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In Red Dragon Inn, you and your friends are a party of heroic, fantasy adventurers. You've raided the dungeon, killed the monsters, and taken their treasure. Now you're back, and what better way to celebrate your most recent victory than to spend an evening at the Red Dragon Inn? You and your adventuring companions will spend the night drinking, gambling, and roughhousing. The last person who is both sober enough to remain conscious and shrewd enough to hold onto his Gold Coins wins the game.

Made by Slugfest Games, there are eight full box sets of the game and 13 Allies or Versus expansion decks, each addition introducing new unique characters, drinks, and occassional alternative play styles and challenges. Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Grayport is a semi-separate game that focuses on an adventure for before the usual Inn games, and likewise introduces another playable character.

    Games and Expansions 
The original Red Dragon Inn characters are:

Red Dragon Inn 2 added:

Red Dragon Inn 3 began the introduction of characters with extra, more complex mechanics:

Red Dragon Inn 4 brought the crew of the Crimson Drake and the Sea Event deck for whenever you might want to change things up by drinking and gambling on the high seas:

Red Dragon Inn 5 is a larger box specifically prepared to hold all Red Dragon Inn characters through to the end of 2018 and then some, and of course four new partying adventurers:

  • Sera the Fleetfooted, a ninja-themed female rogue
  • Lizwick the Collector, whose Bag of Holding is full of all sorts of potentially useful — or dangerous — junk
  • Joran the Trickster, a prank-playing apprentice human mage
  • Zakhan the Drunken Master, a half-elven booze-loving martial artist

Red Dragon Inn 6 mixed things up by introducing four villains and a new Boss Battle play option where players can party up against one supercharged villain:

Red Dragon Inn 7 brought the staff of the Red Dragon Inn itself into play:

Red Dragon Inn 8 is themed around a pub crawl, bringing in staff from other taverns:

  • Samantha the Bookie, from the Scurvy Dog, the tavern where everyone takes bets on whatever Bar Brawl is going on (and there's always a brawl)
  • Father Farai, a holy man with a passion for brewing, always serving up new samples at The Harmonious Cup
  • Phyll Startusk, barista and owner of Startusk's, serving drinks plus coffee and pastry to hip young mages
  • Lucky the Scoffler, an elderly goblin lady who runs Lucky's Rolling Barrel, who always seems to get herself in trouble with the law for some reason
  • Nerodia the Petrifier, the wench from the Bad Guy Bar in RDI 6, also Promoted to Playable

Ally character decks expanded the cast one at a time:

Two-for-one Ally partners or Versus packs:

  • Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport, in addition to being its own game about the adventurers, includes Chronos the Time Mage for use in both games.

  • There's also a "Gambling? I'm in!" game pack can be used as minigames to spice up gambling rounds and as a standalone game in its own right.

This board game series provides examples of:

