Bluffside Places: Rogue's Rest Inn & Tavern

[Crothian]

Everyone needs a place to work, a place to live, and places to hang out and get into trouble. The Explorers' Guild's Bluffside Places are fully detailed locations within the city of Bluffside, but can easily be used in any other fantasy setting

The first in the series is the Rogue's Rest Inn & Tavern, and comes with seven maps, 32 NPCs with backgrounds, descriptions of all the rooms in the Inn and above the stable. CC2Pro files of the maps are also bundled with the PDF, and can be viewed using CC2Pro or the free Viewer/Printer from ProFantasy.

Those who purchase Rogue's Rest will receive links to download several bonus files: color versions of the maps (in gif format), a map of the New City area where the Rogue's Rest is located, and a Rogue's Rest's employee's residence floorplan.

Rogue's Rest Inn & Tavern is 30 pages long with cover, including a new presitge class, a new magic item, and sells for $5.00.

 

[Crothian]

Rogue Rest Inn and Tavern

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Places are always an important part of the game. Some times they are just names that the characters pass through but a well defined building like a shop or tavern can become a big part of the story. NPCs in these places can become allies and friends, or enemies and betrayers. The ability to use a place over and over makes it familiar to the players and characters as well as allows the DM to really explore the NPCs and the subtitles of the place. It can make for a nice change of pace from the typical dungeon crawler or exploration sessions that are more common in the game. Rogue’s Rest Inn and Tavern is a well defined place that will be easy to use in any game and offers a number of NPCs along with a well defined Inn.

Rogue’s Rest Inn and Tavern is a place by The Explorer’s Guide. The Explorer’s Guide is a little different from the usually companies. They have been given permission to continue defining the Bluffside setting even though the original company, Mystic Eye Games, has stopped. I think this is a great way to keep some of the beloved settings alive and Bluffside to me is a much loved setting. The PDF is thirty pages long and very nicely book marked. The layout is really good and so is the art. The book does have borders and maps so it can be a bit consuming of ink when printed, but the look of the book is really well done.

The Inn is designed to be used in Bluffside but there is really very little of it that ties it to that setting. With a little work this place can easily be moved to the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. The book starts with a good and thorough description of the inn and tavern. It goes room by room leaving nothing uncovered. This eye to detail is very useful and ill help a DM that has little time really make this place come alive. The tavern has a menu with prices another simple detail that I really enjoy seeing in these types of places. There are regulars listed for the inn as well so a DM can easily populate the place and there are three general plot hooks that can be used. The plots hooks are about the different NPCs and a bit about Bluffside but they are general enough that any DMJ should be able to modify them slightly to fit their own campaign and world.

One of the best things about the book is the sheer number of fully defined NPCs it has. There are over thirty NPCs with backgrounds and fully stated out in here. I did not go over the stats with a fine tooth comb but there were no obvious mistakes as I read through them all. It is the backgrounds of them though that really make them feel alive and like real people. The NPCs here can easily be used in any campaign and the DM will have no trouble expanded on what is written about them.

While there are some good plot ideas in here, I felt with the cast of characters and connection to Bluffside there could actually have been more plots and adventure ideas. Bluffside is a city that has a lot going on in it allowing people to pick and choose what they would want to use. I think a stronger connection to Bluffside and a wider range of plots would make this inn and tavern even more useful.

Rogue’s Rest Inn and Tavern is a very solid piece of work. For those who enjoy Bluffside this makes a great addition to that city. But for someone just looking for a nice fantasy style inn to place in a campaign, this book will do the trick for that as well.