Bookmark Origin Story

What Goes Into a Bookmark?

As Jack Nicholson once said, mostly, “Where does he get all those wonderful toys bookmark ideas?”

The bookmarks we make are generally influenced by a game title, event, or person. Conventions, seasons, holidays, artists, contest winners, dice sets, (and of course, Munchkin sets) are all fine reasons to make a bookmark.

Usually we’ll try to tie the bookmark’s theme to its mechanic. For example, my namesake bookmark, The Official Devin Lewis Munchkin Tavern 2016 Bookmark of Super Tasting! (that’s a mouthful!), is based on – me! I’m a supertaster, so I thought it would be entertaining to have people lick the bookmark and stick it to their foreheads. 

Which brings me to another goal of the bookmarks. We want them to be both funny and unique for Munchkin. Bookmarks can totally break the rules of the game, which can make them all the more fun for people. But we have to be careful, too. The rules can’t be so broken that it ruins the game for other players, but the bookmark must still be powerful enough (and silly enough) to make you want to play it.

We solve this by having the bookmarks get destroyed or passed on to other players. Another limitation is the built-in rule that you can only use a maximum of two bookmarks per game – and that only if you’ve managed, by curse or on purpose, to change the sex of your character during the game.

That said, we here at Steve Jackson Games pride ourselves on being a (practically) limitless source of the worst best puns around. So we’ll keep making bookmarks -- and Munchkin -- as long as you keep playing!

You can find a list of all our bookmarks here!