  • Action Girl: Pretty much all the female characters are unafraid to get physical with their fellow adventurers, even The Wench.
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: Keet has a great many of his finds in museums, but sometimes things end up as tips for the Wench instead.
  • A Hero To Her Hometown: Wizgille is adored in her hometown of Copperforge because she's one of the greatest Arcane Inventors in the world.
  • A Lizard Named "Liz": Kaylin's wolf, Wulfric.
  • All There in the Manual: Most of the characters' personalities are very well spelled out in their decks, but Slugfest has occassionally posted a short story about some of the characters. The actual layout and history of the inn was published in a supplement for Pathfinder.
  • Almighty Janitor: It's a bar full of adventurers, many of whom have no compulsions about poisoning their best friends as a prank - but one glare from the Wench, and they'll stop what they're doing. She's also the one who drags them to their rooms when they get too inebriated, and she's very good friends with Pooky.
  • Amazonian Beauty: Bryn. The cover for The Red Dragon Inn The Character Trove 5 even seems to have Cormac the Mighty attempt to flirt with her with a bicep flex (she just rolls her eyes).
  • Ambiguously Gay: Brother Bastian, whose picture and flavor text hints at this.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Pooky. It's subtly implied in the cards and pretty much confirmed in the online character extras. Zot's backstory notes that the first time he bothered contacting Pooky's mind, he experienced "a whirling maelstrom, vast and chaotic", and when Eve first saw Pooky through a Truesight spell, she immediately looked away in horror. The fact he's also a carnivorous rabbit who enjoys biting monsters to death and who can No-Sell powerful spells like stasis makes it pretty obvious, of course.
  • Arranged Marriage: Kaylin's parents attempted to wed her off to a nice "normal" pixie boy named Ciaran in hopes that this would finally "settle her down". This was the last straw for Kaylin, who promptly left.
  • Badass Preacher: Brother Bastian, member of a severe sect dedicated to Korash, the God of Justice and Light.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Gog is a sweet-tempered gentle guy...but he doesn't like thieves. Or bandits. The moment Serena mentions her way being blocked by a bandit camp, Gog is all too happy to wander that way and smash it down around their ears.
    • Cheating at cards to several of the more "noble" characters, who would gladly take the pot away (often at weaponpoint) from you if you get caught.
  • BFG: Bryn's "I think it's time to stop playing around, don't you?" card has her brandish a lit torch in one hand while supporting and pointing a cannon on her other shoulder toward the fourth wall. It's for calling out cheating.
  • Big "NO!": One of Baron von Vlazlo's "Boss Deck" cards is basically this, aptly titled "NO!!". It can Negate an Action played by another player, and it can't be Negated in turn.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pooky on his "Ignore action" cards can try to look more the cute and adorable bunny to try to invoke guilt:
    • "The Wench thinks you should stop being mean to Pooky." The wench is cradling him in one arm and pointing an accusing finger with her free hand.
    • "Don't make Pooky cry!" has Pooky holding his face with his front paws as if he's about to do just that.
  • Bizarre Beverage Use: Some characters have a use for their ale beyond drinking it, such as Fiona using it as armor polish. There's a few cards in everyone's deck where the various wenches yell at them for "Playing with the drinks," refuting their non-drinking use, and a few "I don't think so!" cards, representing the character getting annoyed at their drinking buddies not drinking their beer.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: All the fighters to some degree, but Bryn in particular.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Natyli, who drove the other trolls of her village wild with her willingness to abuse her juju magic for pranks and selfish games, and for her refusal to accept being punished when she did wrong. It got so bad, they were willing to exile her... and she still hasn't learned her lesson.
  • Breakout Character:
    • Pooky, so much so that he got his own individual deck, appears in a lot of other character's cards, and is so far the only character to crossover into another game (specifically, Level 99's EXCEED Fighting system.) Not bad for a character that merely started out as a main character's familiar.
    • Wizgille the Tinkerer from Red Dragon Inn 3 is also a very popular character. There is barely a set that came out after her debut that doesn't have a cameo appearance from her in some form or fashion. Even in the backstory, she is this among her fellow gnomes.
    • The Wench, whose induction into the playable cast was met with much rejoicing.
  • Butt-Monkey: Gerki is most often facing the wrath of the other adventurers in the card art. Torglesnarf is this for the villainous characters.
