"You meet a mysterious stranger in a tavern." Origins?

[Paul Farquhar]

I imagine that in the 1970s

Long before the 1970s!

Although the term "tavern" traces back to Roman times, I wouldn't be surprised if the basic concept existed in Ireland for quite a while before that.

You are aware that “Roman times” was before the 7th century?

My understanding is that in 1st century Rome, most food and drink vendors served to the streets, so if you wanted a more private meeting the bath house would be the place to go.

Societies have always had places were people meet up, as long as people have lived in cities at least. There is no causal link from the Canterbury Tales to Tolkien to D&D. People meet in inns in those stories because that’s what they do in real life.

Maybe it’s starting to seem odd now, with people doing a lot of their “meeting up” in virtual space, but humans are social creatures and have always spent a lot of time in communal spaces - which logically serve food and drink so people don’t have to go home.

 

[Dioltach]

Long before the 1970s!

I was referring to the emergence of the trope in D&D. As in, it wasn't drawing on historical or literary sources, but on actual contemporary practices.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I was referring to the emergence of the trope in D&D. As in, it wasn't drawing on historical or literary sources, but on actual contemporary practices.

Is "meeting in a tavern" actually traceable to the Gygaxian game, or did it just emerge spontaneously in many home games (where people, as in my case, were meeting in a pub to play D&D)?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think Westerns did the heavy lifting in establishing taverns in sci-fi and fantasy as the place where adventurous travelers meet in town, and the first place they go when they get to a town. I'm not saying more medieval fantasy oriented media, whether Tolkien or Canterbury Tales, or something else yet unmentioned didn't play a vital role in bringing this trope into medieval fantasy, nor do I discount the fact that in some actual historical times and places such establishments were the natural places travelers went to first, where people were assembled for irregular jobs, and/or the places actual adventurous types crossed paths. I'm just saying that the truly astronomical amount of cowboy-centric media produced in the mid-twentieth century in which some sort of saloon is almost always the key location in town must have hardwired into people's brains that that's where folks meet in settings of daring adventure. It's the main reason every D&D player knew the moment there were villages in their games that those villages must have a singular place for strangers to drink and sleep (two services generally not provided by the same establishments in the actual middle ages, but almost always combined in cowboy media and often combined in actual Old West reality).

 

[cmdr23]

A lot of replies concern some historical version of a pub, which is interesting, but I think it's clear that the origin of the trope "you meet a mysterious stranger at an inn" seen in RPGs today is a combination the moment in Lord of the Rings (which itself has historically-informed precedents via Tolkien) combined with the Pioneer/Western subtext of much of Dungeons and Dragons. Two extremely influential examples of historical fantasy media which inform popular understanding of history, the trope is (neo) medievalist rather than medieval in its referent here.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm just saying that the truly astronomical amount of cowboy-centric media produced in the mid-twentieth century in which some sort of saloon is almost always the key location in town must

Again, a reflection of reality, not something that was imagined in fiction then copied.

Aside from leisure, before modern job interviews, the pub was where most people would go to find a job.

 

[cmdr23]

While the trope as imagined in fiction may be some reflection of reality somewhere down the line, we are discussing the origin of OP's trope as stated:

"You meet a mysterious stranger in a tavern."​

Whether pubs existed and they had a historical social function different from what we might expect now (though I broadly agree) is neither here nor there. We "do" this trope in RPGs broadly because of an intermedial understanding of signs and symbols dating back to lord of the rings and a milieu of western/cowboy media tropes. Those are the cultural referents driving this common narrative move in the hobby - their longer historical context (which may or may not be either accurate or relevant) is not a big factor in this case - because most people have no idea what it is/whether it exists/whether it is "true" etc.

I get that you may want to interpret "origin" as "the original time this happened long ago which has lasted millennia" but human memory (broadly speaking) doesn't work in this way - we are affected by recent and prominent historical imaginings rather than driven by accurate historical events and moments, which for the most part we do not understand at all because of a lack of evidence, living memory, etc. Of course if you're a historian working on the pre-modern this doesn't apply, but those people are not representative of the broader human understanding and processing of historically-related tropes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

While the trope as imagined in fiction may be some reflection of reality somewhere down the line, we are discussing the origin of OP's trope as stated:

Something taken from reality does not have a singular origin. It's like asking "what is the origin of the trope of a character eating lunch?" Doing something people do normally isn't a trope at all. If you want some characters to meet in your work of fiction, the chances are you are going to have it happen in the place that exists specifically for meeting people: an inn, tavern, coffee shop, forum, bath house, village well, wine bar etc etc etc. You are not using it because you saw it in some other author's work, you are using it because that's what people do.

Oh, and if this is the first time those characters have met, they will be strangers. And if the audience doesn't know anything about a character, they are mysterious.

 

[cmdr23]

Something taken from reality does not have a singular origin. It's like asking "what is the origin of the trope of a character eating lunch?" Doing something people do normally isn't a trope at all. If you want some characters to meet in your work of fiction, the chances are you are going to have it happen in the place that exists specifically for meeting people an inn, tavern, coffee shop, forum, bath house, village well, wine bar etc etc etc. You are not using it because you saw it in some other author's work, you are using it because that's what people do.

Oh, and if this is the first time those characters have met, they will be strangers. And if they don't know anything about each other, they are mysterious.

Things certainly do happen at times, in places. There's more to it than that in our postmodern world, saturated in mass media and reconstructed historical/fantasy referants. If you don't agree or don't want to engage with that line of thought, that's ok.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Things certainly do happen at times, in places. There's more to it than that in our postmodern world, saturated in mass media and reconstructed historical/fantasy referants. If you don't agree or don't want to engage with that line of thought, that's ok.

So, what’s the origin of the trope “character eats food”?

It’s perfectly reasonable to engage by pointing out an idea as clearly and demonstrably wrong, despite all the falsehoods that are propagated by modern media.