The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I haven't written a review for RPGNet in a long time, but I suddenly have a very good reason to do so. A review appeared a few weeks back of Lunch Money (LM), one of my favourite games, and gave what I felt was a poor and inaccurate depiction of it. It said it was a bit crap. I beg to differ.

Funnily enough, that reviewer mentioned that SJG's Knightmare Chess is a better game. You see, I bought Knightmare Chess around the same time I bough Lunch Money. After a week, I gave KC away. Three years later, I am still playing Lunch Money. As you Americans say: you do the math.

The games make good comparisons, too, for they are complete opposites. KC is slow, dull, frustrating and suffering from flawed design, but the cards are beautiful to look at. Whereas the cards in LM are pretty ugly to look at - but you don't really care because the game is so much fast, furious, butt-kicking fun.

LM is a fairly silly game. It is designed to mimic, in a comical way, kids' schoolyard brawls, and the kind of savagery contained therein. It harks back to the days when you would practice your Chinese Burns, Dead Legs, Wedgies or even the dreaded Double Nose Gootchie (remind me to show you how to do that one sometime) because hurting each other was the daily past-time during lunch. It then takes this to a far more violent, blood-letting level by allowing you to beat each other with pipes, chains, hammers and knives, and by adding a grisly feel to the artwork. We'll get back to that in a second.

This gives a bit of confusion in the nature of the game. When you've got things as silly sounding as a Pimp Slap or a Spinning Backfist, or the absolutely all-powerful Hail Mary (knee to the groin), it seems a bit odd to then go all dark and brutal and start beating people with chains. Perhaps things like "Compass" or "Sawn-Off Ruler" or "Wet Tennis Ball" would make better weapons.

In short, the game is a bit confused - on one hand, it encourages a sort of "Nah nah na nah nah" kind of fun, and then on the other, it's something out of a Garth Ennis comic with young girlies beating each other to death. Mostly, this doesn't hurt the game; in fact, in a way, it helps. The slip into brutality quickly gets the viciousness flowing in the players, and helps set the tone of a violent hurtiness-muchly game where you are supposed to beat the crap out of your opponents till they're a bloody, screaming heap. And it does for once do justice to the very ignoble savagery that is schoolyard fighting.

But where it does jar is in the artwork and quotes on the cards. The cards are decorated with bizarre and surreal sepia-toned photos of a few little girls in poses and angles which I'm sure somebody thinks are artistic, but the rest of us think are lame. Some of these are great - the Elbow card shows a girl displaying hers and their nasty points in a very natural way, and the Spinning Backfist and Heabut show these attacks coming right at you. But then you have the Kick card which shows a girl's face distorted in a cracked mirror, or the Humiliation card which shows a girl screaming in front of a church - yer what?

Then there's the quotes. Again, some of these are really funny, like Hook, which shows flying teeth and the phrase "Trust me, I'm a dentist", or like Knife, which says "This will only hurt for a minute…". And then there's the First Aid card which says "Mother Mary, won't you whisper…Did Jesus ever have days like this?". It's like a definition of trying too hard to be "dark", and failing miserably. Again, sometimes, the darkness of the art and quotes works, to add some nice bloody ethos to the game. But sometimes it crosses the fine line and just ends up looking monumentally stupid.

(As an aside, experienced players will quickly discover a way to know when a new player has picked up a Grab card - the quote is "Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide" and I guarantee you the new player will find themselves singing the song. Never fails.)

But enough about art - how does it play? The answer is pretty darn well.

There are four types of cards - Attacks (buff), Defence (blue), Weapons (purple) and Special Attacks (red). However, these colours are a little washed out, and in a hurry, they're not always easy to tell apart. Like I said, card design is not a strong suit here. But it's a simple game, so this doesn't cause any big problems.

