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TelemontTanthul
2009-10-05, 06:18 PM
As we all know, Taverns are a staple in any DnD game, and so I was wondering just how interesting some of your taverns might be.

An example: I made a tavern called "The Muddy Boot" tavern. Outside you can find the boots of all the patrons.

Or at least the patrons who have proved themselves in combat. In order to have the right to be barefoot in the tavern you have to defeat the tavern Champion (A big scary guy).

So, what kind of taverns have you guys had?

DiscipleofBob
2009-10-05, 06:47 PM
It was once the most feared ship among the sea. For despite its small size, she had the fiercest crew of halfling pirates the world had ever seen: the Dire Badgers. That is, until the hurricane. The ship was literally plucked out of the water and spun around the air in its winds for what seemed like forever. Finally, when the hurricane subsided, the ship had been deposited on the peak of a small, deserted island. When Captain Narskey gave up on getting the ship down from the mountain, he instead fashioned the ship into a stable building on the mountaintop, using the spare lumber and rope to form various walkways and lifts down to the shore. Now, the Crow's Nest is a favorite of pirates on the sea. No one sacks the place because all the loot is hidden in mountain tunnels almost too small for the halflings, much less a normal sized humanoid, not to mention the barkeep, Ol' Narskey, will set straight anyone who causes trouble. It's a good place for a drink though, if you don't mind all the wenches being under 4 feet tall.

kwanzaabot
2009-10-05, 07:06 PM
I'm working on a tavern at the moment, actually. It's not for a d&d game, it's just for a story I'm working on, however.

It's called The Dragon's Nest- a seedy pub in a bad part of town, that happens to be a front for the local thieves guild. The guild however, is actually a front too: a certain dragon happens to use the guild as a means of collecting valuables and therefore satisfying her greed.

They also make potato wedges that are out of this world.

Frosty
2009-10-05, 07:11 PM
I need to get a tavern named "The Broken Record" sometime, due to the OVERUSE of the work "Broken" in tavern names :smallbiggrin:

Claudius Maximus
2009-10-05, 07:14 PM
I need to get a tavern named "The Broken Record" sometime, due to the OVERUSE of the work "Broken" in tavern names :smallbiggrin:

In a similar vein, the Adjective Noun Tavern (or occasionally Inn) makes an appearance in all my games.

Myshlaevsky
2009-10-05, 07:17 PM
Gastro Taverns.

Zaydos
2009-10-05, 07:57 PM
Three Boars Inn. It's a reoccurring tavern in my games. Started off just as a tavern ran by a retired member of the king's guard with a half-orc barbarian bouncer and his half-troll/half-orc half-brother; an interesting note was that in all variant time lines the Inn existed in some form. In later campaigns it became a mystical inn made by a god at the point where all places intersected and was the ultimate neutral ground for powerful entities. In the next campaign it served the same role but Odin ran it, never said a word and let his two ravens do the talking for him (if you tried to bribe them they'd rob you though).

Thajocoth
2009-10-05, 08:17 PM
My group uses "The Weary Traveler". There's a "Weary Traveler" in every city. It's a chain...

I haven't used "The Weary Traveler" yet. I had one "The Hollow Stein" in the town of Hollowville, named after the town. Also, a "Stonehand's", named after a Goblin family. They weren't incredibly creative though...

In a campaign I'm about to start, I have "Razorbeard's Tavern" run by a family Duergar, with a labyrinth below housing a black dragon, who's the city's mafia boss. Also, "The Fine Vine" run by a family of Eladrin. In most taverns/inns, the barkeep is perpetually rubbing a mug with a dirty cloth. At The Fine Vine, however, the barkeep is perpetually rubbing a wine glass with a silk cloth. It's a more up-scale place... It's taller, with several floors of rooms.

Rhiannon87
2009-10-05, 08:34 PM
One that I have is the Sword & Scroll, a quiet tavern located near the palace. It caters to government bureaucrats who want to be able to have discreet meetings, and guard captains who want to relax after their shift. Definitely upper class, high target for spies and assassins, adventurers generally Not Welcome. (So naturally they end up there. Hee.)

