The quality and nature of Drinkin' Dragons are unknown. It's not easy to make things to test this out. However, we can test out part of it, the movement, without too much fuss. When a dragon (rather randomly) grabs the holy grail, can another dragon take it from that first dragon? We can add generic target drinks, which will increase mobility options.

I bought the fancy dice and tried it. This has reopened the Pandora's box of problems and possibilities.

The weirdness of the theme showed up. Dragons consuming drinks based on orthogonal moves that emerge from dice rolls. It was tedious, not completed. It didn't help that I was working three players on the floor with flawed components and missing the colour of the drinks theme. The game was not exactly bad, but tedious and weird. Dragons did take the holy grail from each other. Dragons travelled to most of their target drinks, leaving behind a lot of neutral drinks. If a blue dragon has the holy grail and all the target drinks it can, it has many movement options and its goal is to ...

The game originally came from just two words: Drinkin' Dragons. What else could we do? Cards, set collection? Give up, move on to something else, like nailing down Atlantis Chess? Try flying around a ring of different markets? You are flying somewhere.

The plot thickens. I've got a new idea bubbling up fast. Different markets (stores, teahouses, whatever noun), with an element of musical chairs. The number of places is two more than the number of dragons.
 
 

Here is a model we can work with for Drinkin' Dragons. Later we will find problems and fixes.

Six places around a big table. Stores if that helps you to understand it. Four dragons and the holy grail are randomly put in these places. Each place has ten or so drinks, in a specific order so you can only drink one specific drink at a time. During a turn, a dragon can drink, fly to another place, fight or do nothing.

Target drinks (e.g. Arcticus should get hot chocolate) are secret.

Fighting is a matter of who has the highest number on a rolled six-sided die. A dragon gets a die every time a target drink is consumed, so the dragon can roll a number of dice. The dragon who initiated the fight wins ties. Drunk dragons lose ties. The dragon who loses is incapacitated for three turns after the superior dragon leaves the place. The winner can seize the holy grail from an incapacitated dragon.

Drunk dragons are drunk for three turns. Drunk dragons can not fly and are inferior fighters. Consuming coffee means you have a one in three chance of needing to pee for the next turn, so you can't do anything including communicating ("I'm busy").

The dragon who holds on to the holy grail at the end of the game wins.
 
 

People would stand up, walk around.

In the past I thought of a game with hermit crabs moving from one shell to another in a social group. They are not hermits, and they sometimes fight. I got to my hermit crab game by accident.

The ideal is this hermit crab game, where dragons flit from one place to another, preferably unoccupied, to get target drinks. Tactical moves, timing, negotiation and trust, and combat. That's the ideal, but it might turn out that dragons go to the places, dragons at the same place live and let live, bad drinks are evaded and and everyone gets their target drinks. (Ignoring holy grail) That would be bad, because players don't make the tactical movement decisions or have tense negotiations.

What will we call the places? Establishments, villages.

What happens toward the end of the game when we are running out of drinks? Let's think through the game play. Is there any point to getting the holy grail early if it just boils down to fighting? A place could no longer exist if there are no drinks, dragons or holy grail. Maybe you win by a) possessing the holy grail and b) being at an isolated place with no drinks, because you drank them all. This would encourage players to still drink at the end. Drinkin', flyin' and fightin'.

A dragon gets a die after getting a target drink. So I guess that means a dragon can't fight initially. Also, might a dragon get caught in a vicious circle and not be able to fight?

Stores don't work like that. But having a specific sequence of drinks forces dragons to make tactical decisions, forces them to consume neutral drinks, and makes them run into bad drinks.

Are target drinks private or public? Dragons would like to take the target drinks for other dragons so they can't be used. This is easier if the target drinks are public. It is somewhat doable if they are private; you would go after the thematic drinks. "Please don't drink that drink." Setup is easier if they are public.

Before I forget: One dragon is Gregarious Greg. Greg shares three of his target drinks ("Let's go for a coffee").

Where is the holy grail during setup? As mentioned above, at a random place. Alternatively, it could be at the centre position, together with dragons. Or dragons in random places, holy grail in centre, that seems nice. Another alternative is to have it at a place, but part of the sequence of drinks, available at some time during the game. The last one is the preferred one.

The rules for an incapacitated dragon are begging to be revisited.
 
 
 
 

A dragon is toppled over if it has lost a fight. A drunk dragon has three chips (never more) which are eliminated over three turns. A dragon that has to pee after a coffee has one yellow light blue chip with a P on it. We'll need a die for that too. Dice would be dragged around with a dragon, so maybe you would have colours associated with players. An awkward thing is you would have to have information about specific dragons, e.g. "lactose intolerant" that is available to players. Some work will have to be put into public (and private) information about a dragon that is available to people. Should the drinks be discs or cards? All things being equal, circular discs look like drinks.

Any thoughts about a box cover? Welsh dragon