Inspiration for planar pub crawl

[Mastocles]

I am planning on a one-off "campaign" where the characters have to do a pub crawl across several planes, but I can't make out which locations would work best.
The game will not be serious —very diskworld-style cheesy—and the crawl will have a series of pub golf objectives, such as an eidetic (photo) with a bunch of pit fiends using a gnomic alchemi-camera.
The players will play as CR 12 creatures from the MM and there won't be much combat —bar maybe for a pub fight or an encounter with the "Brotherhood of Soberhood" or somesuch.
I'll give out pages of useful words in local language to add fun flavour to conversations —simply rebrand Klingon for infernal, Latin for celestial, probably Hawaiian for primordial (due to the vowels) and Anglish with Early modern English grammar for Draconic or similar.
But the pub golf objectives (aka. side quests) will be the major source of player fun.

So I need six pubs on six different planes.
What would you recommend and how what stereotype, book or movie would you take as a reference for them? Challenges also welcome.
I don't plan to abide by the books strictly, so mods welcome —I like the idea of a subjective gravity bar and I have half an idea for the City of Glass which is nothing like on the book.

Thanks again!

[Mastocles]

Forgot. I plan to use a homebrew detailed drinking stage system (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kSdn6aajL4NWOhO0GNxHtmP7r355WB1XILbqPjtDqfw/edit?usp=sharing) to make the players the more they drink —I am not even sure if 5e has rules for it, but in 3.5 they were bad.

[pwykersotz]

Ysgard. You can't have a pub campaign without it. Not only are the drinkers there legendary, it's also the home of Olidammara.

The Abyss. Dangerous drinking games there, where you can win a great deal, but lose even more.

The plane of Mirrors. Drink off against your evil twin! Only the winner gets to walk out again!

The World Serpent Inn (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/World_Serpent.pdf). A great place to either start or end the journey. Probably start.

Those are off the top of my head. Hope they help. :smallsmile:

[Kane0]

You'll probably want to add in sigil too. Anything can happen in sigil

I remember one time i dmed a group making a trip there, stopping by a tavern called the iron flagon. Everything was nailed down or otherwise sturdy enough to take a lot of abuse thanks to the frequent bar fights between visiting fiends, celestials, fey and/or all other manner of outsiders

[Feldarove]

When they get good and drunk you can have them head to the astral planes (or something wonky) and they drink inside their own minds!

[Kane0]

Also limbo, so you can make your own drinks (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynek8DL3WuU).

[Mastocles]

Kane0 > What a bizarre video —I like the concept though. Limbo because it's highly morphic? It has subjective gravity which is something I was hoping to have —and this is better than the city of Glass. Also I was thinking of maybe having a canteen in Mechanus (steampunk themed) where they have to win a certain game, so the symmetry would be neat if I used the latter.

pwykersotz > I hadn't thought of a drinking challenge against one's evil doppelgänger in the Plane of Mirrors. Excellent suggestion!
I also like the idea of the start being in the Serpent Inn.
Regarding the Abyss, why that not the other evil planes? Just for a bar fight or is there more? The pub-golf classic-challenge "Talk to a local about the following controversial topic" would be apt.

I am planning on getting a few kills hence the use of pregen characters straight from the MM.
The great thing of one-offs is that players seem to compete for how many pregen characters they burt through (in a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten a friend's second new character died within a minute as another player fired at the approaching human after mistaking him for a zombie).
In fact, I have an old deck of many things —printed and cut, but never used seriously in game— and I was planning on using it at the end in Sigil.

The characters might be neutral or good, probably not evil. The reasoning why you'd get a bunch of creatures on a pub crawl is that some god made a ridiculous bet or challenge with another god. It's undecided who the party is: playing as angels that are über-polite with upperclass British accents and unable to swear (Azaraphael from Good Omens) might get tiresome quickly, while playing as devils is a guaranteed endless series of bar fights.
A neutral option is that some not-so-nice god is giving a supermagic macGuffin as pub golf prize and the party are mercane, but I am sure it would degenerate into a Ferengi party quoting rules of acquisition.
TBH, I haven't really scoured through the MM for other alternatives —any suggestion welcome :D

Unrelatedly, on pub golf the scoresheet is key so I'll probably have the characters pick-pocketed somewhere. But I can do that last.

