Thiers real world looks at this idea in the us west. Fur trade posts/forts. Same basic consept. In a points of light campaign, you would need them more or less as nighyly stop overs on the road for anyone in the wilderness between civilizations. And that is a grate place for adventures to ply thier trade.
@@Josh-ye9ol I think the old west had an influence on the fantasy tavern. The "classic" saloon with room and food WAS a thing for small towns all over the west. There just wasn't enough business to support the three individually, but enough to make it worthwhile if you had a more reliable sideline. The three just *fit* in that time & place
Nothing "pseudo-" about it, really. Most castles were almost certainly just fortified towers--usually wood, maybe with a stone bottom floor wall. Just reimagine the innkeeper as a squire (the administrative kind, possibly a knight himself too), maybe with a couple men-at-arms (and their families too). Perhaps the master of the nearby countryside, including any farms or a village it's in. Opening the great hall as a pub for locals and travelers, and a floor or wing of rooms as an inn could give such a humble peer an extra income stream when it's not needed for combat. Edit: and he kinda covered that at 19-20 minutes in. :p
Honestly, depending on magic levels in the setting, any inn sitting at a crossroads might be safe. Especially if you have Archfey, gods of travel, or any amount of "Leylines" lip service in the setting. "Oh, did you hear about the local Drow Assassin outpost? Apparently, the target of one of their purges was sleeping at the big crossroads inn." "Not the crossroads that eight separate roads run through?" "Yup. Whole placed burned to the ground." "What happened to the drow?" "Red Caps came right up out of the ground and chased them for miles. When they finally got home, they were ambushed by a few dozen goblins. Had a hag coven with them. Now the word is that two more hag covens are moving into the area, and some warlocks and other cultists are asking if adventurers want to collect drow ears." "Well, there goes the neighborhood." "I wouldn't be surprised if the Goblin King leads this year's Wild Hunt through that entire valley."
@@BlorkTDork Yup, If they were way out in the wilds then they would not be a fortified "inn". It would be a FORT'. Drinking an accommodation would just be part of the fort. Trade and commercial processing would absolutely be the main endeavors of the fort. And the commander of the fort, while being like a little king of his fort, ultimately works for 'the king'.
Adventurers feel like a distinct type of yeomen. Having a constant supply of looted goods would make fortified inns a great place for merchants & adventurers to trade goods that wouldn't be well seen in a town. Because of that, this concept of the fortified inn also favours a type of game where equipment itself is treasure, as you can always sell the 20 scimitars you looted from all the bandits you killed on your way and back.
I have 20 chipped scimitars, 100 bloody daggers, 50 bent arrows, 5 cracked bows, a dozen dented helmets, one oddly pristine breastplate, and ring of unbearable stench to sell. How did you come by so many daggers? Bandits, man. each one had like ten of them.
@@BobMcBobJr most of it is either reparable or can be resold as raw material. Depending on where the negotiations are taking place, no one would really care. Now, how would you explain all that merchandise to city authorities if you aren't part of the merchant guild?
And that is why the kingdom turned them into forts to control the peace and keep trade safe. Also, to use them, you must be registered at a state approved guild which requires adventurers to obey the military in times of crisis.
@@gdragonlord749 nay adventures are always a separate organization from the military soldiers, it makes since even in war times the monster population has to be kept low and road protected so trade can happen. a king that drafts adventures is a king that has supplies lines quickly destroyed by burning farms and city's that can't talk to each other.
"Alright lads, good luck on yer way out into the Wilds. Oh, one more thing, here's a list of hunters and mercs who haven't returned yet from their missions. If you find any of 'em dead, whole or otherwise, you can get 50 silver if they can be brought back and identified. Here's a list of prices for any salvaged gear you find, too. And you probably know what you're getting into with all the beasties roaming out there. Happy huntn' boys
Funny thing is, Chinese version of a Tavern/Hotel is a restaurant/place to stay for travelers in ancient times. Restaurants were develop for travelers. They also notice same travelers needed a place to stay. Hotel in Chinese today is called alcohol store.
Could you elaborate more please!? That is so fascinating and I wish we had more information about Chinese culture/ history merged into DnD lore stories! We do get a lot of Samurai but not too many Chinese mythology besides the Metallic Dragons.
There are some Chinese wuxia movies available on TH-cam like Inn at Dragon Gate or Longmen Town where a tavern is the central story location.@@bensantos3882
That's because they are mainly modeled on western (and latin) saloons and roadhouses. Which sort of derived from the coaching houses of England with more utility. The idea they are 1) on some sort of frontier and 2) it's justification for existing is economic. There us capitalism occurring at these "taverns" and "inns". In Tolkiens work it's a little different. Less American and more English. He mixes modern English pubs with older versions of taverns with group sleeping accommodations (remember all the Hobbits in the same room?). It's still commercial because he included the modern/Victorian pub angle. The heightend degree of of capitalism is the anachronistic part of most of these fictional amalgamations
The Shire feels like a place Tolkien could have visited in his lifetime. It wasn’t exactly modern, but it’s not that far in the past. It’s only once they leave the Shire and enter the “exotic” lands of the Men and Elves that it really starts to feel Medieval.
The real anachronism in Medieval fantasy is the bed. Most medieval people didn't sleep in beds. Beds were only for the sick and the dying. Healthy people slept sitting upright in chairs even in their own homes. The medieval tavern did kind of exist because taverns existed. If visitors got too drunk to travel home then they would just sleep in the Tavern sitting in the chair where they had their last beer. Travelers for the most part didn't exist. Most people in Medieval times never traveled farther than 20 miles from where they were born. The people who stayed at Taverns were locals who lived within a couple miles of the Tavern.
@@NovusodLol, medieval people did not sleep in chairs. Who the hell told you that? Medieval people, just like any other people throughout history, slept in beds. Beds predate humankind in fact (several species of primate also exhibit bed-making behaviours). Medieval beds differ wildly in appearance and style based on the time period, region and social class you are talking about. The poorest beds were little more than a straw-filled matress on a bench or even on the floor, while the richest beds were fancy four-posters with silk, velvet and feather matresses. Beds could be very large, and were often shared by multiple people. The vast majority of medieval households (even wealthy ones) would not have had a dedicated bedroom, so it was common for beds to be convertible into benches or couches for daytime use. Maybe that is where the idea of people sleeping on chairs comes from? Either way, most medieval people wouldn't have had any chairs, let alone slept in them. Chairs in the middle ages were very high status symbols, and incredibly expensive and rare. Only kings and the highest of nobility and clergy would have owned a chair, and their chair often was a direct symbol of their authority. Medieval people would have sat on stools, benches or couches, but virtually never on chairs. It is only in and after the Renaissance that chairs start becoming more common, with the idea of a chair being an authority symbol fading and gradually becoming a general furniture item that anyone could own.
it's often worth looking in to non-European sources when trying to do this kind of logistical worldbuilding based on historical precedent. The classic fantasy inn/tavern may be unhistorical in medieval Europe, but the oldest Ryokan in Japan is from the 8th century. Roadside inns, bathhouses, teahouses and even restaurants with rooms to let were fairly common in China and japan during Europe's middle ages, in part due to a slightly more mobile "middle class" of scholars, merchants, physicians, craftsmen, instructors, warriors, monks, and exorcists. In a broader sense of imagining what adventurers might actually look like in a societal context, China's _youxia_ stories ("wandering hero/vigilante" stories, the predecessor of the also-quite-old _Wuxia_ historical fantasy genre) date back to as early as 200 BC, and the protagonists of those are pretty much cognate with D&D fantasy adventurers. They didn't really have to imagine a world where these heroes could somehow show up to a remote town and save the day from bandits/demons/tyrants/whatever, because they already lived in one that had the infrastructure to support itinerant specialists.
China is a history ripe for picking when it comes to historical fantasy, and with the massive proliferation of Chinese creative works, it's only a matter of time now before we start to see this sort of Chinese Fantasy genre rival medieval fantasy. I'm looking forward to it, D&D-style fantasy has really become stale these past few years.
@@yurisei6732 strong agree. The mythic pseudo history represented in Chinese fantasy is just so rich, and frequently internally consistent due to its grounding in historical reality. I’d really love to see more Chinese fantasy influence western media. They’ve been doing it for two millennia… we could stand to learn a thing or two. I studied for a short while under a Taoist priest, and I was struck by how much the mystical aspects of the practice are just… a full-blown magic system. A lot of the stuff you see in Chinese “cultivation” style wuxia games and media are just straight lifted from actual spiritual practice. I wouldn’t personally lift it wholesale to drop in to one of my fantasy settings or anything, (especially as an outsider to the culture, as it’s a living tradition with real belief behind it… that just feels disrespectful to me), but learning about unfamiliar real-world mythology, belief, and history just really makes your own world building make more sense.
@@spiritandsteel The magic is one thing I'd be happy to leave behind actually. I'm not really into the whole "self-improvement magic" thing, it gives magic a very particular style of implied alignment that heavily limits the kinds of stories and characters you can write. The nice thing about Hermetic magic is that it's turned into a skill like any other: you don't have to have a particular personality to do it, you just have to learn how. Buddhism has the same limitation, the nice thing about Christianity from a worldbuilding perspective is that it largely decouples "virtue" from "morality", giving ample space for evil people who are favoured by gods.
@@yurisei6732 That’s interesting… in my experience there’s actually a lot less “te” (virtue) intrinsic in some of the actual mystical practices, compared to modern fantasy that incorporates Daoist cultivation. Also, in general, the west’s understanding of eastern “virtue” is pretty poor. There’s no real cosmic morality in Daoism (as opposed to Buddhism, but even then it’s way more subjective), and there’s plenty of tales of effectively “dark magic” in Chinese mythology and folklore. Even in some martial traditions, things like “Iron Body” training are considered dangerous or “dark” routes of qi conditioning/cultivation that must be balanced with gentler practices, as it’s believed to make you more aggressive and violent, and to make it difficult to feel anything including empathy. The Daoist/Chinese Folk Religion angle on mystical practice seems just as much “skill” based as hermetic practice or even western alchemy, to me. And- just like those traditions- the “dark” arts are viewed as potent but self-destructive paths to power.
