The Pixie's Box

Waiting

at the

Tavern

Part One: Let’s Pick a Fight

In a previous article, “The Empty Chair”, I addressed a long-standing (or sitting) problem, one as old as DMs/GMs themselves. What to do when not enough of your players can show up on game day?

There is another, lesser problem. Not the occasional “no-shows” that plague oh, so many gaming tables, but the ever-present “late-comers”; The friends, relatives, and spouses who are consistently late as well as the ones that surprise you by not being on time.

You know who I’m writing about.

Yes, most of the time it’s not a problem at all to start without the AWOL players and just let them jump in when they finally arrive. Well, sometimes you may just want to wait that extra 20 or 30 minutes so as to not have to go over everything again when they show up.

Maybe you’re just nice.

Whatever.

Well, are you just going to sit around and chit-chat in the meantime? Sure, that’s nice. How about doing something fun and quick that’ll kick-start that gaming feeling in your players. Something that’ll help to get everyone in the mood for fiercely fighting drow, descending into dungeons dark, and slaying deadly dragons when the party is all together?

May I present the first of three games that always serve to whet my players’ appetites and get them ready for some fun, exciting, fantasy gaming…

Inn-Fighting: D&D Dice Game

Game Designer: Rob Heinsoo

Game Artists: Attila Adorjany and Michael Martin

Game Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Year Published: 2007

Number of Players: 3 - 6

Player Age: 12 and Up

Game Time: 15-30 minutes

Set-Up Time: 5 minutes or less

ISBN: 978-0-7869-4798-0

MSRP: $14.99

Game Type: Cards, Dice, Fantasy, Fighting, Tavern

First of all let’s start with the box.

If I can be honest here, it sucks. What a downright rinky-dink piece of dragon droppings. It’s thin and flimsy. Unfortunately, it’s not well made for travelling at all and this game begs to be brought to your friend’s house or on trips. The top flap opening is also just bad design if you ask me. I can’t tell you how many times I declined to buy this game for the very simple reason that it didn’t look like it was presented very well. When I finally got a chance to see it played by some grognards at NYCC I thought it looked fun and was worth a shot at buying. I went to my local gaming/hobby store here in NYC, the Complete Strategist, and threw down the cash for the game; I think it was about $15.00.

I tore open the clear plastic wrap around the box and began reading the small rule book on my train ride back uptown.

Next game day I threw it down on the table before we got into another chapter of our long-standing on-going D&D campaign and the group got swept up in the chaotic action of this exciting combination of dice and cards.

Second, let’s talk about the game components.

Unless you have no problem getting a pad of paper and a pen/cil to keep score I highly recommend that you use plastic beads or poker chips. In this game your victory points and hit points are one and the same so the score is always in flux. Trust me, colored plastic counters work so much better, too bad none were supplied with the game – it probably kept production cost down. I understand that but at least supply a score pad… come on Wizards.

You get two sets of cards; a deck of “Action” cards and a deck of “Adventurer” cards. These cards are of good stock for how thin they are.

The “Action” cards come in two types…

- 14 Action Cards are special actions that your Adventurer can utilize during the bar fight. These cards usually remain secret and in your hand until you can use them. After playing an Action Card it gets placed face-up in a discard pile next to the draw deck.

- 20 Bystander Cards represent NPCs (or, more accurately in this case, NACs non-Adventurer characters), people who just happen to be at the inn when this bar fight breaks out. Much like a few of the Adventurer Cards, some are listed as (Evil), this only comes into play during the course of a game when certain cards and abilities are played and specify their effects upon evil cards.

These Bystanders give you bonuses in combat as well as act like a shield taking some damage that would otherwise affect your Adventurer.

The “Adventurer” cards form the deck that each player draws one card from at the very beginning of the game. This is your character for the inn-fight. If you and your “Bystanders” all get knocked out before the game is over you get to draw a new “Adventurer” and jump into the fight.

The selection of characters you might draw for yourself to play is impressive and imaginative. They comprise the more common fantasy tropes; the Halfling Rogue, the Human Monk, the Dwarf Fighter, Half-Orc Barbarian, and, of course, an Elf Wizard (*yawn*). However, you will also find an interesting mix of more unusual bar room brawlers such as; the Vampire Assassin, the Warforged Fighter, Githyanki Fighter, Drow Barkeep, and a Beholder Barfly. Each Adventurer has their own unique abilities and defenses.

The game also comes with a set of 6 custom dice and a standard d20 which is used for determining initiative at the beginning of each round and also plays a part in combat.

Basically, every attack is a hit (if you score at least one fist and/or one bar stool on your Attack roll - more on that below where I discuss the game’s Brawl Dice.) The twenty-sided die is used to determine if the attack is “Low Damage” or “High Damage”. You add your d20 roll to the number showing on your chosen attack form, punch, chair, or power. If that number meets or beats the number of your Adventurer’s Skill you do “High Damage”, if it’s lower you score “Low Damage”. As is a standard with D&D games a roll of a 1 is always a miss, a roll of a 20 is always a hit – in fact, a nat 20 grants you a +1 to damage and the recipient of the attack cannot roll the Defense Die!

