D&D General What does your D&D Tavern serve?

They all have booze, with the type and quality depending upon loction and clients. Some serves food, and some have beds for rent. As in the real world, the only thing you need to have to call yourself a tavern is booze. Everything else is an add on...
 

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Food and drink of course, but I try to keep it simple so in a normal tavern you do not get outlandish foods but stews or corn soup, weak beer more to purify water than to get a buzz off, things that commoners would eat (unless there is a holiday going on). It also depends on the racial makeup of the area and the customers.

Room depends on the tavern. Small out of the way ones do not let people stay inside though most let you sleep in the common room after closing. Only the really big ones or the ones on major roads have rooms they rent out.
 
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Taverns are better for finding out local information as the locals may come in at the end of the day and have a drink and maybe some food. Inns may serve food for those staying or in small towns it could be both a place to stay and the only tavern in town. I tend to have a couple options for the players to choose from. There may be one catering to locals and another for merchant wagons and adventurers.

Most smaller taverns and inns that serve food have a basic special which is mostly stew and some bread. The adventurers can generally get some food to go for the next day like some sort of meat pocket or tart. I have had grand inns with many options and abundant food like a Vegas buffet and inns that are little more than hovels where the beer is little more than water and the food has maggots and mold.

The players tend to use the inn/tavern as a meeting place and information place. They can meet new NPCs and find job postings as well. Some are 5 minute stops along the road, while others are home bases where the PCs stay for weeks.
 

One of the first taverns the party visited (in a barony on a typical medievalish world) served a tasty dish called "the Baron's Bass". When the characters found themselves in a tavern in Sigil several months later, it also served the identical dish (with the same name). Will they run into "the Baron's Bass" on even more worlds? Who knows!
 


In my magitech earthmote homebrew, a lot of the cuisine develops as a result of thinking about the relatively limited open space. Goat, fowl, and seafood are more common the pig and beef. Wine and liquor more popular (and cheaper) than beer. For the spices, I try to add a touch of the strange combined with the medieval predilection for combing sweet and savory. So those scallops might come served with a sweet lavender sauce, or the goat in a stew flavored with berries.
 

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