Draco & Co Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Rules of Play
  • Setup
  • Wealth
  • Characters
  • Course of Play
    • 1) Playing an Action Card
    • 2) Proposing a Toast
    • 3) Drawing an Action Card
  • Action Cards
  • End of the Game
  • Special Characters
  • Variants

Components

• 6 castle cards, in six different colours
• 12 player character cards, 2 of each colour
• 3 special character cards: Aunt Sarah, Brother John and Zork
• 1 very special character card: Draco
• 74 action cards
• 1 die
• 1 "cup" token
• 20 silver coins and 25 gold coins

Rules of Play

Setup

Each player chooses a colour from the following:

• 3 players: green, purple, yellow
• 4 players: green, purple, yellow and red
• 5 players: green, purple, yellow, red and blue
• 6 players: green, purple, yellow, red, blue and black

The castle cards and player character cards of the other colours are removed from the game.

Each player takes the castle of their colour and places it in front of them, face up.

Draco is placed on the table, with the cup in his right hand, to indicate his preferred side. The player character cards of the players' colours, together with the three other special characters, are carefully shuffled and laid out in a circle, face up, in a row following Draco as shown in the diagram.

The action cards are shuffled and five are dealt to each player. These five cards are their starting hand. A player's hand must always remain hidden.

Each player receives one gold coin.

The remaining action cards form the draw pile, placed in the centre of the table. The remaining coins form the bank. The player character cards of the other colours are not used and are removed from the game.

The first player is chosen at random. The player to their right, the last player therefore, takes the cup token and places it in front of them.

Wealth

Wealth is the goal of the game. The richest player at the end of the game is the winner.

A player's fortune must always remain visible.

One gold coin is worth three silver coins. The bank makes change whenever necessary.

If a player must pay but no longer has enough money, they pay what they can and are excused from the rest.

Characters

The term "character" in the rules and on the card texts refers to any character, including Brother John, Aunt Sarah and Zork, but not Draco, unless stated otherwise.

The term "special characters" refers to Brother John, Aunt Sarah and Zork.

The term "player characters" refers to the characters in the players' colours, including Aunt Sarah if the card "Old Friendship" has been played.

Course of Play

Each player plays in turn, clockwise. A player's turn consists of three phases, of which only two are mandatory:

1. Play an action card (mandatory)
2. Propose a toast (optional)
3. Draw an action card (mandatory)

1) Playing an Action Card

The player plays a card from their hand, reads its text and carries out the action indicated. The card is then discarded, face up, next to the draw pile.

Choosing characters and rolling the die

Most cards change the positions of the characters around the table. Draco can only be affected by cards bearing the "dragon" symbol (shown in the captured text as a "Q" glyph, which is the dragon icon). If the card does not specify which character must be moved, or by how far, the player who plays the card decides. If a die must be rolled to determine the extent of the movement, the player must decide which character they are moving before rolling the die.

Moving forward and backward

Moving forward means getting closer to Draco's preferred side. Since, at the start of the game, Draco holds the cup in his right hand, moving forward means moving clockwise, the best positions being to the right of Draco. A character who moves forward four places jumps over the four characters that precede it. Draco is suspicious and does not allow anyone to pass behind him. A character whose movement would take it beyond Draco therefore stops just before him, in the first place.

The other characters are shifted so as to maintain a regular arrangement of the cards.

Moving backward means getting closer to Draco's wrong side... and so on.

When several characters must be moved, and the card does not specify in which order, the player who plays the action card decides the order in which they are moved.

2) Proposing a Toast

A player may only propose a toast if the cup token is not in front of any player, that is, if it has been returned to the centre of the table (see below). A player is never obliged to propose a toast.

Draco likes to drink. Each time a toast is proposed, he hands out a share of the loot.

When a toast is proposed, the character in first place, the first one on Draco's preferred side, receives 4 silver coins. The second receives 3 coins, the third 2 coins and the fourth 1 coin. The character in last place, the first character on the other side, must pay 2 silver coins to the bank, and the one before last pays 1 coin.

When a toast is proposed, the players who control the player characters seated next to Aunt Sarah draw an action card.

The cup

When a player proposes a toast, they take the cup token and place it in front of them. When their turn comes round again, after playing, they return this token and place it again in the centre of the table. No player may propose a toast while the toast token has not returned to the centre of the table.

At the start of the game, the last player places the cup in front of them. They will place it in the centre of the table at the end of their turn. This means that no one may propose a toast before a complete round of play has been carried out.

3) Drawing an Action Card

The player takes the top card of the draw pile and adds it to their hand.

When the draw pile is exhausted, the game is nearing its end.

Action Cards

At the start of the game, each player has a hand of five action cards. On their turn, a player plays one card, then draws one.

However, because of Aunt Sarah and certain action cards, this can change. A player may sometimes draw additional cards, or lose some, and so end up for the rest of the game with a hand of more or fewer than five cards.

End of the Game

When a player draws the last card of the draw pile, the discard pile is shuffled to form a new draw pile. The game continues until a player proposes a final toast.

The richest player after the final toast is the winner. In the event of a tie, the tied players eliminate each other and the NEXT player wins. If all players are tied, Draco has won and all players have lost.

Special Characters

Draco: Draco is the leader of the gang. He can only be moved with cards bearing the "Dragon" symbol. A character that changes place cannot pass Draco's place.

Zork: Draco does not like Zork. Consequently, when a toast is proposed, if Zork is in last or second-to-last place, he must pay double the normal price: 4 silver coins if Zork is in last place, 2 if he is in second-to-last. Zork begs from the richest player with such obsequiousness that the latter must pay for him. If several players have identical fortunes, Zork stays alone in his corner and nobody pays for him.

Draco really does not like Zork. Even if Zork is in one of the first four places, he receives nothing.

Brother John: Brother John is not there for the money. Brother John is there to drink well and eat well.

Each time Brother John receives money, he generously gives it to the character occupying the next place. Thus, for example, if Brother John is in second place when a toast is proposed, the character in third place will receive 3 + 2 = 5 silver coins.

Brother John, consequently, has no money. But everyone is fond of him, so someone pays for him. When he is in last or second-to-last place, the character occupying the preceding place, if it is Zork or a player character, pays for him. (If Brother John is in last place and Zork in second-to-last, the richest player must therefore pay 2 + (2x1) = 4 coins.)

Aunt Sarah: The old Aunt Sarah knows many things, reads the future in the lines of the hand and in her crystal ball, and never stops talking to her neighbours. When a toast is proposed, the players who control the player characters located immediately to her left and to her right draw an action card. They will from now on play with one more card in their hand. If both characters are controlled by the same player, that player draws two cards.

If the card "Old Friendship" is played, Aunt Sarah is from then on under the control of a player, to whom she can from then on make money gained or lost. She nevertheless continues to make the characters beside her draw cards.

When the position of a character means that it should:

Character	Receive gold	Give gold	Draw a card
Draco	Does not receive	Does not pay	Does not draw
Brother John	Gives it to the character occupying the next place	The character occupying the preceding place pays for him	Does not draw
Aunt Sarah	Does not receive (unless Old Friendship)	Does not pay (unless Old Friendship)	Does not draw (unless Old Friendship)
Zork	Does not receive	The richest player pays for him (pays double in case of a toast)	Does not draw

Variants

For a shorter game, remove the last 10 or 20 action cards from the draw pile.

Players who want a longer game may decide to end the game only when the draw pile has been exhausted for the second time.