The Fantasy Fair is about to start, and storybook characters from all over the realm are coming to town for the show. Everyone knows there's only one place the visitors want to stay: The Fairy Tale Inn!

It's everyone's favorite home away from home, and like always, the place is going to be booked solid. Each of the Inn's two owners will compete to be the one who takes the best care of the guests. They will take turns ushering guests into enchanted rooms, gaining gold for strategic placement, and successfully keeping the guests from fighting. (Note to self: NEVER put Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf in adjoining rooms!)

In Fairy Tale Inn, two players will try to earn the most gold coins by the end of the game. To set up, players will select the character cards of guests who will be present during that game, then take the corresponding character tokens and toss them into the mixing bag. Next, players will randomly draw those tokens to fill up the guest list board. After randomly selecting who goes first, the first player gets a gold coin, while the other player gets two. Now the game starts!

On a player's turn, they will pick a character token from the guest list board, paying the cost indicated on the board, then they place that guest in the inn, sliding the token into the vertical game board with the colored side facing themselves (while the monochrome-colored side faces their opponent).

After the token slides into the slot, the player may score points based on the room the guest ended up in, as well as any additional guests that might be around. Every character has different abilities that say how they give gold to their corresponding innkeeper. For example, the Little Pigs like to be close to each other; they automatically give the player who placed them 1 gold coin and an extra gold coin for each other Little Pig token connected to them. The Big Bad Wolf, on the other hand, gives their player three gold coins for every row where their innkeeper played more Big Bad Wolf tokens than their opponent at the end of the game. (In case of a tie, neither player gets gold.) There's an art to placing guests as several rooms of the Inn are enchanted and give a bonus or penalty to the player that places a guest there.

The game continues with players picking and placing guests until three columns of the inn have been completely filled. When that happens, players gain gold from characters with end of game abilities, then the player who has gained the most gold wins the game.