Masaioh
2009-10-05, 08:38 PM
I typically don't name any of my taverns, but it's in a small city a few days away from the big capital city. Within about 10 minutes of the game starting, it imploded and formed a black hole into another plane. Then it rebuilt itself out of jello and killed half of the residents of the city by dividing by zero, and the innkeeper was eaten by a tojanida.

Then there's an inn in my setting's planar metropolis, the 'Blacklight Junction'. It looks like a Salvador Dali painting in 8D that is being viewed under a blacklight, hence the name of the city. It is run by celestials.

Ka'ladun
2009-10-05, 08:39 PM
A few campaigns ago I made a tavern called "The Madmen's Den," the local wizards bar. The sentient door would only open if it liked you (or if threatened with fire). While they did serve beer, most of it was in various neon colors and tended to make you glow for a bit afterwards. And of course the tables levitated.

The best part though were the chairs. About 50 sentient chairs who loved sawdust. If you put sawdust on one of them, every chair would run into the back room, emerging a moment later completely sawdust free and would cluster happily around whoever fed them. The few people who tired to sneak into the back room to see what happened were promptly mobbed and tossed out of the bar by the chairs.

The Vorpal Tribble
2009-10-05, 08:41 PM
Might say I put some thought into one once...

The Gaping Maw (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9827)

Froogleyboy
2009-10-05, 09:08 PM
Might say I put some thought into one once...

The Gaping Maw (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9827)

Oh course you put thought into it! You're the god damned VP! You put awesome amount of detail into ev-er-y-thing!

herrhauptmann
2009-10-05, 10:49 PM
A friend used this while DMing a few years back. It doesn't quite fit all the established rules, but the game didn't have a high enough level of optimization to make the departure from the rules relevent.

Bar was run by a fairly high level dwarf brawler (DM had just finished reading some R.A. Salvatore)
All weapons were checked at the door. Room was also filled with certain spell effects like an AMF. All these effects nerfed people who fought with weapons, spells, or used Sneak attack/skirmish for massive damage. (a few houserules built into the bar) However, if you fought with only your own body, you wouldn't get nerfed.

If you got into a fight in the bar, you had to fight with your fists, because all the furniture was made of wicker.
The wicker chairs/stools would deal 1d2 damage with no str bonus. Thus encouraging the combatants to rely on themselves.
Simultaneously, the tables would be so heavy that anyone trying to use them in a fight would immediately count as heavily encumbered (unless their strength was greater than 50). So fighting with a table would be 1d6+str mod if you had 50+ str. Or just 1d6 if your str was 49 or less.
So it was generally better to fight with your bare hands, because a specific phrasing for the furniture said that people with approx. 20 or less str couldn't even lift the tables.

TelemontTanthul
2009-10-05, 11:18 PM
I think your tavern fits all the qualifications for this thread. It was interesting, without a doubt.

Did this tavern have a name?

Akal Saris
2009-10-06, 12:23 AM
I've actually been thinking about this a bit today, as I want a distinctive "home base" tavern for the PCs in a low-level, Waterdeep-specific game I'm running now. Something in the Dock quarter preferably, but it shouldn't be very rough, as the PCs are mostly white collar workers.

Cityscape Pgs. 44-45 lists lots of activities and their associated rules for taverns, such as drinking games, feats of accuracy (darts), games of chance, making friends, telling stories, listening to music/tales, picking pockets, and, of course, getting drunk.

It also has a cool list of sample tavern names on Pg. 44. Eerily enough, one listed is the 'Angry Owlbear', which bears an uncanny resemblance to the main tavern in a few campaigns that I and two other DMs in my group ran, which was 'The Boorish Owlbear.'

