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I'm thinking about buying it as a 'better munchkin' party game for larger groups.
1. Is it really a better game? Like, any decision making at all?
2. How does it play with more people? Downtime?
3. How do you rate each of the 3 sets comparatively?
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Jeff Wood
United States
Davis
California
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I don't play it with more than 4.
There is a lot of downtime between turns (even the gambling doesn't help this).
Plus, there are too many of the 'gotcha' cards in play at any time to be fun. Rarely does a gambling game end without the wench taking the money because someone always has it. And the wench is always saying you should stop messing with your drink.
That said, I usually put out all 12 characters for people to choose from. New players should shy from RDI 3's characters, but any character from the first two sets is intermingable.
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Mike Beiter
United States
Tonawanda
New York
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It is best with 4. We have played 5 or 6 regularly and it is not so bad. But beyond that it does go slowly, and people often get eliminated after only one turn.
A good way to help balance larger player games is to allow a larger hand, or more starting gold.
It is an amazing game though and all sets are very fun.
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King of the Dead
United States
Portland
Oregon
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I just realized this is all addressing the game played with 6+ people.
In that case I'll actually have to completely agree with everything. So, never mind.
I'll have to disagree with these things.
Cinnibar wrote: There is a lot of downtime between turns (even the gambling doesn't help this).
I find the downtime to be very minimal. Only when people are first learning the game does the downtime reach what I could call long. Once people get the hang of how the different cards work it goes quite fast.
Not sure what you meant about gambling up there so I'll leave that alone.
Quote: Plus, there are too many of the 'gotcha' cards in play at any time to be fun. Rarely does a gambling game end without the wench taking the money because someone always has it. And the wench is always saying you should stop messing with your drink.
The wench only says that twice in each person's deck. I find it happens far, far less than it could and surely less often than I would like.
Every "gotcha" card in the deck has not one, but many foils. Someone plays a gotcha and you play a gotcha on the gotcha. The hand management in order to pull this off is a large part of the game.
[I usually put out all 12 characters for people to choose from. New players should shy from RDI 3's characters, but any character from the first two sets is intermingable.[/q]
I agree completely with this last part.
There's a lot of differences between this and Munchkin, but there's definitely similarities. I actually like Munchkin but I'd play this over it any day.
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Nox Spellenzolder
Netherlands
Terschuur
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schizoferret wrote: I'm thinking about buying it as a 'better munchkin' party game for larger groups.
1. Is it really a better game? Like, any decision making at all?
2. How does it play with more people? Downtime?
3. How do you rate each of the 3 sets comparatively?
1. I think Red Dragon Inn is a better game than Munchkin, because it has less things happening. Meaning that with Munchkin, after a while, every player has accumulated a lot of cards in front of him/her. And has a hand with all kinds of cards. This does of course add to the fun. In Red Dragon Inn the table stays "cleaner". You have a better overview of what is happening.
Though I do like both games a lot.
2. I've played it with different amounts of players (2 to 7) and I love all. Even with 7 players, the down time was quite managable & the "Gambling Rounds" + interact cards keep the game flowing nicely. A Drink Game here and there, some sharing of the drinks keep everybody involved.
3. I like all 3 sets equally. Every set has characters I really love & characters that are so-so. The 3rd expansion has "side Decks" for 3 of the 4 characters, which give the game some new & great twists.
All in all, I really enjoy this game & love how it breathes the raw ambient of a midieval inn!
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Sam Waller
United States
California
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1. I feel that the decision making in Red Dragon Inn is meaningful and predictable. If I attack an opponent, I can bet on a decent chance of the damage sticking, and I can trust in the drink deck to deal damage as well. However the variance is such that you can get some big turn arounds, and the metagame encourages a lot of evening the odds. As you get familiar with individual characters, you learn how they play with one another and then you can start playing against those assumptions players are making of your character.
2. More players does increase the downtime, but it shouldn't be too bad. Generally, players should be spreading around the damage at the start of the game, so you'll have your turn, plus your responses to being attacked, forced into a Round of Gambling, or brought along for a drink event. We tried very hard to remove the down-time aspect of the game by making it very player response reliant.
3. All three are solid and it's entirely dependent on what kind of character you like to play. RDI:3 is a step up mechanically, because each of those characters has an additional deck or chart you need to track. They are all balanced as far as we've been able to observe, so it is really down to whether or not you like to play sneaky rogues or brawns-not-brains barbarians.
5 and 6 player play pretty solidly, after that I would suggest figuring out how you want to tweak the handsizes and starting gold. My personal, non-official suggestions is bumping up handsize and starting gold by 1 at 8, 10, and 12 players. I would also remove "Oh, I guess the Wench Thought that was her tip..." from every deck, or change it so she only removes 2 Gold from the pot. I've played it either way and we're still trying to figure out what works best at that size of a game.
The other way to do it is to run two games in parallel, and when enough players are eliminated between the tables combine to make a winner's table and a loser's table so the elimination isn't that difficult to deal with. e.g. Table A has 2 players left. When Table B gets down to 2 players, they should team up and the eliminated four should start up their own game.
I hope this helps! Happy Gaming!
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T M
United States
North Carolina
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I noticed a similar thread here that recommended things like...
-- giving everyone a chance to dump and draw before the first round;
-- each player draw one card at the start of any player's turn;
-- start with extra gold and cards.
Has anyone done any further experimentation with these ideas? I do see the official rules now suggest 12 gold for 7+ players.
I played with a group of 6, and it seemed like one of the problems was everyone had to keep giving a drink to the person immediately before them; it was hard to get the drinks to accumulate on players' drink decks.
I'm hoping to play with a group of 9, soon, and trying to figure out how best to make sure everyone has a good time.
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