Red Dragon Inn 3 Game Review

If you’ve been reading this blog you know I’m really enjoying Red Dragon Inn. So of course I’m buying the expansions to the game. This week I will go over Red Dragon Inn 3: another fun installment of post adventure fantasy night including drinking, fighting and gambling at the Red Dragon Inn.

Red Dragon Inn 3 can either be played as an expansion or as a stand alone game. It includes everything you need so if you really want to you can jump into the game line with this edition. However I really don’t recommend that. This is because even though this is the exact same game each of the characters has different extra mechanic introduced specifically for that character. While this does make them extremely interesting and fun to play it can be confusing for a new player, especially one not familiar with the normalcy of special powers in an RPG setting.

Since I’ve already covered the base game rules in my originalpost on the first installment I’m going to jump right into how the four new characters are different.

First up is Serena the Pious, an Orc Palladin. Of all the characters I think she has the easiest to understand mechanic. Serena has an internal struggle between her pious religious side and her barbaric Orc side. Most of her cards have either a blue up arrow (to increase piety) or a yellow down arrow (to show her decent into barbarity.) her piety level is tracked on an extra card scored one to eight and you keep track with a gem like you do with alcohol content and fortitude. This piety level changes the effect of certain cards. Usually cards that effect Serena for her benefit are positively affected by high piety while cards that negatively impact other players get bonuses when Serena has a low piety. This makes Serena an ideal character for people who like to plan out what cards to play ahead of time.

Brewmaster Phrenk, the troll potion maker. Phrenk has an extra potion deck he plays with. Each turn Phrenk turns over a potion card from his potion deck, which pretty much gives him one more potential card to play per turn. The most interesting part of this potion deck is the face up card can be sold to other players for the cost on the card. While this does allow Phrenk to potentially gain much needed gold he could end up selling a card to a player who turns it back on Phrenk. This crazy potion brewing troll just needs to ask himself, is it worth the gamble?

Kaylin the Renegade, a Pixie Enchanter comes with her companion Wulfric. Kaylin is interesting as she is pretty much two characters in one. One a bad girl pixie and the other a mood swinging wolf. At the end of each turn Kaylin turns over the Wulfric mood card. Her companions mood changes and this has a dramatic change in card effects. Sometimes Wulfric is Bitey and he adds fortitude damage, sometimes he is content and nothing happens, sometimes he is stalwart and he defends Kaylin and sometimes his mood turns on Kaylin causing her some problems. All in all Kaylin is a very random character to play. Perfect for oddball players who constantly change strategy!

Wizgille the Tinkerer, a gnomish artificer: by far the strangest character in the box. A number of cards in Wizgille’s deck have a small gear icon in the top left corner. When one of these is played she draws a card from her gear deck. The gear card decides if her gadget used actually works properly. First the card will say if the card takes effect... of course it doesn’t stop there, read down to an “AND” which says how the effect is changed followed by another “AND.” The second “AND” is often just a quote but some cards have multiple effects. The randomness of the character really makes for an interesting game. However I find she is extremely confusing for new players, even if an opponent is playing her. She’s best suited for experienced groups played by a player who really doesn’t care about winning or losing… they just want to have crazy fun.

Of course the drink deck has some different cards. Gamblers Grog causes a player to gain a whopping 4 alcohol content or they can pay 2 gold to pass it on to another player. Gnomish inspirational ale causes a player to gain 2 alcohol but they also get to draw 2 cards to add to their hand. Barroom brawl causes all players to lose one fortitude. Then there is Monsters attack: this means monsters are attacking the tavern. Every player loses one alcohol content AND every player who decides to defend the tavern gains 2 gold but loses 3 fortitude.

To sum up I really like Red Dragon Inn 3. It’s great as a stand alone game or mixing it up with the other editions so players can change up characters. However I would only recommend this one for players who are experienced in the Red Dragon Inn game line. New players are often confused by the various special player mechanics as they add more rules to the game. Having said that, if you think you are up for the added rules go right ahead. After all having the three editions could open you up to a 12 player game of tavern inn mayhem.