The Book of Taverns

[Messageboard Golem]

Book of Taverns
A 112-page perfect bound softcover book from Necromancer Games; written by Chris Jones; interior maps by Brian LeBlanc; cartography by Ed Bourelle.

The Book of Taverns is a collection of ten taverns of varying sizes and flavors. Each one is given at least six or seven pages of text, which includes a detailed background, a full history and stat block for the notable people and creatures at each tavern, a full menu that includes food, drink, and other services, and a room by room key of locations. The maps are all outstanding, a perfect blend of artistry and functionality; the art by Brian LeBlanc is his usual charcoal work familiar to those who have purchased previous Necromancer Games products; it lends a consistency to the book, and provides a fairly accurate representation of the various people and locations.

The game stats all look well done, though I didn't go over them with a fine-toothed comb. One minor problem I have noted however is that there are some misspelled words, of the type that a spell check program would not catch (e.g., "Sills" instead of "Skills", "jut" instead of "just"). Then there was the new magical musical instrument detailed in Malachai's Public House that is repeatedly referred to in the boxed text as a ring. This is a minor complaint overall, not enough to affect my rating of the book, but it is something that NG should pay attention to in future works.

Rather than give a general description of the taverns overall, I'll provide below a capsule summary and review of each establishment.

The Trireme: A place with a Greco-Roman theme, where you can go to sip or swill wine and debate philosophy, or anything else that comes to mind. Players and DMs who like to do a lot of intensive role playing should get a kick out of this one. 4/5

The Witch's Teat: Run by a colorful group of scoundrels, this place has a magic portal which intermittently conjures random monsters; unlike a summon monster spells, these creatures and their equipment are permanent. When no monsters appear, there are also pit-fights. This place is perfect for players whose eyes glaze over with more than five minutes of non-combat-related events, but the NPCs are interesting enough for more balanced groups to find plenty to do here as well. I would've liked to have seen stats for sample blademasters though. 4.5/5

The Quintain's Tower: More than a tavern, this place serves as the focus of a number of ogre, bugbear, and goblin tribes, as well as two groups of rangers. For fairly involved reasons, these groups mostly get along with one another. Stats are given for leaders and members of each tribe, as well as for the heavy-hitting ogre mage who runs the place. The backstory of the tavern is also quite a read. Outstanding. 5/5

The Horse Lord: This is one of the more sedate, even boring, of taverns. It serves as a meeting place for the horse wranglers of the region, and competes with a similar establishment across town (which I thought sounded more interesting). It does have some nice touches, but I don't see most adventuring groups spending a lot of time here of their own accord. 3.5/5

Vain Robert's Gibbet: On the wharves, this tavern caters to privateers, surly sailors, and even pirates. It is built from a converted grain silo on the site where a notorious pirate was hanged. A great place to hear sea stories, recruit sailors, gather information, and get into trouble. 4/5

The Lion Rampant: I'm not quite what to think of this one. The tavern caters to the wealthier set, and is run by a paladin, yet it serves as a front for the local thieves' guild (which this guy is marginally aware of). Although this is explained in the background, it still seems a little iffy. There's also a self-described king from the distant future who lives here in exile, with a band of paladin hangers-on at his side. Still, a useful place to meet petty nobles or even contact the thieve's guild. 3.5/5

Death and Taxes: This small tavern is located in three connected basements in town, and is frequented by merchants, particularly a pair of rival guilds-and thus is as much a den of rogues and scoundrels as any of the other places listed here. A good place to gather information or meet contacts in the merchant class, though its insular nature means it it is not otherwise welcoming to outsiders. 4/5

Malachai's Public House: Run by a famous halfling bard (some would say infamous); if the Trireme allows the DM to cut loose intellectually, this place is great for the showboat DM. It is a great place for adventurers to hang out, sell off or acquire magic items of dubious origin, hear tall tales and seeds of new adventures. 5/5

The Dagger & Rose: This large tavern/inn is located on a trade route between two cities that is haunted by bandits; the owner of this place hires out mercenaries, and has a secret of her own. The Dagger and Rose has a French feel to it, and is a good place for road encounters en route to another locale, as well as to interact with snooty nobles. 4/5

