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Pathfinder Tavern (aka Taverns & Tankards)

mystictiger

mystictiger

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Aug 5, 2014
I've recently started treading Pathfinder books, and some of them provide really interesting ideas for how to deal with those things you do between adventures - invest in a business, start a secret society, found a kingdom (?!). How plausible / interesting would be to make those the focus of the adventure?

Two versions immediately spring to mind:

1) The PCs are actual-heroes. Honest-to-goodness adventurers, but their exploits happen off-screen.

2) The PCs amount to people who'd normally be NPCs in any other setting; "expert" or "aristocrat" and so on.

Is this at all interesting? What would you want to do?
 
Sounds interesting. How would we know how much experience and money do these people has to work on between adventures? Also, the races and classes - and levels and spells - really make it different, even between adventures...

One thing is for sure, most of my characters would be focusing on non-magical item crafting, some would be using Alchemy, or even magic, but still using their skills to create items of art, or for use... or both.

Next to that, it really depends on the adventuring company or the area, even the situations, for that makes one start a society / businness / kingdom...
 
You have my attention. These are heroes with dayjobs it sounds like. I could see myself playing into a warrior/expert, ex-guard quartermaster. Innkeep/bouncer for the wife's tavern. Ok, my tavern, but we all know the wife as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.
 
Yes please I have discovered something about certain casters and magic items that makes me really want to be a magic shop owner.
 
The idea I have in mind is to take a traditionally adventure-some setting / area like, say the Moonsea in Forgotten Realms. Then take a city (like Melvaunt), and then create factions and groups and so on (but then I'm a big fan of world-building). For example, the party may decide to let one faction set up shop in their tavern, and offer quests, and then have to deal with the consequences of this. Or one of the merchant guilds may decide to try and ... acquire the tavern (resulting in mafia-type intimidation).

There would be 'adventures', but not in the grand D&D tradition, and we'd also use the Pathfinder rules for organisations (meaning that if you want to craft something, you have to acquire gold, magic, goods, and so on).

Given the rough-and-tumble frontier nature of the Moonsea, I can easily imagine some odd combination of tavern-magic-shop-temple. I imagine it to be rather like the people who made their fortunes selling gold-panning equipment to prospectors during the California gold-rush.

Now. I'll have to do a little more planning. But the insight / suggestions offered above have been really helpful!

My biggest worry, I have to admit, is that we spend ages creating a Pathfinder character, but a Pathfinder character is kind of optimised for combat. And there'd be very little of it. My second biggest concern is that we'd be turning D&D into a SimCity-style board-game
 
So, for this premise, the group would own one large "business" but each char be in control of different aspects of it? For example, we have one in charge of a magic shop, another mundane crafter, a bouncer at a tavern, and likely other things, but the tavern and magic shop and all else would all be linked as one large business/community/etc?

I'm not worried about the sim-city aspect. As for character classes, I do think those with high skill points or special abilities will be more common. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Having to balance marketable skills against combat ability in case of bandits/takeover attempts is an interesting dilemma.
 
If we do this, then maybe a group of adventurers - or more like, adventurers knowing each other, not necessarily from the same long quest, but worked together - got a deed for a place, maybe one of them is a noble or knight... or priest... And also, they can not exchange the pricey prize... So, they choose to make something out of it... It is possible to have friends still adventuring, spouses, maybe even wounded or aged characters looking for retire...

And of course maybe there are even children in the picture... Non-adventuring friends...

I would not fear that Pathfinder is combat oriented. Because a lot of things are usable out of it. And it is easy to say that instead of going for the round by round fights, we can resolve it with a post or two, considering the participating characters fighting provess... (Because, really, what can a group of thugs do against a couple of middle level adventurers? While meeting a house-destroying dragon can cause us to win, but still loose, needing some rebuilding, maybe healing.) And the DM can decide what we get out of the encounter. (A group of goblins in the cellar? Possibly some diseased rugs and copper pieces with a couple of interesting bone jewelry. A big dragon? If we win, then maybe dragon skin and some other components, and possibly needing to send a group to look for the dragon's hoard or masters...)

As it becoming sim-city.. well, we would not be owning the whole city. Maybe a village, but definitely not a whole town - unless someone becomes Major or the "Evil Overlord".
 
This has taken slightly longer than expected to prepare for:

1) I was trying to find a setting I liked rather than make one up entirely. In the event I settled for Melvaunt. But having actually looked at the demographics and so on of the city, it feels really very odd. So I spent even more time thinking about the local climate, trade patterns, and so on. Yes, I'm a nerd. The city is going to end up being dominated by three prominent families, each with a slightly different mercantile focus. Yes, my view on his may also be determined by Crusader Kings 2.

2) I've been thinking more about the Downtime rules. I think I now have an understanding of them, more or less. Crafting of any kind will require appropriate resources.

3) I've been thinking about how I want to introduce people to the inn. The ideas I have are:
a) You jointly inherit it
b) You acquire it through combat / adventuring.
Regardless, I'm not sure - yet - of a suitably strong hook for characters. I guess that'll largely depend on what characters / types end up being relevant.

4) I've been looking over the 'general' rules, trying to work out what's acceptable. Given the demographics of Melvaunt, I'd like to keep it to the "Usual suspects"
 
So I am clear we have to spend these influences to craft thing? Or can what the characters naturally do work?
 
lilithsboy said:
So I am clear we have to spend these influences to craft thing? Or can what the characters naturally do work?
Click to expand...

My intention would be that "general crafting" (to make money) would be done to create "Gold" or "Goods". Specific crafting to make something special (for example, tables, or glassware, or a talking magical fountain) would be done using the ordinary rules.
 
So would we be in the actual city, or would that just be the closest city? Basically, are you still thinking a California-type settlement or proper civilization?
 
Gonna also declare my interest in this. And is Crafting the only way for us making money?
 
Here's the setup-thread.

I had in mind the following ways to make money:

1) Direct crafting and selling stuff (although this will probably produce Money in the Pathfinder sense rather than GP)
2) Sponsoring adventurers. They go and do the epic quests
3) Commerce / smuggling / crime. For example, selling drink.
4) ??? - I'm easy to convince. If you can think of an interesting way to make money I can probably be convinced.

This is, after all, a D&D game rather than a GURPS game - I don't want the economic aspect to be overly realistic / tedious.
 
What about owning an establsihment that does...well, the illegal. sounds like there's a prohibition
 
Once we have a clearer idea of who wants to take part, we can work out exactly what kind of establishment it will be. To my way of thinking, Melvaunt is almost cyberpunk in nature - that is, money and connections count for way more than mere law. I want to facilitate a fun story that we tell together rather than dictate anything.

If you can convince both me and the other players that you want to be a... I don't know... front for the liberation of half-gnomes, then so be it. I'll work around that!
 
My preference is that you're all in one thing together. Simply because I want this to be as much about interaction as it is about business-management and so on.
 
Makes sense. Maybe we should have you set the initial concept for the business so we have something coherent? Cause I have a few concepts, not sure which one to go with.
 
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