Attacks are the basic building blocks of the game, listing the name of the attack (Kick, Hook, Jab) and the damage it does (a number from 1-4, or 7 for the Hail Mary, the most devastating attack in the game - ouchy!). Weapons are just like Attacks, but aren't discarded after being used, so you never run out of ammo. Players have 15 points of lunch money - basically life points - and on their turn, each player launches an attack (plays a card on the centre stack) to whittle this amount away. Unlike the schoolground, however, taking lunch money off your friends by beating them up does NOT give you that money - these are just like life points in Magic. At the end of each attack, all those playing cards draw their hands back to five cards, and play passes until only one player is left standing.

Once the attacker names his victim (only one per attack) and plays his attack, the victim can play defensive cards, such as Block or Dodge. Some defences don't work against some attacks, or have special effects, such as the Disarm card which forces the player to drop his Weapon, if he used one. Players can also skip their attacks to play First Aids to get points back, or to discard in the hope of getting better cards.

Finally, Special Attacks add some interesting twists to these simple rules. Poke in the Eye, for example, does very little damage, but incapacitates its victim, allowing the next player a free shot - if they want to take it. The Big Combo is pulling two moves at once so requires two Defence cards to block it. And so on. The most important Special is the Grab, because it allows a free attack if successful, and it itself is automatically successful after a blocked attack (either attacker or defender can play it). This allows for some fantastic exchanges, which is what really makes this game come alive - see below.

Normal game play is simple. Low attacks get thrown around a lot for minimal damage, as players wait for the right combos in their hands. Defence cards are the most valuable, and so need to be hoarded: players will often be skipping their attacks in order to get more of them. This makes sense because being a defender gives you more of a chance to play successful Grabs. So you wait for your opponent to attack you with a punch, and then you block, grab his arm, pull him into a headlock and noogie him into oblivion. Of course, just as you go to grab him, he might slip away himself, and then hit you back even harder than you were going to hit him. Sometimes exchanges of attacks and clever, special defences like this can go for up to four or five cards, which can be quite exciting. You grapple backwards and forwards until one player makes the decisive hit for some huge amount of damage- surprisingly like real life.

Strategy is simple - you just hold out as long as you can until you get your devilish combo ready, and when your opponent is all out of Defence cards, hit them with everything you've got. But getting this timing right and reading your opponent provides timelessly entertaining gameplay, as well as plenty of room to bluff. And the randomness of the deck means you're always on your toes. Can you take this blow and lose the points, or will you sacrifice the defence card that was so important to the combo you we're working on? It's tense, taught and several other things beginning with "t".

The real beauty of this strategy though is that it all happens at break-neck speed. The right card combos are so powerful they can knock you out of the game in two hits. Plan too far in advance, or bet too much on the deck giving you the cards you need, and you're history. Thus LM has a nice level of strategy, but doesn't sacrifice game speed or unpredictability to do so. Like a real fight, this is fast and furious and extremely brutal, and speed and luck count just as much as brains and firepower - but you need all of these to win.

Obviously, however, this amount of luck and speed means this is no game for any one looking for deep play. Once you have the basic strategy down, play can become formulaic, and predictable. For example, if you draw a bad hand, you're pretty much screwed and there's little you can do about it. This means that it can tire after about five or six games or so, especially for larger groups. However, it always feels fresh again next time, so while it might not last an evening, it will last for years.

And of course, you don't really want to play for any great time, because that's not the point. LM is one of the most adrenalin pumping games I've played, full of nail-biting climaxes, see-sawing advantages and victories snatched from defeat at the last possible second, as cards and people get slapped around harder and faster. It's not supposed to be long-lasting, and that's probably a blessing.

Finally, the real bonus of Lunch Money is in how it brings out the spirit of the game. The rules suggest and the cards encourage that you narrate your actions, rather than playing your cards soullessly. When you pull a Big Combo, you're supposed to describe your cool moves, such as "I walk over to Mike and grab his head and ram it into my knee twice". The best card of all, Humiliation, is especially ripe for description and abuse. All the horrible things you wanted to do at school are at your disposal - and now you can do them in the comfort of your own home, at no personal risk to yourself. What fun.

Of course, you don't have to do this, because the cards are pretty descriptive on their own. My group tends to be less enthusiastic in this regard, and we still have lots of fun with it. Unlike something like Baron Munchausen, shyer, quieter or less dramatic players can have just as much fun with this game.

