Inn Through The Side Door – Reinvigorating the cliché

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After a solid effort, it’s become clear that I’m not even close to having the next part of the New Beginnings series ready to publish, and the deadline is now less than 20 minutes away, so I’m resorting to another filler post, one that I’ve been saving for just this purpose.
This was inspired by a link that Hungry at Ravenous Role Playing shared in the same week that he happened to plug a couple of my articles.
The original article, FYI, was “You … save??… a tavern??” by John Arcadian at Gnome Stew which I’m happy to acknowledge! Thanks to both Hungry and John for the inspiration!
You can read John’s article (and watch the video he in turn links to), and read what Hungry had to say about it, which in turn inspired me, by clicking on the links above.
Starting campaigns in an inn or tavern was pretty much the first cliché of D&D, and therefore of RPGs, so far as I’m aware. So much so that it is practically synonymous with two different phenomena: a lack of imagination, or the PCs as afterthoughts. Neither are necessarily true, mind; but that’s the popular perception in gaming.
And yet, this is one of the few logical places where people of disparate prior existences might rub shoulders, making it an inherently sensible sort of place for a party of adventurers to encounter and get to know each other – so long as you accept the metagame premise that “they will team up because they are all PCs”. It’s often easy to tell who the PCs are, anyway, as soon as the environment is described, simply because of the relative level of detail in the descriptions. Most of the occupants of the room will be generic cut-outs, and the few who aren’t will stick out like a sore thumb.
Some GMs concentrate efforts on eradicating this overt NPC discrimination, seeking to impress with the depth of the personalities present. This is often a problem because it is usually false advertising; the GM has invested way more effort into these throwaway characters than they merit.
This diverts from a profound problem that is usually overlooked. The PCs will usually come from many different social classes, and Inns and Taverns – if they aren’t in the back end of nowhere – will cater to a specific working class or social sub-group. The shipwrights will have one tavern, the wagon-masters and their staff will have another, no doubt there will be one for the hunters as well, and a couple for the soldiers, and so on. This reality is ignored in the name of expediently bringing the party together.
There are some alternatives worth considering – a group of fellow travelers banded together for mutual protection, or everyone being hired for the same job (often caravan protection – almost as common a cliché). But let’s say that you’re the sort of GM who delights in taking something so routine that it has become boring and giving it a twist – or that you want to be that sort of GM – and so have deliberately chosen to begin with the granddaddy cliché and deliberately do something different with it.
I can even envisage a strongly-serial “adventure of the week” in which each adventure starts off in a tavern, usually the same one, and something strange happens to lead to the adventure – in other words, using the inn as a framing device.
This article is being written as filler, something to appear the next time I get caught short by a deadline. I have listed below some twenty-five clever variations on the cliché for the general amusement of the readers and some creative inspiration for GMs out there that like a good twist on an old friend.
- An intelligence agent mistakes one of the PCs for his contact, unaware that his enemies are right behind him.
- A smuggling operation is being run out of the inn which is maintained only as a cover, and is deliberately run-down and overpriced to keep patrons away. Pity the PCs, being rather naive, haven’t taken the hint.
- The watch arrests one of the PCs on suspicion of something nasty that he didn’t do (or maybe that he did, that’s up to the player) and arrests the other PCs as suspected confederates – in a social setting that isn’t big on fair hearings.
- A patron on lookout at the window warns of an approaching press-gang. Patrons scatter out various bolt-holes.
- Someone sets the inn on fire.
- The inn runs out of drinkables thanks to oppressive new taxes. The crowd get unruly and decide to complain to someone – up close and all personal, like.
- A con-man is fleecing the crowd. When the Watch enters, he hides his goods and booty in the kit of one of the PCs, planning to steal it back later.
- The barkeep gives a pointed demonstration of the racial or class prejudices of the world by telling one of the PCs, “we don’t serve your kind here.”
- The sun goes out and the world outside vanishes, leaving only a gray mist. Inn exits now lead directly to the dungeon, there’s no way out except through the far end, there are limited supplies, and the mob are unhappy and looking for someone to blame. All eyes turn to the strangers who have just arrived.