  • Chainmail Bikini: Fiona wears the form-fitting "boobplate" version as her armor and uses a literal chainmail bikini as underwear. One of her attacks is to punch someone for making another dumb joke about it.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: According to Bryn's backstory, she basically got to be so big and strong because she never grew out of that "I can keep getting better!" mindset from when she was a kid.
  • Continuity Nod: Pooky's deck has a lot of this. Some of the cards are ripped wholesale from his shared deck with Zot, while others have Pooky 'borrowing' things from other adventurers (including Dimli's grandfather's helmet and Phrenk's 'special stuff').
  • Cool Old Lady: Both Captain Whitehawk and Ohava the Grand Cleric hold their own with the best of them.
  • Counter-Attack: Many characters have cards that deal fortitude damage in return in response to being dealt damage first. Remy's deck in particular is primarily counter cards.
  • Crossover: Spyke and Flower, the mascots of Munchkin, are playable in these games.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Piss off Pooky at your own peril. He's known to have killed one monster by biting its face off, and another by ripping its guts apart from the inside out. Worse, it's unclear if he did so after being Swallowed Whole or if he forced himself down its throat to kill it that way.
  • Cute Monster Girl:
    • Kaylin, though she'd probably rip your eyes out if you said so, since she hates the whole "cutesy Pixie thing".
    • Serena is a surprisingly attractive Orc maiden, and it's even noted on the website that she survived because the paladins who destroyed her village thought she was too cute a baby to kill.
    • Natyli is adorable, as opposed to the only male Troll we see, who is hideous.
    • Nitrel is rather cute for a Goblin, though her tendency to solve problems by blowing them up is decidedly less cute.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Natyli.
  • The Dandy: Fleck. He even refers to himself as a "fop.”
  • Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • Empathic Weapon: Banefall, who blesses Murgath's targets and tries to temper his attacks. Unfortunately for him, he can't get rid of her either.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
    • Search high and low in vain, for the Wench is known by no other name. No longer the case in Red Dragon Inn 7...Warthorn spills the beans that The Wench is named Olivia in one of his story cards.
  • Evil Counterpart: The Black Dragon Depths, an underground bar the bad guys seem to prefer to hang out in. Complete with a gorgon wench to serve the drinks. Gameplay wise, the villain characters have their own version of certain stock cards: for example, "Wench, bring some drinks for my friends" becomes "Wench, bring some drinks for these fiends".
  • Expy:
  • Eyedscreen: The "marked" tokens indicating that a character has come to Remy's attention (not a good thing) are long narrow images of his scowling eyes.
  • Gadgeteer Genius:
    • Wizgille's devices can perform such wonders as turn alcohol into gold or distort time itself! However, these machines are all quite unpredictable and can work far better or worse than expected. She's achieved fame anyhow because, even though her gadgets don't work all the time, her skills as an Arcane Inventor are such that she can actually make devices that even other gnomes think should be impossible.
    • Wrench makes use of comparatively simpler, jury-rigged devices, like mobile beartraps and clockwork doubles. He avidly studied Wizgille's methods and even got to study with her.
  • Gargle Blaster: Look out for some of the "4 Alcohol Content" drinks (although ANY drink is capable of becoming this if accompanied by a chaser or two). Averted by water and coffee/tea, the latter of which reduce inebriation. Exaggerated in Red Dragon Inn 7 with a 5 Alcohol Content drink (previously only available through Kickstarter). There are also race-specific drinks that get one race drunk, and physically damage others.
  • Gender-Equal Ensemble: The core games usually come with two male and two female characters. Red Dragon Inn 2's mostly male cast was balanced back out by Red Dragon Inn 4's mostly female crew.
  • Gentle Giant: Gog wants to be this so very much, and is really a calm and gentle soul, but he's just so big and strong and clumsy that he fails.
  • Glamour Failure: The first thing that shows Pooky isn't really a rabbit? When he opens his mouth — it's too big for a rabbit, and aside the rabbit incisors, it's filled with lots and lots of fangs.
  • Good Is Not Soft:
    • Remy cares about the well-being of his crew (and fellow adventurers), but he's willing to get rough to discipline them. Case in point: In his "Infighting? Not on my watch!" card, he stops two fellow adventurers from fighting by clonking their heads together.
    • Gog isn't above beating up bandits and thieves.