The Four Winds: An interplanar tavern was perhaps inevitable for a product such as this. In the time-honored tradition of interdimensional trademeets as the Bizarre of Deva in Robert Asprin's Myth books, the endless corridor and tavern of Raymond Feist's Midkemia books, or numerous other literary sources, this tavern, run by a god of travel called the Whiskey Man, is an infinite series of three rooms, each of which can be adapted by its locals to suit their needs. As one of the qualifications for entering the place unescorted is to be 15th level, the Four Winds is a place for high level adventurers to further quests, even into epic levels. The "bouncers" are 18th-20th level rangers, the servers are Exp18 ghosts...and of course it is run by a god. You'll either love the fertile grounds this locale can bring to your campaign (especially in challenging high-level PCs), or not want it anywhere near your campaign world. Overall, I felt the area was well-presented and organized, with a good selection of sample rooms (the city of Freeport by Green Ronin makes a cameo, and there were probably others as well I didn't recognize). I would have liked to have seen stats for the flying monkeys, though; the spelling and syntactic errors seemed more noticeable in this tavern; and the final sentence ends on something of a cliffhanger... 4.5/5

Were I to average my above ratings, the result would be 4.2 out of 5. However, I'm going to bump this up to a 5/5 due to the nature of the work. I didn't feel there was a truly weak tavern in the lot, all of them were quite useful, and some I felt were inspired. I can't imagine a DM buying this accessory and not falling in love with at least two or three of the watering holes and wanting to use them right away. And there's enough material here to be usable for years to come and over many campaigns. It could have used another round of editing, I felt, but this was not enough to seriously hurt it; I mainly noticed it actually due to the otherwise stellar presentation of the work. I particularly loved the maps, a far cry indeed from those published in Necromancer Games' Rappan Athuk 2.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Eat, Drink and Be Merry!

The Book of Taverns contains 10 fully fleshed-out taverns DMs may easily drop into any campaign setting. From the Trireme, a quiet hillside establishment serving world-renowned wines and haunted by a pair of lovelorn ghosts, to The Four Winds, an interplanar watering hole existing in the space between worlds, the taverns contained herein can be used on the fly as impromptu resting spots, or as the foundation for entire adventures. Each tavern is fully mapped and detailed with numerous adventure hooks. You will also find more than 40 new NPCs and a host of new magic items!

And be sure to visit the Necromancer Games website, where product support including a bonus establishment is available!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

hi,
great review for an awesome book. Get it !

 

[JoeGKushner]

As I get older, I have less preparation time for my games. When Eden announced Waysides some time ago, I though, “Ah, here’s something that’ll help me save time while adding value to my campaign.” Well, while I’m waiting for that book, from left field, Necromancer Games decides that it is indeed a good idea and WHAM! Here’s the Book of Taverns, ten complete taverns, fleshed out and ready to be dropped into almost any type of campaign.

The ten taverns here allow the GM to use them as standard places for meetings of adventurers, but also pushes the envelope in many areas, allowing the GM to use each tavern as its own little adventuring hole. The formula is simple, a brief paragraph of the bar, the background, Dramatis Personae (that’s NPCs to you out there), Establishment, Goods & Services, and Adventure Seeds. Take for example the cover. This shows a party of adventurers in battle with some strange type of demon. What type of bar could this be you ask? How about The Witch’s Teat, a place with a cursed pit that acts as a summoning spell, drawing crowds and warriors from miles around to test their battle prowess and earn some gold? Different right off the bat eh?

For those who have those real high fantasy places and want something similar to Monte Cook’s The Nexus or the old World Inn from 1st edition, then you’ll enjoy the Four Winds, a bar owned by the Whiskey Man, a god of the drink. His tavern opens to all places and is an excellent way to add characters from other settings into the local campaign. Of course not everything is as it seems there and characters will have to be watching the surroundings to make sure that they don’t wind up getting off at the wrong location themselves.

Other strangeness abounds. Take the Lion Rampant, a haven for thieves that houses a king from the future, disposed of by being sent back through time. His story has created a gathering of knights who wish to take him back to his time and liberate his people. Knights and thieves getting along? Not for long…


As you can tell, there’s a bit of high magic running around in this book. Malachai’s Public House for example, is not only run by a powerful Halfling bard, but has some guardians over its treasure that few would want to tamper with unless they just leave the Four Winds tavern and were feeling really bold.

The good thing though, is that not all of the intriguing factors depend on high magic or lots of power to work. In some cases, its simply a matter of misdirection. In both Vain Robert’s Gibbet and The Dagger & Rose, elements are underfoot that are not what they first seem and players may spend some time visiting these locals until they find out what’s really going on, if they ever do.

