A D&D Tavern: Setting Up the Iconic Campaign Element

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM, the Official Podcast of Monsters.Rent. If you are a podcast listener, I am currently waving at you because I am recording myself on video to add to our Youtube Channel, How to Be a Better DM.

Today’s show is going to talk about one of the most common D&D tropes out there. It’s the place where all great adventures start, and usually where most adventurers end their day. It’s the place that I like to imagine myself in when I record these shows, and you and I have sat down at a table to swap stories.

But before we get to that, I just want to take a moment to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I was chatting my my boss at my day Job, and he asked about the podcast and Monsters.Rent. We got to chatting and he looked us up on Spotify and Apple. Because of you, we have over 50 ratings on Spotify and over 15 on Apple Podcasts. That’s so awesome. Just seeing that made my day. I can honestly say that from. Myself and Tanner, if we didn’t have you listening and interacting, this would be much more lonely. So thank you so much for listening and adventuring with us :) 

A couple weeks ago, I was running the free Halloween one shot. Spoiler alert, but ther is a tavern in the one shot. If I can be Frank with you, during th one shot, the party went to the Tavern and honestly I did not have it as fleshed out as I wanted. Improv is great, and it’s a very important skill to have, but have a plan that goes well is usually better. I had to improvise. In my opinion, it wasn’t as cool as it should have been.

So it got me thinking. Basically every D&D campaign has taverns in them. They are a mainstay of th hobby. So I decided to do an entire podcast episode on taverns, specifically on how to use them and how to prepare them and how to populate them. We’ll talk about some tips to make it easy for you to run them in your games.

The Importance of a Tavern

Let’s first talk about the importance of taverns.  First f all, you can choose not to hve them in your game, which is completely fine.

However, as I’ve already said, a tavern is a very classic trope of D&D games. It can function as the base of operations for your party. It can be sort of that “safe space” that your band finds all along their journeys.

It can be much more than that however. For one thing, it can be a place of great player-to-player roleplaying, which in my opinion is some of the most important roleplaying there is.  

Combat can be so quick paced and hectic, that sometimes it is nice to metaphorically kick back and have a nice drink with friends.

Sometimes you also need your bad guy’s to “Kick down the door” as Brandon Sanderson and Friends say on their podcast, Writing Excuses. What better place than a tavern.

I think the most important reason to feature a tavern in your game is because our characters are adventurers. That, by definition, means that they rarely return home. People still want to feel a sense of home, or at least a sense of coziness. That’s exactly what taverns were created to do. Throughout history, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, taverns became a place of refuge for people on the road. So why not sit back and enjoy the feel of a homely tavern with your friends.

Elements of a Tavern

Obviously, if you want to feature a tavern, then it would be good to know the most basic elements of a tavern. As I like to say though, once you know the rules, you can learn how to break them in fun and interesting ways. So let me tell you what you will most likely find in a tavern, and then you can change things up in very new and interesting ways, however you wish.

The Barkeep

Since a tavern is a type of bar, you obviously need a barkeep. The most basic requirements of a barkeep are that they serve drinks. In more common tavern settings, the barkeep is behind the bar. Often they know a lot about the town or the setting, but sometimes they don’t. In most cases te barkeep is just as iconic as the tavern. That means that the tavern is a great time and place to really make a unique character that probably won’t become embroiled with the party as a pocket NPC.

Patrons

Next, you have the patrons. While the party may or may not ask about the barkeep, they will most definitely ask about the patrons. That’s because the patrons pose possible threats, opportunities and surprises for the party.  Here too you can create characters that will delight and entertain your party, but don’t be surprised yourself when the party adopts one of them or tries to kill all of them. 

Drinks - Food

Taverns are food service establishments, and more importantly, drink service establishments. That means that you have to have food or at the very least, drinks. More importantly, you’ll need to know how much the food and drink costs because that will be a very real cost to your players.

Servers

If the tavern is big enough you may need to add in some servers. These are like waiters and waitresses in the real world. It’s a pretty simple thing to add in and these characters can even be unique and interesting or they can be simple and boring. It’s all up to you.  You see servers aren’t necessary to a tavern like a barkeep or food and drink are. 

The Bulletin

Another interesting, yet unnecessary, piece to add into your tavern is the  Bulletin. This is simply a board with various notices pinned upon it. Most of the time, the notices are for jobs that need doing. This can function as a very important game element, drawing your players from one plot hook or adventure hook to another.  Simply add this to the corner of any tavern and watch your players dive into each adventure.

The Interest

The last thing that you may or may not want to add to your tavern is “The Interest”. This is a blanket term for anything that makes the tavern experience memorable. First, if you don’t want or care that the characters or players remember this particular tavern, then don’t put an Interest in the tavern. An interest is anything that would make someone remember this tavern. One way you can think about this is, “Why would people come to this establishment over any other tavern?” Or you can simply think, “How can I make this tavern experience more fun for my players?” It’s similar to how you find some sort of quirk to add to NPC’s to try to make them more memorable too. To help you understand what I mean, let’s do a couple of examples.

