Yes, I know.
It's the perennial bugbear. The cliche to end all RPG cliches. The adventuring party has to meet somewhere. Why not an inn?
I recently picked up a copy of Curse of Strahd and was unsurprised to see this very idea floated in the first adventure hook in the book: The characters start their adventure in an old tavern, the details of which are for you to describe. It's an old perennial. It crops up everywhere.
Why not? You've got to start somewhere.
The problem is, the more you rely on an old standard the less satisfying it feels. Sure, you need to start somewhere. Yet if you start with something boring that's not a good lead-up to the adventure that follows.
What would make it more interesting?
It's your local. Nameless tavern number 368 in a life full of nameless taverns is not a good start. What if you and your mates have been coming here all your lives? What if you have history with this place? It may even be your family that owns it, the proceeds from your adventuring that keep it afloat. The more stake the characters have in the location, the more likely they are to feel happy about being there. Variant: it's not just your local, you own the place. If you don't look after it, who will?
There's something odd about this place. Just Another Tavern? What if this one's haunted? What if the whole thing is built inside an elemental, frozen in place? What if the inn is secretly run by magical cats that are constantly underfoot? What if the beer is brewed by a God, or at least a Demigod? At least make this place stick out in the characters' minds. They may want to come back here one day; it'd be great if there was a here to come back to, not Just Another Tavern.
There's something very odd about this place. If the tavern is a front for the Zhentarim, or Edom, then it probably looks pretty normal on the outside. That's the whole point of places like these. They don't attract attention. They may be perfectly normal. Pay no attention to the peculiar carts and vehicles that come and go at all hours of the day and night. Don't go looking for secret doors or hidden passages. You won't find any. I swear.
There's something very odd happening right now. Even the most ordinary tavern becomes very interesting when someone sets it on fire. Or perhaps someone important to the ongoing campaign is paying it a visit. Ravenloft, for example, has the bard Darklord Harkon Lukas roaming one of the realms looking for new entertainers to join his act. If someone like that is performing onstage, the inn suddenly becomes a thousand times more interesting. Edom has any number of peculiar characters who might do the same. The Madman might frequent the local bucket of blood, or the Ex-IRA might show up as the behind-the-scenes owner of this particular establishment. Maybe they'll become the characters' patrons. Maybe they'll let slip some important clue.
It has a peculiar history. This works very well in settings like London, where there's an established history that goes back centuries and it's not uncommon for pubs to have a past that goes back to the Tudors. Sure, everything's normal now. At least, it seems that way. But fifty years ago there was a string of horrible murders, or a cult, or a conspiracy, and at this very inn ...
It's not really there. What if the adventurers are only dreaming? Or hallucinating? What if the inn only exists because of a shared delusion, perhaps inspired by a peculiar book that the characters all read, one that doesn't want to leave their minds? Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is a realm called I'Cath, infested by ghosts and hopping vampires. This is a realm with two sides, one of which is trapped in the throes of an eternal dream. Suppose the inn only exists on one side of that paradigm? The inn might be part of the dream version of I'Cath and the characters may only experience it by being part of the dream; God and the DM alone know where their bodies are in the waking world. If this were Cthulhu, and the inn only exists in the Dreamlands, then the characters might be in very different parts of the waking world. You could run a sprawling campaign with characters based across the planet, who meet each night in the Golden Cat to discuss their adventures and plan new ones.
That's it for this week! Enjoy.
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