One nice touch is that each inn has a menu with a gray background and symbol with the price list. Bad news is that there’s no download off the Necromancer site yet to print out and hand to the players.
The maps within have a very familiar look to them. Grabbing my Foul Locales books, Beyond the Walls and Urban Blight, I checked the Cartography and yup, Ed Bourelle of Skeleton Key Games handles the honors here. This means that the art is crisp and clean for the maps, easy to read and use. Interior art chores are handled by long time Necromancer artists Brian LeBlanc.

There were some problems with the book. In some instances, the game stats were wrong. Simple enough matter. Other instances, the editing was off. Others, spelling was off. These are minor things but after seeing the third and fourth and fifth error, it gets on your nerves. Another minor issue is that there is no master map legend that you can refer to. I know, most of the things are obvious, but… Lastly the book’s overpriced at $19.95 for 112 pages when most books are 128 pages for that price. By themselves, these are minor issues but added together, that’s the loss of one star.

The one thing that those extra 16 pages could’ve done to make this a five star product would be lists of commonly sold goods, broken up by the grade of the bar ranging from drinks, foods, and services with ideas on sizing a bar to handle crowds of various sizes. A brief paragraph at the opening of each bar, of someone walking in for the first time, to give it some ambience would’ve been icing on the cake too.

If you enjoyed the old City Books by Flying Buffalo then you’ll love Taverns.

 

[Liquide]

You can find the Old Flying Buffalo stuff at this site:
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/prices.htm

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The Book of Taverns is an unprepared GM’s best friend. Need to know what the tavern has to eat and drink? No problem! What about who runs it, or the staff? Once again no problem! If you need a tavern for those plane-traveling PCs then The Four Winds is what you need. What about a meeting place where orcs, ogres, and humans get along? This book has got one for you - try The Quintains Tower. This book has ten fully detailed taverns that can be easily placed in an existing campaign with little or no modifications.

Each tavern is broken down into five categories. First is the background followed by the people who own and operate the tavern, along with staff and any other NPCs associated with it. Next is the description of the tavern, goods and services, and last adventure seeds.

The background gives the history of the tavern, who built it, when it was built and why.
Also included are brief descriptions of each tavern. Each background reads almost like a short story, introducing you to the people who will be interacting with your PCs frequently, at least some of them will.

Next come the NPCs - the people behind the tavern. All the people associated with the tavern are here, from the owner to the stable hands. Each NPC is fully detailed, having a description, stats, skills, feats and items.

Following that is the description of the tavern, along with the maps. Each room is covered, from the common room to the bedrooms. First is a description of the building, what it looks like and general information about the outside along with wall thickness and door information. Next is a room by room description, detailing what is in the room, who usually is there and why they are there. This section is also where you will find anything in need of special attention - traps, chests, secret doors, etc.

Goods And Services is a small section giving a menu of sorts of what can be had in the tavern - food, drink etc. and how much it costs. Each tavern has its own unique menu. There is none of the standard ale here. Want something special? How about knuckle bones, a drink that is made using orc bones instead of woodchips.

Although there are only a few adventure hooks each one is designed with the history of the tavern in mind. Each hook gives a brief overview of what needs to be done, while at the same time allowing the GM enough room to add his or her own creations and ideas to it.

I really liked this book; it makes the GM’s job a little easier. With a little preparation any of these taverns could be added to an existing campaign. I did have a few problems with it though. First, some of the menus were a little hard to read; on some of them certain categories that should have been bold were not. This is not a major problem but it causes a little confusion at first glance. Second, a lot of the NPCs had some sort of magical item, these ranged from small things like a ring of sustenance to vorpal swords. Now not a problem in and of itself it could cause some powergaming if the pc’s decide to relieve said NPCs of their items. Third, there were a few typos that caught my eye. Most of them were easy to read into the general idea of the sentence but some of them made the sentence a little confusing. That said I still recommend buying this book. If you need a place for your PCs to stay for a while or just a one stop shop these taverns offer a good resting place. With the detailed histories and personalities your PCs might just look forward to going to that tavern just over the next hill.

