An Alternative to the Tavern Cliche

[Tequila Sunrise]

A lot of us complain about the cliched 'you all meet up in a tavern looking for work' campaign start, and with good reason. For experienced gamers, it's old and stale. However, I sometimes find it hard to come up with good alternatives to the tavern scene. I've come to realize that maybe this is because of the way we play d&d; that is, we often play it still holding on to our modern sensibilities. Need a job? Go pick up the want ads/town bulletin at the local mom & pop's/tavern!

In a medieval world, everyone already has a job from the day that they're born. They train thru childhood and when deemed ready to start working by their superiors, they are assigned a specific place to work. No want ads, no resumes, no references. So I've been thinking, has anyone tried starting a campaign in this vein? Say, starting out an 'adventuring party' in their backwater human hamlet; so that they all have to be human (or perhaps a 1/2 breed) and a 'standard' class (fighter, cleric, druid, ranger, wizard) and don't need to meet up in the tavern because they already know each other and already have a job/mission given them by the town elders. In order to accomplish this mission, they soon must leave for distant and exotic lands; as they visit other nations and cultures, more options become available to them.

This situation might be similar to certain electronic rpgs (FF is the one that I've played): the group encounters a specific character in their journeys, and the DM announces (possibly after the PCs get to know the NPC) that a player can 'trade out' a current PC in exchange for the new one.

Or the situation might be simpler: upon arriving at a new community that has new/exotic races after a long and harrowing trek, the DM announces that any players are welcome to create new PCs using this culture's race and class options.

Anyone ever done this? Have any comments anyway?

 

[VirgilCaine]

Yes. My PCs are in contract to the local Baron (and are now investigating his murder) and are one of a few adventuring groups that are on call to handle problems that crop up.

I plan in future campaigns in my campaign setting to make having a lord-vassal relationship important for "adventurers". Whether they work for a church, merchant guild, lord, or burgomaster, they can be trusted because these are authority figures--they have a connection to civilization.

If you don't, guess what? You're a loose cannon, untrustworthy, unconnected to civilization, who knows who or what you could be working for?

 

[Fieari]

Cliche though it may be, I've never actually used it myself... either as a DM, or as a player. None of the people I game with have utilized the "you meet at a tavern looking for work" schtic at all. We've had fellow soldiers in an army, neighbors looking to save their homes from an invading goblin clan, treasure hunters running across each other on the road, prisoners excaping together, and when there are really weird party members, we've sometimes had a party mage call the others magically...

I'm a fan of the need to do something being obvious enough that no one has to pay you to do it.

 

[Glyfair]

Cliche though it may be, I've never actually used it myself... either as a DM, or as a player.

I have used it, and had it used, I have to admit. However, it's been a long time and I can't remember the last time it happened.

Although cliche, I think I wouldn't mind having it being used in a game, as long as it's handled well.

 

[painandgreed]

IMC, people are often born and trained to be adventurer parties, or at least mercenaries. These are usually the younger children of nobles or the well to do who already have enough heirs and have already pulled enough strings to get other older siblings cushy jobs. The younger ones are trained in their profesion and either groups with other noble children in similar situations or with lower classes who show promise and are trained in their classes. The training, equipment and adventuring companions are seen as providing for the child to make their way in the world. Thus, most 1st level adventuring parties have been raised together through childhood for the purpose of being a 1st level adventuring party.

For the most part, such parties or individuals seeking employment will not chekc the taverns but rather the seasonal tournsments. At such torunaments, which are usually in conjunction with fairs, are occations for nobles or even countries to test their martial skills against eachother. In the more peacable regions, it may be the only real warfare some nobles can expect to see. Such events, including a grand melee, are rarely balanced and every noble that can is trying to fill out his forces as much as possible. For somebody of an adventuring class, they could actually survive from fair to fair, travelling the country selling their services a week at a time. Meanwhile many nobles are also traveling from trounie to tournie and will keep such mercenaries with them between events, expecially if traveling through rough lands where extra people may be of even more use. Many such mercenaries even have set schedules of who they are to work for each season and they make the rounds. It is also here that people who are looking for adventurers go to find them. Not only are they all gathered there, but there are plenty of tournaments so they can watch and get an idea of their skills.

