I’ve often daydreamed about using Kickstarter to create some sort of Shakespeare game. The primary thing stopping me is that while I’ve got some Shakespeare knowledge, I have no idea how to even start creating a game for mass production.

Luckily Steve Jackson Games does not have this problem.  Lucky for us, these professional game developers decided to drop a Shakespeare version of their huge hit Munchkin on us back in February.  I immediately hit the “Shut Up And Take My Money” button.  I even added the Kickstarter extras pack.

My game arrived this week!

If you’ve never played Munchkin, it’s a sort of comedy “dungeon crawler” game where you’re all players starting on level 1 of a 10 level dungeon.  On each turn, you fight monsters and look for treasure.  Meanwhile, every combat is a combination of what weapons you’ve found (to increase your score) and what curses you’ve uncovered (possibly decreasing your score).  Other players are encouraged to help you or gang up on you, depending on your friends.

So what I got was exactly this (not sure that I was expecting anything else), just with a Shakespeare theme.  It’s a complete game, coming with a board, full deck, standup pieces and dice.  There are many extension packs to the original game, this isn’t that. This can be your only copy and you still have a complete game.

The artwork, monsters, treasures and curses are all Shakespeare themed. As shown, “The Head That Wears The Crown” is a level 14 undead monster. Its special power is that it steals any headgear you might be wearing and uses it itself. All the cards are like that. There’s a Rosencrantz card I saw whose power is that, if Guildenstern is in play, he can join him.

Whenever Shakespeare is mashed up with another thing you have to wonder, “How appealing is this to Shakespeare fans, and how appealing is it to fans of other thing?”  Look at the Shakespeare / Star Wars crossover books, they’re incredibly popular, but I can’t stand the things. Guess I’m not a big enough Star Wars fan.

I think you need to be a real fan of Munchkin to appreciate everything that comes in this kit. They actually did this incremental thing where the more support the project got, the more material they created. There’s a standard idea of “stretch goals” in Kickstarter, but that’s not what this is. This is,

“There’ll be at least 100 cards in the deck, plus 1 new card for every 5k shares we get on Twitter” (for example. That’s not the extra goal.) So I don’t know how many cards I ended up getting.

There’s things I’m a little disappointed in.  The characters (“standees”) are original artwork, but it’s just 6 different colored versions of the same picture over and over.  I thought that there’d be unique characters on each.  It wouldn’t have been hard for them to do that, so I’m not sure why they didn’t. Imagine Monopoly if all you got to fight over was whether you wanted to be the red top hat or the purple top hat?  Having your favorite piece is part of the fun of the game.  They did fix this a bit by offering a set of 3d pieces as part of the expansion pack, which is cool I suppose, but 4 pieces is really just 2

copies of the same thing (each piece has a male and female version), one black, one white.

I like the new card type of “dungeon cards” which I think will add to the game.  They provide a sort of theme over the whole game, including the opportunity to reset the dungeon card (voluntarily or otherwise). That addition feels like it actually changes the game, and isn’t just putting some new graphics and descriptions onto what is otherwise the same game you’ve always had.

We haven’t played yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Maybe once I start getting into the deck and actually having to deal with the repercussions of running into various Shakespeare quotes come to life, I’ll love it?

My wife and daughter don’t get much time to bond. With two younger siblings in the house it’s hard for them to sit around and watch a movie that might have more “adult themes” than the two younger ones are ready for.  As we’ve worked our way through various 1980’s classics my wife has asked about Pretty Woman, a favorite of hers. I remind her of exactly what that movie is about, and how ugly Jason Alexander gets at the end, and maybe it’s not something our 11yr old boy is interested in or ready for.

But, the other night the boys were out at a karate event and the middle daughter was having friends over (hanging out in the basement), so  I came home discover them watching Pretty Woman together.  Thus began the remainder of the night’s entertainment, listening for random feet in the kitchen and diving for the remote control to make sure nothing questionable is on screen when younger eyes might see it.

There’s a scene toward the end when Julia Roberts’ character convinces Richard Gere to take a day off and relax. She makes him take his shoes off and feel the grass with his toes. Before you know it they’re relaxing as he reads to her.

“Wait,” I say. “What did that book just say?”

My daughter knows this game and is already looking for the remote control.

“Are you serious?” my wife asks.  She knows that the sooner we finish this movie the better the odds we don’t get permanently interrupted.

“I could have been seeing things, but I could swear the book he’s reading from has a big word with a capital S on it. Which would be weird because you’d expect Complete Works or something and his name wouldn’t be the first word.”

My daughter has skipped a good minute or so before the scene, so we wait it out.  I get up and stand near the screen with my camera ready.

“Ha!” said I.  “Not my first rodeo.” If you can’t read it from the picture, it’s “Shakespeare Quotations.”

I actually went back just now as I’m writing this to rewind the movie (on the computer) and try to figure out what he’s reading.  You hear, “deaf heaven” and “my bootless cries.”  Son of a gun, they’ve got him reading Sonnet 29. Awesome. Better than something totally cliche out of Romeo and Juliet. I’m a little annoyed that they’ve got him reading from a quotations reference book rather than a Complete Works. It’s like neither of the characters knows anything about Shakespeare and thought, “Oo, that sounds romantic, we should read that” but wanted to get just the highlights or something.

Not only have I never noticed this, I’ve never seen a reference to it. Not that I was looking all that hard.  Googling “pretty woman Shakespeare” does indeed show some of those “25 Facts You Never Knew” type lists about the movie, and at least a couple of them do drop what Richard Gere is reading.

Is there a larger Shakespearean comparison or parallel we can make? You’ve got all the obvious Galatea / My Fair Lady stuff.  But is there anything else in this movie that connects to Shakespeare? In other words is this scene entirely coincidence, or is it a hint to a larger connection?

Here’s an interesting twist. How about a modern day murder mystery series set in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford on Avon?  Jo Joyner and Mark Benton (the names mean nothing to me) star in the new BBC (ah, that explains it) show.

The female lead will be named Lu Shakespeare of course, and I’m hoping that means that each episode will have the opportunity for some Shakespeare references, jokes, plotlines, or just general what have you.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get to see the show, being in the US and all with limited BBC access, but I like to look out for my people.  Who knows, maybe it will be a smashing success and spawn a US version based in Stratford, Connecticut.