D&D 5E (2024) Carousing in 5E

[Marandahir]

forming new NPC bonds at risks of forming new rivals.
Downtime rules in XGtE

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I think that, no matter the outcome, you are going to meet people so bad outcomes can lead to getting enemies (adventure seeds) and enemies of those enemies (allies). So just giving them a contact could be a good consolation prize. Players tend to do cooler things with NPCs than money or xp anyways.

Just frame the failure, discuss a likely contact and their relationship to the PC based on the scenario and let the player make the NPC.

Now they get to do a bit of world building for you and give you ideas for adventures.

 

[sevenbastard]

Ability score increases. Link each result to a Ability score and they roll 3d10 and add it as a hundredth. So your wisdom might be 13.22 and your charisma 11.78 ect.

 

[touc]

1. Not everyone may be into partying as a roleplay feature. In my current pirate campaign, every time we're in port, folks are warming up their d100 to roll on our carousing table (attached). It has led to some unusual storylines that I would never have come up with otherwise, which might lead to XP and side adventures. For a private game, that's probably the best incentive for carousing. However, you said yours is public.
2. Reskin carousing as training. The basic idea is spend coin, get benefit. Change your carousing table into a "here's what happened during your training" and give out basic boons such as "reroll the next 1 on a d20 you roll" or "you automatically make your next Constitution saving throw without rolling." You could limit these to 1 week duration, or last through the next session. Since they're basic, they are used whether the player wants them used or not (e.g. the next Con save would have been easy, but the boon is used up regardless, or I rolled a 1 on a non-essential skill check, still used up). You can keep the item feature, handing out disposable things like Potions of Healing or a 1st level scroll or an Antitoxin.

I'll side track for the private table folks into Carousing. To encourage carousing and indulging pirate vices, instead of "Heroic Inspiration" we replaced it with a mechanic called "Vices." I have a jar filled with fake gold doubloons (representing having inspiration), handed out anytime you cater to a pirate themed-vice (chosen during character creation) against good judgment, such as The Drink or Bravado. When a ship started sinking, our Drink character opted to rush into the Captain's cabin to check for a secret stash of rum rather than assuredly make it off the ship in time. He got his coin.

 

[aco175]

Is it too simple to just update the tables so that all “bad” results have a consolation prize? Like, “you’re in jail, but hey, now have a thieves guild contact” or “you lost a finger, but impressed the mayor’s daughter”. Give all bad results a consolation prize. Seems like in the end, would be better than 50xp consolation prize. In the spirit of even failures move the game forward.

Make this a direct thing you can use. Give the player a 'contact' coin/card/whatever that they can use for information or service in the game. The PC might go to the library to find some information and uses the card to gain advantage on the check since the contact he made works there and can help or has a personal library and will check tonight. The PC might need an item and uses the card to be able to find it, like poison of thieves' tools or something counterfeit. The PC might need a linkboy in the dungeon to hold torches and uses the card. These kind of things.

This means you are rewarding a bad roll though.

 

[Distracted DM]

ToV's Luck is probably the easiest solution here, but to keep it as an incentive it should be the only way to gain luck. If you're running ToV's Luck RAW, it's quite plentiful.

The alternative (more work-intensive) option is coming up with temporary boons, maybe single-session durations or one-shot uses, that're thematically appropriate to each carousing result.

As a side note, if you're looking for more carousing tables you can check out Knights in the North's tables for DCC. They're my standard tables, they're the ones that I first found and made me fall in love with the idea of carousing.

Spoiler

I'm always on the lookout for more carousing tables! Can't get enough.

 

[Koloth]

Instead of XP, a reward is a clue toward a future adventure/quest/encounter. The character listened to someone's tale after buying him a drink. The barmaid mentioned something interesting after she was tipped. The character noticed a ragged note on the jobs board. What the clue is isn't apparent during the carousing session. The clue only becomes apparent later when the character is notified by the GM that she remembers this odd tale heard in the bar or on that ragged note.

Basically, the party is earning future hints from the GM for those times when the party is stuck because the players forgot that important bit of information. Or the GM wants to nudge the party down path A(toward the quest) rather then path B(which leads to the cave of TPK).