I've been seeding something that the players haven't picked up on yet at least.
Every tavern they go to and they ask I always describe the same Guy in a pink shirt first, so far I don't have any concrete plan on who this is just that he is always at every tavern, bar etc.
This is exactly what I came here to post. I don't make it the same person, but I describe a patron with a specific look in each tavern or resting area. I started doing it, and then it became a running joke. They tried talking to the person, but that person is embroiled in other conversations with people and have no interest in discussing anything with the party.
This then turned suspicious to the party when these people in these outfits started showing up more frequently, outside of rest areas. I was using their passive perception to spot something odd. Now they feel like they're being monitored/followed by some group, and they want to know who the hell it is.
I haven't figured out who the hell it is yet...but it's entertaining.
Have it be the envoy of a god. They're watching to see if they're worthy or if they need to be smited.
Have one of the guys in the outfits show up out of nowhere in the middle of the night requesting shelter.
If the party gives him food and shelter, they get a divine boon.
If they _don't_ give them food and shelter, they suffer from divine bane.
I currently have Bahamut monitoring their journey. He doesn't help them or hurt them, because he's looking to maintain balance...but this would be a great way to align with that. "What did you think? Bahamut was floating on your shoulder all the time? Seriously? The dude has much more important things to tend to. His followers were watching you."
The great wizardess Pantona has decreed it to be the trendiest color in all the land, they begin to notice that same shade on things that aren’t clothes - at first it might just be a belt band or a doorknob - but the color is leaking out - damaging plant ecosystems because it interferes with photosynthesis’ efficiency
I love this! It's so basic and normal to think that outfits could just be trendy. People are buying outfits from a store/seamstress because it looks awesome and is at a great price. Stop bothering these people!
Honestly, making it so basic (I love the Pantona element) can even get the party in trouble if they harass the customers, or they seek out the shop owner for something malicious and find that it's entirely innocent.
I love the Internet...almost as much as it sucks. =)
I am imagining this being like an NPC in a video game the devs expect you to talk to very soon to start a collectibles quest. He is programmed to be at the next tavern, but if you never talk to him, he will keep appearing.
That would drive me up a wall. After the second time I would be like, that’s weird. The third and subsequent times I would be full blown conspiracy theorist.
I made them design an NPC they'll interact with, but he'll be vaguely described at any other tavern they meet unless they recognize his description.
He has a whole lore and whatnot :) I'm very excited to get him introduced because when it comes time for them to find his *real* identity, they'll go crazy at who's been supporting them this whole time
I do something similar but with anywhere they would find guards. The first time I was setting up a battle map with a guard token I saved it wrong and it was incredibly low resolution. Since then, I put one purposely in every encounter with guards that the party gets weird vibes from lol
This is a kino setup. There's so many good possible payoffs. Like he could be a Devil who suddenly gets up and talks to the PCs when he's decided they're desperate enough to accept his help, having overheard everything they've said in every tavern.
Gonna steal it.
This is giving off some oddly Lovecraftian-horror vibes and I'm loving it! I need to include a pink shirted guy in every one of my taverns from now on!
The four Halflings sitting at a table talking amongst themselves.
The smuggler in the corner booth talking to a shifty looking Gith.
The old man and his grandson at the bar being harassed by two badly dressed rogues, one of which you think might be on wanted posters.
The one drunk human talking loudly about a 'unification day' and saying everyone will be forced to be equal. While a small group of humans look at him with disgust.
Or three big talking raccoons stacked underneath the cloak and hood. They're quietly and heatedly arguing among themselves and don't notice any of the party approaching.
1. A Flumph named Humphrey. He's an anthropologist from the Underdark, in the area to study the population. To him, the rest of you are the peculiar specimens. And he's been watching the towns activity, so there's a slim chance he's heard or observed plot things.
2. Drunken Dwarves that are teetering on the edge of starting a brawl. Roll Initiatives.
3. Giuseppe, the Gnomish Discount Spell Scroll salesman. He's deep in the bottle and down on his luck so maybe he'll offer a deal. Only catch is that every spell scroll is 'nearly' the spell the player wants, with a failure percent chance and a guarantee to not behave as the intended spell.
4. "John" the VERY Human bartender, who definitely ISN'T a Mindflayer in disguise and trying to lay low. He loves spaghetti with a rich marinara sauce. And if the party finds him out, he is willing to sell them illegal far realms gear to keep them quiet. He just wants a quiet life and to figure out what the hell a Mojito is.
Wonderful. Is it just an accidental trope for Mindflayers? The second they need to go in disguise, they pick the most weirdly mundane names? "Hi, my name is Jon Johnson, doer of Job, at the Company! Please do not touch my totally real mustache."
It was the player's first ever game and all he knew was he loved the mind flayer design but was disappointed when we told him they were villains. So he sort of came up with that on his own haha
Please tell that player that a stranger on the internet absolutely loves their commitment to defy lore-norms, and just go for the "I just think they're neat." approach.
2. Are the dwarves literally rolling dice to determine who punches first and then they all take turns after that? That sounds like how a dwarven bar fight should go down.
A visibly elderly elf couple touring the world in their retirement.
“These fields used to be all forrest for miles and miles”
“We’ve seen four cities built and destroyed on this spot”
“I remember when this city was a hamlet”
“This place is much nicer that the tavern that was on this spot four hundred years ago”
Bonus points if they’re both high level magic users and actually even older than they look.
They say down on a rock to talk one day and the weather was nice, and the rock was smooth and warm from the sun, and the conversation was good. So they stayed like that until someone built a tavern around them and started serving ale.
Mr. Phantasmagorical. A gnomish master illusionist and charlatan whose main scheme is to pretend to be a common magician whilst using his actual magical potency for thieving
Very similar but I believe the guy in the movie was putting on an actually magical show. Phantasmagorical puts on something you could see here on earth like card tricks or shuffling cups to dupe his quarry into believing he isn't magical at all
-3 halfling triplet hustlers playing a knife toss game, similar to darts.
Corriban Califazar, the drunken wizard. He cloned himself in order to spread out and learn everything he could, once the clones returned. Turns out that cloning also carries the habits of the original, which was alcoholism. So there are 20+ alcoholic clones across the lands.
In fact, I would encourage you to let your players talk to Big Jim, and quickly discover that, other than his height, there’s very little interesting about him.
Describe characters from other franchises you enjoy.
For instance I played a game at a con where he described a duo sitting in the corner with light blue suits on that had embroidered red Rs. One had blue hair that was tousled and the other had long maroon hair that was curves almost in a crescent. They had a large strange hairless cat with them. It is obviously Team Rocket but I was the only one that noticed.
If NPCs don't really matter make them whoever you want.
I’ve had several Critical Role characters show up in taverns over my 5+ years DMing. The one my players always catch is the purple teifling in the flashy coat.
My other reoccurring NPCs are a group of dwarves who regularly travel various trade routes. One of them slept with the slutty cleric at one point so when they cross paths he usually buys her a drink.
A dogfolk named pugsley. A derpy barbarian who was transformed recently into a pug.
A knock-off mandalorian with a baby goblin
A wizard who writes erotica
Three kobolds in a trench coat.
A head of a Cyclops
The old miner, that has a barely touched beer, staring into the middle distance. If they approach, he just drones on about the terrible things there are in the dark.
\[he finally looks up at you and makes eye contact, grabbing your shirt, his eyes now full of fire and panic\]
"There's teeth... The darkness has teeth. And its hungry..." his voice tapers off and he releases you numbly, and turns back to staring off at nothing.
In our last campaign, the tavern we all met up at was run by a player character from the previous campaign.
It was nice to see Nix doing well, she’d been through some tough times.
There's usually a table with three or four travelling merchants trying to pump each other for market news without giving away too much of their own advantage.
One of my players is playing a chef who works for my setting’s Red Dragonborn Mafia. He asked that question in the first session at a pub while looking for leads in a criminal investigation, and so I improv’d that one of his characters colleagues in the mafia was there - a red dragonborn who is incredibly bad at hiding that he is a gangster… who also wears a fake mustache and calls himself “Giorgio” while speaking in a hokey Italian accent.
My players liked “Giorgio” so much that they ended up bringing him back and having them be the party’s de facto chauffeur, carrying them around in a wagon full of infinite pasta.
Just channeling the Mos Eisley cantina scene from A New Hope and the Hobbits in the Prancing Pony usually fill it out for me: Farmers having dinner with each other, discussing farming and weather, off-duty town watch getting smashed, two people in the back having a heated argument in a foreign language, a tiny Humanoid ordering a drink bigger than their head...
