The Prancing Pony… The Vulgar Unicorn… The Silver Eel…
In heroic fantasy novels and short stories, there are always those places where heroes go to carouse, gamble, drink, and spend their treasures – the local inn. Heck, even in a “galaxy, far, far, away”, heroes meet and bar fights break out just as they do in “swords and sorcery” settings - even if those swords happen to be light sabers!
Inns and taverns are an important part of almost every RPG campaign, particularly medieval fantasy ones, where they represent a “safe” place to meet and carry out all manner of business – legal or not. But not every such locale is perhaps not as well developed as a GM would like, given that a quest to save the multiverse might be hatching in one corner of the bar.
Slugfest Games has a remedy for that, successfully funding a Pathfinder supplement in a Kickstarter campaign. The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns purports to offer a wide range of new content, for players and GMs alike, to add more oomph to the local watering hole in almost any PF Campaign.
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is a Third Party Pathfinder supplement to enhance and more fully develop inns and taverns in a heroic fantasy setting. The supplement explores the nature of building and maintaining inns and taverns, as well as the varieties of goods and services offered there. In addition, The Red Dragon Inn also offers new NPC classes representing commoners and service folk who might be found in taverns and inns in a fantasy milieu. The Guide has a new PC class – the Artisan – along with new spells, magic items, magical consumables, and more.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is very good, with exceptional writing and a great layout. The designers made sure to use formats easily recognized by Pathfinder gamers, and used a parchment-like finish to the pages which works quite well with the theme and illustrations in the supplement.
For navigation through the PDF, the book has a table of contents which gives correct page destinations. However, there are no PDF bookmarks which does limit how easy it is to navigate through a large document.
The illustrations in The Red Dragon Inn are excellent, and overall they really enhanced the reading experience of the book. Some of the illustrations are in full color, while others are black-and-white line drawings, but all are done with exceptional details and shading. I am particularly fond of one piece showing a dwarf innkeeper offering a room key in his hand, with bottles of alcohol set on shelves behind him. While the rum and elven wine bottles are expected spirits in any fantasy drinking establishment, the unexpected Persian style jug labeled “Djinn & Juice” gave me a good chuckle. The cover art, however, was a bit understated, although I really liked “The Red Dragon Inn” logo with the scroll work entwined by a sinister looking dragon.
Even the cartography in The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns turned out very well, and again are in full color, with great attention to detail. Furniture, walls, and other features of the rooms are represented here, and would make great “dungeon tiles” if printed out on sturdy card stock.
Your Home Away From Dungeon
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is a good sized supplement touching on a number of topics dealing with inns and taverns in a heroic fantasy setting. The Slugfest Games’ design team worked with the current Pathfinder rules, but also created some rules variants to handle inn/tavern related activities such as crafting qualities, intoxication, and gambling.
The book is divided into 13 chapters, each dealing one aspect of detailing inns and taverns. The designers use the proprietor of The Red Dragon Inn, the dwarf known as Warthorn Redbeard, as the narrator for explaining all about how inns and taverns. There is even a short story about adventurers running through The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Tanverns, with each section helping to illuminate ideas found in the chapters of the supplement.
The first ten chapters of this supplement are designed for both the player and the GM, while the last three are for the “GM only”. I really liked that they split up the material that way, as opposed to other supplements that mix content and give players too much information.
The first three chapters of The Red Dragon Inn detail the day to day operations, activities, construction and furnishing of an inn or a tavern. Chapter 1 concentrates on Operating Inns and Taverns, and the designers look into many aspects of how an inn works, from the quality of rooms and décor, to entertainments to be found there. The goal it seems is to make an inn or tavern a central focal point in a campaign, where adventurers can find goods and services between quests. In Chapter 2, the designers created some great new ways to run Barroom Brawling scenarios. They pulled out all the stops here, and designed new ways to use common items found in a tavern or inn to bash, confound, or incapacitate one’s foe. They include a table of improvised weapons, divided by weapon type – a leg from a chair is a one-handed weapon, while the whole chair is a two-hander – as well as other effects that an item might have. (Warning: Chamberpots have a splash effect! Icky!) Hazard effects are also covered here, such as slippery floors and falling chandeliers. Finally, Chapter 3 details the actual cost and effort of Building Inns and Taverns, from their foundations to their roofs and everything in between. There are discussions about location and local population centers, as well as an assortment of tables for construction types, costs, and building times. In all three chapters here, the level of detail is fantastic and fascinating to read.