[Rawrawrawr]

There was a time before the gods. A time when eldritch horrors ruled the planes - and chief among them were the Aboleths. When the gods appeared, they threw down the Aboleths. Ever since then, the Aboleths have retreated to the dark, watery corners of the multiverse, plotting their revenge.

'Cept Barry. Barry was the Aboleth that didn't handle the whole "not in charge of the universe anymore" thing that well. Barry drank. A lot. So much they he eventually decided to just live in a pool of beer. He spends most of his time sulking in a corner, singing "Margaritaville" quietly to himself. Also, he's spent so much time in the beer pool his mucous now forces people to breathe beer instead of water.

His domain is a surprisingly popular place to for planar travelers to go to on pub crawls, since there's no where else in the universe that claim to have genuine Aboleth beer. When planar travelers show up, Barry tends to shift between:

Trying to murder them for being a part of the gods' world (He's not very good at this, as being drunk for tens of thousands of years have not been kind to his sense of coordination). He also rants about how good the ol' days were, before those gosh-darned "gods" and their "laws of physics".
Trying to hug them (which is arguably more dangerous, because of the Aboleth mucous thing) while going on weirdly uncomfortable rants about how "most of the creatures in the gods' creation are a**holes, but you guys are a few of the good ones." He's not above Enslaving people into hugging back.
Going back to his corner to sing Margaritaville.





Also, there could be a pub that they have to pass out in, since the next pub is in the Plane of Dreams.

[Mastocles]

I like Barry's backstory and he offers a great challenge —He(?) really needs to go in.
Not to mention that my crew are BIG fans of the Far Realm due to a previous escapade.
I tried DMing a premade 4e Eberron campaign —too little time to prep, so I went premade— and we were disliking so I let the go wild —they cunningly escape their pursuers, fled on the lighting rail and then went on a hunt for trans-game-ntional relics. They go undercover and rob blind a secret weapons/relic facility, steal a warzeppelin and some gyrocycles (PF:Puresteam), snipe a platoon of paladins (D20 modern: Weapon locker), save Henry Armitage from MiGos, steal his copy of the Necronomicon, open a temporal gate, stop the great war (mix of WWI start and JFK's assassination) and impersonate the king. By the time the Hound of Tindalos came running out of a corner, the poor puppies were assimilated thanks to tech gained by several cycles of bootstrap paradoxes via the temporal gate.

Unfortunately, I'd never hear the end of it if they entered the dimension of dream by unconsciousness from alcohol intoxication as it doesn't have REM sleep. Plus I am forbidden to ever DM there as I tried to make it weird and confusing. Every time they rolled a prime number on a d20, I rolled a blank d6 with primes written on in sharpie: if they matched they could alter reality to a certain extent. I allowed the elven samurai to do a permanent mind swap with an owlbear… for the rest of the campaign (in the prime material) he kept getting stuck through doors and tunnels.

[Inevitability]

A pub on the Elemental Plane of Earth, bordering the elemental plane of Fire. All drinks are liquid minerals and metals. You may see a Galeb Duhr calmly drinking from his molten pumice, a rich Efreeti noble ordering liquid rubies or a Salamander enjoying his molten iron.

[Mastocles]

yesterday I run this one-off and it was great.
The game collapsed before playing, 30 minutes before the game it was 3 out of 5 players reveal they couldn't make it due to the same bug. So it was a cozy 3 person thing, but the players were keen to run a beta of sorts and really enjoyed it to the point of wanting a repeat with the other folk another time. With the exception that it be done on a Friday or Saturday with alcohol for the players as it would be a perfect D&D drinking game.