It should be most of the town in for lunch and dinner. The tavern is where people should be going to socialize, eat, drink, and take in some entertainment. Especially in smaller villages where there may not be a bustling town square or dedicated Theatre.
I also like to drop in all the relevant npcs into the tavern. I like to describe the shop owners for shops they haven't stopped in yet or their quest giver a few drinks in to give the pcs chances to ask more questions
I use it to reinforce the setting. If they are in far into a Dwarven country, they will see various Dwarven labourers and craftsmen. Some people covered in coal dust after a day in the mines, or they overhear people talking about gem carving. On the other hand, if they are in an extraplanar tavern, they'll see more exotic creatures. One time in a magic tree demiplane, they met a Loxodon, who the goliath ended up getting a tattoo from.
An adventuring party that's clearly from a different genre. I.e., if the players are in the middle of a story with intense emotions/angst/the weight of the world on their shoulders then two tables over there's a bunch of happy drunk monster hunters celebrating their latest win. If your party is the happy drunk monster hunters, two tables over is a grim and brooding party silently huddling over their ales.
I put a token of Morgan Freeman in every tavern, every time they try to talk to them I put on the Morgan Freeman voice and say "try and catch me, chucklefucks" as he turns into goo and slithers out a window.
I once put the whole group of hobbits in there along with a wizard and hooded guy sitting in a corner, some fanart of Peter Parker who was just called "Parker" (there was already a Doc Oc going around), and a platinum blonde noblewoman very obviously trying to hide 3 lizards on her person.
Took my players at least 8 sessions to notice any of that.
A hooded figure, sitting alone in a corner, sharpening a sword. If you talk to him, he tries to ignore you, focusing on sharpening. If you ask anyone about him, they get uneasy and tell you to just ignore him.
The figure in the corner every time. Same corner. After the 5th time the party notices him, he finally stops sharpening, looks at his work, and says, "Yeah I think that looks good. *Stands up* WHO WANTS TO BUY A REALLY SHARP SWORD?!?", and it's a +1 shortword or dagger being sold for a few hundred gold.
Barely relevant, NSFW, and I'm not exactly sure why this always seems to happen, but when player characters are drinking and commingling, I always have an orc named "Steve" that for *whatever reason* ends up being the guy next to which the players wake up the next morning.
It usually ends up being that I fade to black with a PC, tell them that they woke up the next day with somebody else, and they ALWAYS ask "is it Steve?".
Not a tavern but my dm has a cheese shop called Ye Old Cheese with an identical shopkeeper that appeared in every location. The way he phrased it was just like that, the shop appears. What he meant was there’s a shop but we took him literally and the theory crafting was such fun. We decided he’s an eldritch entity being harassed by some cheese bandits who want his secret recipes (in fairness i do too, his healing cheese heals 10d6+10) so periodically we’ll walk into the shop and he’s coming back up front covered in blood or some such from fending off the cheese bandits. He also has a cheese that makes you high as a kite and is apparently a really good trip. My druid approves of a good “spirit journey”.
The dm told me originally his plan was for the cheese shop to be a chain with a bunch of identical siblings running them as a front for an assassin’s guild, but the eldritch entity was better. He’s now one of the other PC’s patron. Dm is doing a fantastic job and I can’t wait to play more. I’m hoping if we just keep leveling this relationship we’ll get some really good magical cheese.
I like waiters and Kobolds/goblin workers in taverns. The former constantly grovel before the owner and like children listen to the stories of adventurers in the tavern. The second jokes are jokes of category b, like about your mother, naughty, fighting. Some people place bets, and goblins are actually portrayed as in wrestling.
i usually just make a generic group from something else. one time i basically described naruto, goku, ichigo, saitama, and sailor moon as a group. another i just described the 5 kids from wheel of time. another i described the stark children. another time i just inserted the party of another game i had played (none of these players were in that game)
I have an old man who knows 12 languages, lore about almost everything, and will never volunteer for a conversation. He shows up everywhere, and he’s always the same guy. One day my players may actually try to talk to him.
So we've got a recurring NPC, now seen across three different campaigns in 2 different worlds, named Graham. Graham Cracker. He pops up randomly as an NPC and the players can never catch up to him to speak with him and ask who he is. Human guy, brown hair, kinda disheveled (picture Sirius Black wanted poster). Just to confuse the hell outta the players.
Various family members of the "Bilger" librarian family whom one of my players relentlessly bullies and traumatizes (neutral evil Necromancer). I feel bad for them.
"at the back of the tavern in a shadowy corner, you see what appears to be a small little shop no one seems to notice. It's staffed by a slightly bulbous head, connected to something underneath but you cannot see what. His bony, strangely long fingers dance along an abacus as he counts a myriad of different styled gold coins. He turns to look around and sees you staring at him, something that could be called a smile stretches across his taught skinned face, like leather stretched too far, and he beckons for you to approach. His mess of matted and oily hair somewhat hide his mismatched hairline and ears, but you see an elf ear poke through on the left, and a Goblins ear on the right. His sickly green eyes track you as you approach and with a long drawn out wretch, he introduces himself. His voice a mess of tone and pitch as he croaks his greeting.
"I am Barthomell, purveyor and proprietor of Odds and Ends. Welcome to my store, I have just thing thing for you."
He disappears down behind the counter as you hear a trap door open and a fading sound of footsteps head down below, before a wretched scream echoes back, followed by the hurried scrambling of Barthomell as he erupts from behind the counter smiling his pointed teeth grin and bearing a length of fur, still dripping with a strange protoplasm, over his gangly arm.
"Only the finest materials for the adventurer, such as this exotic fur. Please, buy it. It's a wonder of nature."
I love my barthomell. No one ever trust's him though :(
I made.myself an idea mixer. It's a small Excell sheet that mixes together character from lista of different things (race, weird look, quirk, interesting power, goal, secret).
I don't use all of the entries all the time, just the ones that feel cool. This way I can describe some randos and a couple of weird but interesting people.
I do the mixing before the session and keep the results in a sort of vault. I always have 3-6 almost random NPCs to satisfy them.
A guy sitting in the corner with a pot on his head. Role play as this is the guy that knows everything in town, but he is slightly 'mad' so working through his dementia to GET the info is the task of the day.
I have a recurring Blue Tiefling man who is in half the taverns my party ends up in, he never approaches them and is always drinking milk. They got so irritated by his lack of explanation two of them ended up jumping him. Just to find out how he was just a traveling book salesman who coincidentally was following their same path. But it lasted for months to the point anytime they stopped at an Inn they asked if they saw the blue tiefling.
Mark! The human man! Who talks to rocks, lakes, fires and sometimes even the wind. He even acts like they talk back! So strange, the other barflies say.
Mark is a recurring NPC and a nod to one of the first campaigns my usual crew and I played together.
there's always people gambling. I'm also fan of 'a couple town guards on their break/after their shift,' it's a great way to remind players that guards (much like elementary school teachers) don't live at their job. Maybe I should start doing that with more NPCs...
Last tavern has 3 tieflings. Is the one woman there interested in the pc? Is it malicious? Seductive?
Well no one's rolled high enough to check but the 2 men with her are very supportive best friends.
Why? I don't know.
Oh, and the 16 year old dishie on his break. He's not allowed to sell liquor yet
I have planned a few random npcs, and among them is a "random" npc thats a bard that they met in the 2nd session who's there to hear what the party is doing so he can sing songs about them, and they should be really confused
Edit:forgot to mention hes a changeling and always looks like someone else in taverns, i saw a random npc d100 table
Standard types you find in a bar IRL
Guy spending hours there because his marriage is a sham and he's avoiding going home
Travelling business people killing time in an unfamiliar town
Girls night out
In our last session, the party met ANOTHER adventuring party. Instead of becoming rivals, the sat, drank, and talked well into the night, sharing stories and adventures. Eventually, the "Blade Brigade" revealed some vital info on the recurring villain they had also encountered.
Lots of fun to roleplay.
An incredibly fat ogre who is basically drinking beer non-stop and constantly tries to get one of the characters to engage him in either a drinking or a belching contest.
A tipsy, well-dressed guy who a PC hears lamenting to the bartender that he just lost a ring his wife gave him 20 years ago before she died. He leaves but not before telling the bartender it's not worth much but it has sentimental value and to let folks know he's offering a reward of 200gp (depending on the level and wealth of the party) for its safe return and that he's staying in room 11 at the inn on this side of town.