In Chapter 4, the designers look into the types of Equipment found at inns and taverns, both mundane and magical. Again, the level of detail in the content is amazing, with nearly every item that could be found in an inn or tavern listed in tables and descriptions – including hit points, hardness, and break DCs where appropriate. Bedding, lamps and braziers, furnishings, and even food stuffs are all described here, and there are some nifty illustrations scattered about of the items being discussed. As for magical items, The Red Dragon Inn offers more than a score of new enchanted devices and accoutrements, from tumbling dice (think loaded dice but harder to notice) to a phantom footman. The designers also introduce a rules variant for crafting – Structural and Aesthetic Qualities – which can add features, as well as change the materials cost, and crafting DCs of items.
The fifth and sixth chapters of The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns concentrates on two of the more popular forms of entertainment in those establishments: Drinking and Gambling. Chapter 5 takes an in-depth look at Drinks and Drinking, and gives listings for all kinds of beer, wines, and spirits that might be found in a fantasy setting. Some of the alcoholic beverages listed have some rather cool effects, such as Gnomish Inspirational Ale granting alchemical bonuses to Intelligence depending on how inebriated the hero becomes. The designers also include a handy conversion chart for converting barrels, kegs, jugs, mugs, flagons, bottles, and shots from one to another. (FYI, there are 3600 shots in a barrel). There are also Rules Variants for handling Intoxication, how the new Intoxication rules effect Drunken Class Archetypes, and for Poisons and Poisoning one’s enemies in a tavern setting. Chapter 6 takes a look at Gambling, including tips on handling gambling games, how skill use can effect gambling outcomes, and a sample gambling encounter for a GM to use.
The seventh through the tenth chapters offer new player-character options, starting with Feats and Traits in Chapter 7. Some of these feats and talents are aimed at providing support for the new class discussed in Chapter 8: The Artisan, although any class or archetype can choose them. These include Craft Wondrous Food and Drink, Improved Master Craftsman, and Potent Brewer. For medically inclined characters, the feats of Surgeon, Improved Surgeon, Herbalist, and Expert Caregiver might be interesting choices if no Clerics are on hand to fix injuries and illnesses. Traits here are for characters that want to excel at drinking or gambling, and include examples such as Hollow Leg and Honest Face. The aforementioned Artisan class is an interesting blend of crafter and adventurer, with an interesting mix of abilities to trade and negotiate with the common folk, remain unnoticed in a fight, and to craft wondrous items and gear. If anyone ever wanted to play a character like Durnik from The Belgariad Series, or Gendry from Game of Thrones, this new class is the one to pick. There are new rules for Brewing, Baking, and Cooking in Chapter 9, including rules to craft magical versions with interesting effects. And what inebriated Wizard wouldn’t love to have spells like Phantasmal Intoxication, Amplify Potency, or Power Word – Intoxicate in his repertoire? Chapter 10 has some new Spells which might be very interesting to add to a campaign.
The final three chapters are designed to aid and offer advice for GMs who want to more fully develop the role of inns and taverns in their campaign. Chapter 11 introduces five new NPC classes - Craftsman, Laborer, Politician, Service, and Trader – which serve as fellow patrons or as workers at inns and taverns a hero might visit. There are also examples of these NPCs, and each class is fully developed from Level 1 to Level 20. The designers offer ideas on how to create Gambling Encounters in Chapter 12, and have five examples to use or to modify for an adventure. And at last, in Chapter 13, we have three Sample Taverns to serve as examples or to be used in a campaign. These include The Draft House, The Broken Tankard, and yes… The Red Dragon Inn! All these areas are fully detailed with maps and local lore, room descriptions, NPCs, and even adventure hooks, and more.
Overall Score: 4.0 out of 5.0
Conclusions
When one looks at a product overall, I have to say that The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is one heck of a good read, and offers some great new content for Pathfinder and d20/3.5 gamers. Actually, I could recommend this book freely to anyone who DMs/GMs a FRPG, because there is so many great ideas in here for making inns and taverns a more important aspect of one’s heroic fantasy campaign. The writing is enjoyable to read, the illustrations are nifty, and the content offers a new view on something ubiquitous to any FRPG.
If one considers how much new material is packed into this one book, The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is well worth taking a look at, and might just change how your campaign runs altogether!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
In heroic fantasy novels and short stories, there are always those places where heroes go to carouse, gamble, drink, and spend their treasures – the local inn. Heck, even in a “galaxy, far, far, away”, heroes meet and bar fights break out just as they do in “swords and sorcery” settings - even if those swords happen to be light sabers!
Inns and taverns are an important part of almost every RPG campaign, particularly medieval fantasy ones, where they represent a “safe” place to meet and carry out all manner of business – legal or not. But not every such locale is perhaps not as well developed as a GM would like, given that a quest to save the multiverse might be hatching in one corner of the bar.