Regarding historical accuracy, you were actually quite right at this one. The only thing you mayhaps forgot to mention is that Inns were not small to mid houses like they are like to be shown when the "adventuring party" is down on their luck, and can't afford the "proper/good" Inn. As you said, Inns were (very often) walled off, and they (often) had proper portas, not just a gate to the property, and in fact a lot of villas of ancient rome have become Inns throught history, which were obviously of the richer kind. The rural Inns (along roads, not in towns or cities) were often run by freemen owning the surrounding land, and thus had made profit by selling their produce to travelers at a higher cost, since they are de facto monopolies (as long as the town or city is not close by to offer competition). From historical records we also known that Inns were incredibly profitable as long as there was traffic in and out of the settlement (which in the age of walking everywhere is a given alongside trade routes). In the Hodges list we can see that an inn in the 14th century has earned 27.25 pennies, or more than 2 shillings in one day after feeding and housing 3 men, 4 of their servants, and an unknown amount of horses. Even if we say the Innkeeper only earned 30% of it due to procurement and taxes (random low estimate, idk what they actually spent), that's still 9 and 1/12 pennies, which is 1.5 times the amount a well equipped soldier, or lowly officer would earn. Now TAVERNS are also probably on the expensive side, at least from my research. For example in the same source it's said that the collective rent for 138 shops on London Bridge was 160 pounds 4 shillings, whilst the collective rent for a measily 3 taverns with the exclusive right to sell sweet wine was 200 pounds. I don't know the disparity between lower end Taverns and higher end ones, but the existence of Alehouses, or Kvass merchants (easter europe) indicates that cheap alcohol was rather procured from such establishments instead of taverns, so it may be the case that even low quality Taverns were still rather profitable (they were often selling wine, afterall).
Consider also including the abbey church, which in the real medieval period often came with a temporal title to a county or even more powerful office. The abbot would have great vested interest in the whereabouts and purposes of armed travelers in his lands, and might be inclined (or required by hommage) to provide a place to rest, arm, and provision chartered pilgrims, adventuring companies, and the like.
This is interesting as a general concept; what other interested parties could fund support services for adventures? Organizing an adventurer's guild is a common but somewhat contrived trope, but government, religion, and existing guilds could all be sponsors; I suspect the kinds of forces that historically shaped educational institutions might be interesting to explore.
Also another thing to consider is that Free Charter Merchant Market towns would see value in attracting Adventurers to their Market town for Food, Supplies, Gear & to keep the Roads clear of Monsters & Bandits etc etc so might see it well in their interest to provide a Municipal Inn/Tavern/Lodge or Camp-Site reserved for adventurers.
This reminded me of a book about inns in Medieval France: the church offered free lodging to pilgrims (and to all travelers) along pilgrimage routes. I'm fairly sure in the Brother Cadfael TV series this meant non gentry types would doss down on the church floor.
Make it a network of some kind of polytheistic individual diety that is specifically dedicated to travelers/commerce/a specific fued or rivalry with another god or nation that justifies a network of relatively well organized outposts that provide things typically considered to be at inns. Could be less commercial under these circumstances of one wanted to choose an angle that way, while still maintaining commerce as an ancillary to whatever mission or purpose They could be shrines to the God of travelers where there are a few acolytes that upkeep a small inn like establishment. Semi fortified but mainly just well occupied and often hosting nearly a town worth of residents due to how well established they have become in the culture. If you ask me, commerce feels very modern and anachronistic. Depending on how archaic one would want the setting to feel I would make it appear as if commerce was rare but for the few people capable of getting any coins. I would have most characters offering services or goods for things they want. You could recruit a party member by agreeing to help them fulfill a mission after or before doing tasks for you or accompany etc. Especially if those characters were of lower status
In actual history fortified caravan rests were common along the Silk Road. They were essentially small fortresses with lockable gates; you had to arrive before curfew to get in, after which the gates were locked. This served to keep people out as well as ensure guests paid the overnight fee instead of trying to leave before daybreak without paying. These were typically built with around a day's travel between them at typical caravan speeds so that you always had a safe place for your animals and goods for the night due to the constant threat of bandits and thieves
Very well-thought-out video. There was no “adventuring class” in medieval Europe because of a distinct lack of dragons with treasure hordes, wizards with lootable labs and libraries, and goblin caves full of plunder for those adventurers to live on. There were dangerous beasts to slay - wolves, bears, adders and even lions in a few remote late-Roman areas threatened livestock and children - but not much reward in slaying them. The real monsters with treasure were all human - the Gilles de Raises and Elizabeth Bathories - and of course those people weren’t interested in keeping up adventurer bands who might put a stop to their wickedness. In a world where humans aren’t on top of the food chain, adventurers make more sense, as do inns catering to them. The state-sponsored countryside inn-fort has precedent not only in Baldur’s Gate’s Friendly Arm, but in the US military frontier forts of the 18th and 19th centuries. They were expressly intended to protect commerce, and people might camp inside them or just outside the walls, trusting in the presence of the US Cavalry to deter robbers. Ironically, Native Americans were often as eager as anyone else to seek safety from robbers both European and Native by camping near a fort; part of what made the Sand Creek Massacre so infamous was that it was committed in sight of Fort Lyon (although by state militia, not by the US Cavalry), a place that had always before been a safe haven for friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes.
Medieval Europe certainly had travelling mercenary bands, on a sliding scale towards bandits and pirates. And there was certainly treasure to loot, though it was held by rich people, not monsters. Consider the Vikings, Magyars and Mongols.
Tom, I really love these history-applied-to-fantasy type videos, really helps me flesh out my world-building. Will be integrating some of these concepts for sure! Btw, music volume was fine, imo.
This is important if you're using the 7 day long rest. You really need somewhere reliable to sleep so you don't get kicked out after day 3 and have to start all over. I can't wrap my head around sleeping on the ground for half a night and being on watch the other half and getting all your hit points and spells back. Making friends with a lord and staying with him for a week while you recuperate seems more reasonable.
If you look into how the earliest editions of the game were played you find an obvious work around for this. Npc minions. 1st and early 2nd edition had no class specific mechanical uses for Charisma, even though it was an important stat for every class. That's because Charisma was the stat that affected the rolls you made to haggle with NPCs you wanted to hire. PCs of a certain level hired between 20 and 80 NPCs to carry gear, make camp, hold torches, haul treasure, hold tower shields while standing in front of the wizard, stand in the back and fire arrows at anything out of the front line PCs' range, and a couple hound masters with a dozen dogs each for the nightly watch. Charisma was the stat that decided if the two dozen NPCs you needed to take into the dungeon with you were each paid 1 gold piece a day or ten gold pieces a day.
It would be a terrible idea to require 7 day _uninterrupted_ long rests in any setting. I can see the value of requiring 7 day long rests in principle, but they should allow for interruption, giving you the benefits of a short rest, and only requiring that you make up the difference. So like if you got ambushed on day 3, you could fight them off using post-short-rest options, and then start resting again and only need to go an additional 4 days.
@@AmoebaInk My feeling on "HP" in RPGs is that you CAN'T play it as though "HP" represents your complete physical condition, that if you are at 1 HP then you are a pile of meat barely holding together. Instead, HP must represent your "resilience," your ability to keep fighting, even though you are tired and in pain. If you reach 0 HP, then that doesn't mean that you have sustained horrible, gaping wounds, it just means that you can no longer stay fully conscious, and an enemy could coup de gras you, or that you _might_ fade away due to the accumulated pain and trauma, but you can also stabilize yourself and just chill at 0HP until you can get your act together. A fighter at 1 HP is actually in pretty good health, all things considered, he's just very bruised, slightly lacerated, and can barely keep himself _upright._ This is why he has ways of "healing" that back, it's not knitting wounds, it's just gutsing through the trauma and continuing to fight. In that sense, a good night's sleep _can_ allow you to recover most if not all of that "damage," to the point that you have no problem doing the same thing tomorrow. Now a DM might choose to call out certain attacks, especially crits, as dealing grievous physical wounds, and these should not heal up over night, those would be special story circumstances to deal with outside of the HP system. Some other RPGs do take physical trauma into effect, like the Palladium system, in which you have two health pools, one that rises and falls casually like HP, and another that is only touched by certain attacks or when HP reaches zero, and that is treated more as your absolute physical structure. If you take injury to this second pool, then it does take a long time and serious medical intervention to recover it.
@@AmoebaInk Well with enemies you can have more fun with it, hack and chop away, they aren't getting back up anyway. But for players it should be less serious, so even if a character takes like 25 points of damage, that wouldn't be like a sucking gut wound, it would just be a nasty cut on the arm or to the side that you could put a bandage and poultice on and it wouldn't be too distracting as it healed to full.
@@AmoebaInk Yeah, like I said, you can do that, but it's outside of the normal "HP" system. I mean, applying some basic healing tools to him should not then cause that arm to regenerate to full condition, even if you can get his HP to max. An archer with 30 HP who loses an arm might lose 25 HP, and be close to passing out, but then if he gets healed to full he would still be missing an arm, just more steady against getting knocked out again. Actually recovering or replacing the arm would be a separate quest.
An unscrupulous merchant looking to build their town’s relationship with adventurers for cheap could recruit groups from other towns for jobs those groups are too green to handle to artificially create the “I heard these goblins are sitting on a *pile* if gold” situation
I really like the idea of inns and such being owned or sponsored by local lords or groups, and needing a written pass to be allowed to stay. Gives it a real kind of touch, especially the Roman like fortified ones!
Yes Lords would find it in their interest to attract adventurers to clear out Monsters & the Inn would be great source of Income/opportunity to recoup expenditure on the Adventurers Jobs.
