When your halfling has the sniffles and your gnoll chooses mental impairment over D&D…
Written by e
March 29, 2008
13 Comments
What do you do when members of your group are (expectedly or unexpectedly) absent?
Inn-Fighting
My original plan yesterday was for us to play while waiting for whoever was late (and isn’t there always someone late?). We knew Hakim wouldn’t be there because he wasn’t feeling well, but we didn’t expect to wait and wait for Eko and not have him show up at all. (The gnoll is a bass player – music geeks will understand why this explains everything.)
While waiting, Name and I tried to figure out the rules to Inn-Fighting with the new guy, who will eventually be playing a caster (warlock, I think). I’m not sure if we were all brain-dead or the rulebook is hard to follow, but it may be a combination of the two. (We did wonder about the ages 12+… would a group of 12 year olds figure out the rules faster than we did? If so, what does it say about the college-educated set?)
It became evident that Eko wasn’t showing up. Our DM didn’t want to run the adventure with two people out, especially since some of it actively involved the druid, so we decided to try Inn-Fighting instead.
We even got the DM’s girlfriend involved! (He was so happy that she was playing – it’s one step closer to getting her playing D&D! She’s borrowing my copy of Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
For those that are unfamiliar with this game, the premise is simple. You are an adventurer in a bar. A fight breaks out and you kick arse, gathering up allies where you can. The more people you knock out, the more victory points (VP) you accumulate. The first person to accumulate 20 VP and make a successful attack, wins!
Seems simple, right?
We played for over two hours. On one game!! There are lots of twists and turns coming from the various powers of each adventurer, bystander, and action card.
Some of our favorites:
- Syranil, Half Elf Paladin - Her Smite power deals crazy damage to Evil characters and the evil character gets no defense roll. (Extra Irony Points? Her bystander was an Orc Maurauder.)
- Finno, Halfling Rogue – When he has a bystander on his team, you can’t defend against his power attack because you are flanked!
- Charrg, Half-Orc Barbarian – We all hated Name for having this card. With Charrg’s defensive move, a frenzy, he deals anywhere between 1 and 5 damage to every adventurer. When all you have is 2 to 10 hps, that’s a big owie.
- Bodyguard, Bystander – Does his job by eating 2 pts of any damage to your adventurer.
- Drunken Caravan Guard, Bystander – When he defends from an attack, he hits his head and forgets who he was fighting for. Everyone rolls a d20 and the high roller takes him.
- Kobold Wizard (evil), Bystander – Stinking Cloud. Nuff said.
What makes the game so long is that it thrives on “Take Down the Leader“. The Power Attack is always targeted at the player with the most VP, so may the gods be kind to you if you are winning!
The good news? This evens out the game so that by the end, everyone is within an inch of winning and has to really get a lucky card or roll to get over the edge. It’s not like Monopoly, when you look across the table and see Grandma with stacks of 100s and you have change for a twenty. Many a game of monopoly in my house would end with people leaving the table because it just wasn’t fun anymore. Not the case with Inn-Fighting – everyone is almost a winner until the bitter end!
The bad news? We spent the last hour of the game with the whole table hovering between 18-22 VP. Once you have 20, you must make a successful attack before you can win, which means everyone else at the table is trying to power attack you to take you down before your turn rolls around.
In the end, our DM won. (We like to make him think we let him win.)
All in all, once we had figured out the rules, this game was really fun to play. I’ll be bringing it to future sessions for sure. It could be easily modified so that the winner would only need 5 or 10 VP to win, which would make the game much shorter.
The unexpected bonus? The blue d20 that game with the game gave me 4 critical hits… more 20s than I’ve rolled in my entire career as a drow. Go figure.
E. Foley is a geek girl extraordinaire. She writes amazing online dating profiles for geeks and non-geeks, helping clients all over the world find love. Her writing can be found at Dating Sites Reviews, Examiner.com, and elsewhere as a ghostwriter. By day, she is the Copywriter at ThinkGeek. She lives in Maryland with DaveTheGame and her adorable cats, Mr. Peanut and Don Juan. (Email e, or follow @geeksdreamgirl on Twitter.)
“We spent the last hour of the game…”
Gah. How long did the whole thing take? Even an hour is waaaay too long for a light “take that” game. Rob Heinsoo is a funny guy and a good designer for RPGs, but I might need to take him to the Dave school of board game design…
I dunno, we spent forever just walking around the DMs living room saying, “Where’s (the gnoll)?” ….so I have no idea when the game actually started.
A lot of the beginning went slowly because we were trying to all figure out the rules.
I think now that we all “get it”, the next time we try it will go faster.
You did not let me win!!!>-(
I used Tactics! *8-B
There was a card that allowed me to deal damage with out rolling…yes, automatic damage, free, no rolling, no defending, you are sh*@# out of luck type of damage. The second I got me 20+Vp, I player that card and won. IN YOUR FACE!! >-)
Looking forward to the next Inn-fighting game. =)
Ill take the lot of you!!
One of my favorite D&D related time wasters is Three Dragon Ante, it’s like a mutant version of poker and trading card game.
I highly recommend it.
Bonus: You can play it in character and use your character’s skills. Bards are insanely good at it of course. It’s not like I’ve ever fascinated other players to make them do my bidding *eyes get shifty.
Sounds like a fun game…maybe I’ll convince my players to go in on it with me. Since my gaming space got flooded out last Thursday and it’s not quite ready for the game yet, this might make a good diversion so they don’t feel like they’re missing out too much…
Dont forget to check out http://www.slugfestgames.com/games_rdi.php
Red Dragon Inn is a good “drinking” game that is similar to this one. Excellent game for playing when your players are bored and wanting a break at the inn. (“i’m getting drunk, are there any girls here?”)
Caleb
that’s too cool
This is essentially the D&D Edition of a “skirmish”..a rather awesome “demo” version of the full game (in my opinion)…and it’s just WAY too much fun =P It’s the D&D game for non- D&D…ers…erists…erites?
ah well games instead of D&D gets very dangerous, D&D endoursed games im been thinking but as a D&Dner tunred Boardgamer turned back to D&Der i think its a dodgey line to tread there can be only one so i will not real my list of good games just in case this turns in to boardgame blog instead of d&D date blog
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How does “DnD Inn Fighting” differ from “Munchkin” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchkin_(card_game))? (besides the fact that “Munchkin” is made to make fun of everything DnD)
From what you described, the gameplay sounds very much the same as Munchkin: everyone gunning for the top player.
avianfoos last blog post..Maybe, just maybe, MMOs are like DnD
@ Avian – It’s similar in the Take Down the Leader mentality. I think the biggest difference is that you’re fighting against your table mates 100% of the time and not whatever monster card is turned up like in Munchkin.
Learning it from the printed directions is a bit confusing(bad directions writer, bad!), but if you have someone explain the rules to you, it makes sense quickly.
It’s a fun game, I need to play it more often!