The other dice which come in the game box are six-sided dice with 5 unique symbols on each.

These are the Brawl Dice, you get 5 gold d6 and 1 red d6 (Your Defense Die).

They each have

2 Punch (depicted with a fist symbol),

1 Chair (depicted with a bar stool symbol),

1 Power (depicted with a lightning bolt symbol),

1 Ale (depicted with a bar mug symbol),

and 1 Luck (depicted with a twin dice symbol).

When combat begins for the first time at the beginning of the game the first player rolls all six dice. S/He can choose to use Punch, Chair, or Power dice rolls to hit opponents and you save Ale and Luck dice until there are at least three in the pool when they can then be used to heal (Ale) or draw an Action card (Luck). After resolving the Brawl Dice the remaining dice, those NOT put aside in the pool for Luck and Ale, get passed on to the next player.

The red Brawl Die is also known as the Defense Die. This is because if you get hit by an attack that deals 3 or more damage to one of your characters, either a Bystander OR an Adventurer OR if the damage is enough to knock-out one of your characters, you get to roll the red Defense Die.

If the result is a Luck symbol it can benefit your Bystander or your Adventurer. If it comes up Power it can usually only help your Adventurer.

The game also comes with 2 double-sided rule cards. Really? Two? It’s a 3 – 6 player game and it comes with only two rule cards. Wizards of the Coast, you dropped the ball on this. Come on, there should be six. Even if you had given only three in the pack that, at least, could be argued as acceptable as one card could be placed between two players each. But only two? Bad call.

All the cards that come with the game are a bit on the thin side but they are rather sturdy. You may want to sleeve these cards but in all honesty this game relies much more on dice rolling than card shuffling and playing so you may well be able to get away with not sleeving these cards without jeopardizing their longevity.

Much like the cards the custom dice that come with the game are all well-made and seem well balanced.

The rule book is a small 24 page booklet that could have been edited better but is sturdy enough.

As mentioned earlier, Wizards of the Coast should have included a score pad with the game or even colored plastic beads for tracking hit points and victory points but they decided not to.

Third let’s take a quick look at the overall game.

This game captures the chaotic feeling of a barroom brawl perfectly. Speaking as someone who has been in his fair share of bar fights this game does a great job in imitating this atmosphere with just dice and cards. My group and I enjoy the game mechanics of Punch on the left, Chair to the right, and Power to a much greater choice of targets. The scoring system of victory points overlapping with hit points works in the since that in combat your lost hit points become the attackers victory points. The theme of the game is a great match to the mechanics and together they really do evoke a feeling of what a bar fight in a D&D game might be like.

The use of Bystanders acts like a defensive shield protecting your Adventurer from harm in many attacks. The downside is that your opponent still gets victory points whether it’s from defeating another player or a Bystander.

The Game actually does play fast enough and even though it’s a quick run the intensity of the fights and trying desperately to hit who you want to hit when you want to hit them can get maddening.

This game depends a bit on the luck of the draw into your hand as much as the luck of the dice rolls. However there is room to plan out a little strategy when it comes to decide to hit left, right, or use your power. At the same time there is a lot of pure chaos, just like a real bar room brawl!

Final Thoughts…

Right off the bat, the packaging box is a horrible piece of construction. The art is interesting although I personally am not a huge fan of it. Also the rule book is miserable. It’s written poorly and edited worse. Reading and understanding the rules do not flow easy the way the book is set up. I’d also like to add that this game is SCREAMING for a second edition! There just are not enough cards in this game to make too many fights feel different, if not a new edition at least an expansion with more Action cards. More Adventurer cards would be nice but not as needed as new Action Cards. AND NEW PACKAGING, PLEASE!

This is most definitely not the kind of game that you call your group over and plan a day around, that’s for sure. This is a great filler game, something short and fun to play in between games or while waiting for everyone to show up.

With those points stated let me end on this note, Inn-Fighting is an incredibly Fun game! Really fun!

It plays so quick and can get so intense that you can play several games before realizing how much time has flown by! Everybody here at the Nerd Wasteland thinks this game does deserve a small spot in every gamer’s shelf.

Thematically this game hits the mark. For a small, filler game I have to say that it does a great job not only Feeling like a fantasy-world bar fight but the rules work for the theme – the rules don’t feel like they were just slapped on any old theme, they really work well with the game on the chaotic-thematic level of this all-out bar-room brawl.

Inn-Fighting: D&D Dice Game hits all the marks; Cheap cost, Fast game play, No real set-up time, Easy rule mechanics, New players can jump in any time – Even In The Middle Of An Existing Game, and it’s FUN!

If you play fantasy rpgs like Dungeons & Dragons or board games like Descent I bet you and your Nerd Herd of Twenty-Sided Warriors will enjoy getting into this Inn-Fight.

Come to think of it, this quick, light game is also great for creating the perfect chaotic epilogue to a game of Red Dragon Inn. Trust me.

In Fact the game even comes with blank character cards that you can use to re-create your favorite fantasy RPG or board game character to bring into the Inn-Fighting!