The Boorish Owlbear

A large, drafty inn run by a surly fat man, the Boorish Owlbear is a loud, happening place popular among adventurers. It features momentos from various quests, including the stuffed and well-worn owlbear in the corner furthest from the fire. This was the home of the Company of the Boorish Owlbear (1 group), as well as the namesake for HMS Boorish Owlbear (another group).

bosssmiley
2009-10-06, 05:40 AM
All our local taverns have closed since the pipeweed ban came in. May hell-and-damnation attend the puritan Cult of the Envious Rose which has infested our lands. :smallwink:

daggaz
2009-10-06, 05:59 AM
Real life story. There was once a rather overweight woman of questionable upbringing named Maria who sailed the seas of the Carribean. Half pirate, half prostitute, she was as independent as they come. Well.. she pissed some pirate men off, who marooned her on a beautiful but almost entirely deserted tropical beach on the western shores of the island of Cuba.

What did she do? She promptly set up shop, enlisting the help of the natives and building a world class bar and brothel, which was the place to be if you were a pirate looking for a little R&R.

The place still bears her name on modern day maps. "Punta del Maria la Gorda" or "Fat Maria's Point." The local dive shop/bar is run by the government tho and could use a few pointers... but still a beautiful place.

herrhauptmann
2009-10-07, 07:26 PM
I think your tavern fits all the qualifications for this thread. It was interesting, without a doubt.
Did this tavern have a name?

I wish I could remember the name of the bar. I was too busy working (and on different schedule) to play. So I was just sitting with him helping him come up with flavor for a city he was building. Some of the concrete rules were done later.

There was also a weapon shop run by a halfelven dandy. Items were discounted if they were fencer type weapons and equipment. Heavily marked up for things like plate armor or axes.
Female customers who were attractive (no dwarves/orcs) got discounts and free 'lessons'.
Anyway, those were my contributions to the campaign. Feel free to use.

Gamerlord
2009-10-07, 07:39 PM
I remember in one campaign a recurring NPC, who just kept on rebuilding his inn over and over again as it was destroyed by orc raids, reckless PCs, reborn demon lords, abberations, and a varitey of nasty things, he just kept on moving to another area, building it again, no matter what storms it was forced to weather...the name? Bad luck's haven

Toric
2009-10-07, 08:04 PM
In an Eberron game I'm playing in, my character is a dwarf with a passion for baking. One day a fellow PC of his shelled out the money for an establishment on a moderately high level of Sharn, and after a little brainstorming the Golden Tankard was born! Its current staff is clearly defined and statted out.


It's a conservative affair, sticking to the style of most of the nearby taverns, if you can ignore the fact that most of the tables come up to the average human's knees. The main appeal of the Golden Tankard is, in fact, the Golden Tankard, a hollowed-out tankard of firm salted bread baked to crispy perfection and topped off with the swill of your choice. Come in on a regular night for a pleasant well-lit atmosphere and a staff short on everything but hospitality, or wait till the next monthly Brawl Night to get in touch with your inner hoodlum while chatting it up with Authentic vagabonds and neer-do-wells. And don't worry about the broken chairs; when two of the three co-owners are constantly gone adventuring you learn to keep a generous repair budget.

Darcand
2009-10-08, 12:37 AM
I often use the Swine & Swan, a middleclass watering hole on the main road through whichever city I am playing with at the time. Always has a room to rent.

Or The Bucket, an gambling venue run by a pair of halfling brothers that squat in abandoned buildings and change locations frequently to keep the watch off their backs. The sort of place you can't find if you don't already know where it is.

Or Tarts, an upper class "gentleman's club" and base of operations for Tanitha House, half-elf bard with full ranks in dance, gather info, knowledge local, and knowledge nobility. The place to go when you need to know a dirty little secret.