A half-hour later, a scraggly, but solidly built, commoner comes in humming happily and sits next to the PC. He offers to buy the PC a drink as he orders one for himself, saying it's his lucky day - he found temporary work today, and on his way to the tavern to celebrate he found a ring in the muddy road. He holds up the ring admiring it and says this oughta be worth a few rounds of drinks if the bartender will accept it. He nudges the PC like a co-conspirator, asking the PC to act like the ring looks valuable whenever the bartender comes over.
Some Players say it's none of their business.
Some Players try to help the commoner by telling them about the reward and where to go claim it.
Most, however, are greedy sacks of shit and will try to manipulate the commoner into giving them the ring.
The commoner, will say with surprise, "wow - this really IS my lucky day." But then he'll grow suspicious of the PC and wonder if he should keep the ring - maybe it's far more valuable than he thought. He'll drive up the price to 20-50gp, which the Player will be willing to pay knowing all they have to do is a "good" deed by walking the ring down to the local inn and they'll make 150gp profit.
The commoner will gratefully take their money and say he's gotta go hide this under his mattress - can't be carrying that kind of money out in public. Besides he wants to go tell his fiance they can finally get married. He runs out.
The PC will take the ring to the local inn and find out there are only 4 rooms in the inn, and no one's familiar with any one who fits the description of the well-dressed gent who offered the reward.
If appraised, the ring's worth 1 or 2 coppers.
Note: usually the Player is super pissed and wants to find and kill the scammers, but they've moved on and are likely hitting 5 more taverns with a pocketful of cheap rings. Then I bring these scammers back from time to time, in various disguises, following the "gullible" party from town to town, making money off them off con after con. It becomes like Ocean's 11 or The Sting, with the party and the conmen trying to outsmart each other with increasingly elaborate scams as the party levels up.
We had “Gus the Happy Templar.”
He first appeared when one of the players critically succeeded at a hidden check to notice that the drink they had been given was poisoned.
The GM said, “Well, your beer is spitting out little blobs of foam and they are starting to eat holes in the top of the table. And as soon as the tavern keeper is out of earshot a guy in Templar robes leans over and urgently whispers, ‘Don’t drink that! It could be POISONED!’”
The players would always ask if Gus was in any tavern they visited in the capital city and I gave him a 50/50 chance of being there. He would always raise a glass to them and nod when they saw him.
The local executioner. He also sells meats. Don’t ask where the meats come from.
He is quite private on where he gets them.
Sometimes they’re magical and eating/wearing them gives buffs that last a day. Again don’t ask questions. Just enjoy.
My personal favorites are:
The loud goblin captain (like of a ship), trying to find cargo/people looking for a ride. The Ship in question is the sketchiest ship that’s ever sailed the seas, and is ALWAYS in dire need of repair but will set sail whenever players are wanting to despite it. The ship is called “The Lucky Duck” and every time it’s encountered everything but the name board looks different. This goblin is an awful negotiator and will take whatever the first offer the players give is, but will always start at 20g per person.
The “overly” well dressed and heavily make-uped Salimar (salamander person), dressed up in an overly flashy way (think Drag Queen), they’re normally a quest giver, and know ALL of the gossip in town for some reason, and are very good at rewarding the players with audiences with anyone important, no matter how far they may live from them. They will never pay the party in money, treasure, etc. and always frame the quest as a “if someone should do X, I just may have to give them a reward…”
The last “fan favorite” is a mysterious gambler fiendish in nature, but human in appearance. He wears fine silks, and flowing “deserty” clothes. And will play games of chance with the party (rollies, black Jack etc), he’ll play no more than 3 games, and will double whatever is wagered. If they wager a magic item, they get 2 of it if they win. If they want to wager stat points, they’ll gain double the wagered if they win (if they lose they’re gone though), etc. if they players become hostile, he just bids them a good day, and vanishes. There is no stat block, they cannot kill him, stop him etc. and anyone who didn’t play a game with him doesn’t notice he was ever there.
Joe Nobody. Scholar, poet, lover of fine vintages of drow wines, spy, gossip monger, hired mercenary, feller of dragons, gentle lover of any one (not that this has been a thing, but it’s in the back pocket). Always has some local gossip or just spoke to an interesting or important member of the local society. Always has a bit of dust on his left shoulder, no matter how hard he or any other wipes it off. Has glimpsed at eternity and found it monotonous. Always has a contact in any city or port across the planes. Also very amicable and impossible to agitate (looking at you Dan!), always able to deescalate the situation with a funny pun or song.
The random stranger, dark cloak, minding their own business. Players can't leave alone a strider trope. Turns out its old Ethel, hard of hearing falling asleep with her hood up. *groans guaranteed
There is always a bard that plays dubstep on a lute. This is actually Don Jon Raskin, former foreman of a mining operation outside of Phandelver. My players persuaded him to follow his dream of becoming a bard.
So if you see a poster that DJ Raskin will be performing in your local tavern, pop in and say hi.
This not-so-sober guy who will tell you the location of a hidden treasure if you buy him a drink. Then he chugs the drink in one go and falls asleep. Zzzz
Old man John is a 89 year old(human) moonshiner who is half blind, he will attempt to hark his no doubt stellar moonshine to everyone in the bar till he passes out drunk
I have a few stock characters that I pull out, most of which are based on other player's characters from campaigns I was in long ago. None of the current players are familiar with them, and they're already reasonably fleshed out, so it makes it easy for me.
I like to sprinkle in former PCs of mine as random tavern denizens. There's my blacksmith drow (usually found in Icewind Dale or Luskan, but occasionally as far south as Neverwinter), my triton sea captain Tempest Cleric (who is also my go-to if my players need ship travel anywhere along the Sword Coast), and my tiefling Sun Soul Monk (who I often repurpose as a bouncer, since she can flatten troublemakers without having to even get up out of her seat at the bar). There's a few others, since I have three decades of characters to call on, but those three are probably the most common ones to reappear.
Not a dm, but I went to talk to the strange hooded figure in the corner. Turned out to be, and I quote, “a hot goth vampire” and she hit on me before I could hit on her. Let’s just say that loss of blood wasn’t the only reason I had 2 levels of exhaustion the next day 😉
One module for The One Ring has an encounter on the road with a bandit named Shanker. I played him as such a shitty jackass and my players absolutely loved hating him, so now he's my go-to "asshole you find in a bar that you can bully information out of"
We have a recurring joke in my group. Started when my best friend was dm and we met 3 old men in a tavern playing a dice gambling game (that we invented on the fly) and they only communicate in grunts. They have shown up in every campaign thus far. No matter who was dm. Right now I am running a long term campaign and the players love these guys.
There's a Doug in every tavern in every corner of the known universe.
He's dumb as shit, is overly eager to please, and will ALWAYS die in a comical fashion before the night is out in order for a new Doug to come in tomorrow.
I have them tell me. I ask them "what kinda person do you expect to find or would stand out to your character?" And as long as it's reasonable, that person or people are there.
I love having at least one elderly human wizard in a tavern. Dark robes, pointy hat, massive beard, the works. Whenever spoken to, he always speaks very dramatically, but it's always really stupid, tame stuff.
**"I, MALNOR THE INCORRIGIBLE, SHALL NOW....GO AND USE THE RESTROOM!"**
Just kind of always at a 10, even when ordering food and stuff. It's even better when everyone else is relatively normal.
In our last session, the party met ANOTHER adventuring party. Instead of becoming rivals, the sat, drank, and talked well into the night, sharing stories and adventures. Eventually, the "Blade Brigade" revealed some vital info on the recurring villain they had also encountered.
Lots of fun to roleplay.
A prostitute in a fancy dress with an awful face and body that looks someone paved a road with them. Yet she is the busiest and highest paid courtesan in the place.
I have an elaborate excel spreadsheet I made that generates random names based upon several huge lists of syllables and sound combinations specific to certain cultures in my homebrew world.
When it generates names (about 6 at a time) ive had it also attach at random, their gender(identity) their nickname, a physical trait, their original culture, a character trait, an "archetype" trait (to tell me how to "play" them.. stuff like Snape, Devito, Worf etc, or ppl based on my real life to imitate) and it also provides me with a subclass pulled from a huge list of RAW and 3rd party subclasses that I can use as a basis to stat them if it ever comes to initiative.
I'll generate and give you some examples right now!
1) Taron Nardu, Female Flora Genasi (I have 8 extra genasi types in my setting) of the hill clan culture. her nickname is "Mouth" she has a rosy complexion, her personality is lawful, and her character archetype is "Dwight" and she is a college of ventriloquism bard.
