Munchkin

Red Mage: Thus, as you can plainly see, I have balanced every nuance of my character to perfectly complement every other facet. I've exploited every rule in the book to eradicate the very notion of flaws. Look on my character sheet, ye mighty, and despair!
Ordeal of Pride: There's still the matter of hubris.
Red Mage: Have you heard nothing I've said?

—8-Bit Theater, "Mark of the Marvel"

The Munchkin is the Tabletop RPG player who plays the game to "win", at any cost, even if that isn't the point of the game. Perhaps the most ridiculed Player Archetype of all time, this player is rarely interested in the story behind the game. Indeed, his characters are little more than extensions of his own personality, or whatever personality would give him the most plusses.

He sees fighting monsters and solving puzzles only as a means toward more power, more gold, more stuff, more plusses. A Munchkin is not satisfied until he can kill a god with his +25 Dancing Holy Vorpal Sword of Flame. On a Critical Failure. Of course, the combat mechanics is only the most obvious avenue. Munchkins try to hunt for "XP for roleplaying" by being over-the-top dramatic, and Kossuth help you if the game uses Ritual Magic—everything will stop until the word salad cooked up by the Munchkin is resolved. Anything that gives more plusses will be used and abused.

The Munchkin's ambition frequently outstrips his sense of fair play. Most of the time, he looks out for number one; the other players are little more than minor inconveniences to him, or obstacles on his path to ultimate power. As such, the Munchkin may engage in one or more of these irritating personas:

  • Ninja Looter: Don't expect a Munchkin to share the spoils of an adventure equally—if he can't take the lion's share, he'll try to take the best stuff first.
  • Gamebuster: Min-Maxing taken to its upper limit. Any Munchkin character of this type is nothing more than a collection of 'kewl powers', taken for no logical in-story reason other than their combat effectiveness. Often includes blatant Game Breaker abilities and power combinations that were never meant to be. Call him out on this, and he'll call you a Scrub.
  • Rules Lawyer: This Munchkin disputes every Game Master ruling, and has memorized every loophole in the game manual. For some reason, he never seems to "correct" the DM when the rules as written would hurt him... The Game Master's best tactic against this guy is Rule Zero; what the DM says, goes, no matter what page 54, column 2, line 41 word 5 of the book says.
  • Cheater: He never rolls where you can clearly see him, and he gets a distressing number of natural 20s. It's just his "lucky dice", he says. His character sheet comes prerolled with max stats. And he has an annoying habit of "forgetting" to write things down, like whether he's used up his spells for the day. Could this be the sort of sad, pathetic creature that would cheat at a cooperative Tabletop RPG game? (Yes.)
  • Metagamer: We all metagame once in a while. After all, even if our characters don't know exactly what that orb with all the eyes is, they've got the feeling that it's dangerous and probably shouldn't be charged head-on. But this guy seems to have read (and memorized) all the monster manuals and the published adventures, and is impossible to catch off guard. Once he sees that giant green scaly thing charging him, he immediately breaks out the acid. Homebrewing is the best way to trip this fellow up.
  • Psychopath: If it has stats, it's there to be killed. For this Munchkin, violence is the first, last, and only solution to every problem. Even the most zealous Real Man knows when it's not time to fight, but not this guy. He'll take up any excuse to start a fight.

Munchkins are a constant source of pain and agony for the Game Master, unless he's a munchkin too, and will often be the direct cause of the Bolt of Divine Retribution, or even Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. He may be forced to employ some killer tactics just to challenge them.

A more pleasant brand of munchkin may try to share his rule-bending benefits with the rest of the group. A more audacious one (a cross with The Loonie) takes advantage of his knowledge and power to do incredibly crazy things that their fellow players will be telling their children about in years to come. Sadly, a rare breed.

A Player Archetypes trope, along with The Real Man, The Roleplayer, and The Loonie. Can be "Stop Having Fun!" Guys, if they leave the other players in the dust, and force them to play "Their Way." Not to be confused with the small but pleasant folks who live east of the Emerald City, nor the pleasantly-wacky card game/tabletop RPG inspired by this Player Archetype.

Compare Mary Sue, who is frequently the literary counterpart. See also Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend, who is someone who gets Munchkin benefits thanks to a third party.