There are, however, a few small problems with LM. Some of the Special Attacks are either so difficult to execute or have so little extra effect as to make them never worth launching. And some, like Choke and Headlock, are so complex they can't be played without resorting to the rulebook, a big no-no for such a fast game. Weapons aren't as helpful as they should be, because discarding and getting new cards is so important. And finally, some of the Defence cards are too weak. But there is nothing here that can't be fixed. We simply pulled out the Specials we didn't like and made a few house rulings, and it now works fine.

Some of the complexity of the Specials also make the game tricky to teach, so new players can't be introduced as easily as they should be for a game like this, and sometimes people will forget the rules. However, since rules are not so important here, this is quite survivable. Also, LM only really works for smaller groups, because the time delay of waiting for your turn breaks down the flow, decreases the strategy and removes some of the excitement. Even with four players it begins to show some strain. But again, not a fatal flaw; these are merely quibbles which stop this great game from being truly extraordinary.

And Lunch Money is a great game. Except for a few of the subtle rules with the Specials, it is easy and quick to learn. It's also quick to play so new games happen constantly and no one ever feels left out when they lose. It's wild enough so that no-one, no matter how skilled, can ever be sure of victory at any point, but still has some good strategy. It requires one pack of cards to play and nothing else (scoring is simple enough to be done in your head) so it can be carried easily and played anywhere. I've played it on buses, on park benches and in dentist waiting rooms - which got us some strange looks, let me tell you.