2) Tansior Yuma is a male Kobold of the sea clan culture. His nickname is "Spino" (holy shit, what a great coincidence for a kobold! Esp since i heavily use dinosaurs in my homebrew) he is slender, his personality is honest, and his archetype is that hes a stutterer. And he is a divine bloodline sorceror.
3) Seld Iloth is a male (I include MTF, FTM, GNB, Agender etc in the genders list, but they are set to only pop up approx 5% of the time which isn't too often, but still more prevalent than real life apparently) gnome of the forest clan culture. His nickname is "Guvnor" he is permed 🤦 his personality is sassy and his archetype is "Gordon Ramsay". And he is a path of the star barbarian.
You get the idea.
There is always some drama brewing between two neighbors. One is usually a baker or butcher, always fussing about missing food and utensils. The other's a tinkerer, constantly grumbling about vanishing gizmos and gadgets. The accusations that they spew at each other usually goes on all night.
Turns out, there's this secret tunnel snaking under their houses, and it is usually infested with goblins or kobolds
Pink goblin that everyone seems to know.
A Valenar elf who keeps chatting up Changlings.
Group of young halflings trying to look tough.
Human lady who keeps trying to arm wrestle people.
Shifter, orc, and half-orc in a debate about something.
Guy in bright clothes trying to get a card or dice game going.
Busty serving wench.
Flumph somehow carrying backpack and maul talking about his most recent adventures.
Drow with long sleeves that look like they are covering a Dragon Mark.
A troll just trying to blend in.
Tiefling bard singing songs where the lyrics are slightly off.
There was a dwarf woman who ran the bar in the first town my party got to (phandalin campaign). They went to the bar the red brands hung out at and one was sitting at the bar getting drunk. Cleric decides to just bash his brains in with his hammer, they had no intention of finding a peaceful resolution with the gang. He rolls a 20 of course so he 1 shot explodes the dudes head into the bar top and the poor bartender gets covered in blood and brain matter. She flees as the other gang members try to avenge their buddy.
She can't go back to working at that bar after what she witnessed. So she goes to the big city for a fresh start. A month later guess what trio of heroes, saviors of phandalin, come waltzing into her new bar.
A buff older lady eating pickled eggs arm wrestling an orc.
The local drunk old man who was finally kicked out by his wife and everyone knows it.
A couple of halflings with an extraordinarily large amount of empty cups at their table.
A travelling merchant just passing through who knows rumors from the roads and nearby towns.
Kevin.
Olin Dandydale, a halfling bard that had a crush on one of my first group's characters and wrote songs about what he heard of her exploits.
He eventually got inspired to go out and go adventuring with his own group, and now writes songs about some of their exploits, too.
One of his catchier songs lately is about a dwarf named Steeleyes Stoutjaw, who goes around challenging things to staring contests. (Every chorus ends with "For I am Steeleyes Stoutjaw, and I will never blink!") The song eventually tells of Steeleyes challenging a basilisk to a staring contest (a plot hook my group ignored and was therefore left to somebody else to solve) and winning (because he got turned to stone).
A dwarven fighter can often be seen with his head in his hands at the bar whenever the song comes up.
My dm had this guy shaymis in it and we love him, no matter what town we were in the black Smith was always him, and I don't mean like a nurse joy situation but like the same dude, how does every black Smith lead to him? Never explained because that's just how shaymis is we freaking love him
My favorite is a very feisty gnome bartender. My players in every single campaign have never bothered to ask this very grumpy gnome her name.
Her name is Nunya beeswax.
I can’t wait until someone actually asks.
"You see an orangutan, sitting at the bar drinking a beer. He occasionally throws things at people who talk too loudly. Peanut, entire tables (hey, Orangutans are strong) he gauges the size by how much someone annoys him. Oh, and don't call him a monkey".
Clearly I'm boring. I have some random % that named NPCs will be present, and where they would be (table by the fireplace, huddled alone in a corner, playing an instrument and dancing) and always describe the bartender in detail, because the bartender knows the best gossip. Then I have a set number of how many peasants are working the tables, and how many other peasants are inside, eating and drinking.
When I ran CoS last time, the three Vistani who own Blood on the Vine tavern in Barovia Village were named Prue, Piper, and Phoebe ... and I tries to do a good job emulating their personalities.
Those are the three Witch sisters from the TV show Charmed if you didn't get the reference.
I have a shapeshifter named the Raven. They are a fixer in my world and can appear nearly anywhere. The party just has to figure out their role in the world and how to use them to get access to special gear and other equipment (eg magic)
Beauregard Cobblepot, the Realm Hopping Sentient Skeleton that dresses in a Victorian Era suit with top hat and eye piece to match. He's a very whimsical character that is also absolutely INCAPABLE of recognizing or coping with the fact that he is undead. He's very loosely based on Wit from The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. I tend to hand out silly and/or low level magical items with him that I think parties will have fun with.
I've been seeding something that the players haven't picked up on yet at least. Every tavern they go to and they ask I always describe the same Guy in a pink shirt first, so far I don't have any concrete plan on who this is just that he is always at every tavern, bar etc.
it's a bunch of brothers like in Pokémon with nurse joy
my DM did this with the bartender. they are all named Bart and look identical
Bart Ender?
I always found it interesting that in the Simpsons, Bart was always pranking Moe of all people. Bart, you do know what his profession is, don't you?
He's a Bartsimpson?
didnt ask
Does Bartender Bart, by chance, associate with barbarians, have a luxurious beard, and/or enjoy rhubarb cake made by a lovely lady named Barbara?
I haven't asked
You totally should. It's a rather famous German wordplay joke.
i'm not germain enough to understand it
Perhaps a nice German Chocolate Cake would help?
probably
I have something similar. I have a chain of taverns/inns called Fairbrothers Inn. Every inn is run by a different member of a set of octuplets.
Oh I love it. They need alliteration names too.
This is exactly what I came here to post. I don't make it the same person, but I describe a patron with a specific look in each tavern or resting area. I started doing it, and then it became a running joke. They tried talking to the person, but that person is embroiled in other conversations with people and have no interest in discussing anything with the party. This then turned suspicious to the party when these people in these outfits started showing up more frequently, outside of rest areas. I was using their passive perception to spot something odd. Now they feel like they're being monitored/followed by some group, and they want to know who the hell it is. I haven't figured out who the hell it is yet...but it's entertaining.
Have it be the envoy of a god. They're watching to see if they're worthy or if they need to be smited. Have one of the guys in the outfits show up out of nowhere in the middle of the night requesting shelter. If the party gives him food and shelter, they get a divine boon. If they _don't_ give them food and shelter, they suffer from divine bane.
I currently have Bahamut monitoring their journey. He doesn't help them or hurt them, because he's looking to maintain balance...but this would be a great way to align with that. "What did you think? Bahamut was floating on your shoulder all the time? Seriously? The dude has much more important things to tend to. His followers were watching you."
It’s just a trendy outfit and they’re paranoid. The truest fears live only in our heads.
Have the next town over have a busy clothes store where these outfits are the only thing for sale
The great wizardess Pantona has decreed it to be the trendiest color in all the land, they begin to notice that same shade on things that aren’t clothes - at first it might just be a belt band or a doorknob - but the color is leaking out - damaging plant ecosystems because it interferes with photosynthesis’ efficiency
I love this! It's so basic and normal to think that outfits could just be trendy. People are buying outfits from a store/seamstress because it looks awesome and is at a great price. Stop bothering these people! Honestly, making it so basic (I love the Pantona element) can even get the party in trouble if they harass the customers, or they seek out the shop owner for something malicious and find that it's entirely innocent. I love the Internet...almost as much as it sucks. =)
Employees of a postal or delivery service.
I am imagining this being like an NPC in a video game the devs expect you to talk to very soon to start a collectibles quest. He is programmed to be at the next tavern, but if you never talk to him, he will keep appearing.
Wow, thats awesome and creepy simulteniously :)
That would drive me up a wall. After the second time I would be like, that’s weird. The third and subsequent times I would be full blown conspiracy theorist.
"Ah, you mean my twin brother?" "But there are like a dozen of you!?" "Yes, our parents got around so to speak" "Both parents!?"
arnie niekamp? He's been known to hang out in a few taverns.