Examples of Munchkin include:

Anime and Manga

  • Lina Inverse of The Slayers is a pretty good example of a Munchkin as a main character, with maybe trace elements of The Loonie. Incredibly powerful and greedy, with no qualms about blowing up her own friends or beating them to a pulp (though she does draw the limit at actually stealing their stuff—she will beg for it, though), and so impulsive in using her powers that she's earned a terrible reputation throughout the known world.
    • This is kind of variable through seasons or between the series and OAVs. At least the first two series portray her as relatively compassionate and well-rounded, even if she is hot-headed and frequently selfish. The "Book of Spells" OAV, on the other hand, is more in line with the Munchkin, showcasing much more of her greedy, mercenary side.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima
    • Nodoka Miyazaki. Armed with a book that lets her read the minds of anyone whose name she knows, she seeks out two artifacts to create a nasty combo. One lets her, by demanding someone's name, receive it (without them even saying it). The other lets her read books remotely—that is, without them even being open. Any one or even two of these objects wouldn't be that powerful. Together, she rapidly turns from a terminally shy girl into one of the biggest cases of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass ever, humiliates one of the most powerful characters in the entire series by evading his attacks and stealing another of his artifacts to make herself even more powerful (while reading the details on how to use it from his mind), and effectively takes enough levels in Badass to leave even the main character fawning at her awesomeness.
      • This is a good time to note here that this is a case of Tropes Are Not Bad; not only does it work out to be purified awesome, but it is perfectly well justified—Nodoka, before seeking the artifacts, had encountered probable Big Bad Fate Averrinicus, who basically deconstructed the main character's entire team. Her life was very, very much on the line, so taking the absolute best optimization of the build presented to her by her Pactio artifact was the practical choice. It also shows what some types of Munchkin consider to be the ideal of Munchkin play—finding odd combinations that combine into pure magic. (And to be fair, in a series where "courage is the real magic", Nodoka needs quite a dollop of it to successfully pull off her feat of Munchkinry.)
      • And let's also note one other thing: Nodoka wasn't out to become "all powerful" or whatnot, she simply wanted to be as useful as possible. Under most circumstances, her powers were only of limited usefulness, and easily disrupted (even if she knew what an opponent was up to, she still had to act upon/tell others that knowledge). Now if she had an item (her Pactio card?) that let her tell her allies that info Telepathically...<shiver>.
    • Perhaps even scarier was Nodoka's Best Friend, Yue. With her ability to research just about anything ever printed, Yue could discover stuff that her opponents didn't even know. Couple that with her mystical training/knowledge/knight gear, and she outmunchkined Nodoka (without the key...[context?]). Likewise, if one looked at real munchkins, we'd have Negi himself (re: his real power boost, on par with Eva), Eva (immortal undead and caster), Chachamaru (Pactio Orbital Laser), Chao (Power Armor, time travel, magic...everything but the pactio), Setsuna/Ku Fei/Mana/Kaede (kickass before the pactio), and most of all: Asuna (Superhuman stats, BFS, Kanka, and Magic Cancellation?!?!?!? Thank God for her Subpar IQ Stat...).
  • Dragon Ball‍'‍s formula for a nearly unstoppable villain: Start by mixing the DNA of every species of the series, for all of their natural abilities and none of their weaknesses. Give it the power to absorb energy and skills from people by devouring them, and let it loose on a third of the world's human population. Buff it with absurd regeneration powers that let it come back to full power From a Single Cell. Top it all off with an alignment of Chaotic Evil, and you have Cell, a supremely overpowered biological android and GM's worst nightmare. Even its flaws are minimized: its initial hideous appearance gives way to the Bishounen Line, its insatiable desire to conquer everything only drives him to become more powerful, and being utterly reviled by the entire world is of utterly no consequence to a Nigh Invulnerable Lightning Bruiser such as itself.
  • Many of the villains of Yu-Gi-Oh! could be considered this. And in a purely adversarial sense, Seto Kaiba.

Comic Books

Film

  • Cass in The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. The humor value of some of his antics (attempting to kill the Big Bad with a lightsaber and dynamite—in a Medieval European Fantasy setting) might put him in the Loonie category, except for the fact that he seems to be doing them for perfectly serious reasons.

Live-Action TV

  • Dwight on The Office. In the episode "Murder," he and everyone else in the office play a murder mystery dinner party game set in Savannah, Georgia. He draws the Butler character but immediately abandons it to play a hardass detective.
  • In an episode of Community entitled "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", the group tries to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Pierce immediately takes on the role of the munchkin, starting off as a psychopath and ending as a cheater.