A few things to add from my experience: 1. It's not widely known, but monasteries (traditional ones) since they changed very little over centuries, still offer accommodation literally for adventurers, as they did in medieval times. I lived in a monastery for a few years and I met many kinds of people who were stepping by as part of an adventure. Bikers, artists, travelers, people seeking their meaning of life, etc. Chances are, if you visit a monastery today and ask for a bed as a traveler, you'll get one with food and stuff. Just remember it's rude not to participate in the monks' prayer while you are there. (Also since phones were invented it's better to call them before.) 2. I wouldn't say such taverns never existed, maybe not during medieval times, but rather later. Maybe the fantasy trope was modeled after modern taverns? I live in a small agricultural town in Central Europe, there are similar taverns there, a house with pub in the basement, a restaurant downstairs and a few rooms above. It's not like a hotel, the focus is on the restaurant and the pub. With less shady characters though.
A big reason to take in travellers would be entertainment. Hosting a group of adventures could get you some news from the next town or city, new stories, maybe a song you haven't heard before. These things are pretty valuable.
Yeah, my group handeled it that way. We paid for the food and Entertained people who took us in. (We had so many singing and dancing and painting character's, we were practically a boy Band on tour)
I do like the idea of inns being sponsored by the local lord. Mainly serving as points for travelers to rest safely from the horrors of the nights. I imagine they'd also be resting and resupply points for soldiers that would be patrolling important roads to keep them clear of dire bears and goblin tribes. I think it would be also very fun to use the inns to indicate how dangerous the general area it. The inn is a few scattered buildings surrounded by a short fence? Not much more than wolves here. The inn it a bunch of buildings that are in a circle and the only entrance is through the central courtyard? Goblins, maybe some dire bears. The inn is a stone keep with patrolled walls and several towers with balistas? Might be some of beasties of the big scaled and fire breathing variety around here.
I've had the wayside Inns appointed by the king of the nation at that point, they were spaced at about 25 miles apart, around the same distance for Pony Express stations, though there were exceptions when there was something else that the courier system could utilize for their stations. Local nobility had to keep them stocked/provisioned to some extent. it also meant that the kings people could use them as needed for their business.
You mean a caravanserai. Like a designated waypoint and loading station on the trade paths or compound where loose sailors, teamsters and guards can stay without forming an unregulated slum.
Actually the Witcher 3 has a great take on this, one of the rural taverns you go to for a quest acts like a pub, something you would probably see in medieval taverns, you can sit down with your ale, get some bread and a bowl of pottage (literally whatever was in the pot) and this model is seen especially in England with taverns hundreds of years old keeping the same business model, and if you were a traveler as the dialogue says in game “ye can sleep in any bench” taverns may offer the space for travelers after curfew, a cheap place to sleep indoors with a fire. Of course it’s not a merchant inn with posh beds, but most people back then didn’t really have beds anyway
Witcher taverns in the game did not even have beds so in a sense they were historically accurate. In the books however there were the usual fantasy taverns simply because the book Geralt had to sleep sometimes.
@@kacperwoch4368 in the books some did, Gerald stays a lot using the laws of hospitality, but yea, my point being that a bench near the fire is a hell of an upgrade to camping outside with the monsters
They do have "bed", but it was just some straws, leaves, etc and then covered with some fabrics. Like cotton or linen sheet. It was the equivalent of sleeping in like.. Japanese Futon. You sleep on the floor. With some stuff for your body to rest. Not directly touching the floor.
Hypothetically, it's the minimum number of people who can have all the required skills. More people would mean smaller shares. Less people would mean eventually lacking some vital talent.
True, but I like to think that if you saw one lone adventurer about to set off from a tavern, the random people nearby would remind him or her that there need to be four people and possibly offer to join as one of those four. It would be like how we think of 13 as unlucky and maybe 7 as lucky.
Wasn't it the case in classic D&D that parties would often have multiple "hireling" characters around to carry loot and poke at traps? You might have four players and four "heroes," but the actual "party size" might be 8 or more.
@@timogulYou can hire as many goons as you like. A henchman is like a junior apprentice adventurer. They got a class level and typically half a share of loot and xp. They do pretty much what a PC does. Hirelings includes mercenaries, level 0 caravan guards who guard your expedition on the road and secure base camp. They are more like second line spear-carriers.
Two important facts about "inns/taverns" are that magic and the economics of adventuring shatter any hope of maintaining historically accurate business models. The average conception of a fantasy tavern might be closer to a modern hostel or a Victorian/Renaissance era inn than anything that existed in the dark ages, but actual medieval inns never had sporadic visits from teams of mercenaries with no functional idea of the value of the coins they are dropping. The average rural townsfolk will spend a couple of copper coins over the course of a month. At most. The average adventuring party will walk into the town where these townsfolk live, pay ten gold pieces for trinkets and random trash the village grocers might have priced at one copper piece for anyone else, tip five gold pieces to any random person who lets the adventurers stop and interrogate them for forty-five minutes, and buy single apples from the local children for one gold piece each. Adventuring parties that just slayed a dragon and ransacked its hoard display their wealth the same way the rulers of the Mali Empire displayed their wealth while on pilgrimages to Mecca. No local economy along their travel route was spared. There's an old Order of the Stick comic where an ordinary village and its people are going about their day when a rider gallops through town screaming about adventurers coming down the road. Everyone drops what they are doing and runs around preparing. One child asks their father what's going on, and the man simply says they have to do what must be done and not to look down on the village adults for what's going to happen. The final frame of the comic is the party appearing on the edge of the frame while the townsfolk are standing on their porches holding signs and products for sale. Every single sign has listed prices in gold pieces and claims they are offering their goods at a special discount to celebrate the visiting heroes. The reality is that every single purchasable good in town has been marked up by at least eight hundred percent of what the locals would pay. Small villages on the roads between major population centers and known ancient ruins would most likely maintain sizeable inns for a number of reasons. Having a big hotel out by the road into town pulls in anyone who extracted piles of treasure from the dungeons. That's the entire business model for the Yawning Portal in Waterdeep. The big hotel for mercs also keeps the dangerous and armed outsiders and anyone trying to assassinate them isolated from the rest of the town. At least at night. As for remote inns at isolated crossroads. They'd be fine in most mid to high magic settings. If there is a god of travel, horizons, pilgrimages, or journeys in the setting, that means everything from a roadside mile marker shrine to a full service tavern at a major crossroads point is holy ground. Going around ancient Greek and Roman roads and taking hammers to the phallic parts of the statues of Hermes/Mercury at all the crossroads and mile markers is a sure fire way to earn the wrath of the god who could and would follow you literally anywhere. You just don't do it. Even if there are no travel gods in the setting, there's still probably at least a couple archfey who claim to be "the lord of the crossroads." If you burn down a tavern/inn/carriage house located at a major crossroads layline, be prepared to dodge at least a dozen mid level warlocks and hag covens. Having multiple immortal tricksters with limitless magic gunning for you only ever ends one way. You'll eventually get what's coming to you. Edit: "What's that? You're saying the lord of slumber had one of his Dream Walker Assassins tattoo a dick on your forehead while you slept? You need to leave our town. We can't harbor dead men."
Much like the Mali pilgrimage an adventuring party dropping gold on everyone would be rare. There wouldn't be any known ancient ruins with stuff still in them. Most adventurers wouldn't actually spend like that. They would pay taxes for legitimacy and safety. There is plenty to protect the economy.
@@yaelz6043 Your points assume a static world with little to no magic. Ruins are Dungeons. They get moved into by the peoples and factions that can't or won't take up residence in the "civilized" cities. Those groups gather resources. They stock up on weapons, gold, and goods. And that's ignoring the possibility that several Dungeons might be sentient and actively restock their treasure hoards on a regular basis. The existence of dragons with a stereotypical hoard breaks all concepts of a medieval economy just by itself. Even if we are assuming that the average dragon converts most of their hoard to copper coins just so they can fill a larger volume of lair space, the sheer number of coins it would take to make a nest/bedding for a creature the size of a dragon is astronomical when compared to the economy of a peasant village that frankly shouldn't be using coins in the first place. They'd still be on the Barter/Reciprocity system. As for the fantasy of the "tax paying adventurer"... what the hell are you smoking and where can I get some? Once you get far enough into even tier two levels you get tax exempt status by default. A level 12 wizard isn't paying taxes for their safety. They are demanding a tithe from every being living within sight of their tower so that nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than that wizard tries to move into the region. Edit: The point is that the existence of adventuring as a profession and the stealing of wealth hoarded by the enemies/targets of adventurers would drastically alter the economics of all surrounding civilizations. The average Murderhobo squad might not put out as much gold as the actual Emperor or Mali, but the towns and settlements frequented by adventurers would without question adopt the pricing models we see in modern tourist trap towns and destinations. You think the town that springs up next to a mega dungeon with seemingly endless treasure hoards isn't going to set prices the same way resort hotels price the flip flops and headache pills they sell in their gift shops? You think peasant shop keepers will never figure out the trick that allows Dasani to sell water bottles in Disney World for upwards of ten times what they sell them for in any Kroger?
@@brodriguez11000 Sure, non standard customers that frequent the area would impact some of the offerings and facilities. Probably about as much as the need to harness local or leyline magic for protection would alter such things.
You know what's the funny thing? Tourist traps nowadays are exactly like the comic you mentioned... Selling an espresso in italy gor 8€ to americans... 400% price increase
In Vinland Saga, season 2, the landowner has a small pallisade fort with a small stable and communal house and puts up so called "Guests" which are basically just landed bandits who protect his farm from other danes
@@Crits-Crafts in the old days (mainly antiquity, a bit in the middle ages too), a hostage would be treated like a host, it's just that they couldn't leave hostages were usually noblemen given as part of peace or alliance treaties, so you wouldn't want to be treating them rough
The lowest ranks of titled lords in europe were watch tower lords. A lot of them were just that. But those who operated inns are the ones who were able to transition into the bourgeoisie. They often wpuld become richer than their liege and force a wedding favorable to them.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for some time. Adventure's guilds have the exact same problem. Enter a place of business, grab a quest off a billboard, go to a receptionist to accept the quest... and dodge all the people eating and drinking at a combination bar and restaurant, plus the inn upstairs, and sometimes there is even more things here like an arena or an upstairs guild-only shop for adventurer stuff. Like, an entire town is crammed in this one building.