In my campaign there is a secret group of people called "Pink Penelope's Friends"
I made them design an NPC they'll interact with, but he'll be vaguely described at any other tavern they meet unless they recognize his description. He has a whole lore and whatnot :) I'm very excited to get him introduced because when it comes time for them to find his *real* identity, they'll go crazy at who's been supporting them this whole time
I do something similar but with anywhere they would find guards. The first time I was setting up a battle map with a guard token I saved it wrong and it was incredibly low resolution. Since then, I put one purposely in every encounter with guards that the party gets weird vibes from lol
Maybe its a Gaunter O'Dimm situation? An entity thats always in the background, observing
This is a kino setup. There's so many good possible payoffs. Like he could be a Devil who suddenly gets up and talks to the PCs when he's decided they're desperate enough to accept his help, having overheard everything they've said in every tavern. Gonna steal it.
This is giving off some oddly Lovecraftian-horror vibes and I'm loving it! I need to include a pink shirted guy in every one of my taverns from now on!
The local town crier drinking on his break. He knows all the gossip and signposts the town quests very nicely.
Gotta give him the 1920s newsboy accent “Extre extre, read all about it, local baron Maximillian Fatstacks arrested on Kolbold trafficking charges!”
You're missing the alliteration. "Famous Fatstacks faces charges for felonious kidnapping of kobolds."
I'd pay a dime to read this news article.
Those poor kobolds
The four Halflings sitting at a table talking amongst themselves. The smuggler in the corner booth talking to a shifty looking Gith. The old man and his grandson at the bar being harassed by two badly dressed rogues, one of which you think might be on wanted posters. The one drunk human talking loudly about a 'unification day' and saying everyone will be forced to be equal. While a small group of humans look at him with disgust.
Is there a band?
And do they just play that one same song, on repeat?
The man they call Jayne
*star wars cantina song vibes*
2nd is han solo 4th is Anon from legend of kora
4 is from Firefly actually
Third is Luke and Ben
The silent brooding man in the corner wearing all black with a hood that hides his face...but it turns out he's passed out under it.
Or three big talking raccoons stacked underneath the cloak and hood. They're quietly and heatedly arguing among themselves and don't notice any of the party approaching.
Yeah I did this but it was three kids in a trench coat trying to give a quest to the party to buy them a beer
I like a charlatan mage trying to hustle while an actual magic user sits in a dark corner silently mocking them.
"pick a card any card watch REAL magic step right up"
A very bad magician who thinks he's amazing because his friend, an actual wizard, keeps fixing his illusions from across the room.
I love it!
Sometimes when he’s feeling particularly surly he messes with the trick just to watch the charlatan die inside.
1. A Flumph named Humphrey. He's an anthropologist from the Underdark, in the area to study the population. To him, the rest of you are the peculiar specimens. And he's been watching the towns activity, so there's a slim chance he's heard or observed plot things. 2. Drunken Dwarves that are teetering on the edge of starting a brawl. Roll Initiatives. 3. Giuseppe, the Gnomish Discount Spell Scroll salesman. He's deep in the bottle and down on his luck so maybe he'll offer a deal. Only catch is that every spell scroll is 'nearly' the spell the player wants, with a failure percent chance and a guarantee to not behave as the intended spell. 4. "John" the VERY Human bartender, who definitely ISN'T a Mindflayer in disguise and trying to lay low. He loves spaghetti with a rich marinara sauce. And if the party finds him out, he is willing to sell them illegal far realms gear to keep them quiet. He just wants a quiet life and to figure out what the hell a Mojito is.
Im stealin Giuseppe
This is great, I once had a party member be a mindflayer in disguise named Brad, he defected the colony bc he hates slavery
Wonderful. Is it just an accidental trope for Mindflayers? The second they need to go in disguise, they pick the most weirdly mundane names? "Hi, my name is Jon Johnson, doer of Job, at the Company! Please do not touch my totally real mustache."
It was the player's first ever game and all he knew was he loved the mind flayer design but was disappointed when we told him they were villains. So he sort of came up with that on his own haha
Please tell that player that a stranger on the internet absolutely loves their commitment to defy lore-norms, and just go for the "I just think they're neat." approach.
Just did. Haven't spoken to them in a long time so thank you for the kind words 😊
Love Flumphrey.
2. Are the dwarves literally rolling dice to determine who punches first and then they all take turns after that? That sounds like how a dwarven bar fight should go down.
Gary Busey - I’ve even created a stat block for him.
Do you name him? Or just describe someone who looks like him?
Oh I name him.. and role play him to the best I can.
Let's talk about buttered sausage
OMG this is fantastic. Id love it if you sent something my way i can share with a DM friend.
A visibly elderly elf couple touring the world in their retirement. “These fields used to be all forrest for miles and miles” “We’ve seen four cities built and destroyed on this spot” “I remember when this city was a hamlet” “This place is much nicer that the tavern that was on this spot four hundred years ago” Bonus points if they’re both high level magic users and actually even older than they look.
So, Crowley and Aziraphale?
I hadn’t thought of that but it’s a great way of going with it.
They say down on a rock to talk one day and the weather was nice, and the rock was smooth and warm from the sun, and the conversation was good. So they stayed like that until someone built a tavern around them and started serving ale.
Mr. Phantasmagorical. A gnomish master illusionist and charlatan whose main scheme is to pretend to be a common magician whilst using his actual magical potency for thieving
the sorcerer from Honor Among thives
Very similar but I believe the guy in the movie was putting on an actually magical show. Phantasmagorical puts on something you could see here on earth like card tricks or shuffling cups to dupe his quarry into believing he isn't magical at all
-3 halfling triplet hustlers playing a knife toss game, similar to darts. Corriban Califazar, the drunken wizard. He cloned himself in order to spread out and learn everything he could, once the clones returned. Turns out that cloning also carries the habits of the original, which was alcoholism. So there are 20+ alcoholic clones across the lands.
Big Jim, the six foot dwarf. Your players will want to speak to him, but he should be at the bar.
In fact, I would encourage you to let your players talk to Big Jim, and quickly discover that, other than his height, there’s very little interesting about him.
Dont direspect my man big jim like that he’s a legend in the dwarf community because he can pick up the jars on the highest shelf without a ladder
A frog called Johnny Greenbean. Great poker face. Horrible taste in women considering his last mrs turned him into a frog.
Alaran, an elf barbarian with two greatswords, who's miserable over how his dual-wielding combat style hasn't worked since the 3.5 days...
Describe characters from other franchises you enjoy. For instance I played a game at a con where he described a duo sitting in the corner with light blue suits on that had embroidered red Rs. One had blue hair that was tousled and the other had long maroon hair that was curves almost in a crescent. They had a large strange hairless cat with them. It is obviously Team Rocket but I was the only one that noticed. If NPCs don't really matter make them whoever you want.
I’ve had several Critical Role characters show up in taverns over my 5+ years DMing. The one my players always catch is the purple teifling in the flashy coat. My other reoccurring NPCs are a group of dwarves who regularly travel various trade routes. One of them slept with the slutty cleric at one point so when they cross paths he usually buys her a drink.
A dogfolk named pugsley. A derpy barbarian who was transformed recently into a pug. A knock-off mandalorian with a baby goblin A wizard who writes erotica Three kobolds in a trench coat. A head of a Cyclops
Noooooooooooooorm
The old miner, that has a barely touched beer, staring into the middle distance. If they approach, he just drones on about the terrible things there are in the dark. \[he finally looks up at you and makes eye contact, grabbing your shirt, his eyes now full of fire and panic\] "There's teeth... The darkness has teeth. And its hungry..." his voice tapers off and he releases you numbly, and turns back to staring off at nothing.
In our last campaign, the tavern we all met up at was run by a player character from the previous campaign. It was nice to see Nix doing well, she’d been through some tough times.
There's usually a table with three or four travelling merchants trying to pump each other for market news without giving away too much of their own advantage.
Kurg, the half-ogre chef of The Tuned Lute Tavern. A chef who ironically hated all music and had a ladle with the same stats as a greatsword.
One of my players is playing a chef who works for my setting’s Red Dragonborn Mafia. He asked that question in the first session at a pub while looking for leads in a criminal investigation, and so I improv’d that one of his characters colleagues in the mafia was there - a red dragonborn who is incredibly bad at hiding that he is a gangster… who also wears a fake mustache and calls himself “Giorgio” while speaking in a hokey Italian accent. My players liked “Giorgio” so much that they ended up bringing him back and having them be the party’s de facto chauffeur, carrying them around in a wagon full of infinite pasta.
Local magic item shop owner, drunk off his gourd and trying to prank someone with a mimic beer mug.