Literature

Mythology

  • Real Mythology example -- Sun Wukong, the monkey king from Journey to the West. His origin story makes him the patron god of munchkins.
    • Of course, his GM responded by dropping a mountain on him (which means that Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies is Older Than Feudalism?) and later using a cursed headband to effectively place him under control of a more sensible player. Bravo!
    • Also, Sun Wukong's name in Japanese is very familiar to a lot of people with similar implications: Son Goku.
  • Also, not to be outdone, the Norse have an entire Pantheon of Munchkins. From Thor, who can't die unless he lets go his magic hammer (that he can't let go of)[please verify], to Odin, who had some of the most epic lootz in all of mythology.
    • Odin may very well be a literal munchkin god. He took a major flaw (ripping out his left eye) in order to get a huge bonus to his Wis and Int skills (drinking from the legendary Well of Mimir). He even got some nice animal familiars out of it, the ravens Huginn and Munin (thought and memory, respectively).
  • Marduk. He first appears after every other god in his pantheon collectively fail to destroy Tiamat and destroys her singlehandedly for them. On the way, he loots the halos of every divine entity he kills, making him orders of magnitude more powerful than any other deity, and returns to the heavens to be made king of everything for eternity. The entire story reads like a terrible Dragon Ball Z Mary Sue fic.

Tabletop Games

  • The card game Munchkin is all about this, with cards such as "Whine at the DM" and "Convenient Addition Error" allowing you to gain levels. In fact, as the catchphrase, "Kill the monsters, Steal the Treasure, Stab your Buddy" indicates, the whole point of the game is backstabbing (if you're a thief, literally) your way to victory.
    • It's telling when the rulebook opens with telling you to roll for turn order, then argue about it.
    • The company also published the satirical Munchkin's Guide to Power Gaming, covering useful and critical information such as how to cheat at rolling dice, manipulating the GM, How Every problem Can Be Solved With Bigger Guns, and weapons such as the rapid-fire miniwand, capable of firing dozens of fireball spells per second.
  • Warhammer 40000 manages to make the game quite difficult for Munchkins to play by making basic Troops units an essential requirement for winning two of the three base scenarios, and making infantry squads much more powerful than tooled-up characters. The Tyranids and the specialist Space Marines generally have enough strange special rules and loopholes (at least in the Dark Angels and Black Templars rules that are still an edition behind) that a Munchkin can still have fun, they just have to work at it.
  • An amusing anecdotal etymology: In the beginning of the '80s, a Parisian player nicknamed "Gros Bill" ("Big Bill") became infamous for this style of playing, to the point of becoming legendary among French roleplayers. As a result, the French term for "munchkin" is "grosbill".
  • The game 1000 Blank White Cards basically revolves around this if you want to win. The final blank in the deck is usually the card that wins the game. You need to expect this.
    • That said, 1000 Blank White Cards is the sort of game only a Munchkin would want to win, since the only rule (aside from the premise) is that the guy with the most points wins-as the website points out, what's the point in making a card that says you get all the points, if the next guy makes a card that demands you eat your "I get all the points" card? As a consolation prize, the website offers an extra win condition for those who can't fathom the notion that you can have fun playing a game even if you don't win-if there are more of your cards in the pile at the end than anyone else's, you win.
    • It's a slightly modified game from The Enemy Papers. Where it was used as a part of an object lesson.
  • Pretty much all players in Penny Arcade and PvP DnD podcasts, shown brightly in 3rd series finale, but visible through all games (surprisingly, almost avoided by least experienced with RPG, and playing most self-obsessed character - Mike Krahulik and his Jim Darkmagic). In some cases can be explained by party being chaotic evil/neutral, as wealth is their sole motivation.
  • Old World of Darkness rules were partly invented to avoid munchkinism but in fact ended up generating two system-specific types of Munchkin:
    • The "tortured" character who avoids traditional munchkinism but is instead a being of pure Wangst and taking up all of the game's "spotlight" time as a result. Since Storytellers are "suggested" to reward role playing with XP, this wangst can turn into player wangst when their "deep performance" isn't rewarded like they expect.
    • The "ugly alcoholic baby midget ninja" who takes on a monumental number of relatively mechanically-inconsequential character flaws (being short, being a child, being ugly, being an alcoholic or drug addict etc.) in order to pick up a game-breaking combination of advantages. Which is not actually allowed by the rules, though.
    • Not everybody knows about him nowadays, but the original World of Darkness does have its very own metaplot munchkin character: Samuel Haight. (And he broke the rules to get that way, make no mistake.) But considering he ended up as an ash tray in Hell (Wraith shadowlands, actually), most players are kind of disinclined to follow his route. (WoD's way of saying Munchkin = BAD?)
  • There is the famous story of Old Man Henderson, the only character to ever win Call of Cthulhu.