Thats because a place like that existed in pretty much every city in northern and central europe. with a very prominent one in London. A Typical Hanse tradepost had a billboard, drinking halls, a restaurant and places to sleep for poorer traders and workers. Also alot of gambling and whores..
If adventurers were real, that would kinda be exactly what happened though. You'd get these towns within towns, going wherever the rumours said monsters were. Same thing happened with nomadic traders historically, you got large buildings where all the traders would set up shop when they came into town, and it was more efficient for locals to go there to sell to and buy from nomads rather than have the nomads visit ten different shops dotted around the city. If you've got adventurers about, you're not going to just stay home and hope they visit your alley to stock up, you're taking a wheelbarrow of goods to wherever the adventurers are and selling whatever you can.
I really like what you bring up in this video, especially in part of DnD party forming more connections by finding places to stay instead of just waltzing up to the local inn/tavern to get a room. I also like the idea of these "mini forts" that behave as inns on the road that could easily turn into castles.
I love all of this! RE: Punishing toughing it out in the wilderness repeatedley, I find the easiest method is to just take up the Gritty Resting Rules from the 5e DMG. 8 hours is a Short Rest, and a Long Rest requires 24 hours of little to no activity, iirc. If you take up One D&D's exhaustion rules in combination, then long travel and excursions into the wilderness slowly wear them down, and the longer they're away from civilization the longer they'll have to recover in it... and some lords might not be so patient with these ruffians staying here for the next week.
I generally divide inns as places for travelers to stay and taverns as neighborhood places where locals can gather to drink and socialize. If there are any lodgings in the tavern it will be reserved for locals to sleep it off as they would be known to the tavern keeper and not for strangers t stay overnight. Adventurers can go to taverns, but they may be given the cold shoulder and eyed with some suspicion as strangers similar to wearing your team's logo and going to a sports bar frequented by the fans of a rival team. The taverns will also serves as the strongholds of any neighbor organization or gang so enter at our own risk.
If there an adventure guilds why wouldn't they build an adventure inn and hall for them and take on quest. Quest that Watchmen, reeves, guards and knight are put to the side, too busy to do, out of border, difficult terrain or things that want to keep secret. That doesn't interfere with the local law enforcement.
@@majesticgothitelle1802 The thing is, both can happen I think A specialized guild or adventurer inn could be built in order to offer them special services, but I think it would only be localized on very highly frequented locations, such as big cities or important crossroads, since setting a specialized inn in a small town or on the road toward middle-of-nowhereshire wouldn't be financially tolerable due to lack of activity frequency, while the generalist inn could offer lower quality adventurer services while also being useful for townfolks and other types of travelers Otherwise that would be like setting a castle in the middle of marshlands, there may be a lord for this castle but nobody would come to it since there is about nothing useful to find
@@pricel141l but you have to remember adventure are more temp, mercenaries and odd job workers. They would be less likely to be welcomed in by the locals due to being strangers. Adventure would be like nomad in real life. They would have local warriors, shaman, priest and whatever class as the one part of the community doing the hunting, search in the Territory, and serving of the community and noble. You have to come up with a reason why they won't have a town wizard officer. shaman that deals with spirit and undead. a priest and church for the country god in a town. A scout that patrol and maintain the wild life population and hunting. Adventure would be a special guild having wondered if long distance would require outside of the Territory for long periods of days. That would be needing an inn outside of town and village. While the guilds hall would be in the city and town where it is safer and the local government watches over and tax.
This is one of my favorite dnd Chanels I do more world building than minmaxing and re-examining tropes is such a pleasure thinking deeper on them and I often spend a couple hours mauling over the video maybe even researching the topic
The Roman predecessor to a medieval inn would be a mansio. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansio The mansiones were state-sponsored and intended for the use of people on official business, who were expected to provide a passport to identify themselves. There existed also privately-owned similar venues, but they were somewhat disreputable, frequented by thieves and prostitutes. They would surely be visited by adventurers as well, if Rome had any.
I'm pretty sure a fantasy equivalent of the roman empire would have adventurers for 2 reasons : - One, they had rampant corruption problems among official guards, so the average politician would be very pleased to be able to pay some shady guys to "take care" of their opponents - Second, if there were a roman empire equivalent in a fantasy world, it would have passed through the same monsters and races problems as its medieval counterpart, thus creating an untiring need of adventurers to take care of those issues as well as maybe explore some untouched lands rumored to be plagued by monsters guarding huge treasures
Have you talked about the idea of the city watch or city guard at all? If not, could be a good video topic. It sometimes comes up in games where a player says "why wouldn't we go to the city guard and they can deal with it?" and besides the narrative reason of "it's boring" it can be a little difficult to come up with a verisimilitudinous reason that the guard can't or isn't willing to involve themselves where the adventurers should. So like, going into how a city guard would operate, their interactions and relationship with adventurers, how big a town needs to get before they have a standing guard, etc.. The way I rationalize the one problem, by the way, is that the city guard reasons that instead of sending a squadron of 20 good men into cult-infested sewers to get potentially stabbed by traps or turned gibbering and inside out by eldritch magics, they can just make a deal with 4-5 insane but terrifyingly competent schmoes to go in and clear everything out, then send in the squad afterward to clean up the mess.
My players once got an abandoned warehouse at auction, and when they got there it turned out to be full of ghouls. I thought they would deal with it themselves, but they boarded it up and handed the problem to a previously mentioned Paladin order nearby. Legitimate solution to the problem, but they missed out on the loot the undead had, and their new property was damaged in the fighting. Any choice they make is valid, but all choices and non-choices have consequences.
In medieval times, most towns didn't have permanent street guards Of course they had some militiamen employed to watch at the town's outer doors and walls making sure to spot eventual threats, but nothing even close to some sort of police force So if you even wondered how could the guards be unable to take care of an affair within town just think about this : In reality, lords didn't usually paid full-time guards to watch the streets and take care of common folks problems, it's overwhelmingly expansive for people that are in fact not productive at all most of the time (and you NEED as many productive people as possible at this time) As for intown monsters problems, I think your usual militiamen aren't fit for a fight against ghouls, mages of even, why the fuck not, full fledged vampires They could keep them at bay for the time being, waiting for actual professionals, either true knights from a nearby big city, mercenaries or passing adventurers, to take care of the problem directly, which is also a way to avoid having to deal with the problem of dead or injured townfolks which the local lord then would have to take care of, instead of being able to simple send the adventurers fuck around once their job is done and their pay given
It's also worth noting that even a Level 1 player character is a cut above professional. This goes back to the stories of Conan the barbarian (who is often described as shrugging off things that would have killed three "lesser men"), Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (best thieves in the world-central city of Lankhmar), Errol Flynn's celluloid swashbucklers (fencing with three men at once) and so on. Player characters *start* as remarkable (at least in D&D and similar settings), and get tougher from there. To use D&D 5th Edition as an example: a typical guard is CR 1/8 (that is to say, a squad of 8 of them are considered a modest challenge for a group of four player characters); a fully-trained knight or veteran is CR 3. Quite often, the question of: "Why don't we call the Guard?" can often be answered by a wry: "Do you think they could handle it?"
The big thing stopping a “city watch” from dealing with an issue (at least for a town that doesn’t have a Cleric that can create food and water out of nothing) in a medieval or ancient town is the fact that it is possible that there are only 3 full-time guards per 100 members of the population, or even fewer, with the rest of the “guards” just being random men of the town who have been told to fight crime that day by the sheriff, or the “see something say something” guys who organize opposition to a criminal they see (for reference, see X-Men Apocalypse where Storm is hiding out in Egypt and steals a loaf of bread, and a bunch of men see this happen and chase after her, ready to cut her hand off as punishment for theft). Similarly, you could try gleaning from how the Taliban runs their government, where the people at the top do nothing except act as figureheads until they need to fight, and otherwise arrange their society around the men in general having power, where the man of a house is expected to be personally responsible for maintaining the obedience of everyone in his household. Later, this can result in proverbs 31 type situations, where the men sit around and talk at the city gate while the women do all the work. In light of such situations, it makes sense that those men want to stay in town where they feel safe and powerful, and so an outsider man can be quickly sent to deal with the monster situations while those townsmen get to remain comfortable. Consider how much money Amazon makes off of making it convenient to receive stuff, and now adventurers suddenly make it very convenient to deal with scary situations for a price, and the townsmen will provide the adventurers with Prime-subscription level revenue.
I don't know what the requirements for a "fantasy tavern" are to you but even a wild west saloon feels pretty close... 200 years ago and for quite some time before, taverns/saloons were built as hotels and drinking/eating spots and towns were literally built around them. The tavern was the community forum of its day, the US Marine Corps was born in a Tavern, men were recruited in taverns. So minus the elves, and I guess middle-earth movie styling, fantasy taverns aren't all that "fantasy".
I think rather than a fortified inn, what would make sense in a very fantastical setting would be an inn attached to a wizard tower or some other accommodation of a powerful magic user. This would likely be the greatest form of protection for travelers as magic users would likely be able to detect any kind of monster or shape-changer trying to sneak into the inn and the inn itself would be protected by the magic user themselves if it ever came under attack. The relative isolation of the inn would mean that if the magic user were ever to have some sort of disastrous or explosive complication in whatever magic research they might want to do, they would have it away from any densely populated areas. Having such an inn on a major travel route or between two large cities would allow the magic user to purchase common supplies from merchants passing through while also allowing them to commission adventurers staying in the inn for rarer objects or monster parts. The inn could also serve as a form of income for the magic user so that they could better fund whatever magical research that they may be interested in. The magic user could run the inn in any number of ways, from having apprentices work at the inn, to staffing it entirely with the undead or even making the building itself a living being.
Totally agree, especially on the last part with the forts. It makes so much sense in a world full of monsters. Do you have a video on how rural living conditions might be? By taking this thought further, in this type of monster heavy settings dispersed farms make no sense. Fortified villages would concentrate most of this frontier population. I think this is an interesting topic for a video
Taverns have been around since ancient greece called taberna. They were equivalent to the American type type of bar/saloon. They served alcohol and food and was the location of local gambling. They did provide a place to sleep a bed roll in a corner. Not very popular in western Europe but was every where in spain, Italy, and greece.