 

[Legion]

Legion's Review Disclaimer

This book is a terrific DM resource. It doesn't matter if you're a DM with a homebrew world or a DM who likes published source campaigns, this book has at least five taverns you can easily stuff into any town, city or wayside stop over. Everything from the relatively mundane to the fantastical is in this book. Do you like gritty and realistic without a great deal of magic and malarky? Then Death & Taxes is the tavern for you. Prefer to have things way out of the league of ordinary and everyday? Try the Four Winds (just don't say we didn't warn you.)

First off, the good of the book (and there is a lot of it but I'm just going to touch on a few.) The book is meaty. The font used is a bit smaller than what looks typical of Necromancer products so it's obvious they wanted to cram in as much goodness as they could, and they succeeded. The layout is well done, the maps are beautiful. But the epitome of why this book is so terrific rests in the writing. Author Chris Jones packs the characters with such diversity and refreshing originality that you can't help but get smitten with one charater only to turn around two seconds later and find one you like even more. (Two of my personal favorites are the twins from the Witch's Teat, but you'll have to read them yourself to know why, and Clarissa Paetersong from Lion Rampant.) The settings are unique and original and Jones does a terrific job, effortless and vividly creating the canvas for DMs to play in. The Four Winds is a multispacial locale that provides DMs with a penchant for exploring other planes a ready-made plot device to step off further adventures. The book is just full to the brim with wonderful characters and locales.

The bad? Not alot. Aside from the occasional editorial snafu or a missing table of contents (which isn't really that horrible a glitch) the book doesn't have many faults. I have a personal thing about the cover. I think the interior art is much more evocative but that is purely a personal choice and not one that would ever keep me from buying a book.

That's it. All in all, you really can't go wrong with the book. It's one of those rare items that I think everyone will find something to like and few will dislike. And anything that makes my life easier as a DM is a major plus. I've already incorporated three of the taverns into my campaign world and I can easily see using at least three more sometime down the road.

If you're a DM make your life easier, buy the book. If you're a player, make your life easier with terrific examples of character conception that hovers at brilliant.

 

[trancejeremy]

The Book of Taverns is a 112 page softcover sourcebook from Necromancer Games, priced at $19.95. (The price is a bit high for my personal taste, and why I didn't pick it up until recently, but as there are $25 96 page sourcebooks, I guess it's not too bad.)

Rather than being about Taverns, it contains 10 detailed taverns that you can easily drop into your campaign. So, something of a location book. Some are taverns, some are more like inns-tavern combinations.

This book to me fills a huge niche. Taverns (and Inns) are very common in D&D games, but something that can be time consuming to create. And tricky to come up with original ones. Much like how I base my NPCs on people I know or from fiction, I tend to base taverns on places I've been. In that case, it's mostly a couple different pool halls and the occasional sports bar. The latter is usually full of yuppies, so that's not a very good basis for a fantasy tavern.

Each tavern is presented in a fairly standard format: Intro, Background, Important People (generally the people who work there), a room by room description of the place, a menu/listing of services and goods/drinks available, and lastly some adventure hooks.

The 10 Taverns are:

The Trireme - A Greek themed bar, with a history out of a greek tragedy. (And a curse). Since it's very Greek, this might be a bit tricky to use.

The Witch's Teat - Bar with gladiatorial fights (with a twist - sort of has a reverse stargate in it). I found this to have the most interesting staff of any bar in the book.

Quintain's Tower - This is a place operated by ogres & goblins, in the ruins of an old castle. Neat idea, but gets a bit weird, because there's also this ghost tree and rangers that protect it.

The Horse Lord - This is essentially a cowboy bar. You learn a little too much about the owner's love life. (The "Horse's Mistress" would have been a better name for the place. Ick). This is another one of those a bit hard to use.

The Lion Rampant - A tavern catering to rich people and aristocrats.

Vain Robert's Gibbet - This is a pub for sailors and privateers/pirates. Very suitable for Freeport. Very very suitable.

Death & Taxes - sort of a secret, members's only place. This is hard to use I think because the players are unlikely to be invited to join, or ever visit.

Malachai's Public House - Relatively generic inn, run by a halfling bard. Probably the most obviously useful. It is very high powered though, and is perhaps most suitable for a setting like the Forgotten Realms

Dagger & Rose - Sort of a roadhouse, a inn/tavern on a major highway between two cities.