Of course, although taverns may be cliche, they're still a reasonable place to meet mercenaries. In between jobs, they have to stay someplace and rental properties are rare. So they stay at inns that almost always have taverns because such people need food as well as lodging and spend most of the off season drinking.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

IMC, people are often born and trained to be adventurer parties, or at least mercenaries. These are usually the younger children of nobles or the well to do who already have enough heirs and have already pulled enough strings to get other older siblings cushy jobs. The younger ones are trained in their profesion and either groups with other noble children in similar situations or with lower classes who show promise and are trained in their classes. The training, equipment and adventuring companions are seen as providing for the child to make their way in the world. Thus, most 1st level adventuring parties have been raised together through childhood for the purpose of being a 1st level adventuring party.

I note you're using the present tense; is this because you're describing how society works in your campaign or are you just using the present tense to describe real-world historical details?

 

[reason]

...

Alternatively, you can pull the teeth of the cliche by making the tavern a whole lot more interesting.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=120841

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[reanjr]

In my current campaign, three of the characters (human cleric, human bard, gnome rogue) started out by living in the same city. Two of those had backgrounds that meshed together. The gnome rogue had moved in with the bard's extended family after leaving her home and the two worked together as freedom fighter/assassins.

Two additional characters (human druid, human fighter) met up recently (out of game), the fighter fleeing the country after his having relations with his commanding officer's wife and being marked for death, the other having left his family for dead after they persecuted him for joining a nature cult. They end up traveling down river and ending up in the city the others lived in.

The church the cleric is a member of has multiple sects that disagree and act somewhat autonomously. So I had the assassins (bard and rogue) hired by one sect and followed by the cleric to make sure they did the job and did not notify the authorities. I had the druid and fighter, as outcasts likely to leave the city soon, hired by another sect to do the same job.

This may not work as well for other DMs who plan things out more, but I wanted to do an adventure based around wererats. Given the characters' backgrounds (two of them assassins) I figured a simple job to kill a wererat would suffice. Snowballing that in with the cleric was easy, as I just made the cleric's boss hire the assassins. With the druid's background of nature cultist, and the fighter's vague background of ex-military, I worked with them to flesh their backgrounds out, having them fleeing the militaristic nation to the north. This is when the druid decided that his family had turned against him, and the fighter decided on the carnal transgression.

You just have to take the existing backgrounds and start to permute them in various ways and see how they can fit. This works out really well for my group, but DMs that allow a Half-Fiend Wereturtle Warlock from Elysium working with a Pseudonatural Hyper-Intelligent Shade of Blue Cerulean Caller are probably going to have a more difficult time of fitting things together. If this is the case, try patronage or initial conflict of interest (both used in my example, in addition to background meshing) to get them working towards the same goals (even if it's at each other's throats)

 

[reanjr]

Cliche though it may be, I've never actually used it myself... either as a DM, or as a player.

I dont recall ever using it (but I've run alot of campaigns so I probably have). But I didn once have a player who indicated when he went into a tavern that he was going to pull his hood around his face and sit in the corner looking dark and brooding.

I had a 1st-level adventurer approach him and ask him if he had any work. It was priceless. He actually gave the guy a job related to the adventure at hand. Something the PCs could have accomplished easily but would have taken (play-)time to roleplay out. Handwaving forward to the adventurer returning, things were well on their way.

 

[Tonguez]

1. members of a travelling Circus troupe (a juggling rogue, a scorcerer gnome, a barbarian strongman, a knife throwing fighter and a griffon riding Ranger)
2. associates of the same Temple (a cleric, a temple guard, an ex-orphan from the Temple orphanage, a parishioner)
3. Agents of the Merchants Guild heading north to investigate the late shipments from the Silver Mines (cue Burning Plague)
4. Survivors of a Shipwreck
5. Participants in a Harvest festival
6. Survivors escaping from an overrun village (first adventure - locate the other survivors (who are being hunted down) and get them to safety)