So many of your videos have superb ideas that I will take as inspiration. I am now imagining an order of Hospitality, fortified inns and healers on routes for every major settlement.
This is, by far, one of the best made and we'll thought of videos on this subject I have seen. From beginning to end it is informative and thought provoking. Thank you so much for making this video.
I really like this in context of your adventures guild video. Instead of an in town location the “guild hall” rather being a small fortress a day’s journey between towns. The angle that the person running the adventure guild is actually the local noble, looking for at least some +1 swords for his town guards just makes it that much better.
I tried to tackle this problem myself when I was coming up with various fantasy styled stories, and discovered that when you look into the historical ways people traveled and needed accommodations, you really do see where various types of inn might be necessary. In my story, I came up with something called a Wayfarer's Inn; the entire thing is on thick stilts in the form of stables, and a larger area for storage of wagons/carts with a dedicated stable hand there to brush down the beasts of burden, care for their feet, get them some food, clean water, and a place to bed down for the night. The area is blocked off after nightfall, but the inn above is a place of respite, and a trading hub. If you have barrels or boxes of food, linens, extra weapons you don't need, or anything that might fetch a nice price, this is the place for you. With the building on stilts, and with its fenced wall (albeit of treated redwood) any creatures/bandits/monsters attempting to attack will find themselves quickly taken out by archers (the family who owns these types of inns are former adventurers or have guards on hire from the local militia) or the owners themselves. Every type of item, weapon, good, and service can be purchased from the wayfarer inn - including a bath in their open air bath house. Aside from these, I've done the same with temples, hospitals, and random inns across the world, with some being sanctioned only by the local lord, baron, earl, duke, or king.
this video is so inspiring, your different examples were planting seeds in my head for potential campaigns that could be potentially very grounding and engaging in my opinion. Awesome
Video request/idea: I would love to see how societies would form, given the adventurers existence as a social class/role, and how this role would come to be. For example, army as an institution got established as means to protects the land from intruders and to conquer others, clergy - because people needed a place to gather and feel that they belong in the community, and later because places of people gathering created leaders who had political power. So I wonder where did adventuring should "historically" come from, if we assume that it had developed to the heights of adventuring guilds and such
Well it would have to revolve around monster hunting, catching powerful criminals and invading/counter attacking places the state didn't want to actually occupy such as the under dark.
@@yaelz6043 it could, but also why would the government want to hire adventures for this if they can have a regular army that is much more obedient and consistent? I have some ideas and a even fewer solutions, one of which I've implemented in my world, but they all seem pretty niche to me, so I'd like to see a deep dive into the topic
@@nin0f well the adventurers don't need to be hired, just told that a monster's horn or horde are valuable. You wouldn't just pay them to kill something, they would kill it and sell you something of worth that they got off it. As for a regular army, losing population or even just farming time is really bad, no one will miss adventurers when they die in a cave somewhere.
@@yaelz6043 Yeah, but then why not send your own army of trained people to get the treasure if it's valuable enough? Of course some adventurers might go look for small-sized treasures, but that is not really sustainable, nor does it lead to development of adventuring as a stable institution In my world the reason why the adventuring is cool and armies don't exist is because there are literally NO countries and states, because humans and monsters have mostly a predator-prey relationship. That means that if any settlement becomes big enough to become a state, it almost immediately gets overrun by hungry monsters. Because of this big settlements are much more akin to the ancient polis (Greek city-state) and can't afford a regular army, since they don't and can't exist long enough to create an army institution. That is one solution, but, obviously, it is very specific and can not be even remotely generalized for a medieval Europe type of setting
Ex soldiers turn mercenary killing monsters and acting as bounty hunters for cash and as a bonus it's a lot freer and than being a mercenary in a war with less time constraints since you won't be traveling as much in general and when you do you get to chose where.
How is this the first time Im seeing your channel?! THIS is the fantastic kind of DM inspiration content Ive been looking for! Well thought out detail, and reason behind each decision.
My/Our World Of MIDORIS is of heavy influence in many areas of Western Europe/British Isles 1215 - 1415. A Hamlet will have 8-16 farms/homes/huts including any merchants/businesses within a 16-25 square mile area. A small Village will have 16-24 farms/homes/businesses within a 16-25 sq.mile area: a large Village will have 32-64 farms/homes/businesses within a 25-64 square. mile area: A small City will have 49-144 farms/homes/businesses within a 36-81 sq.mile area, and a large City would have 81-400 farms/houses/businesses with a 81-121 sq. mile area. Now, Its largest cities across its largest Continent, Arethya, have populations of 1) 240K residents, (2) 210K, (3) 180K, (4) 150K, and (5th) in population having 120K population. While there are a couple dozen more cities across the Continent, the majority of these cities have a population ranging from 4K to 12K. It also often appears that Only these larger cities offer the most durable types of armor such as Plate Mail or Full Plate, as well as other objects, foodstuffs, clothing, and the like of the highest quality!!😊😮
Adventurers would want secure accomodation, VERY secure. The price of their kit is usually counted in the thousands of gold pieces and if anything get's stolen? You do not want a group of trained killers blaming you... They would almost certainly have some animals (familiars, mounts, animal companions, etc) but possibly very exotic ones and so can you accomodate an Owlbear, a Pseudodragon or even an Ooze? I would imagine some capacity with magic would be essential (either to limit it on the premesis or to offer services, e.g. better security, magical services, etc) and also some arrangement with merchants who trade in magical items (usually these sell for massive sums compared to to non-magical items). The parallel with mercenaries is a good one, they tended to travel in large groups due to hostile populations and were not popular, and so an adventurer group might disguise itself as say, a troup of actors or merchant with guards in order to fit in better. Guild membership might also afford adventurers a more acceptable social position and stronger ties to an area e.g. armourers, weapon smiths, etc)
A good example of the day's ride apart concept is the California Mission Chain on the El Camino Real from San Diego to Sanoma. Only a handful were walled, relying more on a handful of soldiers stationed there to dissuade those with bad intentions. For my world the ground floor of my Taverns or Inns have a Hostel style common room with the upstairs for for small groups (party sized). These Taverns and Inns are the primary way information is spread (and plot hooks dropped) as they rely on travelers to share what is new "down the road". Consider the local Lord that collects a bed tax in exchange for protection from the outside baddies. Everybody wins.
So, one idea I had for a realistic inn and tavern setup in a small village would be to have the inn and tavern close by, possibly next door to each other or across the street. Depending on the setting and if you wanted to get fancy, there could also be a thermopolium (ancient Greek/Roman take-out restaurant equivalent) close-by as well, and it could possibly be a food supplier for the tavern. Put this in proximity to a market square and you've basically got what would function as a "traditional" fantasy tavern.
You are forgetting that the medieval era happened outside of England too. In Germany there where Wirtshäuser and Gasthäuser which very much and very closely resemble the Prancing Pony. So your points are pretty mood. By the 18th century England has adopted the style of tavern/inn from the mainland.
A couple of further thoughts on fortified inns being a days travel apart: * In wilder, sparser parts they could be a day's ride apart so that while walking travelers have to rough it most nights they do get an option to sleep inside walls regularly. And travelers with horses (or camels, etc) can get to them every night and they are also more likely to be able to afford paying for the better accommodations. * If there are known to be bandits or monsters in the area (but not enough to stop traveling completely) organizing a convoy for the day would come naturally to most? Just set off from the inn together in the morning, and keep the same pace if possible. This reminds me of something Chaucer wrote... that is to say: our group of intrepid adventurers will often travel together with others a few days at a time. Side characters coming and going, lore learned, news told, etc. And can we trust them all? hm. * Just like in the Wild West and the Roman Empire, if there's a courier/postal service, those would surely also be using these subsidized inns? Might be one of the funding sources for the inn keepers. Final thought: The time from when Rome fell to the end of the medieval perdiod has the lack of all this as a minor but still sort of defining feature. Traveling wasn't unheard of, no, but it wasn't common at all for almost everyone. Never going further than the next village over wasn't weird.
Fantasy taverns: never existed. Me (DM): **Don't care**. There's a bartender who's the owner, a server who is probably the owner's kid etc., private rooms, a common room the players will never use, a stage with a randy bard, unique food and beer, a loudmouth local that will pick a fight with the players but then get intimidated into submission, a dragon's skull on the chimney above the fireplace, rumors, and diner booths in the corner that are in shadows but have a view of all the exits. And the players will be sad if there isn't one of these not-taverns waiting for them after a dungeon slog. Fantasy taverns will have more than this, but the above is as much of a foundational requirement as dice. Comment section: You're a bad DM with no originality! Me: You're not at my table and your opinion is poop on my shoe. I've been making players happy since 1978, and I buggered your grandma back when she was hot. That's why you smell bad. Vicious Mockery, you take 7 points of psychic damage and have Disadvantage to respond to this comment. BAM
8:50 honestly proper vision would be sort of like a mix US Marshall service mixed with mercenary’s and bounty hunters. We have some sort of judicial authority after all.
Adventurers are a special case indeed. Recently I was playing a 12th level (Pathfinder) Sorcerer and some yokel villagers were going on about the inn or whatever. My PC was horrified and teleported to the nearby city to stay in a nice hotel. Bunch of slobs. Call when you need me to nuke some fools. You have a good point about friars and tinkers being acceptable to locals and not adventurers. Our Barbarian was a giant, roaring maniac, our Rogue looked and behaved like a ninja assassin, my guy flew everywhere, breathing ice blasts, you get the idea. I've no idea if we'd be welcome at a roadside tavern, but the landlady was not in much of a position to say no. We paid and tipped well, to be fair. Had to pay for an alarming amount of repairs too.