- There’s a painting, seemingly of the inn-keep, whose head turns to look the other way anytime no-one is looking – because the inn-keep has arrested his aging, tying his age to that of the painting. So long as it doesn’t age, neither does he. But there’s always a price to pay for such favors, and the bill is about to come due.
- What looked like an inn or tavern on the outside is really something else on the inside. If mundane, the PCs have just blown the cover of whoever’s using it. If not, the PCs are the latest suckers to be lured into a trap.
- The inn is the gathering-place for a coven who are about to summon something way too big for them to handle.
- A prophesied messiah has just been born/revealed at the tavern. Is it a con, is it a mistake, is it genuine?
- The floor, rotted and of shoddy construction, collapses under the feet of one or more PCs.
- The PCs look in the mirror behind the bar and find themselves trapped in a nightmare world while their evil duplicates are released to wreak havoc on the world.
- Everyone in the inn is a Doppelganger (refer Pieces Of Creation: The Hidden Truth Of Doppelgangers, and they want to add the PCs to the collection.
- The barkeep is secretly a Vampire who enthralls the PCs – for a while.
- There’s an Earthquake, leveling the inn.
- One of the patrons murders another. The PCs are taken in as witnesses, even if they saw nothing – and if they say they saw nothing, they will be suspected of being conspirators.
- One of the PCs inadvertently tries to spend counterfeit money (not knowing that it’s fake).
- The Inn’s ale has been poisoned by a rival, or a protection racket.
- The inn is completely empty and none of the doors open from the inside. Why?
- The innkeeper is a deranged lunatic who will attempt to kill the PCs in their sleep.
- The inn is a front for a conspiracy. The PCs must join, or die.
- The innkeeper runs an illegal slave-trade through the cellar. The PCs may be mistaken for customers (lots of innuendo, never stating out loud what “The Merchandise” is), or will be added to the collection.
May this collection bring you – and your players – much amusement! Oh, and here’s one more for good measure:
- The daughter of the local noble can’t sing, has two left feet, is clumsy, has a slight squeak to her voice, nags mercilessly, and is not particularly good-looking. She has slipped away to avoid an arranged marriage to the son of a ruthless noble of lower rank but great influence ($$$$$) and disguised herself as a truly awful entertainer, much to the annoyance of the patrons. She gets one of the PCs drunk (Mickey Finn if necessary), and when the son of the ruthless noble comes looking for his bride-to-be, she claims that she and the PC were wed in a civil ceremony last night…
Have fun!
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April 14th, 2015 at 5:36 am
My group just recently started on a Pathfinder adventure path and we all started in the inn, which I never had an issue with, cliche though it may be. I do agree that adding some kind of twist makes for a more interesting introduction of characters. The path we are playing, Mummy’s Mask, makes an attempt to add such a twist. The path sets the inn up as the gathering point for adventures from all over to gather and form into teams. The beauty of it is that most teams are fully assembled when you get there. This is, perhaps, another twist that can be added to your list. Everyone is told to gather at the inn to discuss something that’s plaguing the town. As always, great article.
April 14th, 2015 at 12:25 pm
Good one, Benjamin! Glad you enjoyed the article :)
May 22nd, 2015 at 2:03 am
I love the list at the end. There are some really great hooks. I have made it a point myself to never start a campaign in an inn. It seems like that, where is a likely place to start adventure, is a boring and so much overused one. In the games I GM for https://fyxtrpg.com/ I try to start campaigns off with a bang. Something that tosses the party right into the fire. It doesn’t have to be a fight, but something other than “you’re in an inn looking for work”. Some of my favorites have been jailed, enslaved, waking up alive in a battle field and my personal favorite, actors in a play.
May 22nd, 2015 at 2:50 am
There’s nothing wrong with starting in an Inn – if you get the adventure off to exactly the sort of start that you describe! That, of course, is the whole point of the list of hooks that I offer.