Video Games

  • In massively multiplayer games, there exists the opportunity for higher level players to give lower level players gold and items the lower level players would not normally be able to acquire. From the era of MUDs on.
    • World of Warcraft twinks dominated Player Versus Player battlegrounds in the lower level brackets, often frustrating more "average" low level players. One famous twink had a dodge rating of 120% at level 10. Blizzard really ought to know better; Diablo II had level restrictions on enhancement items way back in the late '90s.
      • Twinking in World of Warcraft was eventually trumped in a patch which made battlegrounds give experience, so players would eventually level out of their preferred bracket. That same patch also added the option to turn off experience gain, but doing so results in being placed in an entirely separate bracket from other players of a similar level. So it's munchkins only vs. other munchkins and casual players vs. casual players.
    • EverQuest had one egregious example overlapping with griefing on a roleplaying server. When you died, you lost experience, and would actually lose a level if your experience dropped enough. However, you would not lose any new powers, though they might be scaled back to the lower level. In one notorious case, a level 50 character killed himself all the way back down to 20, then went around decimating other level 20s with his greatly expanded power set. This case caused a change preventing such massive de-leveling. Now that's some dedicated powering up.
  • Maple Story has an extremely large portion of the higher-leveled community who are pretty much like this. The MMORPG itself even has a plot, but virtually no one cares about that aspect of the game even though it is quite decent. The community originally wasn't really like this; until the economy started going crazy and the game owners would add tons of overpowered special equipment for the majority of the higher-leveled players who have extreme amounts of cash (which essentially neglects everyone else); as opposed to the originally rather fair gameplay.
    • Some games have even easier twinking. In Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst, the only equipment with level requirements are frames (aka armour) and barriers (aka off-hand shields). But in addition to these basic items, the game featured units, with varying purposes, and MAGs, whose stats would augment that of their owner when equipped. Some units were especially powerful in the early game, such as Centurion/Ability, which boosted five of the player's six stats by 30 points each. Since they lacked level requirements, these rare and powerful units could be used at level 1, as could MAGs which had been raised to level 200, their maximum. (Conversely, some of these units—like Centurion/Ability—had limited use at higher levels.) A level 1 HUmar is no real threat, but when equipped with four Centurion/Ability units and a level 200 MAG, they become an unstoppable death machine until Very Hard difficulty.
      • Also of note, it's entirely possible, through the use of MA Gs and Units, for a level 1 Ranger type character to use any gun in the game, including the most powerful ones.
    • Due to the use of skills rather than level for item requirements, Anarchy Online was particularly notorious for twinking. It crossed into lampshade territory as almost the entire player economy was based on twinking and even casual players would be using gear at least a few levels higher than them. This was severely curbed, as equipping high-level items early on depowers it to the point where it can actually be worse than something in line with your current level.
    • A case could be made that MMOs don't even try to discourage munchkin-style roleplaying. Sure, items have minimum level requirements, and the most powerful gear requires you to bring down raid bosses for which you'll need the second-most-powerful gear to even attempt, but the basic style of play is oriented toward making your character constantly more powerful. Players will even deride other players for not playing like munchkins. The trick-and-trap or intrigue-based adventure of a pencil-and-paper RPG is completely absent.
      • Technically, there are such things as "roleplaying shards". And they are specifically marked as such, not vice versa. So grinding/munchkin is the default mode.
  • This is Lampshaded in Planescape: Torment, when talking to an "Elderly Hive Dweller". Upon beginning dialogue, one of the lines used by her is "I'll bet ye've got all sorts o' barmy questions!" (she mimics your heroic stance) "Greetin's, I have some questions... can ye tell me about this place? Who's the Lady o' Pain? I'm lookin' fer the magic Girdle of Swank Iron, have ye seen it? Do ye know where a portal ta the 2,817th Plane o' the Abyss might be? Do ye know where the Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum is?"
  • The Einzberns in Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero are solid examples. Generally, they seem to have a penchant for summoning the most powerful servants available, such as Angra Mainyu in the third war (only he wasn't what they expected), King Arthur, the most powerful Saber-type Servant, in the fourth war, and Hercules, who they MinMaxed despite the fact that he was already very formidable without it. Specifically in his case: sacrificing all his sanity points for a boost to all stats, even though he would be much more dangerous with his mind intact despite the slightly lower stats, seeing as he's Hercules and all. His Master Illyasviel von Einzbern is just as badly minmaxed, her creators having modified her body so she has enough Mana to continuously feed his energy-expensive mad enhancement ability. The process they used stopped her growth before hitting puberty and shortened her lifespan to less than 20 years. Additionally, they stole her childhood in order get the two of them to bond, thus earning her his total obedience. Ironically, they always lose.

