WIP Wednesday! Tavern Talk

We like to use work-in-progress Wednesdays to highlight all sorts of little nuggets we’re currently prepping for our DnD campaigns. In this week’s edition, we’re opening the heavy oak doors to the Charlotte’s Web Inn so you can poke around at some recent Dungeons and Dragons 5e prep.

Any RPG blog post is naturally going to have a print highlighted so today we’re going to show off a recently completed piece from Fantasy NPCs Inn Set. Same story, different set but you’ll be extremely satisfied printing this set.

We’re focusing on another bar backdrop – does that make us obsessed with this particular type of scatter terrain? Hey! Mind your own business, pal! We kid, we kid. It’s just fun to change tavern pieces in and out at times. Keeps the game fresh. Plus, no two taverns are necessarily alike, right?

Sadly, DM Ben noticed that a few of the traditional tavern “exercises” weren’t the smoothest in our last game sesh: food & drink and bar games. He scrambled when asked, “What can I order?” and he also didn’t even offer any sort of simple bar game to further entrench the players into the scene. Not cool, DM…not cool. Never fear! We’re in between games now so the DM has had some time to properly plan these two tavern staples into future encounters.

To simplify the food and drink process, we’re recommending some really handy GM tables from Anthony Woods’ great DnD supplement, “Spectacular Shops & Services.”He’s created two random d20 Meal tables sorted by classic or modern. Simply pick a table and then roll for both the waitress’ recommended meal and price. There’s also a Random Drinks d12 table to ensure your bartender can answer the, “What’s good?” character question.

For example: our d20 roll of “8” meant that our busty barmaid says, “The Grilled quipper with lemon and dill is tonight’s special (2 sp).” And our d12 roll of “9” means the balding bartender says, “You look like a man who needs a Wyvern’s Wrath (2 sp).”

So DM Ben just photocopied these two pages and dropped them in his DM binder and not they’re a simple page turn away – no fuss, no muss.

For a simple yet engaging bar game, we’re suggesting another extremely useful common games table from LoreSmyth’s “Remarkable Inns & Their Drinks” DnD book. There’s a great Common Games table and one in particular called, “Six sided Dice” lept out at us because after all, we’re gamers and rolling lots of dice is our jam.

The rules are so simple. Place your bets: 1 gp, 10 gp, etc. Each player puts five d6’s in a cup, gives them a little shimmy & shake, and then let ’em roll. Highest score wins. We needed a name though so we’re calling it, “Sixer Elixir” – the winner gets the pot and a free drink. Maybe we’ll print some sorta cool dragon cup to serve as the shaker.

Our last housekeeping item is two of our NPCs need face cards. One is for Renaldo Brownpaints, a tavern drunk, who is a bit of a snitch and is serving as the group’s town informant (in exchange for plenty of bar suds of course). The other is for our new resident fisherman, Ewan McHook. We reached into our deck stash from Paizo’s GameMastery Face Cards series and pulled up these two gems.

Pretty good progress overall, right? 🙂