    • Serena has quite the temper on her.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: The heroes and villains don't seem to mind pitching up to the same table for a drink or two, or even occasionally teaming up. Sure, they'll engage in roughhousing and trickery, but it's no different to what they pull on their allies either.
  • Gorgeous Gorgon: The "Wicked Wench" from RDI 6 is one, to an extent.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Gog is half-Ogre and absolutely huge.
  • Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Fiona, who can heal herself with drinks, and Bryn, who crushes beer steins and flexes around piles of mugs.
  • Hearing Voices: It's implied to be the case with Halden, who carries out the Unfinished Business of the spirits who hang around him. Though his totems would like to remind us that these voices are NOT made-up.
  • Hulk Speak: Gog, as reflected in the titles of some of his cards (e.g. "Gog not think so!" instead of the usual "I don't think so!").
  • Insistent Terminology: Wrench's "Head Case" gizmo appears to be a bucket with a scrawling and part of it cut out to resemble a helmet.
    "No! It's not just a bucket!"
  • Intercompany Crossover: Pooky is avaiable as a fighter pack in the collectible card game Street Fighter Exceed.
  • Karma Meter: Serena's Piety Meter, which changes or is changed by the effects of her cards, modifies the effects of her paladin abilities based on how much she actually behaves like a paladin.
  • Killer Rabbit:
    • POOKY, so much. One of his cards is even called "Nasty big pointy teeth". It's worth mentioning that Pooky isn't referred to as a rabbit on his deck, but a "Strange Thing". His origin story on the website suggests that he's some manner of chaos elemental.
    • Kaylin the Enchanter, a cute looking Pixie who absolutely hates being called cute and is generally a vicious, scheming little bastard.
  • Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: Serena the Pious is a Token Heroic Orc raised by the paladins who destroyed her village and who struggles to balance her orcish instincts with her lawful path.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: The Wench has a habit of thinking that pile of gold in the ante was her tip.
  • The Lad-ette: Bryn the Boatswain, who flexes in pretty much all of her cards. Fiona isn't that far behind, though she would argue the point - one of her cards is even called "Who says I'm not a lady?!"
  • Loners Are Freaks: Kaylin left the Pixie Grove because her nature as a loner made her a freak to the other pixies.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: From the third game set onwards, the game designers added unique rules to many of the characters:
    • Phrenk can brew potions to either sell or drink.
    • Kaylin has a secondary deck showing Wulfric's mood, which changes every turn granting bonuses or penalties.
    • Every time Wizgille uses an invention, she turns over a card from her Gear deck to see how well it works or how disastrously it fails.
    • Pooky has a Sanity Meter, while Serena has a Karma Meter.
    • Erin the Ever-Changing has four possible forms: a bear for damage, a raven for gold control, a tree for resisting everything, and her norrmal elven form.
    • Cormac can activate Rage Tiles to make him hit harder but drink more.
    • Natyli can curse and debuff other players, giving them tokens to make them get hit harder, get drunk faster, or make their cards less effective.
    • Remy has a special Marked mechanic for dealing with delinquent players, which usually enhances the effects of his cards if he targets Marked players.
    • Many of Ozrik's cards are element-aligned, which he can discard to enhance his other cards.
    • Brother Bastian has special prayer cards with powerful effects, which must be paid for with prayer tokens. These can be gained by playing certain cards from his deck (which often requires using a weaker effect).
    • Lizwick's cards let her retrieve items from her Bag of Holding.
    • Zakhan can gain Drunken Chi, which he can expend to buff his cards but makes him effectively more drunk than he is.
    • Many of Wrench's cards are Gizmos, which can be targeted as if they were separate players.
    • Zariah summons her companions Scrappy, Bandit, and Amber, which can combine to form “the Chimera,” which enhances the effects of some of her cards.
    • Halden has a Totem Deck of Health, Damage, and Mind types that he can string together for strange effects.
    • Keet has a series of artifact cards that replace his gold pile, which can be revealed to have positive or negative effects.
    • Nitrel uses a bomb deck, and frequently gives bombs to other players for varying damaging effects.
    • Torglesnarf starts with additional gold, and has minions he can bring into play. If they take damage, he must pay to keep them in play.
    • Amundyr hands out scarabs with her cards, damaging players on their turn.
    • Vlazlo uses blood tokens which he can gain by playing cards to pay for other card costs, or to gain addition bat or wolf form cards.
