Yes! I gave Cheapass Games $ for this game!

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1 Components: What you Get: The Renfield Deck, which is 54 cards in three suits. Plus this fine rulebook. What you Need: Money. Renfield is a gambling game. If you aren t playing for real money (which you really, really should not do), start each player with at least $100 in chips, and compare scores at the end. If you come out with more than you started with, you re doing well. The Goal: Mmmm. Bugs. You can t eat just one. Welcome to the wonderful world of Renfield, where gravediggers and other foul miscreants spend their spare time playing an unusual game of cards. During the week, these grisly fellows make their living digging up the freshly dead. So you can only imagine what kind of sordid game they might play to unwind. Well, imagine no more. The object of this game is to take the fewest points, as long as you take at least one. The points are represented as yummy, delicious bugs. You have to eat at least one bug (that is, take at least one point) to win the hand, but among the people who take bugs, the one who takes the fewest bugs wins. Okay, eating bugs is not the real object of the game. The point is actually to soak the other gravediggers for their pocket change. Eating bugs is just the fun part. The Format: Renfield is a trick-taking game. Each hand is played in six rounds, or tricks, in which each active player plays one card onto the table, and the highest card takes the set. The player who takes one trick leads the next one, and so on for six tricks. Renfield is also a gambling game, sort of like Poker, in which everyone has his own stake, and money is played into a pot in the center of the table. Like Poker, it has developed a few variants, which are listed at the end of the rules. The variants are written as extensions of the core rules, so learn the basic game before moving on to the rest. Like Poker, this game plays best with 4, 5, or 6 players, though it is possible to play with as few as 3 or as many as 8. Expect a good deal of chaos in the larger games, and a lot more order in the smaller ones. The Cards: Each card has four important details down the side. A Rank (1 through 17); a Suit (Tools, Parts, or Stones); Bugs (i.e., points, zero through six); and a Dollar Cost (zero through five dollars). Rank determines the highest card within a particular Suit. The order of the Suits is set by the high bidder at the start of each hand, and is represented by the arrangement of the Key Cards (the zeroes of each suit, which do not shuffle into the deck.) The Bugs represent how many points the card is This Cheapass Game is free. That s right, free. You can print it, copy it, and share it with your friends. Obviously, if you like it, we d appreciate a dollar or two in return. We think this is the best way to get great games into your hands, so please help us make it work. Yes! I gave Cheapass Games $ for this game! To learn more, read the last page of this document, or visit

2 worth towards your score, and the Dollar Cost is the amount you must pay to the pot when you take the card. (Not when you play it.) Doublers: Some of the cards, 2 s and 12 s, are doublers. The x2 in the dollar slot doubles the money you must pay to take the trick containing that card. Double on the bug line doubles your score for the entire hand. To Begin: Remove the three Key Cards (the zeroes of each suit) and put them in the middle of the table. These are the indicator cards for their respective suits, and they will be arranged on the table to show the hierarchy of suits on this hand. Choose a dealer, who shuffles the deck and deals a hand of six cards to each player. Set the rest of the deck aside. After each hand, the role of dealer will pass to the left. The Bidding: Before playing the hand, players will bid to determine who will set the suit order and lead the first trick. Starting to the dealer s left, each player must make a bid in dollars, or pass. The bid goes around the table just once, ending with the Dealer. Players must bid higher than the standing bid, or pass. If no one bids, the Dealer must take the lead for $5. Whoever makes the largest bid puts her bid in the pot, and arranges the Key Cards so that her choice for the highest suit is on the top, and the lowest on the bottom. Every card in a higher suit outranks every card in the suit(s) below it. Playing the Trick: The Leader (on the first trick, this is the player who won the bid) plays a card face up onto the table. Proceeding to his left, every player must play one card. Following Suit: If a particular suit was led, players must play a card of the same suit if possible. So, for example, if a Stone was played first on this trick, you must play a Stone if you have one. If not, you can play any suit you want. There is no other following rule; you can play higher or lower than the lead, and you can play anything you want if you are out of the suit that was led. Folding: Once you have taken at least one bug, you may fold instead of playing a card. If you fold, turn over the cards you have collected, and lay down your hand. You are out of the game, and cannot win the hand. Note: You can only fold at a moment when you would play a card. If you take a trick, you must pay for the cards you ve taken before you have the opportunity to fold. Taking the Trick: If you played the highest card on the trick, you take the trick. The highest card means the highest ranked card of the highest suit, as dictated by the order of the Key Cards. Pay the pot for all the cards in this trick. (A x2 in the dollar slot doubles the price of the trick.) Arrange the cards on the table in front of you, so that other players can see how many bugs you have, and which cards have been played. Whoever takes the trick leads the next one, and so on. If a player folds instead of leading, the lead passes to the left. Winning: After all six tricks have been played, players who have not folded compare their scores. Whoever has the smallest number of bugs, but at least one, wins the pot. A Double in the bugs area (found on the 12 s) doubles all your bugs, not just the bugs from one trick! Two 12 s means your bugs are x4; all three 12 s means x8. If two or more players are tied, they split the pot and leave the odd coins for the next game. After each hand, the deal passes to the left. Play as many hands as you wish. Arranging the Key Cards (Tools is high here.) At the end of the game, your goal is to have more money than you started with. Just like in real life.

