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Home > Dungeon Master Basics Give Your Inn Some Punch!
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Dungeon Master Basics - Give Your Inn Some Punch!
by Phil Tucker
You know the score. At some point, inevitably, your players will want to spend the night at an inn. Maybe they're straggling into a new town, brokenhearted and sore, looking for someplace to rest their weary heads after days of traveling through the wilderness. Perhaps they're using the local inn as a center of operations, war planning over the central table, preparing their next strike against the enemy. Maybe they just like to party, drink a ton of beer and go to bed with the bar maids. Either way, an inn will play a central role at some point in your career, so what can you do to make it more memorable and fun?
First off, the most vital detail you have to figure out is who runs the blasted thing. Who is the inn keep? What's their story? Why are they here, running this inn? The options are endless, and will set the tone for the establishment. Are they a retired adventurer, notched longsword hanging over the bar? Are they a civilized ogre, a compliment of exiled dwarves, an alcoholic Djinn, a drop dead gorgeous Medusa who wears tinted glasses and has her hair pulled back into a hissing pony tail? This person will be responsible not just for being the figurehead that the players interact with, but for everything that happens in the inn, from who is hired to work the different roles, to what sort of clientele patronizes the inn.
Say you go with a gentlemen ogre running the joint. Right there you need to ogre-size everything, from the front door to the stairs. Not everything need be huge, but that ogre has to be able to get around comfortably. Second, what sort of people would an ogre hire? Probably be a mix of rough and open minded humans along with a mix of half-orcs and other less savory types. After all, why would an ogre harbor the same prejudices as a human? This could be fun-what would your players think about being served their coffee and pie by a surly goblin?
Once you've picked your owner and the consequent wait-staff, you need to throw something fun into the mix, something unexpected that goes with the character of the place. Nothing makes an inn more forgettable than the standard compliment of common room, bar, bedrooms and nothing else. So what if you throw something random into the mix? What about a gladiatorial pit in the center of the common room where people can bet on fighting crabs? What about a greenhouse off to one side where the innkeep grows magical fruit from which his famous punch is made? A pet komodo dragon that incinerates the trash out back? Black orbs embedded in the ceiling by a local mage that shoot magic missiles at anybody who gets out of line?
Running with our ogre innkeep and his crew of half orcs and goblin waiters, let's say he's got a civic attitude, and is running a school out of the inn's basement where goblinoids can receive free instruction on all the higher minded stuff they missed out in the wilds. Courses are taught on everything from philosophy to legal studies, helping goblinoids integrate themselves with society. Suddenly the inn has taken on character, and further, it's bound to cause a reaction in the rest of the town: how would the rest of the city take this place, what sort of trouble might come it's way? It's these kinds of questions that will make your inn a place that will stick in your player's memories long after their PC's are dead and six feet deep in the ground.
About the Author
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