Slugfest Games has a remedy for that, successfully funding a Pathfinder supplement in a Kickstarter campaign. The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns purports to offer a wide range of new content, for players and GMs alike, to add more oomph to the local watering hole in almost any PF Campaign.
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns
- Designers: John Blomquist, Cliff Bohm, Barry Figgins, Dave Kalis, Jeff Morrow, Erin O’Donnell, Daniel Rolling, Sam Waller
- Illustrators: Kennon James, Rhonda Libbey, Danil Shunkov, Beth Trott
- Publisher: Slugfest Games
- Year: 2013
- Media: PDF (169 pages)
- Price: $14.99 (Available from RPGNow!)
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is a Third Party Pathfinder supplement to enhance and more fully develop inns and taverns in a heroic fantasy setting. The supplement explores the nature of building and maintaining inns and taverns, as well as the varieties of goods and services offered there. In addition, The Red Dragon Inn also offers new NPC classes representing commoners and service folk who might be found in taverns and inns in a fantasy milieu. The Guide has a new PC class – the Artisan – along with new spells, magic items, magical consumables, and more.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is very good, with exceptional writing and a great layout. The designers made sure to use formats easily recognized by Pathfinder gamers, and used a parchment-like finish to the pages which works quite well with the theme and illustrations in the supplement.
For navigation through the PDF, the book has a table of contents which gives correct page destinations. However, there are no PDF bookmarks which does limit how easy it is to navigate through a large document.
The illustrations in The Red Dragon Inn are excellent, and overall they really enhanced the reading experience of the book. Some of the illustrations are in full color, while others are black-and-white line drawings, but all are done with exceptional details and shading. I am particularly fond of one piece showing a dwarf innkeeper offering a room key in his hand, with bottles of alcohol set on shelves behind him. While the rum and elven wine bottles are expected spirits in any fantasy drinking establishment, the unexpected Persian style jug labeled “Djinn & Juice” gave me a good chuckle. The cover art, however, was a bit understated, although I really liked “The Red Dragon Inn” logo with the scroll work entwined by a sinister looking dragon.
Even the cartography in The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns turned out very well, and again are in full color, with great attention to detail. Furniture, walls, and other features of the rooms are represented here, and would make great “dungeon tiles” if printed out on sturdy card stock.
Your Home Away From Dungeon
The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is a good sized supplement touching on a number of topics dealing with inns and taverns in a heroic fantasy setting. The Slugfest Games’ design team worked with the current Pathfinder rules, but also created some rules variants to handle inn/tavern related activities such as crafting qualities, intoxication, and gambling.
The book is divided into 13 chapters, each dealing one aspect of detailing inns and taverns. The designers use the proprietor of The Red Dragon Inn, the dwarf known as Warthorn Redbeard, as the narrator for explaining all about how inns and taverns. There is even a short story about adventurers running through The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Tanverns, with each section helping to illuminate ideas found in the chapters of the supplement.
The first ten chapters of this supplement are designed for both the player and the GM, while the last three are for the “GM only”. I really liked that they split up the material that way, as opposed to other supplements that mix content and give players too much information.
The first three chapters of The Red Dragon Inn detail the day to day operations, activities, construction and furnishing of an inn or a tavern. Chapter 1 concentrates on Operating Inns and Taverns, and the designers look into many aspects of how an inn works, from the quality of rooms and décor, to entertainments to be found there. The goal it seems is to make an inn or tavern a central focal point in a campaign, where adventurers can find goods and services between quests. In Chapter 2, the designers created some great new ways to run Barroom Brawling scenarios. They pulled out all the stops here, and designed new ways to use common items found in a tavern or inn to bash, confound, or incapacitate one’s foe. They include a table of improvised weapons, divided by weapon type – a leg from a chair is a one-handed weapon, while the whole chair is a two-hander – as well as other effects that an item might have. (Warning: Chamberpots have a splash effect! Icky!) Hazard effects are also covered here, such as slippery floors and falling chandeliers. Finally, Chapter 3 details the actual cost and effort of Building Inns and Taverns, from their foundations to their roofs and everything in between. There are discussions about location and local population centers, as well as an assortment of tables for construction types, costs, and building times. In all three chapters here, the level of detail is fantastic and fascinating to read.
