Very disappointed and then pleasantly surprised.

The Minions were home with me this week, the victims of flu bugs and a badly sprained arm. The easy way to get through all that was to plant their sick and injured butts in front of the Xbox and let their brains glaze over on video games. Instead I took the opportunity to try out a couple of recent gaming purchases on them.

Now while I'm a dedicated RPG gamer I never really got into the dice and card games. but I figured they might be fun to pass the time with the minions without having to invest the hours setting up a RPG session. so I picked up the Inn fighting dice game from WOTC and the Munchkin card game from Steve Jackson games.

We tried Inn Fighting first.


Inn Fighting basically tries to simulate a classic barroom brawl at an Adventurers tavern. each player gets a character card with the various races and classes of the D&D world. Each card has advantages, disadvantages, and special abilities in line with ones race or class.

The rules seemed simple enough, until you got into actual play. once we started playing a few questions popped up that needed resolving before play could continue, probably not a big deal amongst a group of experienced gamers who were willing to slog through it until they got it down, but with kids or non-gamers it can be a real drag-which it was. I ended up saying screw-it and putting the game away and moving on to the next game, Munchkin.



Now Munchkin is a card game where each player is a member of an adventuring party that's looting a dungeon. It's a parody of every cliche you've ever seen while going through a dungeon crawl. Munchkin was quick to learn, funny as all hell and got us involved in some good old fashioned wheeling and dealing as well as backstabbing fun. The Minions and I loved it.

I always heard that Munchkin was SJG's big moneymaker, even more so than GURPS, now I see why- the game is fun quick, and really easy to pick up even among non gamers. And to capitalize on the games success they have a ton of expansion sets, which I'm sure I'll soon be collecting.