My crown jewel however is The Resting Place, set in Pathfinder, but flexible enough for any setting. Marika Lastleaves (human brd2/rg2/cl2) grew up well to do in the city of Magnamar, but despite his parents' wishes chose the life of a wandering minstral. Unfortunately he soon proved very unsuccessful as a musician and turned to a life of petty crime to make ends meet. After a run in with Hellknights on the back streets of Korvosa Marika fled west. On the road, exhausted and starving he took shelter from a storm under a rocky outcropping next to the road and was surprised to find basket of bread that had fallen from a passing wagon. In the morning he woke to find himself surrounded by purple butterflies, the symbol of the goddess Desna. He took this as a sign to turn his life around, returned home and convinced his father to fund a temple to Desna on the location of his revelation. Now The Resting Place stands open to all, and always has a bed and hot meal, free of charge to those in need.

Vangor
2009-10-08, 02:43 AM
My oft used tavern is known as The Hitching Post. Usually an unassuming structure positioned on a corner with cracking, off-colored plaster coating brick walls, the establishment is operated by a Half-Drow who is known as N. After realizing his status was unalterable due to his human ancestry and being male, he chose to escape. An attack on the surface elves provided such an opportunity, as well as one to exact revenge on the priestess who relished punishing him for too long. He used her head as a macabre token of entrance to a nearby city, and through various means he raised enough money to purchase what would become The Hitching Post, due primarily to his love of alcohol.

Not only is the Drow bartender, N has stopped attempting to correct anyone on "Half", an exotic sight, but the tavern has perhaps the oddest musical "duo" known, an Ettin known as Anfal and Forvar (Attack and Defend in Jotun). Somehow the Ettin manages to play the hammered dulcimer, drums, and a set of flutes with either head well enough to the delight of the crowds, and somehow N has convinced the beast to bathe often enough. He serves, too, as a bouncer, though his presence is rather sobering enough for any potential trouble makers.

The center tables are pressed together as necessary for newcomers to an ongoing game of The Dragon Hoard (a simple, fast-paced game with dice), usually attracting bets as often as players. The entire gaming area is overseen by a rather short Halfling, Jolas from Accounting, who sprints about dispensing winnings and accepting bets on how vast the hoard will grow before being won and who will next win.

Perhaps most notable about The Hitching Post is, however, the sign. While the once bright red lettering and rich brown of the horses has gradually faded, the lithe, black figure naked and tied to the hitching post is frequently redone. And when the sun shines down the street, one can see a glimmer from the polished onyx circlet with four prongs holding back her "hair" and another four embedded within the wood of the sign.

BloodyAngel
2009-10-08, 02:55 AM
The tavern my group remembers is a little throwaway joke that they crashed in while running from the law. The owner was a grubby old man who hated the system... the king... the guard... and was quite outspoken about it. Like Dennis the peasant, but SLIGHTLY less muddy.

His bar was named the Royal C*ck. It's sign was a picture of a very goofy rooster wearing a crown. The group loved it, and kept making excuses to go back. It also inspired many a hilariously perverted pun. What can I say... we're immature. :smalltongue:

karnokoto
2009-10-08, 06:27 AM
I don't have anything good to add (best tavern we've ever been in turned out to be an illusion, so nuts to that!) but I just wanted to say I am LOVING this thread.

woodenbandman
2009-10-08, 09:52 AM
The Bearded Hammer, owned by a mister Alestorm Ironfire Hammerfall. The pub is famous for its extensive collection of war memorabilia, its strict entrance requirements (you must be this bearded to enter), and having the finest dwarven ale in the land. The pinnacle of dwarven ale engineering: the Dwarven Stout of Elf-Slaying +5.

Then there's the brothel Erotic Nightmares, which is staffed entirely by dopplegangers.

And the Bed of Razors, a nightclub/fightclub establishment run by a female drow named Black Widow. Located in the basement, it's one of the hottest nightclubs in town, with amateur knife fight night every tuesday.

oxinabox
2009-10-08, 10:37 AM
I had the "City of Doors"
A tavern that has two doors, on leads to a door (sellected by the owner) on the material plane, the other to Sigil.