In Chapter 4, the designers look into the types of Equipment found at inns and taverns, both mundane and magical. Again, the level of detail in the content is amazing, with nearly every item that could be found in an inn or tavern listed in tables and descriptions – including hit points, hardness, and break DCs where appropriate. Bedding, lamps and braziers, furnishings, and even food stuffs are all described here, and there are some nifty illustrations scattered about of the items being discussed. As for magical items, The Red Dragon Inn offers more than a score of new enchanted devices and accoutrements, from tumbling dice (think loaded dice but harder to notice) to a phantom footman. The designers also introduce a rules variant for crafting – Structural and Aesthetic Qualities – which can add features, as well as change the materials cost, and crafting DCs of items.
The fifth and sixth chapters of The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns concentrates on two of the more popular forms of entertainment in those establishments: Drinking and Gambling. Chapter 5 takes an in-depth look at Drinks and Drinking, and gives listings for all kinds of beer, wines, and spirits that might be found in a fantasy setting. Some of the alcoholic beverages listed have some rather cool effects, such as Gnomish Inspirational Ale granting alchemical bonuses to Intelligence depending on how inebriated the hero becomes. The designers also include a handy conversion chart for converting barrels, kegs, jugs, mugs, flagons, bottles, and shots from one to another. (FYI, there are 3600 shots in a barrel). There are also Rules Variants for handling Intoxication, how the new Intoxication rules effect Drunken Class Archetypes, and for Poisons and Poisoning one’s enemies in a tavern setting. Chapter 6 takes a look at Gambling, including tips on handling gambling games, how skill use can effect gambling outcomes, and a sample gambling encounter for a GM to use.
The seventh through the tenth chapters offer new player-character options, starting with Feats and Traits in Chapter 7. Some of these feats and talents are aimed at providing support for the new class discussed in Chapter 8: The Artisan, although any class or archetype can choose them. These include Craft Wondrous Food and Drink, Improved Master Craftsman, and Potent Brewer. For medically inclined characters, the feats of Surgeon, Improved Surgeon, Herbalist, and Expert Caregiver might be interesting choices if no Clerics are on hand to fix injuries and illnesses. Traits here are for characters that want to excel at drinking or gambling, and include examples such as Hollow Leg and Honest Face. The aforementioned Artisan class is an interesting blend of crafter and adventurer, with an interesting mix of abilities to trade and negotiate with the common folk, remain unnoticed in a fight, and to craft wondrous items and gear. If anyone ever wanted to play a character like Durnik from The Belgariad Series, or Gendry from Game of Thrones, this new class is the one to pick. There are new rules for Brewing, Baking, and Cooking in Chapter 9, including rules to craft magical versions with interesting effects. And what inebriated Wizard wouldn’t love to have spells like Phantasmal Intoxication, Amplify Potency, or Power Word – Intoxicate in his repertoire? Chapter 10 has some new Spells which might be very interesting to add to a campaign.
The final three chapters are designed to aid and offer advice for GMs who want to more fully develop the role of inns and taverns in their campaign. Chapter 11 introduces five new NPC classes - Craftsman, Laborer, Politician, Service, and Trader – which serve as fellow patrons or as workers at inns and taverns a hero might visit. There are also examples of these NPCs, and each class is fully developed from Level 1 to Level 20. The designers offer ideas on how to create Gambling Encounters in Chapter 12, and have five examples to use or to modify for an adventure. And at last, in Chapter 13, we have three Sample Taverns to serve as examples or to be used in a campaign. These include The Draft House, The Broken Tankard, and yes… The Red Dragon Inn! All these areas are fully detailed with maps and local lore, room descriptions, NPCs, and even adventure hooks, and more.
Overall Score: 4.0 out of 5.0
Conclusions
When one looks at a product overall, I have to say that The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is one heck of a good read, and offers some great new content for Pathfinder and d20/3.5 gamers. Actually, I could recommend this book freely to anyone who DMs/GMs a FRPG, because there is so many great ideas in here for making inns and taverns a more important aspect of one’s heroic fantasy campaign. The writing is enjoyable to read, the illustrations are nifty, and the content offers a new view on something ubiquitous to any FRPG.
If one considers how much new material is packed into this one book, The Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns is well worth taking a look at, and might just change how your campaign runs altogether!
Editorial Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary playtest copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.75
- - Design: 3.5 (Wonderful writing; great layout; but no PDF bookmarks)
- - Illustrations: 4.0 (Great artwork and illustrations; a bit of a dull cover; wish there were more!)
- Content: 4.25
- - Crunch: 4.0 (Plentiful; awesome rules variations; fantastic new classes)
- - Fluff: 4.5 (Massive amounts; great story writing; tons of character and GM friendly fluff content)
- Value: 4.0 (A very reasonable price for a book that can so enhance any PF campaign!)