Some people have mentioned it but we have more recent real world examples that still exist. Taverns come from Roman Tabernas which still exist in Greece as taverns, a place to sit and have a meal and drinks. A fortified Inn is a caravanserai. There is one next to the castle near me. It was a walled enclosure with rooms for rent for merchants and goods. They were specifically built, not just converted villas. If it was full, camping was available inside as well. You were paying for the security of the walls, for the most part. And its not in the castle for safety reasons but right next to it so the local lord can shop and levy taxes without having to go far. Lords are just as involved in commerce in their lands as anything else.
Huh! Great video, my mate. Got it randomly recommended and watched the whole thing. I don't have a lot to say but I want to leave a comment for algorithm to feed on. I might add that I really like your tone of voice and choice of words, on top of the matter obviously. I'm leaving a Sub so see you next time and GL out there because this channel seems to be deserving more attention surely.
This actually kinda helped me nail down a gameplay loop for a Tavern Management game that I have. The concept of a Hamlet or a Small Fort beside a town or city for all types to gather is wild.
Could you imagine an inn on a well traveled and protected road. Giant pot of food simmering, local beer, and small rooms available to rest under a roof. I can't imagine these didnt exist. Its seems like such a no brainer.
Love the focus on inns! It was a big sticking point for my current world building to get these right! For a resting mechanic, I’d introduce fatigue back as a mechanic (perhaps retooled) that requires players to make checks/saves when resting rough. Such checks are helped/hindered by supplies, weather, condition, etc. or outright negated with certain things like special items, comforts, food (to encourage cooking/cooking classes if allowed). On the topic of hospitality, when inns aren’t available, things like favors or helping with chores like cooking would be a great way for adventurers to find accommodations. Someone with leatherworking proficiency can more easily score room and board with a local tanner, or be put up in a large family home when a cook, or even nab a room in the alehouse if a brewer! And the more artisanal skills might offer one extended stay at a local lord’s manor in exchange for an art piece or restoration or appraisal! The more academically minded might be able to house in the local wizard’s tower in exchange for swapping spells or scrolls (though for price that would be an extended stay or guaranteed hospitality on future visits). Or perhaps universities offer room and board for varying reasons. Students might have be charged to their grant or their own school foots any bills (if perhaps they’re adventuring for semi-academic purposes like archeological digs and delves), or are welcomed on standing for graduates, or in exchange for guest lectures on niche or highly specialized topics like ruins, spellcraft, runework, potions. Of course a world might give special titles to especially famous and successful adventurers and their parties for services rendered, and as a way to bridge (or keep control over) their social class as very wealthy and skilled people. Thus at some point said adventurers might simply impose on lords directly, or be granted hospitality by even royals! But before even that, if someone like a fighter is a military veteran room could be provided at forts, guardhouses, or barracks. Mercenaries might have a code of hospitality to friendly companies. And of course established adventuring guilds may be the ones tasked with operating these remote, rural, and wayward inns. Such groups might require constant communications and run vast networks, thus their letter & parcel runners need guaranteed lodging. Such in s might also be joint ventures with merchant guilds for the shared purpose of travel safety, and might even double as factories, farms, or ranches given sufficient land. Even without a direct investment from a merchant guild these things might still be found among rural inns simply as a vast revenue source, a way to keep up food supplies both for normal patronage and for emergencies. Some of the best vintage might come from such places disconnected from the density, grime, and waste of urban centers. Many of these inns can also be villas that are owned (if not also operated or lived in) by local or distant lords. Perhaps even royals invest in villas that double as inns for revenue, with separate accommodation for the owner. Perhaps these are even operated by the manor lords as real resorts on beaches or hot springs! The possibilities are endless!
I really would recommend you check out 1st and 2nd edition. Because that thing you talked about about the fortified Manor houses possibly being gifted to adventurers. Once they are famous enough. Remind me quite a bit of a feature that fighters had until 3rd edition. Copied from the aD&D 2e player's handbook When a fighter attains 9th level (becomes a “Lord”), he can automatically attract men-at-arms. These soldiers, having heard of the fighter, come for the chance to gain fame, adventure, and cash. They are loyal as long as they are well-treated, successful, and paid well. Abusive treatment or a disastrous campaign can lead to grumbling, desertion, and possibly mutiny. To attract the men, the fighter must have a castle or stronghold and sizeable manor lands around it. As he claims and rules this land, soldiers journey to his domain, thereby increasing his power. Furthermore, the fighter can tax and develop these lands, gaining a steady income from them. Your DM has information about gaining and running a barony
Adventures are basically an independent militia that deals with problems that are too much for the peasantry to handle, but are below the military to deal with. Basically bounty hunters of a sort.
sweden did have something fairly similar to fantasy taverns, although it should be noted they werent nearly as expansive in scope as what tabletop games portray. They were fairly simple establishments meant to provide food, beverage, a bed and a change of horse. Often they served as a local gathering spot as well but this wasnt universal and a crucial detail being they were 'rarely' found in larger settlements, seeing as they grew out of simple horse stables intended for couriers to have a place to rest for the night. They still exsist to this day and are interesting places to visit as a tourist
The 'Adventurers retreating to the Hospital' was, interestingly, the 'Retreat and Resurrect' place in the 'Neverwinter Nights' game by Bioware, back in the day. The city center had an actual inn (which also served as the local brothel and bathhouse), but the 'main retreat and recovery' point was the Temple of Tyr which served as the hospital during that game's initial setting.
Making a really good argument for murder hobos, adventurers closest proxy in medieval society would indeed be bandits. That being said imposing upon your own social class for hospitality might be very difficult depending on just how free that social class were. In an actualy medieval setting you would likely be restricted to monasteries if you weren't travelling with a retinue of some wealth, even a farm owner probably too high on the pecking order to put up with you.
These are really great ideas. another is the roman period mansio. they were specifically stops placed about a day's march apart, for messengers, couriers, and the higher ranking members of society. basically anybody involved with the government or military other than common soldiers, and paid for by government tax, as long as you're from the government or military, or by donation, if you just want a place to sleep the night and have cash on hand. it matches your fortified inn description quite well.
Great content! I like all the concepts, from the charter-based justification to the RP potential of trying to find a connection in order to shelter for a night.
So I have had in the past, not sure if I still do, several terms for various types of places offering various types of reprieve. The regular "play to stay" list was 1. Hotels 2. Inns 3. Taverns 4. Hostels 5. encampments. Places like staying with monks or peasants were also options The idea is that the nicer you go, the better treatment you get and therefore the more of your stats get replenished and less likely you are to be attacked. You can do this with other things too. Is it a Vineyard? A distillery? A brewery? A bar? An alehouse? All of those are different levels of (pretty much) the same thing. Vineyards make wine and so they are the most expensive, but best for your soul. Alehouses are rolling the dice (literally) on if this new drink will help or actually hurt you
My friend had An Inn And "Tavern" in our main city the Inn was essentially a large hotel near the cities public bathhouse, across from the castles gates within the walls, the tavern was outside the walls in thr village, and was only open select days while the Inn was always open, they didnt serve beer until after around 6 pm equivilant, the rest of the tavern acted as a gathering hall for the guilds to post jobs, where as the upstairs had the rooms for rent spacous enough for each to host a part of around 4, it was the central building aside from the proper castle/fort and the church happened to be next door closer to the gates, the bathhouse nextdoor close to the docks where merchant ships and the fishermens guild was setup, behind it was the crafts guilds marketplace, each of the actual craftsmen had thier shops proper outside the walls. I really liked thebserup it felt like this Inn was the centeral hotel and town somewhat an extention of the town square between it and the gatehouse leading to the inner walls and castles moat, you entered the city via the gates passing the church before encountering the Inn and the townsquare infront of it, the docks led straight to the town square, and you could see the bathhouse just off to the corner of the Inn, was always odd having to go around the inn for the marketplace, he should ofnset it up on the docks
I hadn’t thought of that in my world. But it gives me ideas. One country of my world is highly magically developed and has a main road that runs between most towns and cities and has guard posts, but the towns can be days or even weeks apart on foot. Thematically, the army and adventuring guilds are used to dispose of any “aggressive” creatures found near this road or any villages. This leads to many adventuring-type guilds each having their own theme that leaves them unique in either a type of magic or in the type of jobs they take. Some a para military while others are effectively just hired guards for traveling merchant and crafting guilds. This leads me to the idea that there would also be another guild within all of those, a type of travelers guild. They build small inns within a day’s travel of each other along this main road. And these inns would generally have a shared room or two along with a private room or two and a small stable and even a special barn for special cargo. Anyone using this barn would be given a special necklace with a key on it. This barn would have a special lock that would only open to that key and the inn keeper’s master key. However, if anyone was to open the door or get into the barn without that special key being present an alarm would be set off that would alert the inn keeper, wielder of the key, and nearby guard’s post. Along with all of this these inns would have nightly prices. Though, most guilds pay for reduced prices by paying a weekly or monthly fee for certain individuals to always have certain privileges. For example: the special barn may cost a gold for per night, making a week long trip cost a whopping 7 gold. Which is too expensive for those traveling to only make a low amount of gold overall, but for those selling fine silks and magical wares is fairly cheap for the nightly protection of guards and a warm bed. So a guild might pay 5 gold per week to the traveler’s guild for special medallions that they give to their highest profiting merchants, to ensure their safe travel. With of course multiple options for those needing only stables and a bed or wanting private rooms.
Thoughtful talk-out of a tavern essay. After listening to your points I would now imagine that the 'inn/tavern' that is welcoming 'adventurers' would most likely be in a mercantile district as opposed to a jovial residential situation. Along with that they may even have a writ restricting them to that portion of the city.
Very interesting stuff to hear, especially as someone trying to conceptualize a fantasy world in a more modern setting. How I've thought of it is a set of guilds that are privately owned but part of an organization, licensing adventurers & handing out quests. Most guilds also house inns, bars/restaurants, maybe an emergency clinic for the injured, and sometimes an info broker to sell valuable intel. They could even help out with things such as currency exchange, travel guidance, translation, or the search/distribution of equipment. Essentially an almost all-in-one fantasy tavern with a bit more structure.
Just as a thought, perhaps the inns would actually be slightly closer (or trying to fill in), and have it be something like the Pony Express where it's basically the distance to run a horse to near exhaustion as a messenger system there as well. While there's magic for faster communication, it's more difficult to send packages and similar or deal with some things that might be needed that way.
