I’ll soon start my next #DnD campaign, and I’ve decided to start with a classic - the PCs all meet in a tavern. Now, the PCs intended to meet in a tavern and have plans to go elsewhere (the city of Ptolus, if it matters), but I want to start the campaign to start in a lively manner.
Which means populating the tavern with all sorts of weirdos for some good role-playing opportunities. Any suggestions?
The cast of “piano man” by Billy Joel and don’t tell your players
I just had this happen, sort of, in a completely unplanned way. The party had already met but in the course of events they asked a caravan master to recommend a tavern or inn. He thought for awhile, looked them all up and down, then said “I reckon folks like you would hang out a <insert inn name>.”
The party’s face asked what he meant by “folks like you” and he basically said adventurous and prosperous folks.
They went to the inn and the staff and clientele (randomly generated by donjon.bin.sh) were all female, which made them think something was up. The definitely-not-a-face orc ranger tried to befriend the innkeeper and ended up accidentally scaring the crap out of her. I decided it wasn’t that he was personally frightening but that she had mistaken the party for a different, much more nefarious, band.
Based on her bowing and fawning over the party, the other folks in the inn began to stare. At that point, Mr Face decided he needed to talk to every woman in the room.
Ultimately, based on a weird sequence of crit fails and successes, they ended up with a side quest to kill a demon that been terrorizing a nearby village, assisted by two fairly stupid local mercenaries.
I hadn’t planned it but they didn’t know that until I told them to give me 5 minutes to make a new encounter map!
I love this kind of serendipity - this often creates the best scenes!
Hollister Nimbleprick, a large nosed halfling tailor/thief, looking to join an adventuring group. He’s actually a dwarven fighter in disguise. One the run for the last month, he shaved his beard, took off his boots and swapped his axe for a rapier. If he joins the group, he will complain under his breath anytime they ask him to do thief stuff. He falls every time he tries to climb walls or trips when he tries to sneak around and accidentally triggers every trap he’s tasked with detecting.
Colville suggests that starting in a tavern is a chance to show off the setting in a microcosm. Put folks there that represent various factions or attitudes prevalent in the setting. When I ran a Savage Pathfinder game and had my players start in a tavern, I had some incurious off-duty town guards, the dillettante son of the mayor. I couldn’t figure out a way to work in the diabolist church (I set my game in Cheliax), but I did have a choice of several “first jobs” for them to take.