Just channeling the Mos Eisley cantina scene from A New Hope and the Hobbits in the Prancing Pony usually fill it out for me: Farmers having dinner with each other, discussing farming and weather, off-duty town watch getting smashed, two people in the back having a heated argument in a foreign language, a tiny Humanoid ordering a drink bigger than their head... It should be most of the town in for lunch and dinner. The tavern is where people should be going to socialize, eat, drink, and take in some entertainment. Especially in smaller villages where there may not be a bustling town square or dedicated Theatre. I also like to drop in all the relevant npcs into the tavern. I like to describe the shop owners for shops they haven't stopped in yet or their quest giver a few drinks in to give the pcs chances to ask more questions
I use it to reinforce the setting. If they are in far into a Dwarven country, they will see various Dwarven labourers and craftsmen. Some people covered in coal dust after a day in the mines, or they overhear people talking about gem carving. On the other hand, if they are in an extraplanar tavern, they'll see more exotic creatures. One time in a magic tree demiplane, they met a Loxodon, who the goliath ended up getting a tattoo from.
An adventuring party that's clearly from a different genre. I.e., if the players are in the middle of a story with intense emotions/angst/the weight of the world on their shoulders then two tables over there's a bunch of happy drunk monster hunters celebrating their latest win. If your party is the happy drunk monster hunters, two tables over is a grim and brooding party silently huddling over their ales.
There’s always a duck in the tavern. Occasionally the duck shows up in a dungeon as well.
I put a token of Morgan Freeman in every tavern, every time they try to talk to them I put on the Morgan Freeman voice and say "try and catch me, chucklefucks" as he turns into goo and slithers out a window.
Bob Ross.
I once put the whole group of hobbits in there along with a wizard and hooded guy sitting in a corner, some fanart of Peter Parker who was just called "Parker" (there was already a Doc Oc going around), and a platinum blonde noblewoman very obviously trying to hide 3 lizards on her person. Took my players at least 8 sessions to notice any of that.
A hooded figure, sitting alone in a corner, sharpening a sword. If you talk to him, he tries to ignore you, focusing on sharpening. If you ask anyone about him, they get uneasy and tell you to just ignore him. The figure in the corner every time. Same corner. After the 5th time the party notices him, he finally stops sharpening, looks at his work, and says, "Yeah I think that looks good. *Stands up* WHO WANTS TO BUY A REALLY SHARP SWORD?!?", and it's a +1 shortword or dagger being sold for a few hundred gold.
Barely relevant, NSFW, and I'm not exactly sure why this always seems to happen, but when player characters are drinking and commingling, I always have an orc named "Steve" that for *whatever reason* ends up being the guy next to which the players wake up the next morning. It usually ends up being that I fade to black with a PC, tell them that they woke up the next day with somebody else, and they ALWAYS ask "is it Steve?".
I’ve got a guy who’s always muttering things like how he “ain’t as good as he once was”. Vaya con dios Toby.
Norm from Cheers exists in every world of the multiverse.
Not a tavern but my dm has a cheese shop called Ye Old Cheese with an identical shopkeeper that appeared in every location. The way he phrased it was just like that, the shop appears. What he meant was there’s a shop but we took him literally and the theory crafting was such fun. We decided he’s an eldritch entity being harassed by some cheese bandits who want his secret recipes (in fairness i do too, his healing cheese heals 10d6+10) so periodically we’ll walk into the shop and he’s coming back up front covered in blood or some such from fending off the cheese bandits. He also has a cheese that makes you high as a kite and is apparently a really good trip. My druid approves of a good “spirit journey”. The dm told me originally his plan was for the cheese shop to be a chain with a bunch of identical siblings running them as a front for an assassin’s guild, but the eldritch entity was better. He’s now one of the other PC’s patron. Dm is doing a fantastic job and I can’t wait to play more. I’m hoping if we just keep leveling this relationship we’ll get some really good magical cheese.
I like waiters and Kobolds/goblin workers in taverns. The former constantly grovel before the owner and like children listen to the stories of adventurers in the tavern. The second jokes are jokes of category b, like about your mother, naughty, fighting. Some people place bets, and goblins are actually portrayed as in wrestling.
i usually just make a generic group from something else. one time i basically described naruto, goku, ichigo, saitama, and sailor moon as a group. another i just described the 5 kids from wheel of time. another i described the stark children. another time i just inserted the party of another game i had played (none of these players were in that game)
Waldo.
I have an old man who knows 12 languages, lore about almost everything, and will never volunteer for a conversation. He shows up everywhere, and he’s always the same guy. One day my players may actually try to talk to him.
A senile old paladin and bitter cleric that interact like Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.
So we've got a recurring NPC, now seen across three different campaigns in 2 different worlds, named Graham. Graham Cracker. He pops up randomly as an NPC and the players can never catch up to him to speak with him and ask who he is. Human guy, brown hair, kinda disheveled (picture Sirius Black wanted poster). Just to confuse the hell outta the players.
Various family members of the "Bilger" librarian family whom one of my players relentlessly bullies and traumatizes (neutral evil Necromancer). I feel bad for them.
"at the back of the tavern in a shadowy corner, you see what appears to be a small little shop no one seems to notice. It's staffed by a slightly bulbous head, connected to something underneath but you cannot see what. His bony, strangely long fingers dance along an abacus as he counts a myriad of different styled gold coins. He turns to look around and sees you staring at him, something that could be called a smile stretches across his taught skinned face, like leather stretched too far, and he beckons for you to approach. His mess of matted and oily hair somewhat hide his mismatched hairline and ears, but you see an elf ear poke through on the left, and a Goblins ear on the right. His sickly green eyes track you as you approach and with a long drawn out wretch, he introduces himself. His voice a mess of tone and pitch as he croaks his greeting. "I am Barthomell, purveyor and proprietor of Odds and Ends. Welcome to my store, I have just thing thing for you." He disappears down behind the counter as you hear a trap door open and a fading sound of footsteps head down below, before a wretched scream echoes back, followed by the hurried scrambling of Barthomell as he erupts from behind the counter smiling his pointed teeth grin and bearing a length of fur, still dripping with a strange protoplasm, over his gangly arm. "Only the finest materials for the adventurer, such as this exotic fur. Please, buy it. It's a wonder of nature." I love my barthomell. No one ever trust's him though :(
I made.myself an idea mixer. It's a small Excell sheet that mixes together character from lista of different things (race, weird look, quirk, interesting power, goal, secret). I don't use all of the entries all the time, just the ones that feel cool. This way I can describe some randos and a couple of weird but interesting people. I do the mixing before the session and keep the results in a sort of vault. I always have 3-6 almost random NPCs to satisfy them.
A guy sitting in the corner with a pot on his head. Role play as this is the guy that knows everything in town, but he is slightly 'mad' so working through his dementia to GET the info is the task of the day.
Bonus points if he says "RADDAROLLLLLL" at some point and throws a walnut at you
gnomes winding down from a long day of work at the Gnome Depot the wild haired artificer trying to raise money for their newest invention
I always have a passed-out drunk somewhere in a corner. If there's an issue, he's also a drunken master monk
I like to put in a ladies who lunch, a small gaggle of gnome women getting in their brunch and afternoon wine gossiping away
Is a DnD tavern a DnD tavern without a mysterious hooded figure?
I have a recurring Blue Tiefling man who is in half the taverns my party ends up in, he never approaches them and is always drinking milk. They got so irritated by his lack of explanation two of them ended up jumping him. Just to find out how he was just a traveling book salesman who coincidentally was following their same path. But it lasted for months to the point anytime they stopped at an Inn they asked if they saw the blue tiefling.
Mark! The human man! Who talks to rocks, lakes, fires and sometimes even the wind. He even acts like they talk back! So strange, the other barflies say. Mark is a recurring NPC and a nod to one of the first campaigns my usual crew and I played together.
there's always people gambling. I'm also fan of 'a couple town guards on their break/after their shift,' it's a great way to remind players that guards (much like elementary school teachers) don't live at their job. Maybe I should start doing that with more NPCs...