Sure, Lunch Money might not hold your interest for an entire night. Nor is it a work of genius in terms of design, and the production values are a little weird. And if you require heaps of depth and tactical maneuvering in all your games, or have an aversion to beating the crap out of your friends, you won't enjoy it. But it was never meant to be complex, or long lasting. It's meant to be what it is: a superb filler game that's lots of brutal fun, perfect for any moment you have free.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Lunch Money
Author: C. E. Wiedman Category: Card Game Company/Publisher: Atlas Games Line: Lunch Money Cost: approx $30 Page count: n/a ISBN: 1-887801-47-2 SKU: AG1100 Playtest Review by Steve Darlington on 11/24/99. Genre tags: Modern_day Gothic	I haven't written a review for RPGNet in a long time, but I suddenly have a very good reason to do so. A review appeared a few weeks back of Lunch Money (LM), one of my favourite games, and gave what I felt was a poor and inaccurate depiction of it. It said it was a bit crap. I beg to differ. Funnily enough, that reviewer mentioned that SJG's Knightmare Chess is a better game. You see, I bought Knightmare Chess around the same time I bough Lunch Money. After a week, I gave KC away. Three years later, I am still playing Lunch Money. As you Americans say: you do the math. The games make good comparisons, too, for they are complete opposites. KC is slow, dull, frustrating and suffering from flawed design, but the cards are beautiful to look at. Whereas the cards in LM are pretty ugly to look at - but you don't really care because the game is so much fast, furious, butt-kicking fun. LM is a fairly silly game. It is designed to mimic, in a comical way, kids' schoolyard brawls, and the kind of savagery contained therein. It harks back to the days when you would practice your Chinese Burns, Dead Legs, Wedgies or even the dreaded Double Nose Gootchie (remind me to show you how to do that one sometime) because hurting each other was the daily past-time during lunch. It then takes this to a far more violent, blood-letting level by allowing you to beat each other with pipes, chains, hammers and knives, and by adding a grisly feel to the artwork. We'll get back to that in a second. This gives a bit of confusion in the nature of the game. When you've got things as silly sounding as a Pimp Slap or a Spinning Backfist, or the absolutely all-powerful Hail Mary (knee to the groin), it seems a bit odd to then go all dark and brutal and start beating people with chains. Perhaps things like "Compass" or "Sawn-Off Ruler" or "Wet Tennis Ball" would make better weapons. In short, the game is a bit confused - on one hand, it encourages a sort of "Nah nah na nah nah" kind of fun, and then on the other, it's something out of a Garth Ennis comic with young girlies beating each other to death. Mostly, this doesn't hurt the game; in fact, in a way, it helps. The slip into brutality quickly gets the viciousness flowing in the players, and helps set the tone of a violent hurtiness-muchly game where you are supposed to beat the crap out of your opponents till they're a bloody, screaming heap. And it does for once do justice to the very ignoble savagery that is schoolyard fighting. But where it does jar is in the artwork and quotes on the cards. The cards are decorated with bizarre and surreal sepia-toned photos of a few little girls in poses and angles which I'm sure somebody thinks are artistic, but the rest of us think are lame. Some of these are great - the Elbow card shows a girl displaying hers and their nasty points in a very natural way, and the Spinning Backfist and Heabut show these attacks coming right at you. But then you have the Kick card which shows a girl's face distorted in a cracked mirror, or the Humiliation card which shows a girl screaming in front of a church - yer what? Then there's the quotes. Again, some of these are really funny, like Hook, which shows flying teeth and the phrase "Trust me, I'm a dentist", or like Knife, which says "This will only hurt for a minute…". And then there's the First Aid card which says "Mother Mary, won't you whisper…Did Jesus ever have days like this?". It's like a definition of trying too hard to be "dark", and failing miserably. Again, sometimes, the darkness of the art and quotes works, to add some nice bloody ethos to the game. But sometimes it crosses the fine line and just ends up looking monumentally stupid. (As an aside, experienced players will quickly discover a way to know when a new player has picked up a Grab card - the quote is "Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide" and I guarantee you the new player will find themselves singing the song. Never fails.) But enough about art - how does it play? The answer is pretty darn well. There are four types of cards - Attacks (buff), Defence (blue), Weapons (purple) and Special Attacks (red). However, these colours are a little washed out, and in a hurry, they're not always easy to tell apart. Like I said, card design is not a strong suit here. But it's a simple game, so this doesn't cause any big problems. Attacks are the basic building blocks of the game, listing the name of the attack (Kick, Hook, Jab) and the damage it does (a number from 1-4, or 7 for the Hail Mary, the most devastating attack in the game - ouchy!). Weapons are just like Attacks, but aren't discarded after being used, so you never run out of ammo. Players have 15 points of lunch money - basically life points - and on their turn, each player launches an attack (plays a card on the centre stack) to whittle this amount away. Unlike the schoolground, however, taking lunch money off your friends by beating them up does NOT give you that money - these are just like life points in Magic. At the end of each attack, all those playing cards draw their hands back to five cards, and play passes until only one player is left standing. Once the attacker names his victim (only one per attack) and plays his attack, the victim can play defensive cards, such as Block or Dodge. Some defences don't work against some attacks, or have special effects, such as the Disarm card which forces the player to drop his Weapon, if he used one. Players can also skip their attacks to play First Aids to get points back, or to discard in the hope of getting better cards. Finally, Special Attacks add some interesting twists to these simple rules. Poke in the Eye, for example, does very little damage, but incapacitates its victim, allowing the next player a free shot - if they want to take it. The Big Combo is pulling two moves