In favor room in water deep there is a tavern called the yawning portal it’s a very famous tavern and there’s actually a source book named after it. The yawning portal actually has a well if I remember right in front of it. The well supposedly leads to the Waterdeep underground dungeons that’s one example of a interest it’s easy to remember and it makes the tavern somewhat famous more or less. Another example comes from the Halloween one shot that I hosted a couple weeks ago. I had a tavern in my one shot that is called Caliagri’s cavern. This tavern is actually in a sinkhole. When you enter the tavern building which resembles just a small shack, you descend into the sinkhole and that’s where you find the tavern and the end as well as a bathhouse using the natural spring that caused the sinkhole. That’s one example of an interest for a tavern.

How to Add One in Your Game

Now that we’ve talked about basic elements of a tavern let’s talk about how to add one into your game. First we need to think about how often tavern show up and where. I think a good rule of thumb is for every 25 buildings in a settlement a small tavern should be present. For every 50 buildings in a settlement a large tavern should be present. When you start to add taverns to cities you don’t need to do this hard and fast rule because the city will be big enough that it will have many taverns. at that point what you need to do is sync up a list of taverns that would be most commonly recommended or most prominently found. It would also be a good idea to create a list of terrible taverns or bad taverns, because shady dealings of the underbelly of society happen in these bad taverns. you can also add taverns as way points or stopping points on large roads. They almost act as hostiles but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to add in a tavern there as well. I find that having a tavern in mind when a party enters a town is very important because more often than not they will seek out a N or a tavern for room and lodging.

As far as where the tavern should be placed, there are no rules. You could have a tavern out in the middle of nowhere. That said, With towns and cities, the center of the city will likely be home to older taverns and the periphery will probably have newer ones.

Now, let’s get to building your tavern.

Naming Taverns

For the most part, every tavern will need a name. No matter what though, every tavern will need something that it’s called by other people. Sometimes those two things are different. If you decide to have a tavern who’s owner never named it, everyone in the town might call it Some Guy’s Tavern, which would then be its defacto name, but not it’s actual name.

Naming taverns is quite easy, because you can do whatever you want. That said, here are some tips to help you do it even faster.

1. Focus on the interest. If you’ve already picked the interest for the tavern, then you can just go off of that. Going back to my two examples earlier, both the Yawning Portal and Caliagri’s Cavern draw their names from their interest.
2. Do it Quick without hesitation. If you are coming up with a tavern on the fly, then your players will sense your hesitation. So name the tavern, stick with the name and defend it. Don’t let your players bully you into thinking it’s a dumb name, even if it is.
3.  Verb + Noun. If you are having trouble making up a tavern name, you can take a cue from the Dungeon Master’s Guide and do the Verb/Adjective + Noun formula that might have gotten its start with J.R.R. Tolkein (i.e. the Prancing Pony). You simply pick a noun and then attach an adjective or an active ing verb to the front of it and you got a nice tavern name. Let’s do some real quick. The Red Blade Tavern, maybe something for pirates. The Belching Barrel. The Shifting Mercury. See, it’s pretty easy.
4. Name’s Noun. If that doesn’t fit what you are looking for, you can opt for the Name’s Noun formula. You pick a name, make it possessive and then pick a noun. For example, Cagliari’s Cavern, Arthur’s Round Table (that sounds like it should be a themed restaurant), Vergoin’s Vestibule. Lots and lots of names.

With these tips, naming taverns should be a piece of cake and your players will always think you are the most prepared DM in the universe.

Describing Taverns

After naming the tavern, describing it is the next step. 

First, don’t forget to do some work on the outside of the tavern. This is an easy trap for people to fall into, in fact, I struggle with this myself, but the tavern experience begins outside the tavern. Are there drunkards sleeping in the ditch off to the side of the tavern? Does the tavern have well-paid bodyguards? Is the plaster peeling or is the tavern made of rich mahogany wood? All of these facts tell your party about the establishment before they even set foot in the door.

Try and hint at what might be within the tavern when you describe the exterior. It’s important to do this most of the time so that when do decide to break the rules and make the inside the opposite or contrary to the exterior, you will catch your party off guard. That’s how you get the rewarding reveals.

Moving inside, don’t forget to describe the scene from the five senses. Tell your players what they smell, what makes their mouth water, what they hear, the temperature of the room. 

After you get that taken care of, it’s a good idea to explain the layout of the tavern. Obviously every tavern will be different so to help you out, let’s describe 3 generic tavern layouts that you can use in your games at the drop of the hat.

First, the Cantina. In this Tavern, the room can be any size but the bar itself juts out into the middle of the room with the barkeep being able to service people on both sides, or there being 2 barkeeps. The tables are arrayed around the bar in a circular pattern. 

Second, the classic Bar. In this tavern, one wall is dominated by the bar and the tables are arrayed throughout the room. 

Lastly, you have the L Shaped Bar. The room itself is l shaped with the bar following the shape of the room.  With these three tavern layouts, you can easily describe the shape of the tavern if you are pushed to create a tavern on the fly. 