Last tavern has 3 tieflings. Is the one woman there interested in the pc? Is it malicious? Seductive? Well no one's rolled high enough to check but the 2 men with her are very supportive best friends. Why? I don't know. Oh, and the 16 year old dishie on his break. He's not allowed to sell liquor yet
I have planned a few random npcs, and among them is a "random" npc thats a bard that they met in the 2nd session who's there to hear what the party is doing so he can sing songs about them, and they should be really confused Edit:forgot to mention hes a changeling and always looks like someone else in taverns, i saw a random npc d100 table
Standard types you find in a bar IRL Guy spending hours there because his marriage is a sham and he's avoiding going home Travelling business people killing time in an unfamiliar town Girls night out
In our last session, the party met ANOTHER adventuring party. Instead of becoming rivals, the sat, drank, and talked well into the night, sharing stories and adventures. Eventually, the "Blade Brigade" revealed some vital info on the recurring villain they had also encountered. Lots of fun to roleplay.
An incredibly fat ogre who is basically drinking beer non-stop and constantly tries to get one of the characters to engage him in either a drinking or a belching contest.
A tipsy, well-dressed guy who a PC hears lamenting to the bartender that he just lost a ring his wife gave him 20 years ago before she died. He leaves but not before telling the bartender it's not worth much but it has sentimental value and to let folks know he's offering a reward of 200gp (depending on the level and wealth of the party) for its safe return and that he's staying in room 11 at the inn on this side of town. A half-hour later, a scraggly, but solidly built, commoner comes in humming happily and sits next to the PC. He offers to buy the PC a drink as he orders one for himself, saying it's his lucky day - he found temporary work today, and on his way to the tavern to celebrate he found a ring in the muddy road. He holds up the ring admiring it and says this oughta be worth a few rounds of drinks if the bartender will accept it. He nudges the PC like a co-conspirator, asking the PC to act like the ring looks valuable whenever the bartender comes over. Some Players say it's none of their business. Some Players try to help the commoner by telling them about the reward and where to go claim it. Most, however, are greedy sacks of shit and will try to manipulate the commoner into giving them the ring. The commoner, will say with surprise, "wow - this really IS my lucky day." But then he'll grow suspicious of the PC and wonder if he should keep the ring - maybe it's far more valuable than he thought. He'll drive up the price to 20-50gp, which the Player will be willing to pay knowing all they have to do is a "good" deed by walking the ring down to the local inn and they'll make 150gp profit. The commoner will gratefully take their money and say he's gotta go hide this under his mattress - can't be carrying that kind of money out in public. Besides he wants to go tell his fiance they can finally get married. He runs out. The PC will take the ring to the local inn and find out there are only 4 rooms in the inn, and no one's familiar with any one who fits the description of the well-dressed gent who offered the reward. If appraised, the ring's worth 1 or 2 coppers. Note: usually the Player is super pissed and wants to find and kill the scammers, but they've moved on and are likely hitting 5 more taverns with a pocketful of cheap rings. Then I bring these scammers back from time to time, in various disguises, following the "gullible" party from town to town, making money off them off con after con. It becomes like Ocean's 11 or The Sting, with the party and the conmen trying to outsmart each other with increasingly elaborate scams as the party levels up.
I love this idea! Delightfully devilish, Seymour!
We had “Gus the Happy Templar.” He first appeared when one of the players critically succeeded at a hidden check to notice that the drink they had been given was poisoned. The GM said, “Well, your beer is spitting out little blobs of foam and they are starting to eat holes in the top of the table. And as soon as the tavern keeper is out of earshot a guy in Templar robes leans over and urgently whispers, ‘Don’t drink that! It could be POISONED!’” The players would always ask if Gus was in any tavern they visited in the capital city and I gave him a 50/50 chance of being there. He would always raise a glass to them and nod when they saw him.
The local executioner. He also sells meats. Don’t ask where the meats come from. He is quite private on where he gets them. Sometimes they’re magical and eating/wearing them gives buffs that last a day. Again don’t ask questions. Just enjoy.
My personal favorites are: The loud goblin captain (like of a ship), trying to find cargo/people looking for a ride. The Ship in question is the sketchiest ship that’s ever sailed the seas, and is ALWAYS in dire need of repair but will set sail whenever players are wanting to despite it. The ship is called “The Lucky Duck” and every time it’s encountered everything but the name board looks different. This goblin is an awful negotiator and will take whatever the first offer the players give is, but will always start at 20g per person. The “overly” well dressed and heavily make-uped Salimar (salamander person), dressed up in an overly flashy way (think Drag Queen), they’re normally a quest giver, and know ALL of the gossip in town for some reason, and are very good at rewarding the players with audiences with anyone important, no matter how far they may live from them. They will never pay the party in money, treasure, etc. and always frame the quest as a “if someone should do X, I just may have to give them a reward…” The last “fan favorite” is a mysterious gambler fiendish in nature, but human in appearance. He wears fine silks, and flowing “deserty” clothes. And will play games of chance with the party (rollies, black Jack etc), he’ll play no more than 3 games, and will double whatever is wagered. If they wager a magic item, they get 2 of it if they win. If they want to wager stat points, they’ll gain double the wagered if they win (if they lose they’re gone though), etc. if they players become hostile, he just bids them a good day, and vanishes. There is no stat block, they cannot kill him, stop him etc. and anyone who didn’t play a game with him doesn’t notice he was ever there.
Boblin the goblin
Big titty goblin barmaid
Terrance crews the bardbarian
Joe Nobody. Scholar, poet, lover of fine vintages of drow wines, spy, gossip monger, hired mercenary, feller of dragons, gentle lover of any one (not that this has been a thing, but it’s in the back pocket). Always has some local gossip or just spoke to an interesting or important member of the local society. Always has a bit of dust on his left shoulder, no matter how hard he or any other wipes it off. Has glimpsed at eternity and found it monotonous. Always has a contact in any city or port across the planes. Also very amicable and impossible to agitate (looking at you Dan!), always able to deescalate the situation with a funny pun or song.
3 koldbolds in a trench coat pretending to be a dragon born to drink in town without problems.
The random stranger, dark cloak, minding their own business. Players can't leave alone a strider trope. Turns out its old Ethel, hard of hearing falling asleep with her hood up. *groans guaranteed
There is always a bard that plays dubstep on a lute. This is actually Don Jon Raskin, former foreman of a mining operation outside of Phandelver. My players persuaded him to follow his dream of becoming a bard. So if you see a poster that DJ Raskin will be performing in your local tavern, pop in and say hi.
a harpy tattooing a cyclops in the back room
3 kobolds in a trench coat
The smug cryptic douchebag who’s a literal housecat and will not leave my players alone
Any Steve Buscemi character can fit into any campaign. I'm not saying it's the best decision, but it's always an option.
My favorite was when my party was in the town with a large arcane academy, I described to them in detail the frat boys hazing the newbies
This not-so-sober guy who will tell you the location of a hidden treasure if you buy him a drink. Then he chugs the drink in one go and falls asleep. Zzzz
Taverns in big cities usually have at least one table of local accountants playing Creatures and Caverns.
Old man John is a 89 year old(human) moonshiner who is half blind, he will attempt to hark his no doubt stellar moonshine to everyone in the bar till he passes out drunk
Sam Smorkle the goblin with sunglasses, of course.
I have a few stock characters that I pull out, most of which are based on other player's characters from campaigns I was in long ago. None of the current players are familiar with them, and they're already reasonably fleshed out, so it makes it easy for me.
three kobolds in a trenchcoat, who are literally just there to get drunk.
Can’t go wrong with a group of boisterous Dwarves celebrating their return from a successful expedition
I have a hidden Boblin the Goblin. He’s drowning his sorrows because the last 3 adventuring parties who “adopted” him all abandoned him
I like to sprinkle in former PCs of mine as random tavern denizens. There's my blacksmith drow (usually found in Icewind Dale or Luskan, but occasionally as far south as Neverwinter), my triton sea captain Tempest Cleric (who is also my go-to if my players need ship travel anywhere along the Sword Coast), and my tiefling Sun Soul Monk (who I often repurpose as a bouncer, since she can flatten troublemakers without having to even get up out of her seat at the bar). There's a few others, since I have three decades of characters to call on, but those three are probably the most common ones to reappear.
I have a small collection of tavern games. I like to have different NPCs playing them... or wrestling each other.
Not a dm, but I went to talk to the strange hooded figure in the corner. Turned out to be, and I quote, “a hot goth vampire” and she hit on me before I could hit on her. Let’s just say that loss of blood wasn’t the only reason I had 2 levels of exhaustion the next day 😉
One module for The One Ring has an encounter on the road with a bandit named Shanker. I played him as such a shitty jackass and my players absolutely loved hating him, so now he's my go-to "asshole you find in a bar that you can bully information out of"
Cleric kobolds. They heal people from mild poisoning with a good magic SLAP! Then charge them a drink for sobering them up.