Without out the key (a small glass bottle, kept by the owner) a patron who entered on door can only leave through that door.

thefinalbattle
2009-10-08, 05:32 PM
in a game i'll be DMing soon, in the second-to-last encounter, there will be a long staircase with a room near it they have to climb. the room was previously used as the quarters of a dwarvern preist of thor, but now has been turned into a tavern of all sorts of living and dead creature's favor. the name of the tavern: THE DELICIOUS FAKER, named so because the goblin barkeep magically conjures all the beverages.

Jack_Banzai
2009-10-08, 06:30 PM
My most used tavern in any RPG is the Jagged Nails club in Belltown, Seattle. For Shadowrun, naturally. Based verrrrrry loosely on a club of the same name on the Shadowrun SNES game, my players and fellow GMs helped me flesh out the place considerably. Cecil the elf with his chipped reflexes and blue-toned skin modifications could mix drinks like Bryan Brown on crank while the erstwhile Western-themed ex-shadowrunner samurai-cooler, Westwind, looked on dispassionately. There was also a running gag where we were continually finding vampires and free spirits trying to make off with inebriated young ladies, and we would drag them out of the bar and either kill or drive them off, just so we wouldn't have to pay our tab. Fun stuff.

Akal Saris
2009-10-08, 08:35 PM
Then there's the brothel Erotic Nightmares, which is staffed entirely by dopplegangers.



Nice to see that I'm not the only one whose game includes a brothel run by dopplegangers!

Well, mine's a titty bar (The Pinch and Wink, if I remember), but same difference.

Randel
2009-10-08, 11:36 PM
Once after reading about Sushi-go-rounds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conveyor_belt_sushi) I got the idea for a Tippyverse infinite food trap restaurant.

The kitchen uses a Create Food and Drink trap (or a Create Feast trap, a spell in Dragon Magazine that allows a bard to create delicious food... think its a lvl 1 or 2 spell used by worshipers of the god of trickery or something). The food is put into small plates or cups which are then put on a long conveyer belt consisting of hundreds of small Tensers Floating Disks that each hold one dish.

The line of disks flows into the main room and into a main 'hub' where the line branches off and cycles into several dozen tables each with stools where people can sit (in addition to many other tables for people to eat that aren't connected to the food line). All the floating disks had back along the line to the kitchen where old food is dumped off and all the dishes are cleaned, magically mended, and used again.

In the room, unseen servants pick up any empty dishes and clean the place spotless with cleaning prestidigitation effects.


Since the food is all generated by magic, the tavern doesn't charge per glass or per tray, you pay at the door and its all you can eat/drink.

You don't order your food either, just wait for your desired beverage or dish to come by on the line. Pick it up, eat it, and set the dishes off to the side to get cleaned up by unseen servants and you're set.

The entire tavern is more or less completly automated and the only 'person' on staff is the talking door that you have to give the gold to in order to enter.

The bathroom is also magically cleaned but doesn't have a bath, so while it is technically possible for somebody to pay the 1 gp entrance fee and then stay and eat there for the rest of their lives... they could get kind of smelly after a while and realistically the other patrons might start beating up on you if you just sit around forever.

The place was originally built by a mage who wanted to feed the entire city with their food and water trap and they built the place around it to provide theoretically infinite revenue. However, they had serious trust issues (they were the sort of person who would animate zombies to carry their stuff instead of hiring a henchman.) and designed the entire thing to operate forever without the wizard having to pay anybody to run it. The place is practically indestructible (at least in any permanent sense) because the kitchen is locked off to everybody, the only moving parts the customers interact with are unseen servants and floating disks which are spell effects, and the servants simply repair anything that is damaged or destroyed in a bar fight.

Amazingly, the place has been completely leveled once or twice but was restored mere hours later. Some think that the taverns building itself is a modified version the Secure Shelter spell.

The wizard never got around to naming the place and so far has never returned. While people pay for their all-you-can-eat buffets, nobody knows where the coins go.

Gan The Grey
2009-10-09, 12:54 AM
Best name for a tavern in any of my games: The Grassy Gnoll. The picture was of a surprised gnoll covered in bright green grass holding a Rod of Wonder.

