#RPGaDay prompt for Day 3 is Tavern. The thing is, while I do play Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy games from time to time, my love is in modern (or retro) horror games. That doesn’t mean we don’t have our own taverns though. Sure, I could refer to bars, pubs, and the like but that’s too easy and a little boring. Instead, we need to deconstruct what the tavern is in the fantasy setting and then see what that looks like not only in contemporary vs medieval fantasy world but also in horror.
Meetup
The tavern in medieval fantasy world settings is all about bringing the characters together in a 3rd space – something outside their homes and their work. A public location where people of all walks of life enter and sit down for a moment. A place where business can be done above and below the table. With this in mind, we can then looks at other locations that are accessible in the modern world.
I love retro, nostalgic modern settings of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s. It gives me all the warm and fuzzies to play games that harken back to The Goonies, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and similar. Stranger Things made this nostalgic horror setting even more popular and while that show has its major issues I am grateful for it opening the gates.
For settings like this, think about the themes and characters your players might be playing. If they’re kids, your meeting place can’t be a bar. It has to be somewhere people of all ages can exist like an arcade, mall, video store, the back field where the teens party, an after school club, library, or community center. All of these have their own vibe and can thread well with themes of the game – if the game has a mystery or focus on technology, then an arcade, video store, or after school computer club is the perfect tavern.
In my game Astral Glow, the meetup for the two players is a summer camp. The rest of the game is elsewhere but the summer camp location allows for unrelated strangers to meet up in a place where their connecting isn’t seen as out of place. This works because the characters are teenagers. Having two adult strangers meet this way only works if you’ve added some sort of background that makes sense for them to be there (camp counselor, parent, etc). (Unrelated note to self: explore the idea of a retro summer camp slasher game where you play the cook or janitor trying to save the horny teens from being killed by a maniac.)
In Public Access, the tavern is an internet forum. The Latchkeys (player characters) meet on The Deep Lake Odyssey forum where people come together to share their love for the old public access tv station and discuss the mystery of its disappearance. The four of them meet through the forum and decide they are going to rent a house together for the summer and investigate this mystery. The game starts when they’ve already been in town a while and we don’t see much of their time on the forum but its an understood meetup and, depending on how the game is run, might pop up again when doing research or discussing back story. I bring it up now because the internet is a fantastic tavern for modern games.
Do You Need the Tavern?
Even as we discuss alternative meetup locations, it is important to remember that the tavern isn’t necessary. You can take a piece of advice from modern writing critiques – start as close to the action as possible. Taverns are great if you want your characters to meet in a way that looks organic before you throw some action at them. However, if you are running a one shot, mini-campaign, or a high tension action-packed game, this sort of opener might be inappropriate. Instead, tell the players what they are doing from the start.
In Liminal Horror: The Bureau, the characters enter the Monolith and are instantly in the action of the game. They don’t have much time to get to know each other before facing issues with the location. This is part of the horror of the game – not only is your character in a dangerous situation with the location but they also don’t know the people they are with, adding another layer of unease and danger.
Use of a tavern in your games should be something that is added because it adds to the themes and feeling, the game play, and/or because you enjoy it.