The World Serpent Inn. They were briefed here, no challenges.
The crow graveyard-pub in Abyss. Barkeeper was a vampire viff a very zilly aczent (1 beer Mwahaha, 2 beers Mwahaha, 3…). "Ask a demon about" challenge ended up in a bar fight as expected.
The base of the imaginary pie canteen in Mechanus (a maths joke, Euler's identity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity)). challenge was to win at 4d4 yahtzee. The characters vomited on each other —chest and right leg: I have a body part d12, the only novelty dice worth having.
The mirror cocktail lounge in the Plane of Mirrors. Outdrink your doppelgänger challenge had the twist that the evil guy tried to poison the characters, but by pure luck the moustachioed versions drunk the cups with the poison.
Barry's bar and pool in the Outlands (not Far Realm). It was rather trippy as the beer caused insanity. They sang the Fey Rover (=Irish rover) with him, but ended up killing him after an asphixiating brohug.
The Valkyrie's bosom alehouse in Ysgard. The vikings has Swedish-chef-from-the-Muppets accents. The challenge was to get a helmet from one of them. The first guy asked in exchanged that they help him find his missing beard ring. Knowing how these go (a string of sidequests), they didn't go investigating, but munchkinishly frisked the guy and found it in his beer. One character however go to the wasted stage, so his player left the room and the other player and I planned what ridiculous naked shenanigans the wasted character was doing before being healed to partial sobriety.
They didn't go to Limbo as it was running late.
The planar tavern in Sigil. They get mugged, but notice it and fly after the villain —with detected evil and a fly speed of 90' it was a very easy chase. The final challenge was to draw three cards from the deck of many things and survive. Which they did, albeit losing a few IQ points and possessions.


Now the other folk want a game of it one Saturday…
So thank you all for the amazing suggestions! (More are still welcome as this ain't over though!)

[Human Paragon 3]

Just wanted to say that this sounds awesome! I'd love to run/play something like this. A twist might be to do it in real time and to drink as much as your character drinks, and to have different types of beer and liquor for each destination that you pull out as a surprise. It's a pub crawl without leaving your house, and you get to pretend to be monsters. Just beautiful.

[Mastocles]

I am planning on wrapping up and expanding my notes as a spatbook.
For my new reincarnation of this I plan to make the players drink half a pint of beer (250 ml) or less when the character drinks —there is a lot of character drinking.
I am hoping to make a stack of cards similar to MTG planechase, where one doesn't know what's next. Each card (or on related sheets) will give a description, drinks, NPC role-playing hints and a challenge. In that way the GM can rotate on each plane and everyone gets a few drinks.

[Mastocles]

I won't have time to expand this any time soon. So I am giving it as is:

Pub crawl notes (https://www.dropbox.com/s/iuz0zqrkczqafhg/Pub.docx?dl=0)

Drinking character sheet (https://www.dropbox.com/s/a8cg4ka7xeoemlx/drinking%20char%20sheet.pdf?dl=0)

Plane-chose cards (https://www.dropbox.com/s/rc3jr5bfmp3porz/planes.pdf?dl=0)

The plane cards are not of much use as I don't have a scenario for each, but the notes do allow rotating GMs. The drinking rules are written on the drinking character sheet and are a simplified version of the previously posted rules. The NPCs keep offering shots and stuff so it's too hard for munchkins to sit on certain stages. The character sheet makes it easier to keep track.


Drunkenness increases based on failed “alcohol saves”. A drink is a pint of beer or a multiple if size is different.
Constitution save vs. alcohol DC after every drink.
DC base is 0.
Save:stage stays the same. DC is kept and is added to. Toilet check.
Fail: increase drunkenness by one stage, DC drops to base.

Penalties: it takes at least 10 in-game minutes to leasurely drink a watery drink if alcohol tolerance is below 0 (see below) —way faster than real life. If faster add +2 to the DC.
Standard drinks DC add +2.
Potent drinks DC add +4.
Mighty drinks DC add +6.

Recuperation: After every hour, a new save is available to revert one stage and the DC is that of the failed minus 5.
After a combat DC remove 2.
After food DC remove 5.
After vomit DC remove 2.

Toilet check Wisdom check vs. DC5 sober. DC10 tipsy DC15 drunk. DC20 trolleyed.
If failed by 5 or less character needs the loo and is distracted as is Poisoned (disadvantage on attack and ability checks). If failed by 10 or more the character wets henself.

Stages: For each stage, temporary –1 to Wisdom and Intelligence (not damage, returns once stage is over) for each stage. Conditions stack, unless repeated. Penalties and bonuses are “circumstance” bonuses.
0 — Sober
1 — Tipsy.
2 — Drunk.
3 — Trolleyed.
4 — Wasted. GM controls character and player leaves the room temporarily. Bad hangover (Character is Fatigued the next day).
Stat penalties, Dwarven courage, Drunken boxing and spellcasting issues are on the drinkard sheet.

[Human Paragon 3]

Bookmarked.