3 Variants: Once you know the basics, you ll probably want to try some variations. You might settle on a favorite house variant, or let the dealer call a new game with each hand. Most of these options can be combined to form more complex variants; and don t be afraid to make up your own. Auction: Seven players max. After the deal, players buy different cards as follows: deal seven cards into a facedown pack. Reveal the top card. Players bid in an open auction to buy the card. Players must bid in dollar increments, with a maximum bid of ten dollars, which buys any card outright. The player who buys the card pays the pot, and adds it to his hand. He then puts another card from his hand up for auction in the same manner, but splits the proceeds of this auction with the pot, with any odd dollar going to the pot. (Mean players tend to bid in odd numbers in this stage.) If a card is not bought, it is discarded and the next card is revealed from the pack. Once the pack is exhausted, the game resumes with the normal bidding round. Blaze: The object of Blaze is to take the most bugs. Players ante one dollar to begin. The bidding goes around the table multiple times, until everyone passes. (You can t pass and then come back in.) You are not bidding in dollars, but in bugs. Whoever bids the highest arranges the Key Cards and leads the first trick. Play six tricks as usual. If the bidder makes his bid in bugs, he wins the pot. If he does not, he must match the pot, (or pay some other established penalty) and the game restarts. If a player folds, he stays out until someone wins the pot. Breathing Room: Max six players. Players are dealt eight cards, of which they will play only six. Buying the Trick: In this variant, you can fold with no points. To do so, wait until your chance to play a card, and then pay the pot for every card currently in the trick. It s usually cheaper than taking the whole trick. The Death Card: Before dealing, the dealer declares one or more cards to be Death. Any trick including the Death Card is not taken by anyone, and those cards are removed from the game. The lead goes to the player who would have otherwise taken the trick. The Death Card has no suit, and cannot be played unless its owner has no cards matching the lead. (Option: If you prefer, the Death Card has all suits, and can be played as a follow to any suit.) In either case, the Death card can never be led, and if it is a player s last card, he must fold (points or not) rather then lead the trick with it. This is actually good, if you need to get out of the game for free. Draw: After the deal, there is a betting round as in Poker, in which players may check, bet, call, raise, or fold. Then there is a drawing round, in which players first discard up to four cards, and then all discards are reshuffled into the deck, and the players hands are refilled to six cards. The normal game then resumes at the bidding round. Flatline: There are no Key Cards. Players bid only to lead the first trick, with the Dealer taking an unbid lead for only $2. Players must still follow suit, but all suits are considered to be of equal value. Cards are compared on the basis of rank only, with recent cards ranking above previous cards of the same rank on the same trick. In other words, if two 15 s are played on the same trick, the second 15 is higher. It is possible to shuffle the zeroes into the deck for Flatline. In this variant, if a Zero is led, that suit is high for that trick. Stud: Seven players max. Players get seven cards, of which they will play only six. Deal three cards facedown, and four face up. After the cards are dealt, play proceeds as normal, with players able to play either upcards or downcards as they wish. Wild Cards: Before dealing, the dealer declares one or more cards to be wild. Wild cards may be played as any suit or rank, but revert to their actual value once taken. In other words, play these cards as if they were wild, determine who takes the trick based on the wild value, and then pay for and score them as their face value. Renfield is 1999, 2013 Cheapass Games. Designed by James Ernest and E. Jordan Bojar, with help from Paul Peterson and Toivo Rovainen. Illustrated by Michael O Connor. Thanks also to a sly cadre of villainous Guinea Pigs. Published by Cheapass Games, Seattle WA: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. There is a brief license rights summary on the following page.

