Barroom Brawls

Roleplaying and board games reviews, podcasts, videos and interviews

101376[1]By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Raging Swan Pressis 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 8 pages of content, so let’s check this out!

Brawls in taverns are among the quintessential iconic experiences of adventuring life and I gladly and fondly recall reading about a certain Cimmerian’s exploits in bars. In PFRPG, though, the overall execution of the bar brawl is problematic – several rarely used rules are utilized in bar brawls, including improvised weapons, unarmed combat etc. This pdf now aims to help beleaguered DMs to run the iconic bar fights, so how does this work?

First of all, we have to get the action started, potentially with one of 20 new barroom brawl triggers and then the action starts – a one-page d%-table provides ample special events to simulate the chaos of such a brawl, including tipped beer kegs, fire etc. Of course, a table of aftermath consequences of such a brawl are provided as well and might make for a variety of adventure hooks.

What’s a brawl without brawlers, though and thus stats for barkeeps, merchants and watchmen are included in the pdf as well. Rather cool, we also get 3 new conditions: Tipsy, drunk and hammered, all three with their progressively increasing bonuses, but also with slowly accumulating penalties. Two thumbs up for these conditions that make scaling between states of drunkenness possible!

Of course, as we all know, brawls are cool because they utilize a variety of taproom features – from kegs to tables to stools, a table deals with neatly-aligned acrobatics and strength DCs for you to consult: Want to know what it takes to overturn a full keg? And which benefits you can get (e.g. higher ground)? Consult the table and you’ll have the Str-DC, acrobatics-DCs etc. all neatly lined up!

The deal is completed by yet another page helping with the most common of improvised weapons, 12 to be precise, ranging from stools to tables and mugs.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, as I’ve come to expect from RSP. Layout adheres to RSP’s elegant 2-column printer-friendly b/w-standard and the artworks provided are neat. The pdf comes with extensive bookmarks and a printer-friendly extra version. Hell yeah! This pdf is one of the most useful little pdfs out there. Even if you haven’t prepared anything in advance, this little, humble file enables you to run an interesting, exciting bar brawl. The respective rules are concisely presented and the information on the respective components is easy to locate. Were I to utter any form of criticism, then that I would have loved to see more actions with sample DCs (climb up stairs, jump from table to table or head, etc.) and even more events and improvised weapons – to cut my ramble short: I want more! Seeing the extremely low price and the stellar content, I’ll essentially am forced to all-out recommend this stellar little pdf. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a 2-buck file as fun and useful as this one. My final verdict will be 5 stars + Endzeitgeist seal of approval.

Barroom Brawls is available from:

rpgnowlogo_sized43333333333333333333drivetrhurpg_logo_sized5333333333333[1]
If you have enjoyed this review, please consider supporting the on-going costs of this site by donating a small amount of money.
Thank you for your support.

 

Leave a Reply