So you're all sitting in a tavern and ...

[Jupp]

....when looking around you see on a table in a far corner an old man with white hair and a beard sitting behind a piece of folded parchment. He suddenly looks at you and with a smile he says "C'mon over lads!The adventure of your lifetime awaits you" With those words he rolls a little piece of bone and your vision starts to blur.....

.....You start to open your eyes and your vision comes back slowly. You are not sure how much time has passed but....You're all sitting in a tavern and.....

 

[Turanil]

... as someone is asking for adventurers, you realize you are too drunk to move.
... someone tells you to shut the door because it's really too cold outside.
... nobody comes to serve you. The bartender and barmaids seem to ignore you.
... the bartender tells you that you cannot stay if you don't have a dinner jacket.

 

[MetalBard]

... the wine selection is quite impressive but the food is all rather uninspired.

... a mysterious stranger approaches your table. From the darkened recesses of his robes he produces a pamphlet on time-shares in the Black Swamp of Inconveniently Located Real Estate. Everyone roll Will saves.

 

[Berandor]

I think the origin of the tavern meeting is just that a tavern, or a bar nowadays, is a good meeting place. You can meet new people or just meet with your friends, you can meet without seeming suspicious, etc.

It's just convenient.

 

[RFisher]

I think the origin of the tavern meeting is just that a tavern, or a bar nowadays, is a good meeting place. You can meet new people or just meet with your friends, you can meet without seeming suspicious, etc.

It's just convenient.

I agree. I don't think there is a direct influence from literature here so much as it is just something that makes sense for the game. Where are a bunch of adventurers most likely to meet each other? Where is a patron most likely to go to find adventurers?

A starport bar is the cliché starting point for Traveller adventures too.

 

[jester47]

Taverns and Public Houses and later Inns with such attached, for a long time were the place to go to get news, do business, meet visitors, and a whole manner of other things that various technologies have taken elsewhere. More often then not the tavern was also the "city hall" for small towns and villages. It was the place where everyone met and where people gathered to make municipal decisions. It is no wonder that Tolkein had Gandalf ask the Hobbits to meet him there. It just made sense.

The way it is cliche is when it is not used as a meeting place. If you have people doing all sorts of business there it is less cliche. At least IMO.

Aaron.

 

[Jupp]

Now it would be interesting to hunt down the first source that had the famous tavern meeting point for RPGs

Anyone has a clue?

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

. . . and all the characters in the tavern are attacked by a group of horrible, terrible, cliches!

 

[taliesin15]

I tried once to have new characters meet up for the first time at something like a Beltaine festival, and they weren't all too clear on why their characters would be there, whether the rituals being done were spells aimed at them, or whatever...I think one dude said it sounds like going to the Renaissance festival "hey, can we get some smoked turkey legs and a kiss from a wench there?"

 

[Oryan77]

Now it would be interesting to hunt down the first source that had the famous tavern meeting point for RPGs

Anyone has a clue?

The year was about 80 BC. The city was called Rome. A rich pompous young man named Julius Ceasar was spending another drunken day in the local tavern. As two thugs were looking him over and approaching him in order to rob the intoxicated fool, a stranger ran into the bar and stumbled into Ceasars arms just as Decius Brutus and Mark Antony were about to each get a sneak attack while Ceasar was flat footed. The strangers last words before going into a coma were, "I am named Pompey, deliver this scroll to my cousin in Greece and keep it out of English hands, you will be rewarded your weight in gold.....ackkkkkggllllllll *snore*".