4 Free? Seriously? Tell me a little more about that. Okay, here s the deal. If I made a great game and sold it to you for ten bucks, I d probably keep about a dollar. If I sold it to a big game company, they d probably make a nicer version for thirty bucks, and I d still get about a dollar. The rest of your money would go to printers, distributors, retail stores, and freight companies. And most of those guys don t know anything about what makes a great game. Mass-producing entertainment is a gamble. It s a convoluted way for creators to protect their intellectual property, by selling it in a way that is prohibitively expensive to counterfeit. And it s getting a little old. Why do you pay $30 for a board game? The story goes like this: the retail price of a game covers the cost of manufacturing it, and there is no way you could make your own copy for that price, to say nothing of the hassle of finding little wooden men in six colors. So, it s worth $30 because it costs $30, QED. But the value in a board game isn t the manufacturing cost. It s the play value. Unfortunately, this means that some games are priced way out of whack with what they are worth. And because the big gamble doesn t always work out, some of your money helps pay for the stuff that goes straight to the dump. I ve decided to try a different gamble. I m giving my games away for free. This way, you can read the rules, make a copy, and even play the thing, before you decide what it s worth. If you do like my games, I hope you will send me some money. But I m also hoping you will share this experiment with your friends. You are my sales force, my marketing department, my demo team. You re also my testers, so if you can think of ways to improve my games, please share them with me. I m easy to find at big gaming conventions, and even easier online. Look for Cheapass Games on Facebook, or drop me a line at cheapassjames@gmail.com. If we do this right, we will get famous and do shaving ads. But more importantly, we will prove that there is a better way for a creator to profit from his work. And nothing has to go to the dump. Our Creative Commons Agreement Summary: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. This agreement means... You are free: To Share to copy, distribute and transmit the work (in this case, the electronic files that comprise the work). Under the following conditions: Attribution You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). In this case, Renfield is and 1999, 2013 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. With the understanding that: Waiver Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. (For example, a license to manufacture, or approval to distribute a new set of rules or graphics, can be obtained under a separate agreement.) Public Domain Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license. Other Rights In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations; The author s moral rights; Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights. Notice For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. That means including all pages of this document, unaltered.

5 How to Make Renfield Cards: A Renfield deck contains 54 cards, like a standard poker deck (including jokers). Below are a few methods for making your own cards. Method 1: Labels on Playing Cards Print the cards on full-sheet labels, then cut the labels and affix them to a deck of playing cards. Full-sheet mailing labels are great. Get white ones, not clear, suitable for your type of printer. You can get them at any office supply store for about 25 each (in bulk) and they will be very handy for making cards and game boards. Print the card sheets on full-sheet labels. Print the file at 95% so that the labels will fit easily on the cards. You will be applying these labels to playing cards. The better the cards, the happier you will be. Good playing cards have rounded corners, laminated card stock, and a textured finish that keeps them from sticking together. You can buy a new poker deck for around $3, or you can find canceled casino decks for around $1. Some casinos and card rooms give away their canceled decks for free, so keep your eyes open. The cards in the Renfield PDFs are poker sized (2.5 x 3.5 ). Trading card games are usually printed on poker-sized cards, and sometimes your game store will have a blowout price on these cards. Sometimes they are even free. Compare the price of 54 junk common cards to the $3 you d pay for a new poker deck, and decide accordingly. Cut the labels and apply them to the blank cards. These cards will be a little thick, but still fairly easy to shuffle and deal. Card backs are often an unnecessary step in the process, but we have provided two versions of the card back in case you re dedicated. Method 2: Card Sleeves Print the cards on plain paper and insert the paper, along with a stiffening card, into trading card sleeves. Sleeves made specifically for trading card games can be found online and at most hobby stores. To build this deck, print the cards at 100% on plain white paper. Thicker paper helps keep the images bright. Cut them down to 2.5 x 3.5, keeping the white borders. Card backs probably won t help you, since most card sleeves have opaque backs. Instead, get sleeves with a different color or design for each deck. Strengthen each card with a stiffener: a playing card or trading card behind the printed paper. This deck may be slightly more durable than the label deck described above, depending on the quality of your card sleeves. Sleeves are a good option for Renfield cards, since they don t suffer the same amount of abuse as cards in a realtime card game (such as FALLING or BRAWL). Method 3: 110-lb Index Print the artwork directly on index paper, and then trim the sheets down to card size. I have experimented with a few different card stocks for printing playable cards. Most of the retail Cheapass Games were printed on 110-lb Index, which is a grade that you can find at your local office supply store. Aligning the backs with the fronts can be a challenge, depending on your printer. Hold the printed pages up to the light to make sure that your registration isn t too far off. The challenge with this method is cutting the cards. You need a decent paper cutter, or access to one (at your job or the local copy shop). Although it is tempting, do not begin by trimming off the outside of each page. Instead, make a single vertical and a single horizontal cut through the interior of the pages, creating four sub-sheets with multiple cards and raw edges. Then, set the cutter depth (using the backstop that your cutter hopefully has) to 2.5, and trim each card or strip of cards to exactly this width. Next, set the back stop at 3.5 and finish the cards the other way. If you have a corner rounding punch, you can make these cards much more shufflable by rounding each corner. These punches can be found in scrapbooking supply stores. Method 4, Print on Demand: We have made the Renfield deck available as a print-ondemand deck from artscow.com. Artscow s poker decks are not bad, though (generally) the prices are pretty steep. Each custom deck from Artscow costs $9.99, minus a ubiquitous 25% discount, plus about another $5 for shipping. Once you re on their mailing list, they will sometimes send you discount coupons. You can find links to the Artscow Renfield deck on the Renfield product page at cheapass.com. To be clear, we don t get any of the money that Artscow collects, so if you use this method to make your own decks, please remember that we d still like a donation for our part in bringing you the game. Your help keeps us in business and making more awesome new free games.