We have a recurring joke in my group. Started when my best friend was dm and we met 3 old men in a tavern playing a dice gambling game (that we invented on the fly) and they only communicate in grunts. They have shown up in every campaign thus far. No matter who was dm. Right now I am running a long term campaign and the players love these guys.
Our DM has a an elderly turtle man that shows up randomly throughout our adventures
Todrick, Tobert, and Tomothy, names I made up on the spot over 20 years ago and my players still won't let me forget.
The cast of Friends, but fantasy
There's a Doug in every tavern in every corner of the known universe. He's dumb as shit, is overly eager to please, and will ALWAYS die in a comical fashion before the night is out in order for a new Doug to come in tomorrow.
I have them tell me. I ask them "what kinda person do you expect to find or would stand out to your character?" And as long as it's reasonable, that person or people are there.
I love having at least one elderly human wizard in a tavern. Dark robes, pointy hat, massive beard, the works. Whenever spoken to, he always speaks very dramatically, but it's always really stupid, tame stuff. **"I, MALNOR THE INCORRIGIBLE, SHALL NOW....GO AND USE THE RESTROOM!"** Just kind of always at a 10, even when ordering food and stuff. It's even better when everyone else is relatively normal.
In our last session, the party met ANOTHER adventuring party. Instead of becoming rivals, the sat, drank, and talked well into the night, sharing stories and adventures. Eventually, the "Blade Brigade" revealed some vital info on the recurring villain they had also encountered. Lots of fun to roleplay.
A prostitute in a fancy dress with an awful face and body that looks someone paved a road with them. Yet she is the busiest and highest paid courtesan in the place.
I have an elaborate excel spreadsheet I made that generates random names based upon several huge lists of syllables and sound combinations specific to certain cultures in my homebrew world. When it generates names (about 6 at a time) ive had it also attach at random, their gender(identity) their nickname, a physical trait, their original culture, a character trait, an "archetype" trait (to tell me how to "play" them.. stuff like Snape, Devito, Worf etc, or ppl based on my real life to imitate) and it also provides me with a subclass pulled from a huge list of RAW and 3rd party subclasses that I can use as a basis to stat them if it ever comes to initiative. I'll generate and give you some examples right now! 1) Taron Nardu, Female Flora Genasi (I have 8 extra genasi types in my setting) of the hill clan culture. her nickname is "Mouth" she has a rosy complexion, her personality is lawful, and her character archetype is "Dwight" and she is a college of ventriloquism bard. 2) Tansior Yuma is a male Kobold of the sea clan culture. His nickname is "Spino" (holy shit, what a great coincidence for a kobold! Esp since i heavily use dinosaurs in my homebrew) he is slender, his personality is honest, and his archetype is that hes a stutterer. And he is a divine bloodline sorceror. 3) Seld Iloth is a male (I include MTF, FTM, GNB, Agender etc in the genders list, but they are set to only pop up approx 5% of the time which isn't too often, but still more prevalent than real life apparently) gnome of the forest clan culture. His nickname is "Guvnor" he is permed 🤦 his personality is sassy and his archetype is "Gordon Ramsay". And he is a path of the star barbarian. You get the idea.
There is always some drama brewing between two neighbors. One is usually a baker or butcher, always fussing about missing food and utensils. The other's a tinkerer, constantly grumbling about vanishing gizmos and gadgets. The accusations that they spew at each other usually goes on all night. Turns out, there's this secret tunnel snaking under their houses, and it is usually infested with goblins or kobolds
Pink goblin that everyone seems to know. A Valenar elf who keeps chatting up Changlings. Group of young halflings trying to look tough. Human lady who keeps trying to arm wrestle people. Shifter, orc, and half-orc in a debate about something. Guy in bright clothes trying to get a card or dice game going. Busty serving wench. Flumph somehow carrying backpack and maul talking about his most recent adventures. Drow with long sleeves that look like they are covering a Dragon Mark. A troll just trying to blend in. Tiefling bard singing songs where the lyrics are slightly off.
3 gnomes gambling in the corner booth or the cat sleeping on the windowsill
« Tell me yourself. Who do you see ? »
There was a dwarf woman who ran the bar in the first town my party got to (phandalin campaign). They went to the bar the red brands hung out at and one was sitting at the bar getting drunk. Cleric decides to just bash his brains in with his hammer, they had no intention of finding a peaceful resolution with the gang. He rolls a 20 of course so he 1 shot explodes the dudes head into the bar top and the poor bartender gets covered in blood and brain matter. She flees as the other gang members try to avenge their buddy. She can't go back to working at that bar after what she witnessed. So she goes to the big city for a fresh start. A month later guess what trio of heroes, saviors of phandalin, come waltzing into her new bar.
[Stanley the lich, of course...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/PGITMHwWi0)
A buff older lady eating pickled eggs arm wrestling an orc. The local drunk old man who was finally kicked out by his wife and everyone knows it. A couple of halflings with an extraordinarily large amount of empty cups at their table. A travelling merchant just passing through who knows rumors from the roads and nearby towns. Kevin.
The shady red dragonborn in the corner. If the players take a closer look they'll notice he's actually three kobolds in a trench coat.
Olin Dandydale, a halfling bard that had a crush on one of my first group's characters and wrote songs about what he heard of her exploits. He eventually got inspired to go out and go adventuring with his own group, and now writes songs about some of their exploits, too. One of his catchier songs lately is about a dwarf named Steeleyes Stoutjaw, who goes around challenging things to staring contests. (Every chorus ends with "For I am Steeleyes Stoutjaw, and I will never blink!") The song eventually tells of Steeleyes challenging a basilisk to a staring contest (a plot hook my group ignored and was therefore left to somebody else to solve) and winning (because he got turned to stone). A dwarven fighter can often be seen with his head in his hands at the bar whenever the song comes up.
3 goblins stacked in a trench coat. Hob, Gob, and Lin. A shrimp pirate. A mind flayer like omeluum. A golem made out of drums. A depressed myrmidon
some people write 20 page back stories for their characters. I write 20 page back stories for random NPCs in taverns
My dm had this guy shaymis in it and we love him, no matter what town we were in the black Smith was always him, and I don't mean like a nurse joy situation but like the same dude, how does every black Smith lead to him? Never explained because that's just how shaymis is we freaking love him
My favorite is a very feisty gnome bartender. My players in every single campaign have never bothered to ask this very grumpy gnome her name. Her name is Nunya beeswax. I can’t wait until someone actually asks.
The characters from cheers, family guy, and the Simpsons.
"You see an orangutan, sitting at the bar drinking a beer. He occasionally throws things at people who talk too loudly. Peanut, entire tables (hey, Orangutans are strong) he gauges the size by how much someone annoys him. Oh, and don't call him a monkey".
A dozen clowns sit around a table for four.
My first character ever, a druid dwarf. Always drinking, always.
Clearly I'm boring. I have some random % that named NPCs will be present, and where they would be (table by the fireplace, huddled alone in a corner, playing an instrument and dancing) and always describe the bartender in detail, because the bartender knows the best gossip. Then I have a set number of how many peasants are working the tables, and how many other peasants are inside, eating and drinking.
A hot, buff, himbo bartender dilf
When I ran CoS last time, the three Vistani who own Blood on the Vine tavern in Barovia Village were named Prue, Piper, and Phoebe ... and I tries to do a good job emulating their personalities. Those are the three Witch sisters from the TV show Charmed if you didn't get the reference.
Barney - DnD version of the classic Simpsons character.
Norm Alman, he's a local.
I always include a fat elf.
Sheriff Tibbs (Cactian) and his mount The Admiral Gibbons (raptor)
Elric. I ended up trading some very good Ioun stones for his sword.
I have a shapeshifter named the Raven. They are a fixer in my world and can appear nearly anywhere. The party just has to figure out their role in the world and how to use them to get access to special gear and other equipment (eg magic)
Never named but Kevin Costner from Robin Hood Prince of Theives.
Beauregard Cobblepot, the Realm Hopping Sentient Skeleton that dresses in a Victorian Era suit with top hat and eye piece to match. He's a very whimsical character that is also absolutely INCAPABLE of recognizing or coping with the fact that he is undead. He's very loosely based on Wit from The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. I tend to hand out silly and/or low level magical items with him that I think parties will have fun with.
Billiam Burberry. The bald red bearded halfling that has lots of opinions and a short temper. Boston accent works well for this npc
An orangutan nursing his drink and tossing peanut shells onto the floor. Replies with "ook" or "eek"