Best name for a whore house: Wudan, cuz in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, some bad guy screams, WUDAN IS A WHORE HOUSE!!!!!

Guinea Anubis
2009-10-09, 08:22 AM
I had a place called the Ugly Mermaid, It was in a port town. It was a bar/strip club. The main thing with this place was if you paid for a private room you got a free bottle of wine. The wine was drugged and would knock out a normal guy for almost a day after 1 glass. They would then take the poor guy rob him and put him on a ship setting sail to work as a crew man.

The Tygre
2009-10-09, 09:52 AM
I, of course, have had my own fun at the World Serpent Inn. With Ice Genasi girls... heh...

But I've only got one really detailed tavern in Cauldron. It's known simply as "The Common Humanoid Refreshment Lounge". The name should be giving hints immediately. The whole place is doppelganger node. All the residents are doppelgangers, the furniture is Mimics, even the building itself is a massive type of mimic known as doppelstalt, the last stage of life in the doppelganger evolution. They came to Cauldron to try and populate, but are reconsidering; there's a bit of a risk being next to gaping demon wound in the world, and being built into a volcano, with dragons and giants to the north. The only reason they're still in the city is because they're tracking a rogue member who plays a part in the campaign.

DeafnotDumb
2009-10-09, 10:39 AM
In the city-based game I'm currently in, the DM likes to encorage us to come up with details of the city ourselves to add to his ideas. Of course we've made some taverns.

The Shivering Cat
Funny story, that one. The name is because of the tavern's owner's cat; For some reason, as the name would suggest, it seems to have some kind of affliction that causes it to go into mad shivering fits on occasion, particularly when it gets close to fire.

The true reason for that has been forgotten for quite some time now; In reality, the tavern was built over the ruins of an old alchemistīs lab, which ended up destroyed in an explosion. The explosion was the result of a failed experiment, rumoured to be caused by an aprentice mage who had been hired by the alchemist as an assistant making a bad mistake with a heating spell. Whatever the cause, only one thing remained of the lab after it blew up - A stray cat, in truth the alchemist after being permanently polymorphed. The cat has since made the place its home, and has a deadly fear of fire; The accident also left him the shivering fits, as a side effect of the chemicals.

The Empty Coffin
The owner of the Empty Coffin was a sailor, and brought back many objects and stories from their travels, and they have filled up their bar with many items of different shapes, sizes, color and origin, each with a different story attached to it. The Empty Coffin owes its customers to the stories the owner tells as much as the food and drink that it serves.

The most popular item, placed in the middle of the tavern, is a empty and worn coffin from which the bar derives its name. The story concerning the coffin is the favorite of all the customers. According to the owner, they were buried in that coffin dead but came out of it alive. The story goes that through luck and bravery the owner's crew had saved the life of an important royal, a man related to his queen through a very complicated family tree of somehowt dubious origin, from an ambush that had caught the man's guards unprepared. In return for their help, the royal offered them a favor along with payment, and the crew simply asked that he attend the burials for the people who had died defending the him, and then leave them in peace.

Moved by their grief at their comrades deaths, the royal instead offered to bring the dead back to life with the help of his court magician. The owner of the tavern had been one of the slain, and had to piece information of the strange and foreign rituals the magician performed from the rest of the crew and try and sift out the truth from the lies and exaggerations. However, the owner vividly remembers the sensation of becoming alive again- the feeling of coldness and stillness inside slowly replaced by the warmth and movement of blood, their mortal wounds knitting together and the sensation of numbness becoming one of pain.

Whether the owner of the tavern has truly had such an varied life or simply has a shrewd eye for business is something that many have argued about. Nevertheless, it is true that the tavern does serve many different dishes of foreign food, pleasantly well cooked.

Shademan
2009-10-09, 11:27 AM
havn't gotten to use it yet, but I got me my "halfway to hell, inn"

valadil
2009-10-09, 12:06 PM
I can't remember any of my tavern names. They're all written up on a note inside my DM screen.

