Over the course of the first 60 sessions spent in the starting city of Thenya a lot of inns and taverns featured and were visited. What has been interesting is how critical these public gathering spaces have been to a highly social/political campaign - as dungeons to your standard sword swinging game, so courts and tap-rooms are to the clues and whispers game.
The set up for the campaign is that the party are children of the ruling house, the old Duke having just now passed on at time of writing, but for most of the campaign they were on their home terrain with effectively unlimited force to back them up. This made the challenges all around figuring out who and where the opposition was - and for that, bars and taverns.
Portrait of the bard simplifying things
After compiling all the below list of bars featured and notable points about them I wondered why were some locations popular and returned to? I think because they served a niche in the campaign. We had a number that were sites that just happened to be bars or taverns and were never revisited. There were others that cropped up again and again, some that were sought out directly - as our image above indicates.
The different locations were often conduits to find or place information, or places to seek certain types of people. The other major locations for social encounters were:
- the lunch room at the palace, where breakfast and lunch were served - a conduit for all sorts of gossip within the house
- dinner in the great hall, sometimes information gathering, often event shaping as the local rulers dine each night
- other noble houses, temple events - to rummage around in the whispers outside their own house
- deliberate appointments, calling on others at their places of work
What made a good, often revisited location?
- convenience; for a city crawl, time is the resource you are burning, not the torches or rations of wilderness campaigns. The Howling Knight, right by the palace, but out from under the eyes of the rest of the house was a good staging point for when the party had to split up then reconvene without being under the eye of the palace guard, their grandfather the duke, their parents, cousins, etc.
- clarity - it was known what the place would be like - even if sometimes that expectation was broken - and could be factored into planning. Early in the day the back booths at certain places would be empty. Good notes helped with this.
- convey the flavour - other things happening at the places that were not necessary to engage in (but could be) that portrayed why this place was different from any other and made it distinct. NPCs, decor and interesting cuisine were the three main things that made a difference here.
The last two points complement each other - by figuring out what typically happens at a place, you can readily say what is happening any time the players stop in and so the place feels alive. I typically use a macro version of my NPC motivations piece - what factions is this place associated with, how strongly, and what is their tempo through out days, weeks and months. This avoids you having to reinvent things and when other things happen further afield you'll know whether they will feed all the way back to a venue or pass it by completely.
Notable inns/taverns and their main hooks into the campaign:
The Howling Knight (palace staff)
- across the road from the palace, where the staff go off duty
- known for pungent stews
- run by a trio of goliath sisters who keep everyone in line
- has a regular crew of enthusiastic but very aged tiefling veterans
- popular among the boisterous weaselings
- usually has a musician on the tiny stage in the corner
- frequently used as a performance space by the bard, a location for dates and a general gathering point outside the palace
The Right Fork (trade guilds)
- pitches itself as a fine eatery more than a tavern but things still get raucous late at night
- excellent food, finely furnished and popular among guildsfolk talking business
- fabulous deerling proprietor
- a good place for discrete non-romantic meetings
- players frequent this place as where they go to eat when dining at the great hall is too political or they want to avoid family
The Phoenix Rest (fancy)
- the finest establishment in Thenya that is not a nobles own house
- a place for fine wines, excellent food and squandering large amounts of cash
- certain tables in view make excellent spots to be seen and noted when being seen is the point
- other more discrete tables are the premier romantic liaison spots in the city
- the bard used this for meeting friends, arranging deals and having high-political discussions where they needed to be seen talking in a non-hostile manner with others
The Red Scorpion (dockside, rowdy)
- a bar where everyone stops and stares if a stranger walks in
- down by the river docks, next to a flophouse and a graveyard
- bad reputation, players only went in there as part of a raid by the city guard
- attic was being used as a message drop by spies
The Grey Wasp (sorcerors and travellers)
- arranged and decorated in the styles of far away places and always hot within
- a nexus for wandering sorcerers, their counterpart to the wizards university
- where to find very long-haul traders and travellers
- the party connected with an old mentor to place a young untrained sorcerer with them
The Hunting Thief (gangs)
- a grim, squalid place on the wrong side of the river
- where the shunned and bitter dragonborn gather
- more of a gang lair than an open bar
- acts as an aid nexus for the shanty-town district
- raided as part of a spy hunt, they followed up with requesting aid for the district which their grandfather granted by raising a regiment
The Square Leader (soldiers)
- old soldiers and current watchmen
- walls covered with momentos of battles
- no frills place for good plain food and serious drinking
- visited to seek information discretely and track down arrested folk
The Crystal Coccoon (theater, music hall)
- the nexus of artistic activity in the city
- where musicians are sought when nobles seek to hold events
Other places encountered in passing include:
The Frostmoon (craft guildsmen) - in the city centre, where those too low ranking to be at the Right Fork gathered
The Crossed Axes (traders) - near the Grey Wasp on the main overland trade road, for those from the region and locals who dealt with them
The Fighting Princess (craftsfolk) -
The Smoky Tip (workers)
Other notable bar from campaigns past is the The Torch (planar heist spoils) included because the players got one over on me - managed to get paid twice for a job in Torch, gate town to Gehenna and then absconded with all the money (without paying off one of the other NPCs) and then bought a bar which they called The Torch in honor of its funding. There was a roster of ~20 PCs on paper, functionally two seperate tables, based out of the place. For most of them, getting their hands on the Torch was their retirement. I dread to think what a shambles the place must have been given the chaos the party wrought wherever they went previously.
No comments:
Post a Comment