Colorful characters at the inn
- Thread starter maddman75
- Start date
Herobizkit
Adventurer
IMO, I would suggest scanning ideas from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. If you can envision the DS9 station as a bar in and of itself, it would be chock full of random races with all sorts of jobs. For example:
How about an ACTUAL Pixie waitress with telekinetic pouring skills?
The "bruiser"/bouncer is a Bugbear, Gnoll, or Half-Ogre... something Large and monstrous.
The intelligent Awakened Animal (I prefer housecat) and his Human familiar; or, as a variant, the two get their brains switched, or the human had to put his essence into the cat to survive, and is now magically animating his corpse until someone can fix the situation.... "Someone wash my body, I smell awful!"
The Greatest Halfling Wizard The World Has Even Known... according to him.
Also, if you want to be less unusual, make a lot of your patrons related/same family, working on the same jobs, or have lots of travelling parties "just passing through" but have them pass through enough that they can used for information and potential work.
How about an ACTUAL Pixie waitress with telekinetic pouring skills?
The "bruiser"/bouncer is a Bugbear, Gnoll, or Half-Ogre... something Large and monstrous.
The intelligent Awakened Animal (I prefer housecat) and his Human familiar; or, as a variant, the two get their brains switched, or the human had to put his essence into the cat to survive, and is now magically animating his corpse until someone can fix the situation.... "Someone wash my body, I smell awful!"
The Greatest Halfling Wizard The World Has Even Known... according to him.
Also, if you want to be less unusual, make a lot of your patrons related/same family, working on the same jobs, or have lots of travelling parties "just passing through" but have them pass through enough that they can used for information and potential work.
Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Phew, I thought you'd never ask! Here, let me put on my day-of-birth-guessing hat.S'mon said:William.
Okay, there. I shall now guess the day that William was born, within three days.
Hmmm....
Yes, it's coming to me....
I've got it!
William was born on: Wednesday!
Daniel
The Green Adam
First Post
Cursed Joe
Cursed Joe is a regular in many of my campaigns. Though different variants of Joe populate the myriad multiverse, they all share one thing in common, being a regular joe with some hideous curse on him that caused him to retired from a much more exciting life as an adventurer. In all instances, Joe never talks much about what happened or the 'old gang' and acts like there is nothing wrong or even unusual about himself.
Joltin' Joe- Suffers a mild electrical shock whenever it rains, thunderstorms or an electricity spell is cast within 100 ft. of him.
Jumpin' Joe- Poor jittery Joe has a panic attack and runs in fear if within earshot of the word 'Dragon'.
Poppin' Joe- Randomly disappears every now and then and reappears somewhere else in town. It doesn't happen often and he never travels more then a few hundred feets or so but it is annoying if your in the middle of a conversation.
Faceless Joe- My favorite - Has no face. Think the ol' Charleston/DC super-slueth 'The Question'. Everyone in town treats him like any other guy and no one even seems to notice he has no face. In one version he could still see and talk normally and in another incarnation he couldn't speak and simply made hand gestures or wrote things down.
Joe has been everything from a background character to a real friend and major NPC, a source of some scary info on the nature of magical curses if you can get him to open up. The key is not to make a big deal of it. Invite him to play cards, see if he needs help at the lumber mill or talk about fishing. Joe loves to fish.
Cursed Joe is a regular in many of my campaigns. Though different variants of Joe populate the myriad multiverse, they all share one thing in common, being a regular joe with some hideous curse on him that caused him to retired from a much more exciting life as an adventurer. In all instances, Joe never talks much about what happened or the 'old gang' and acts like there is nothing wrong or even unusual about himself.
Joltin' Joe- Suffers a mild electrical shock whenever it rains, thunderstorms or an electricity spell is cast within 100 ft. of him.
Jumpin' Joe- Poor jittery Joe has a panic attack and runs in fear if within earshot of the word 'Dragon'.
Poppin' Joe- Randomly disappears every now and then and reappears somewhere else in town. It doesn't happen often and he never travels more then a few hundred feets or so but it is annoying if your in the middle of a conversation.
Faceless Joe- My favorite - Has no face. Think the ol' Charleston/DC super-slueth 'The Question'. Everyone in town treats him like any other guy and no one even seems to notice he has no face. In one version he could still see and talk normally and in another incarnation he couldn't speak and simply made hand gestures or wrote things down.
Joe has been everything from a background character to a real friend and major NPC, a source of some scary info on the nature of magical curses if you can get him to open up. The key is not to make a big deal of it. Invite him to play cards, see if he needs help at the lumber mill or talk about fishing. Joe loves to fish.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
There's a great template for Cursed Joe in Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary. It exactly describes a character like him.
Jolly Giant
First Post
In the first campaign I DMed, I had a recurring character that would fit in well in this tavern. IMC, the PCs always bumped into him whenever they visited a place they hadn't been to before; and every time they met him, he had started a new career (i.e. picked up a level of new class). He was always real eager to learn new stuff, but quickly lost interest. He ended up as a ftr/rog/rng/monk/clr (IIRC) - with one level of each.
To my surprise he got the PCs really wondering (and worrying) about what weird, secret scheme he was really up to. How could it be that he always managed to know where they were going, and how did manage to always be there before them? (Typical player meta-thinking of course; everything is always about them. When something strange happens there is no way it could simply be a coincidence that it happens around them! It took them a long time to realise that his part in the story was no more than a bit of harmless comic relief.
Instead of always bumping into him every time the PCs come to new town, he could make infrequent (but more or less regular) visits to the in. Always with a new story tell, about how he visited this new place and met some new friends who thought him these really interesting things...
To my surprise he got the PCs really wondering (and worrying) about what weird, secret scheme he was really up to. How could it be that he always managed to know where they were going, and how did manage to always be there before them? (Typical player meta-thinking of course; everything is always about them. When something strange happens there is no way it could simply be a coincidence that it happens around them! It took them a long time to realise that his part in the story was no more than a bit of harmless comic relief.
Instead of always bumping into him every time the PCs come to new town, he could make infrequent (but more or less regular) visits to the in. Always with a new story tell, about how he visited this new place and met some new friends who thought him these really interesting things...
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