In a Bar Fight, Only Chaotic Evils Survive | Inn-Fighting
Also, I’m a Toxic Jerk
For as much crap as I give D&D, it surprises me that a game with the same setting is one of my favorites. Inn-Fighting checks all the boxes for a good filler game. Quick, fun, and violent.
Here are the basics. You start with a random Adventurer and 2 Action Cards. Your Adventurer is your main character in the fight. An Action Card either gives you a special action or recruits a Bystander to fight with you. On your turn you roll 6 Fight Dice and decide who you want to hit based on the outcome. You can “Punch” the player to your left, hit the player to your right with a “Chair”, or “Power” attack whoever is currently winning. Hit Points you knock off another Adventurer or Bystander are scored as Victory Points. You also get bonuses for knocking them out. Then you pass the dice to the next player and the brawl continues. Whoever gets to 20 VPs first wins the game.
Adventurers run the gamut of D&D classes and races. There’s a (drunk) Human Monk. There’s a (drunk) Dwarf Cleric. There’s a (drunk) Elf Wizard. There’s a (mostly sober) Human Warlord. Etc. The Bystanders are equally varied and equally ready to rumble. I’m not really sure why they’re called that. They’re not innocent bystanders. They’re just not adventurers. Hirelings. NPCs. Sure, the Wandering Minstrel and the Serving Wench want no part of it, but it’s apparent the other Bystanders want a piece.
Unlike the RPG, Inn-Fighting characters don’t have the full range of alignments (if you don’t know what that is, Wiki it). Some Adventurers and Bystanders are called “Evil”, but that’s it. Maybe this is because of the context. In a bar fight, no one is Good or Lawful or Chaotic or Neutral. They’re just Not-Evil. The Not-Evils may kick your teeth in, but the Evils are shittier still.
Note that there isn’t much of a downside to being Evil. One Adventurer, the Half-Elf Paladin, does extra damage to Evils. This means that the Evil’s may occasionally regret their life choices, but most of the time there’s no penalty for being shitty . This is true in real life as well. Unless they’re poor, it’s rare that shitty people actually suffer for being shitty. I know this because I’ve done more than a few shitty things in my life.
One such shitty thing happened about a year ago. At a large family lunch, my cousin, who I share a lot of political views with, expressed her love of Dungeons & Dragons to my aunt. I never knew she gamed, but when I overheard her I immediately rolled my eyes butted in. I then launched into my usual rant about how D&D is a crap system with a crap setting.
Without pause or consideration, I began to shit all over the thing she liked. Without even an ounce of basic fucking humanity, I followed up by shitting on adjacent things (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, fantasy in general) within the span of about 30 seconds. I backed off when I realized I was going too far, but I still didn’t feel shame. Just a vague awareness that I should slow down. I quickly qualified my shit statements by praising Eberron’s setting, but the damage was done. When she later mentioned that she doesn’t game with guys, I totally understood why. Later I would recommend an alternative sci-fi RPG (I think it was Underground) and at Thanksgiving I gushed to her about One Deck Dungeon. I knew I’d been an asshole and was trying to smooth it over. Because I’m an asshole. A toxic, entitled asshole, who did a “profoundly immoral and wicked” thing, which by definition makes it Evil.
But how was this “Evil”? Evil is murder and slavery and rape. Evil is taking children away from their parents and locking them up. Hurting someone’s feelings isn’t Evil, is it?
Yes. I think it is.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that knowledge. I think was supposed to apologize, but I didn’t. Because on top of being an asshole, I’m also a fucking coward when it comes to stuff like this. If you knew me, you wouldn’t be surprised.
When I started writing this, I had an excuse for my rant all lined up. D&D is infested with shitty people. I’m not shitting on non-shitty D&D players! I’m trying to SAVE them from D&D. #DnDGate (which was barely a thing) proved that D&D is too far gone. Non-toxic gamers should abandon Gygaxian fantasy and embrace science fiction! Because most Gygaxian fans are gaping dickholes. And maybe some of that is true, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was a gaping dickhole too.
While wrapping this up, I found out that Inn-Fighting was out of print. Maybe I should have looked that up before I started pondering the nature of Evil D&D characters and haters. Now I’m forced to concoct some bullshit angle. Like this…
Inn-Fighting is a metaphor for nerd culture and nerd rage. Edition Wars, Gatekeeping, and the rest of this bullshit is a big cultural brawl. Almost none of it is in “good fun”, but some of it is beyond toxic. Victory Points represent the exposure or the money someone makes off of culture-baiting. Hit Points represent how much abuse you can take before you delete your online presence.
And in this dumb and pointless melee, I thought I was a Not-Evil. I might have been wrong.