In one of my groups everyone GMs a little. We've all unintentionally used the same inne. It's mushroom shaped. The lower level is just a bar. There are stairs at one side that lead up to a balcony that wraps around 3/4 of the tavern. The rooms are off of the balcony. The room we're trying to get into is always farthest from the stairs. Every single GM in my group has used this tavern, completely unintentionally. At some point I'm gonna write a plot explaining why we always end up in the same tavern.

jiriku
2009-10-09, 12:16 PM
I have two taverns of note to share, both from the same city in my homebrew.

The city in question fills a river mouth between steep cliffs as the river empties into a bay. Nobles of the city live in cliffside dwellings looking down on the common folk, who live on an elaborate series of piers and interconnected houseboats filling the river mouth. The very poorest live landside, on sandbars near the edge of the bay. A system of clockwork gondolas connects the noble mansions with one another and with the waterborne town below. At night the city is illuminated by the ghostly lights of a lighter-than-air puffball fungus that is cultivated in most public places.

The Seventh Heaven is a cliffside hostel of the finest cut, frequented by nobles, priests, politicians, and wealthy heroes. Famous for its potato vodka and honey mead, it is accessible by gondola from below or by a winding stair from the clifftop above. Half of the dining area is a platform built out from the cliff, and it commands a view of the bay and a nearby island where the imperial palace is located. Diners sometimes feel they are floating above the clouds when the frequent fog banks roll in and cover the city below.

The Jigger's Rest is a seedy, ramshackle dive located on the sandbars in the poor quarter. Sailors, fishermen, dock workers, smugglers, and thieves are thick as flies about the place, and the heavy layer of sawdust on the floor soaks up spilled blood as often as spilled drink. The tavern itself is a thrown-together affair of plywood, rotten timbers, and tarpaulin, but the door is a massive, scarred, oaken affair bound in battered iron, locked with a mighty lock, and pierced by a single porthole whose glass has long since been shattered and replaced with iron shutters. The proprieter, a half-orc fence and smuggler named Ivan, has contacts in the city guard who warn him when the place is about to be raided (a not uncommon occurance). If the place is destroyed in a police raid, Ivan salvages the door, moves to another part of the city, and bolts it to another shabby structure. Thus the Jigger's Rest is reborn.

Doc Roc
2009-10-09, 02:09 PM
Awesomeness

I was skeptical when I began reading, but I must say you've earned these, young adventurer.

[You receive a plump rawhide sack that feels empty. Upon opening it, a small cookie winks into existence inside it. It looks pretty tasty.]

Randel
2009-10-09, 05:00 PM
I was skeptical when I began reading, but I must say you've earned these, young adventurer.

[You receive a plump rawhide sack that feels empty. Upon opening it, a small cookie winks into existence inside it. It looks pretty tasty.]

thanks. I kind of imagine it as a tavern created by a mage who really likes making cool stuff, but doesn't really like dealing with people and probably doesn't frequent taverns if he doesn't have to (why go to a smelly tavern when you can magic up whatever you want?).

So he made the place to be virtually indestructable (so those noisy customers don't ruin his good work), to be profitable (since its an indestructable infinite food generating machine then even getting a silver piece or two per customer per visit would pay off after a while) and not rely on him dealing with employees who might mismanage his bar or betray him.

He basically left it there in the city and went off to other places without ever coming back (he either died or became a lich or something else *plot hook*). The Tavern has been operating ever since, collecting a silver piece from everyone who walks in through the door and providing all the food can pick up off the line they can even take stuff home in doggy bags if they don't mind that the food isn't really set to last longer than a day or two (I suppose the dishes might even have been generated with minor or major creation or something so they vanish after a while... he wouldn't care if people were able to get infinite silverware by stealing stuff from his auto-tavern but having permanant dishes would require getting raw materials into the tavern and that puts a 'flaw' in his self-sufficiency thing).