Roleplaying

Now, let’s talk about the most important part of the tavern, roleplaying. 

The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need to be ready to roleplay everyone in the tavern, but you do need to be ready to improv roleplay everyone in the tavern. What I mean by that is that you simply need to prepare a few select characters in the tavern. Everything else is just gravy. 

Being a dungeon master is a lot like being a fisherman. You prepare the bait, but the fish decides  whether they take it. So, being a good fisherman is knowing how to get the fish to take the bait. So with this metaphor, you need to prepare what you hope your characters will interact with. So spend much more time working on things that you actually want to play through. I make this mistake all the time, adding in interesting details about peripheral NPCs and then I get a,l surprised when the characters interact with that peripheral NPC instead of engaging with the important part of the story that I put forth. Obviously that’s where improvisation comes from, but it’s a better experience if your players think you are improvising but really you are going off of stuff you have prepared.

I ramble

So to roleplay  a tavern well, you simply take the basic parts we’ve already discussed and you flesh each out a bit more. 

We’ve talked about creating NPCs often enough on this show so I won’t talk about actual making the barkeep or the maids or the patrons more than just that you need to answer the question of why are they in the tavern still. In the barkeeps case, it will probably have something to do with why they started the  tavern because often they will be the owner. Or, they could just be like a helping hand that needed a job. for the servers it might involve not being able to find work elsewhere or working to go somewhere else. Those motivations are easy generally. With the patrons, it goes a little deeper. The patrons are there for drinks, of course, but why are they there in a large sense? Why have they come to this town or settlement or city? are they regulars? Are they new like the party?

You see, in a sense, good roleplaying is just asking questions about a character, answering those questions, and then acting out the answers. That’s a bit simplified, but you get my point.

So the next thing you need to do is decide whether the character in question regards the party or a given character in a positive, neutral or negative light.

Understanding how any given NPC will treat the party goes a long way to helping you roleplay them. As a default, most people will treat them in a neutral way. One thing to remember too is that people go to taverns for different reasons. Some people go to get drunk. Others go to socialize. If you know why your NPC has come to the tavern, then when the party approaches them to talk, you can respond in the right way with either, “Piss off, leave me to my drink,” or “I don’t recon I’ve seen you lot in town. Where’s abouts you’ve come from?”

When it comes down to it, roleplaying NPCs in a tavern is not any more difficult than roleplaying any particular NPC except that they all have a reason to be in the tavern. 

Helpful Tips

To finish up the episode, let’s talk about a couple helpful tips to remember to make your party’s tavern experience sublime.

Always have the NPCs in a Tavern Fleshed out a little

As I’ve said before, anything you put in the scene is likely to be interacted with by your characters. Don’t put an NPC in a scene tht you don’t want to or are severely underprepared to roleplay. So whenever you create a tavern, write what NPCs are in there whenever the party enters. Write down at least a couple tidbits about the NPC just to help you when it comes time to roleplay. This is a tip specifically for beforehand prep, it does not apply to improvising. That said, it would not be a bad idea to keep a quick reference list of NPCs who have been somewhat fleshed out that you can put into your tavern. I would make the list tavern specific so that you’ve covered the “Why are they in the tavern” bit.

Flesh out the Barkeep

Just as important as the NPCs is the barkeep. This is the person who the story of the tavern itself revolves around because they are most likely the owner, most often the operator. If the tavern is supposed to be forgettable then the barkeep doesn’t matter, but we don’t play D&D to spend hours and then forget them. So give your barkeep some sizzle. Give them an interesting quirk and help the players remember them.

Make Sure to Charge Your Characters

This tip goes for every economic encounter in the game, but don’t forget to make your players deduct money from their character. It’s important because it helps with the immersion, but it also factors in a real cost to the characters. While 1 or 2 gold might not seem like enough, it could be the difference between buying a suit of armor or not. As I’ve said before, have a list of costs that could be incurred in the tavern. Try and make them specific to the tavern, but if not, you could just use sort of a blanket tavern cost for drinks and food and lodging if it is available.

Explain the Difference Between an Inn and a Tavern

Speaking of lodging, I find it helpful to explain to my party members whether or not the tavern has any lodging attached to it. An inn is different than a tavern, though they share similarities. An inn always has lodging and a tavern always has drinks. Sometimes an inn has a bar and drinks and sometimes a tavern has lodging. When you describe your tavern, make sure your players know whether lodging is available.

Helpful Resources

I want to give you some helpful resources, so in the show notes of this podcast episode, or if you go to the URL of the podcast on our website, there will be a list of resources at the bottom of the show notes. Hopefully these help you create the best taverns ever!

Things to Remember

As we come to the close of this episode, I hope you enjoyed talking about taverns and I hope that you got some great ideas for ways to add taverns to your game. They can be the best place for some deep roleplaying, or they can just be a nice pause point in between battling epic monsters. Last thing I’m going to say is that as always, if you...