Web Comics

  • The Order of the Stick
    • This strip shows off a very good example of a character a Munchkin would make, and a very good example of how a smart Game Master can deal with it. The example given is quite possibly illegal (depending on your interpretation of the rules for "attacks of opportunity"), but also relatively mundane, considering that the spell system of Dungeons & Dragons is widely considered to be a Game Breaker in its own right. (It should be noted that the tactic in the comic doesn't work, but see the discussion page if you want to talk about that.)
    • Behold a "Roleplaying" Munchkin at its shameless moment.
  • The embodiment of the Munchkin is the character Red Mage of 8-Bit Theater, who only cares about items based on their stat increases, is a huge Twink and thus (initially) wouldn't use a spell that aligns him improperly to save anyone's life, and thinks he can manipulate the laws of the universe by shifting the numbers on his stat sheet and avoid damage by forgetting to write things down (though this often works). Also, in a 2007 episode, he revealed he is the Last of His Kind, because every Red Mage was a munchkin, and as the dragon Muffin sums up, "they stupided themselves to extinction".
    • Ranger is also a solid Munchkin, considering his choice of classes (to be precise, Ranger and Ranger) his constant abuse of the rules ("Moreover! As a Ranger/Ranger, I can dual-wield my dual-wield!") and his strange family (every species is in his genealogical tree).
  • Darths and Droids turns R2-D2 into this. To be exact, his form comes from taking so many gadgets and abilities, offset with lots of flaws and downsides, notably the inability to speak Basic.
  • All of the PCs from DM of the Rings (the precursor to Darths and Droids) have some Munchkin aspects (most notably an obsession with treasure), but Legolas is the biggest one of the group.
  • Cory (Zoro) and Luke (Luffy) from One Piece: Grand Line 3 Point 5. Given that the GM designed parts of the game with this in mind, this makes Natalie's life rather difficult.
  • Chainmail Bikini has a great example in this strip.
  • Protagonist of Weregeek was suspected of being "natural-born munchkin" at his first Dungeons & Dragons game. And for good reason.
  • Played for humor in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. The Twinks are gang of munchkin characters described as:

Dan: Troublemakers! They have many names: Trolls, spammers etc. Or gamers who god-mod and are "unbeatable." They go about and cause havoc, not thinking about the future!

    • Given that the comic was based off an RPG chatroom, it might be a jab at munchkin players.
  • Minmax the Fighter from Goblins. Among other things, he traded his ability to wink and his ability to rhyme on purpose for two extra feats.
  • The three players of Full Frontal Nerdity fit this archetype to one degree or another, with Nelson taking the cake. The most notable example of this behavior was when they managed to finagle their way into ruling a kingdom after a simple intro quest and using its massive resources to fund expeditions netting them ungodly power-ups.
  • Homestuck:
    • The alien Vriska Sekret, takes time out from being a Killer Game Master to be a Petticoat Seagrift in the "extreme role playing" game FLARP. She has all the levels. All of them. And that's before she even gets tangled up in the mythology of the setting. When it became time for her to fight real monsters for real odds, she started equipped with Rocket Boots and enchanted dice, and was one of the few characters to make the sacrifice to become a Physical God.
    • Eridan applies too, under "psychopath". What little we're shown of his time in SBURB has him bitching that no one seems to want to come to his world and help him deal with all these murderous angels. Karkat points out that the angels wouldn't have been murderous at all if Eridan hadn't automatically assumed he was supposed to kill them, or at least, having discovered that he gained no benefit from killing them, proceeded to keep killing them anyway.
  • Resonance Ben from Keychain of Creation deliberately cultivates Resonance (a Walking Wasteland curse that all Abyssal Exalted have) and uses it to make necrotic attacks. No sane GM would let him do such a thing in the game proper.
  • Mike from Something*Positive is the worst kind of munchkin. He was also an abrasive Jerkass before some positive Character Development. Now he's just kind of a Jerkass and a munchkin. One Deep-Immersion Gaming arc had him showing up late, because he wanted to design "balanced" (read: all stats maxed out) characters for everybody despite being told beforehand that the GM would be doing this, and he announced the campaign just wasn't working and they should just use his characters instead...10 minutes into the actual game.

Western Animation

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