    • Molly has a variety of animal mounts that have varying positive effects when in play, but each mount has a rival that hurts Molly should the two meet.
    • The Wench hands out special reserve drinks, which must always be drunk first and have a variety of effects alongside getting other players drunker.
    • Warthorn has a special deck of tales he regales the other characters with, which can get them drunker or make them lose fortitude.
    • Spyke and Flower draw a card from the Treasure deck each turn, which can either be equipment that can be equipped to raise their Level, which enhances certain cards if their Level is high enough, or curses that have harmful effects.
    • The Lich King only has 13 Fortitude instead of the usual 20, but he can use one of his five fingers to ignore taking Fortitude damage or gaining Alcohol Content. Three of those fingers have a ring, which lets him sell that finger for 1 Gold.
    • Roxana's card are used as ingredients after using the cards. She reveals a recipe card each turn, which she can store one of, and she can use her ingredients to cook the recipe to add it to her hand.
    • Evil Pooky has cards that summons an Evil Doppelgänger of other RDI character, which has two different effects for when he plays it immediately or saved it for later, which reduces his hand size by one until played.
    • Father Farai has three different types of brew cards that he gets when he has enough counters for it. Playing a card that matches the current brew he's working on advances the counter but playing a card with a different brew type makes him change priorities.
    • Nerodia can Petrify another player's cards, removing it from their hand temporarily, and returning the oldest Petrified card during her turn. Some of cards have a Glare effect, which can be activated by returning that many Petrified cards to the cards' owners.
  • Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Remy's features are fairly feminine in comparison to the rest of the male characters, especially his long hair and lack of facial hair. Ironically, he's The One Guy of his pirate crew, which includes a Cool Old Lady and a Lad-ette.
  • The Medic: Deirdre, Serena, and Halden can heal others for bonuses or coin... but sometimes Deirdre's spells or Halden's totem magic just wear off.
  • Mirror Universe: Evil Pooky, quite literally, comes from a mirror universe, and has evil versions of all the main characters as allies.
  • Ms. Fanservice: All the girls have their moments. Kaylin is the only one that ends up naked (albeit with a Scenery Censor), bathing in a mug of hot chocolate.
  • Money for Nothing: A player can amass a lot of gold in a good and early gambling round...and most of it probably won't do much of anything since there's not a lot of cards or effects that can really dent a large gold reserve, the other players will probably realize they can't expect to knock the player out of the game by making them run broke and the prospect of losing their security from losing by running out of gold will give the player little incentive to participate in gambling thereafter.
  • My Nayme Is: Phrenk (Frank) the Alchemist and Witchdoctor Natyli (Natalie).
  • Never Accepted In Her Hometown: Natyli was on the verge of being exiled from her tribe because she would not stop abusing her juju magic on the other villages, both to play pranks and to "get revenge" when she was punished for her misbehavior. Even though her uncle Phrenk saved her from this by taking her away with him, she's still not welcome back until she stops misusing her powers.
  • The Need for Mead: This is the literal premise of the game. The adventurers (whether they be heroes or villains) are simply tired and thirsty after days or weeks of questing. The party needs a break. And what better way to blow off some steam than by drinking, gambling and roughhousing in the Red Dragon Inn?
  • No-Sell:
    • I DON'T THINK SO can negate other sometimes cards (and in a subversion, that can be denied by another "I Don't Think So".)
    • Every character has cards that let them avoid drinking, not have to participate in a round of gambling, not have a drink messed with, or avoid taking fortitude damage, respectively.
  • Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Many of the character decks have "cheating" cards which let them take control of gambling even if the last card was a winning hand. However, there are cards that can call out a player's cheating to win the round of gambling for themself.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Zigzagged with Dimli; although he seems to play it mostly straight, his online background reveals he comes from a "clan-shamed clan", as his clan has been accused of betraying the Dwarvenhold and causing its destruction. Thusly, he adventures to prove his family's innocence.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: They're called pixies, and their hair-color & personality are determined by what season they were born in. Unfortunately for Kaylin, she is the first winter-born pixie to be born in generations, making her too different to stay with her family in the Pixie Grove; as they were all Spring and Summer-born, they just couldn't understand her.
  • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: They're small humanoids who have very little aptitude for magic, but a considerable aptitude for technology. They love to tinker with and build stuff, and although they can rarely become full-fledged mages, they can become Arcane Inventors, who try to mingle magic and technology to produce strange devices.
  • Out-Gambitted: Usually when a Round of Gambling has ended with Gerki or Whitehawk in particular:
    • Gerki has the "Um...I know you think you won, but..." card to take the gold in the center from the winner of a Round of Gambling. Even if Gerki wasn't in the round.
    • Captain Whitehawk has the "What a coincidence, I happen to have the same hand!" card that lets her split the gold with whomever eventually gets the gold (even if Gerki played his "Um...I know you think you won, but..." card first, she gets half the gold from Gerki's ill-gotten gains).
    • Dimli, Tara, and Torglesnarf also have cards that allow them to start another Round of Gambling after a Round has just ended, with them in control of the new Round.
  • Percussive Maintenance: One of Wizgille's cards: "I believe your attitude needs some percussive maintenance!"
  • Promoted to Playable: Pooky in his Ally deck. The Wench in Red Dragon Inn 7.
  • Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Zot does this to Pooky. Inverted in Pooky's deck when he pulls Zot out of a hat Pooky uses.
  • Raised by Orcs: Serena's backstory is an inversion — a band of human paladins wiped out an orc tribe and raised the innocent infant orc they found as one of their own.
  • The Roleplayer: Some house rules state the player must speak the name of the card in the style of the character they're playing.
  • Sanity Meter: Pooky has one that goes Calm, Manic, Crazy and Psychotic, which worsens by one step the more hurt or drunker he gets. Some of his cards get more powerful the worse mood he’s in.
  • Slipping a Mickey: The adventurers have all manners of tricks to put extra alcohol in others' drinks. For example, Eve will outright conceal a Dragon Breath Ale as a more benign drink, Deidre turns water into wine etc. Gerki even has an actual card called "Slipping a Mickey", where he offhandedly spikes someone else's drink (though later printings of the game have changed it to "A little something extra"). However, the Wench sometimes interferes with the spiking.
  • Square Race, Round Class: Serena, the Orc Paladin. How 'good' a paladin she is depends on how you play.
  • Stop Hitting Yourself: Bryn has a card titled this (with the art having her perform the trope on Gerki), letting her Counter-Attack an attempt to reduce her fortitude by canceling it against her and delivering it upon the player that tried it.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Nitrel hands out a variety of bombs with some of her cards, most of which damage enemy players' fortitude.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Most of the cheating cards have this in their title.
  • Tabletop Game A.I.: Otto is a robot who can be used as an additional player. He's intended to round out games with only two players, but given the general nature of Red Dragon Inn, he can be used more or less whenever the players desire. He has several different "jobs" he can be given to change the way he plays.
  • Third-Person Person: Gog and Pooky’s cards have them refer to themselves in the third person.
  • Walking Disaster Area: Gog. Watch out if he wants to give everyone a nice big HUG.
  • Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: Torglesnarf Duncleton (First of His Name) is the self-proclaimed goblin king of small stature surrounded by minions who definitely aren't tiny.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: One of Tara's damaging cards literally reads "Blind girl! Darts! What could possibly go wrong?"
  • What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Lampshaded via Serena's past, where the main reason she was the only orc spared was because she was such a cute baby.
  • With Friends Like These...: The characters are meant to be an adventuring party who travel and fight together. But when they're at the inn, they're more than happy to screw each other over in card games and drinking contests, and will rob each other blind the moment someone passes out.
  • You All Meet in an Inn: Except it's after the adventure. The general cliché of not knowing each other beforehand is also averted. Not only are the characters already an experienced adventuring party (and a ship's crew, for expansion set #4), but several members are specifically connected to one another: Brother Bastian is specifically looking for Serena the Pious because he initially thinks she's a fraud, while Witchdoctor Natyli and Brewmaster Phenk are niece and uncle. Gerki and Fiona grew up together and are essentially a couple.

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