Renfield
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Renfield is a fictional character in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. He is an inmate at the lunatic asylum overseen by Dr Seward, and suffers from a delusional belief system that leads him to eat living creatures in the hope of obtaining their life-force for himself; being confined to the asylum, and aware of the foolishness of taking on a full-sized hospital orderly, this mostly means flies, spiders, and the occasional bird. During the course of the novel, he falls under the influence of Count Dracula - who, as a vampire, does the gaining-life-by-eating-life thing for real - and aids the Count in a number of small ways, most significantly by helping the Count gain entrance to the asylum after Seward and his fellow vampire-hunters make it their base of operations.
Film adaptations of the novel, if they include Renfield, have a tendency to expand his role, making him a more active and long-standing servant of the vampire Count and often depicting his zoophagous mania as a result of falling under Dracula's influence, rather than as a pre-existing condition that made him vulnerable to it.
Renfield is a trick-taking card game produced by Cheapass Games. It is a social gambling game for four to seven players.
The game is based on a theme of "eating insects", both the theme and the name derived from the character of Renfield in Dracula (see above). The theme, however, is little more than an overlay on the card game mechanics.
A Renfield deck consists of 54 cards, split into three suits and numbered from 0 to 17. The suits are called Stones (as in headstones), Tools, and Parts (as in body parts). Each card contains a humorous drawing displaying one of these items.
In structure, Renfield is something of a cross between poker and trick-taking games. As in poker, each player begins with a supply of "dollars" represented by poker chips. Each player places bets into a pot in the centre of the table and hands are played in an effort to win the pot.
Each hand consists of a deal of six cards, with the zero numbered cards removed from the deck. Each player then bids a number of dollars. The winning bidder gets the right to arrange the three zero-cards in a sequence indicating the rankings of the suits. He then leads the first trick.
Tricks are played in a standard fashion, with players following suit if able to. If unable to follow suit, cards of higher-ranked suits trump lower-ranked suits.
Each card won in a trick contains printed on it two values: a cost in dollars, and a number of "bugs". A player winning a trick must pay to the pot the total value in dollars of the cards won, and "eats" the number of bugs won. The winner of the hand is the player who eats at least one bug, but fewer than any other player. The winner of the hand collects the pot.
Play continues over several hands, with the goal of accumulating as much money as possible.
Renfield is currently out of print.