The JRPG Another Eden has both inns and taverns as separate establishments with few exceptions. Because of the time travel plot, these institutions exist even in the distant past and the future. There even is a tavern beyond time and space named Time's Forgotten Stop which is a key recurring location. The inns serve as a common way for player to heal their party of companions and can get an expendable package of food for a total restore in the field. Taverns primarily serve as gossip points, locations were quest events occur, or (beginning in part three) bounty postings. Time's Forgotten Stop also includes a equipment blacksmith's shop, bards that retell the events of earlier adventures of the player (i.e. replay cutscenes), and a person that can that can upgrade character classes or unlock parallel versions of characters from parallel timelines.
Athas, the setting of Dark Sun, is full of these establishments you describe. The caravanserai or Merchant House fortress is often the only "safe" place you'll find in the wilds. For games that involve lots of travel between points of light, this is a great, flavorful way to present the world.
In the summer of 2008, I drove to Spain with a friend on holiday. After spending one night in Denmark, we drove south and came into a small German border town close to Belgium. Everything was closed there, so we decided to head straight into the Ardennes, prepared to sleep in a tent if need be. We came into a small Belgian town with a WWI memorial in the centre, and there was a pub/inn right next to it that was open. They had a room, we got a meal, and some excellent Belgian beer, and it remains one of the fondest memories I have of a journey that took me to Bastogne, Bouillon, Paris, Bilbao, Lugo, Santiago de Compostela, Leon and Burgos.
When I did the West Highland Way in Scotland there are a few of these wilderness taverns still in operation. It's a great way to put yourself in the shoes of a fantasy adventurer
I love to write fantasy and always made fun of the tavern troupe, but still found myself falling back onto the concept time and again. You have given me a new way to think about how I incorporate them. I can turn it from tired troupe to interesting concept! Thanks!
Thanks for this vid. :) In the MMORPG, Pax Dei, our guild, The Order of the Blood Brothers, is forming from within, a group of us who will be going out to investigate, and possibly hunt, supernatural creatures in the Pax Dei world - and possibly be hired by others to guide and protect them through the mythological monster's territories. Even though the name of our guild may be intimidating, it actually denotes our loyalty to each other and alliance guilds, and free peoples of the realm. That being said, we won't be the type of adventurers who are rowdy and out to make trouble. Decent mercenaries do exist in us. :)
The most realistic medieval tavern/inn I've seen was in The book of the new sun by Gene Wolfe, which is strange, because it's sci-fi. Nowhere else I've seen unacquainted people sharing beds in an inn
Along overland trade routes you also got a special kind of “inn” which catered to caravans. They look a bit like basic fortresses that you rent overnight. Walls around a central courtyard, a water source, stables, someplace to unload merchandise, someplace to cook and shelter for setting up your sleeping gear. Little or no staff. They might be locked up until you pay, or they might be open and free for use as sponsored by the local authorities. Caravans are perfectly capable to set up a fortified camp anywhere, but this is much safer and more convenient. Presence of fantasy monsters would make this more true. Cheers
I really think having a calibration of rest periods account for the need of such a proper resting, within a safe-ish structure is something very enriching for fantasy RPGs
D&D does have fortified inns - famously the Friendly Arm Inn which is basically a fortified ring wall with a gate house surrounding a major central keep. But yeah, adventurers having just vanquished the local dragon or other monster threat and made off with its hoard of wealth would be akin to a group of people all having just won the lottery. Could make running an inn very profitable when said adventurers with more wealth than they know what to do with return to your inn at the end of their adventure and tip you a few months or years worth of salary - like we see happens at modern day casinos. (D&D makes it pretty clear that the gold value of loot is often astronomical compared to the yearly salaries of a farmer or innkeeper or waitress. Like on the scale of a yearly wage being a couple gold pieces and a haul of loot for even a fairly low level adventuring party can be worth a couple hundred gold pieces.) Especially since the adventurers could be returning with so much loot that they pretty much have to get rid of it, even when doing so comes at a massive loss of the "theoretical" value of gemstones or other items that are hard to just immediately sell. Because it's hard to haul around several enchanted swords / pieces of armor / gold crowns everywhere.
I have used adventurers's halls as a base of operations. I really like the idea of fortified inns in the wilderness between major towns. I have also seen an adventure group room that has a small apartment like space with a common room with 4 individual bed chambers. I have made specialized inns for adventure groups that have premium rooms like this. They are more expensive but generally better for groups.
In my setting, a wilderness inn is a rarity. Mostly only major trade hubs have inns for travelling merchants and mercenaries. The few that are out in the wild are always fortified. One inn that played a repeat role in the campaign was a front for local military intelligence. The kingdom underwent civil war, so the nature of the troops there changed a couple times, but it always had some heavily armed presence and was well fortified. These fortress-inns were well known landmarks along the major roads where they were located.
In one of my past campaign settings, it was a law that the Lord of any commoner who posted a bounty for an adventuring guild (usually in wheat, animals, or heirloom items) legally had to either deal with the problem with their own men-at-arms, or pay out the bounty and offer the coin equivalent, essentially doubling the posted reward. The nobility were also legally required to keep a conspicuously placed and prominent notice board to accept these bounties, and so taverns were essentially a kind of one-stop mercenary emporium where an adventurer could buy and sell weapons, get drunk, find good paying jobs, and recover from injuries sustained the field. Since Adventurers are essentially traveling mercenaries with more firepower than a small army, taverns devoted to serving adventurers double to also serve to keep those walking, talking WMDs as far away from the average smallfolk as possible. As such, many taverns would be operated tax-free, or even be sponsored by the local lord, and adventuring companies who became especially distinguished may even be offered direct sponsorships themselves just to stick around on a more permanent basis to assist in the local lord's more unorthodox problems.
Another option for where Adventurers might rest, especially in larger towns my be guild halls. If there were guilds for adventurers or specific groups (i.e. Sellsword/fighter fort, Priest's cloister, Mages guild) that could be another option for where members of the party might rest. Leave quest requests on a job board outside the town hall. I do also love the idea of a specific type of inn developing around adventurers as well as seeking shelter with the local lord because they're the only one with the money & authority to pay for them.
I love this! It is bice to have idea to bring travel to life and bring ppl into the heart of the world. I would love to hear more about your mechanical set ups and other world building to make finding good places to stat nore important, raising the stakes!
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Wow I hadn't even considered that. A bunch of fortified inns in the wilderness serving as pseudo-castles is such an awesome idea
Idk if you ever play baulders gate 1 but there is an important inn you go to early on. It literally is a walled small castle.
Thiers real world looks at this idea in the us west. Fur trade posts/forts. Same basic consept. In a points of light campaign, you would need them more or less as nighyly stop overs on the road for anyone in the wilderness between civilizations. And that is a grate place for adventures to ply thier trade.
@@Josh-ye9ol I think the old west had an influence on the fantasy tavern.
The "classic" saloon with room and food WAS a thing for small towns all over the west.
There just wasn't enough business to support the three individually, but enough to make it worthwhile if you had a more reliable sideline. The three just *fit* in that time & place
Nothing "pseudo-" about it, really. Most castles were almost certainly just fortified towers--usually wood, maybe with a stone bottom floor wall.
Just reimagine the innkeeper as a squire (the administrative kind, possibly a knight himself too), maybe with a couple men-at-arms (and their families too). Perhaps the master of the nearby countryside, including any farms or a village it's in.
Opening the great hall as a pub for locals and travelers, and a floor or wing of rooms as an inn could give such a humble peer an extra income stream when it's not needed for combat.
Edit: and he kinda covered that at 19-20 minutes in. :p
Honestly, depending on magic levels in the setting, any inn sitting at a crossroads might be safe. Especially if you have Archfey, gods of travel, or any amount of "Leylines" lip service in the setting.
"Oh, did you hear about the local Drow Assassin outpost? Apparently, the target of one of their purges was sleeping at the big crossroads inn."
"Not the crossroads that eight separate roads run through?"
"Yup. Whole placed burned to the ground."
"What happened to the drow?"
"Red Caps came right up out of the ground and chased them for miles. When they finally got home, they were ambushed by a few dozen goblins. Had a hag coven with them. Now the word is that two more hag covens are moving into the area, and some warlocks and other cultists are asking if adventurers want to collect drow ears."
"Well, there goes the neighborhood."
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Goblin King leads this year's Wild Hunt through that entire valley."
Alehouse = Lemonade stand
Tavern = Downtown bar
Inn inside town = Hotel
Inn out in the wilderness = Fortified shelter
👌
I tend to think off trading posts and trappers forts in the early days of North American colonies.
Inn inside town = hostel?
@@BlorkTDork Yup, If they were way out in the wilds then they would not be a fortified "inn". It would be a FORT'.
Drinking an accommodation would just be part of the fort. Trade and commercial processing would absolutely be the main endeavors of the fort.
And the commander of the fort, while being like a little king of his fort, ultimately works for 'the king'.
no no more like tavern=liquor store
A group of fully armed travelling warrior merchants walks into a bar, a restaurant, a hotel, a stable, a bathhouse and a fortress at the same time...
Also a brewery and a farm
They're bandits, probably.
And who doesn't love a good courtyard, maybe lined with some wide porches and balconies.
and a SHRUBBERY!
Exists in feudal Japan
Adventurers feel like a distinct type of yeomen.
Having a constant supply of looted goods would make fortified inns a great place for merchants & adventurers to trade goods that wouldn't be well seen in a town.
Because of that, this concept of the fortified inn also favours a type of game where equipment itself is treasure, as you can always sell the 20 scimitars you looted from all the bandits you killed on your way and back.
I have 20 chipped scimitars, 100 bloody daggers, 50 bent arrows, 5 cracked bows, a dozen dented helmets, one oddly pristine breastplate, and ring of unbearable stench to sell.
How did you come by so many daggers?
Bandits, man. each one had like ten of them.