This has had a weird effect on the city since the place doesn't require getting food from farmers and there's really nobod 'in charge' of it. If you've got a silver piece you can eat and drink as much as you want even if there is a famine or drought. Heck, you can give a silver piece and grab a whole barrel full of food and take it home to the family. The occupants range from anybody or everybody, some have lived in the place for months or years forming primitive societies free of concerns of food or drink (health concerns and obesity are a problem, as is overcrowding and crime... tick off somebody and you can get thrown out of the place. If they take all your money then you can't get back in until you get another silver piece).

Heh, if he installed a healing device somewhere (maybe a coin-activated trap that heals the user, maybe uses a copper piece to give a cure light wounds) then it could provide a weirdly self-sustaining utopia in a single building. Bar brawls are common since the furnature all repairs itself and people can get healed up easily. The main room has been fought over by various people who try to either kick out 'freeloaders' so they don't sit there forever or by people who really do want to stay there forever. Since nobody really has a 'legidamant' claim to running the place and the tavern doesn't kick out people by itself then actual control of the tavern itself has people fighting eachother. Heck, it doesn't care if the people coming in a humans, dwarves, gnolls, goblins, orcs, or mindflayers... if you pay the door then you can get in. Its the people inside who decide if they want to bug you about it.

Possible plothooks for the Perpetual Food Tavern.

1. Where does the money go? Everyone has to pay the door to get inside but nobody knows where they coins go, after years of it being used they suspect there is some kind of huge room full of coins in the basement (if the place has one). See people trying to dig through the self-repairing floorboards to get the treasure and others trying to stop them. Or somebody tries digging a tunnel in from a nearby building.

2. Sewer problems. Turns out when the wizard made the place he didn't install a disintegration trap to get rid of wasted food or sewage. He just put a pipe into the city sewer system and had the unseen servants work to make sure that one pipe doesn't clog. Now the sewer system has an unending stream of old food getting sent into it and the oozes and rats are thriving. Since the tavern is built to feed about 45,000 people a day or something like that then thats about several dozen tons of biomass getting fed into there a day. Now the people in charge of the citys sewer system as finding crazy amounts of monsters down there and they can't get past them to upgrade the system to handle the load!

The mayor doesn't want to cause a panic and actually tell the population of the city that they very well might wake up to horrible foul-smelling oozes crawling out of the sewers and engulfing them all (not to mention the exploding rat population) So he's asking adventurers to deal with the problem before a sewer-rat apocolypse kills everyone!

3. An army of barbarians/orcs/trolls/giant bees have found out about this place and invaded the city with the sole intent of securing the tavern for themselves! Protect the tavern.

4. Fiendish Roaches have found there way into the tavern and managed to slip into the 'kitchen'. Can you find a way into the kitchen which was designed to be inpenetrable and exterminate the roaches before they breed out of control and destroy the city?

5. Try and find out who made this place and see if he can make more of them.


Oh, now that I think about it... I suppose you could make a magically generated tavern with a modified version of the Mages Magnificent Mansion spell... after all the spell already creates a heros feast and has servants to clean the place up and once the spell is up then it just deposits everyone outside the portal.

DiscipleofBob
2009-10-09, 07:18 PM
See if you can guess what setting this one's based off of:

Bikke's Salty Sea Shanty

The one major inn in the port town of Pravoka, the Sea Shanty as it's more commonly known was founded by the pirate captain Bikke after he lost his ship to a band of adventurers. He hired his former pirate crew as his waiters and chefs and caters to the town's citizens, high-class, pond scum, and foreign travelers alike.

The food was terrible at first, but with no other inns or taverns in Pravoka and other such enterprises were run out of town so practice eventually made adequate and even passable. Now 'Ol' Bikke' as he insisted to be referred to had a successful business that didn't involve raiding ships and deadly combat. He and his crew to this day deny that they've ever been on a ship, despite their thick pirate accents, outfits, and dialogue.

Bikke keeps a generous supply of food and grog in 'The Groghouse' to the west with a secret tunnel in the basement of the tavern connecting to it. 'The Groghouse' is constantly raided by small-time thugs and criminals, causing a constant source of pain to Bikke.