at once so requires two Defence cards to block it. And so on. The most important Special is the Grab, because it allows a free attack if successful, and it itself is automatically successful after a blocked attack (either attacker or defender can play it). This allows for some fantastic exchanges, which is what really makes this game come alive - see below. Normal game play is simple. Low attacks get thrown around a lot for minimal damage, as players wait for the right combos in their hands. Defence cards are the most valuable, and so need to be hoarded: players will often be skipping their attacks in order to get more of them. This makes sense because being a defender gives you more of a chance to play successful Grabs. So you wait for your opponent to attack you with a punch, and then you block, grab his arm, pull him into a headlock and noogie him into oblivion. Of course, just as you go to grab him, he might slip away himself, and then hit you back even harder than you were going to hit him. Sometimes exchanges of attacks and clever, special defences like this can go for up to four or five cards, which can be quite exciting. You grapple backwards and forwards until one player makes the decisive hit for some huge amount of damage- surprisingly like real life. Strategy is simple - you just hold out as long as you can until you get your devilish combo ready, and when your opponent is all out of Defence cards, hit them with everything you've got. But getting this timing right and reading your opponent provides timelessly entertaining gameplay, as well as plenty of room to bluff. And the randomness of the deck means you're always on your toes. Can you take this blow and lose the points, or will you sacrifice the defence card that was so important to the combo you we're working on? It's tense, taught and several other things beginning with "t". The real beauty of this strategy though is that it all happens at break-neck speed. The right card combos are so powerful they can knock you out of the game in two hits. Plan too far in advance, or bet too much on the deck giving you the cards you need, and you're history. Thus LM has a nice level of strategy, but doesn't sacrifice game speed or unpredictability to do so. Like a real fight, this is fast and furious and extremely brutal, and speed and luck count just as much as brains and firepower - but you need all of these to win. Obviously, however, this amount of luck and speed means this is no game for any one looking for deep play. Once you have the basic strategy down, play can become formulaic, and predictable. For example, if you draw a bad hand, you're pretty much screwed and there's little you can do about it. This means that it can tire after about five or six games or so, especially for larger groups. However, it always feels fresh again next time, so while it might not last an evening, it will last for years. And of course, you don't really want to play for any great time, because that's not the point. LM is one of the most adrenalin pumping games I've played, full of nail-biting climaxes, see-sawing advantages and victories snatched from defeat at the last possible second, as cards and people get slapped around harder and faster. It's not supposed to be long-lasting, and that's probably a blessing. Finally, the real bonus of Lunch Money is in how it brings out the spirit of the game. The rules suggest and the cards encourage that you narrate your actions, rather than playing your cards soullessly. When you pull a Big Combo, you're supposed to describe your cool moves, such as "I walk over to Mike and grab his head and ram it into my knee twice". The best card of all, Humiliation, is especially ripe for description and abuse. All the horrible things you wanted to do at school are at your disposal - and now you can do them in the comfort of your own home, at no personal risk to yourself. What fun. Of course, you don't have to do this, because the cards are pretty descriptive on their own. My group tends to be less enthusiastic in this regard, and we still have lots of fun with it. Unlike something like Baron Munchausen, shyer, quieter or less dramatic players can have just as much fun with this game. There are, however, a few small problems with LM. Some of the Special Attacks are either so difficult to execute or have so little extra effect as to make them never worth launching. And some, like Choke and Headlock, are so complex they can't be played without resorting to the rulebook, a big no-no for such a fast game. Weapons aren't as helpful as they should be, because discarding and getting new cards is so important. And finally, some of the Defence cards are too weak. But there is nothing here that can't be fixed. We simply pulled out the Specials we didn't like and made a few house rulings, and it now works fine. Some of the complexity of the Specials also make the game tricky to teach, so new players can't be introduced as easily as they should be for a game like this, and sometimes people will forget the rules. However, since rules are not so important here, this is quite survivable. Also, LM only really works for smaller groups, because the time delay of waiting for your turn breaks down the flow, decreases the strategy and removes some of the excitement. Even with four players it begins to show some strain. But again, not a fatal flaw; these are merely quibbles which stop this great game from being truly extraordinary. And Lunch Money is a great game. Except for a few of the subtle rules with the Specials, it is easy and quick to learn. It's also quick to play so new games happen constantly and no one ever feels left out when they lose. It's wild enough so that no-one, no matter how skilled, can ever be sure of victory at any point, but still has some good strategy. It requires one pack of cards to play and nothing else (scoring is simple enough to be done in your head) so it can be carried easily and played anywhere. I've played it on buses, on park benches and in dentist waiting rooms - which got us some strange looks, let me tell you. Sure, Lunch Money might not hold your interest for an entire night. Nor is it a work of genius in terms of design, and the production values are a little weird. And if you require heaps of depth and tactical maneuvering in all your games, or have an aversion to beating the crap out of your friends, you won't enjoy it. But it was never meant to be complex, or long lasting. It's meant to be what it is: a superb filler game that's lots of brutal fun, perfect for any moment you have free. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)