The Four Winds - This is an interdimensional tavern. It's probably more suited for somewhat nonsensical and high powered settings like the Forgotten Realms (in fact, that has something similar, the World Serpent Inn. And Blackmoor may or may not have had something like it too. The 1986 D&D module "Adventures in Blackmoor" did, but I don't know if it was in the original. But I digress). I love the idea of this, but it's a bit too high powered for my tastes (It's run by a god, and an ex-god makes the beer). And not entirely serious, it seems. It's also full of flying monkeys, which scare me. (Seriously.)

The writing is excellent, full of tiny details and is a joy to read. There are also a lot of puns and hidden references (at least I hope so, maybe I'm reading too much into some things). But nothing overly obnoxious or just plain silly, like found in some products. There are some spelling problems. Including one of my pet peeves, "loosing" instead of "losing". Also at couple instances of a sentence missing a word. But pretty minor.

The interior art is excellent. It's all by Brian LeBlanc. If there's a better artist working in the d20 field today (or the RPG industry, for that matter), I haven't see them (and I probably have a 100 d20 books). Each tavern is fully mapped, and the maps are very well done. Some parts of some maps are quite blurry, though. That's a common problem of color maps being converted to greyscale and printed, but this is very rare in this product, happening on only 3 of the maps (and some of the smaller ones). But it's another pet peeve of mine, and so worth mentioning.

The first, is while the taverns all have very interesting and detailed backgrounds, this detracts somewhat from their genericness. In most cases, this is no big deal, but in a couple, it's hard to get around. For instance, the "Horse Lord" needs to be placed someplace where there are cowboys and herds of horses. One has a time traveller from the distant future. Malachai (of Public House fame) had a huge fight with the local wizards guild and ended up enslaving the 4 leaders of it. A couple of the Tavern Owners/Operators have deals with local thieves guild. So, it's unlikely that most will be easily dropped into your game as it, without ignoring the background. But as I said, that's generally easy to do.

Another downside, is that while the taverns are described completely when it comes to physical layout and staff, in most cases, it's somewhat skimpy when it comes to customers. What would Cheers have been without Norm, Cliff, Frasier, and the occasional guest star, like Harry? ( Or Moe's without Lenny, Carl, and Homer? In most cases, you do get some generic customers, and in a couple cases, there are prominant people who live in the in for some weird reason (like the time traveller guy), but I would have liked to have seen more. And more normal ones, not things like well, time travellers.

While it doesn't really matter to most people, also on the downside, the names of the taverns and NPCs are all product identity. Which is something of a shame, and something I don't understand the point of. It would have been neat to see one of these taverns inserted into an product from another company. Especially as they seem to have borrowed a city from another company in the name/background of an NPC in the Four Winds bar ("Jelka Swag of Freeport", an ex-pirate. Though Freeport is a common name, even in d20, as there is a Freeport in the Everquest.)

Still, to sum up, this is an excellent product for a DM. While all the prominent NPCs do have stats, and there are some new magic items, it's fairly stat-free, so can be useful for most fantasy RPGs, not just D&D/d20

A-

 

[Melan]

The Book of Taverns

At first sight, The Book of Taverns may not be the product that immediately makes the average DM want to rush out and buy it. While the idea isn't entirely new (Flying Buffalo had a series of supplements revolving around city establishments, among them taverns), it is certainly not as widespread as modules or new sourcebooks full of brand new prestige classes. Nevertheless, on its 110 pages, the BoT offers a good value for most DMs who run a traditional fantasy campaign.

Production values are top notch, as could be expected from Necromancer Games: the illustrations by Brian LeBlanc are all well drawn, there are few typos and the maps aren't merely well detailed and accurate, they are pleasing to the eye as well. My only nitpick is that they are too modern and "professional" to be completely "1e feel", but that, too, can be forgiven.

Each of the ten taverns comes with a short mood setting summary, a detailed writeup of the establishment's history, the most important personalities, the menu and/or services available and multiple adventure ideas. It must be said here that this product may not be for everyone: the writeups are very detailed, which some DMs may not find to their liking. Unlike many modules, it is also impossible to use the book on the fly - at least without using the taverns to their fullest.

The described taverns include a hangout of philosophers and sages, an evil temple converted into an inn where adventurers can battle the monstrosities that emerge nightly from a summoning pit, a seaside hangout of pirates and sailors (converted from an old grain silo) and more. I have found that each tavern has a strong, memorable theme and they could serve as launch boards for multiple new adventures - it would even be possible to veawe a campaign around some of them.

 

[Psion]

Same applies here - please don't cut and paste directly from word processors.