Red Dragon Inn II is more or less the same game as the original Red Dragon Inn. Two to four players take the roles of a rowdy group of adventurers, fresh from a successful adventure, as they retire to the tavern to drink, compare battle scars, drink, tell tales, drink, gamble, drink and try to rob one another blind.

If you're familiar with the original game, go ahead and skip the next paragraph since I'm going to be talking about the basics.

Each player gets a play mat and a deck of cards for their character. Each deck is customized to whichever character it represents. The goal of the game is to be the last person still sober, standing and holding at least one gold coin. To that end, each player's card has a track that shows they fortitude and alcohol content. Each stat starts at one end of the track, and if they ever pass then the character has been knocked out. Additionally, losing your last gold coin puts you out of the action as well. On his turn, a player can play a card, buy a drink for one or more other players, and finally take a swig of whatever drink is in front of him. The action cards are varied - each deck contains some unique cards tailored to the character's strengths and weaknesses as well as generic cards that all player have. These cards typically cause direct damage to other players, heal up damage they've taken, manipulate the coins of other players or the Inn, manipulate a drink to force another player to down it, or water it down to reduce the alcohol content hit. Players can also engage in high stakes gambling to attempt to increase the size of their loot while robbing the others of their coin.

Okay, with that out of the way, what does Red Dragon Inn II bring to the table? The most obvious change are the four new characters. You can take the role of a dwarven warrior, an illusionist, a bard or a half-ogre. Each specializes in different areas - for example the dwarf can mess with everyone's drink and of course hold his own better than just about anyone. The illusionist is good at sleight of hand, like making other players think that the cup of harmless water they're about to drink is actually potent dragon's breath ale. The half-ogre has a split personality that makes him sometimes wants to be everyone's pal and other times want to smash things. Lastly, the bard is a rogue-ish fellow who's good at grabbing and holding coins. Each of these new characters is on par with the four from the original game, and the level of humor displayed in the very nice illustrations and card names is high, especially for gamers with some knowledge of role-playing games.

Another nice feature of Red Dragon Inn II (and truthfully, the reason I bought it) is that it can be easily combined with the original game to allow for up to eight players. The game also brings new drink cards into the mix.

It's also apparent that Slugfest isn't done with the Red Dragon Inn - as with the original game, there are drink cards that give orcs and trolls special bonuses, and there aren't yet any orc or troll characters in the game. So we can expect either a full third game or some kind of character expansion in the future.

Red Dragon Inn II is a fun, humor-filled and very thematic light game. It plays quickly (less than an hour typically) and is very easy to teach and play. If your game group typically only consists of four players or less, I'd recommend picking one of the two Red Dragon Inns - go with whichever has characters you're most interested in. For those who have had to shelf the game due to more than four players, grabbing Red Dragon II is a no-brainer.