@@BobMcBobJr most of it is either reparable or can be resold as raw material. Depending on where the negotiations are taking place, no one would really care. Now, how would you explain all that merchandise to city authorities if you aren't part of the merchant guild?
And that is why the kingdom turned them into forts to control the peace and keep trade safe. Also, to use them, you must be registered at a state approved guild which requires adventurers to obey the military in times of crisis.
@@gdragonlord749 nay adventures are always a separate organization from the military soldiers, it makes since even in war times the monster population has to be kept low and road protected so trade can happen. a king that drafts adventures is a king that has supplies lines quickly destroyed by burning farms and city's that can't talk to each other.
"Alright lads, good luck on yer way out into the Wilds. Oh, one more thing, here's a list of hunters and mercs who haven't returned yet from their missions. If you find any of 'em dead, whole or otherwise, you can get 50 silver if they can be brought back and identified. Here's a list of prices for any salvaged gear you find, too. And you probably know what you're getting into with all the beasties roaming out there. Happy huntn' boys
Funny thing is, Chinese version of a Tavern/Hotel is a restaurant/place to stay for travelers in ancient times. Restaurants were develop for travelers. They also notice same travelers needed a place to stay. Hotel in Chinese today is called alcohol store.
So basically China had what the west only fantasizes about.
Could you elaborate more please!? That is so fascinating and I wish we had more information about Chinese culture/ history merged into DnD lore stories!
We do get a lot of Samurai but not too many Chinese mythology besides the Metallic Dragons.
There are some Chinese wuxia movies available on TH-cam like Inn at Dragon Gate or Longmen Town where a tavern is the central story location.@@bensantos3882
I'm wondering whether Eurasian caravansary of Silk Road fame would also align with the sort of complex described in this video.
@@bensantos3882 yes there are 酒楼 and 酒店
It’s strange how fantasy taverns resemble Wild West saloons more than any medieval establishment.
That's because they are mainly modeled on western (and latin) saloons and roadhouses.
Which sort of derived from the coaching houses of England with more utility.
The idea they are 1) on some sort of frontier and 2) it's justification for existing is economic. There us capitalism occurring at these "taverns" and "inns".
In Tolkiens work it's a little different. Less American and more English. He mixes modern English pubs with older versions of taverns with group sleeping accommodations (remember all the Hobbits in the same room?).
It's still commercial because he included the modern/Victorian pub angle.
The heightend degree of of capitalism is the anachronistic part of most of these fictional amalgamations
medieval fantasy actually takes a lot of inspiration form the late 17/early 1800's
The Shire feels like a place Tolkien could have visited in his lifetime. It wasn’t exactly modern, but it’s not that far in the past. It’s only once they leave the Shire and enter the “exotic” lands of the Men and Elves that it really starts to feel Medieval.
The real anachronism in Medieval fantasy is the bed. Most medieval people didn't sleep in beds. Beds were only for the sick and the dying. Healthy people slept sitting upright in chairs even in their own homes. The medieval tavern did kind of exist because taverns existed. If visitors got too drunk to travel home then they would just sleep in the Tavern sitting in the chair where they had their last beer. Travelers for the most part didn't exist. Most people in Medieval times never traveled farther than 20 miles from where they were born. The people who stayed at Taverns were locals who lived within a couple miles of the Tavern.
@@NovusodLol, medieval people did not sleep in chairs. Who the hell told you that? Medieval people, just like any other people throughout history, slept in beds. Beds predate humankind in fact (several species of primate also exhibit bed-making behaviours).
Medieval beds differ wildly in appearance and style based on the time period, region and social class you are talking about. The poorest beds were little more than a straw-filled matress on a bench or even on the floor, while the richest beds were fancy four-posters with silk, velvet and feather matresses. Beds could be very large, and were often shared by multiple people. The vast majority of medieval households (even wealthy ones) would not have had a dedicated bedroom, so it was common for beds to be convertible into benches or couches for daytime use. Maybe that is where the idea of people sleeping on chairs comes from?
Either way, most medieval people wouldn't have had any chairs, let alone slept in them. Chairs in the middle ages were very high status symbols, and incredibly expensive and rare. Only kings and the highest of nobility and clergy would have owned a chair, and their chair often was a direct symbol of their authority. Medieval people would have sat on stools, benches or couches, but virtually never on chairs.
It is only in and after the Renaissance that chairs start becoming more common, with the idea of a chair being an authority symbol fading and gradually becoming a general furniture item that anyone could own.
it's often worth looking in to non-European sources when trying to do this kind of logistical worldbuilding based on historical precedent. The classic fantasy inn/tavern may be unhistorical in medieval Europe, but the oldest Ryokan in Japan is from the 8th century. Roadside inns, bathhouses, teahouses and even restaurants with rooms to let were fairly common in China and japan during Europe's middle ages, in part due to a slightly more mobile "middle class" of scholars, merchants, physicians, craftsmen, instructors, warriors, monks, and exorcists.
In a broader sense of imagining what adventurers might actually look like in a societal context, China's _youxia_ stories ("wandering hero/vigilante" stories, the predecessor of the also-quite-old _Wuxia_ historical fantasy genre) date back to as early as 200 BC, and the protagonists of those are pretty much cognate with D&D fantasy adventurers. They didn't really have to imagine a world where these heroes could somehow show up to a remote town and save the day from bandits/demons/tyrants/whatever, because they already lived in one that had the infrastructure to support itinerant specialists.
And of course, the wild west saloon is a similar location.
China is a history ripe for picking when it comes to historical fantasy, and with the massive proliferation of Chinese creative works, it's only a matter of time now before we start to see this sort of Chinese Fantasy genre rival medieval fantasy. I'm looking forward to it, D&D-style fantasy has really become stale these past few years.
@@yurisei6732 strong agree. The mythic pseudo history represented in Chinese fantasy is just so rich, and frequently internally consistent due to its grounding in historical reality. I’d really love to see more Chinese fantasy influence western media. They’ve been doing it for two millennia… we could stand to learn a thing or two.
I studied for a short while under a Taoist priest, and I was struck by how much the mystical aspects of the practice are just… a full-blown magic system. A lot of the stuff you see in Chinese “cultivation” style wuxia games and media are just straight lifted from actual spiritual practice.
I wouldn’t personally lift it wholesale to drop in to one of my fantasy settings or anything, (especially as an outsider to the culture, as it’s a living tradition with real belief behind it… that just feels disrespectful to me), but learning about unfamiliar real-world mythology, belief, and history just really makes your own world building make more sense.
@@spiritandsteel The magic is one thing I'd be happy to leave behind actually. I'm not really into the whole "self-improvement magic" thing, it gives magic a very particular style of implied alignment that heavily limits the kinds of stories and characters you can write. The nice thing about Hermetic magic is that it's turned into a skill like any other: you don't have to have a particular personality to do it, you just have to learn how. Buddhism has the same limitation, the nice thing about Christianity from a worldbuilding perspective is that it largely decouples "virtue" from "morality", giving ample space for evil people who are favoured by gods.
@@yurisei6732
That’s interesting… in my experience there’s actually a lot less “te” (virtue) intrinsic in some of the actual mystical practices, compared to modern fantasy that incorporates Daoist cultivation. Also, in general, the west’s understanding of eastern “virtue” is pretty poor. There’s no real cosmic morality in Daoism (as opposed to Buddhism, but even then it’s way more subjective), and there’s plenty of tales of effectively “dark magic” in Chinese mythology and folklore.
Even in some martial traditions, things like “Iron Body” training are considered dangerous or “dark” routes of qi conditioning/cultivation that must be balanced with gentler practices, as it’s believed to make you more aggressive and violent, and to make it difficult to feel anything including empathy.
The Daoist/Chinese Folk Religion angle on mystical practice seems just as much “skill” based as hermetic practice or even western alchemy, to me. And- just like those traditions- the “dark” arts are viewed as potent but self-destructive paths to power.
Regarding historical accuracy, you were actually quite right at this one. The only thing you mayhaps forgot to mention is that Inns were not small to mid houses like they are like to be shown when the "adventuring party" is down on their luck, and can't afford the "proper/good" Inn.
As you said, Inns were (very often) walled off, and they (often) had proper portas, not just a gate to the property, and in fact a lot of villas of ancient rome have become Inns throught history, which were obviously of the richer kind.
The rural Inns (along roads, not in towns or cities) were often run by freemen owning the surrounding land, and thus had made profit by selling their produce to travelers at a higher cost, since they are de facto monopolies (as long as the town or city is not close by to offer competition).
From historical records we also known that Inns were incredibly profitable as long as there was traffic in and out of the settlement (which in the age of walking everywhere is a given alongside trade routes).
In the Hodges list we can see that an inn in the 14th century has earned 27.25 pennies, or more than 2 shillings in one day after feeding and housing 3 men, 4 of their servants, and an unknown amount of horses. Even if we say the Innkeeper only earned 30% of it due to procurement and taxes (random low estimate, idk what they actually spent), that's still 9 and 1/12 pennies, which is 1.5 times the amount a well equipped soldier, or lowly officer would earn.
Now TAVERNS are also probably on the expensive side, at least from my research.
For example in the same source it's said that the collective rent for 138 shops on London Bridge was 160 pounds 4 shillings, whilst the collective rent for a measily 3 taverns with the exclusive right to sell sweet wine was 200 pounds.
I don't know the disparity between lower end Taverns and higher end ones, but the existence of Alehouses, or Kvass merchants (easter europe) indicates that cheap alcohol was rather procured from such establishments instead of taverns, so it may be the case that even low quality Taverns were still rather profitable (they were often selling wine, afterall).
Consider also including the abbey church, which in the real medieval period often came with a temporal title to a county or even more powerful office. The abbot would have great vested interest in the whereabouts and purposes of armed travelers in his lands, and might be inclined (or required by hommage) to provide a place to rest, arm, and provision chartered pilgrims, adventuring companies, and the like.
This is interesting as a general concept; what other interested parties could fund support services for adventures? Organizing an adventurer's guild is a common but somewhat contrived trope, but government, religion, and existing guilds could all be sponsors; I suspect the kinds of forces that historically shaped educational institutions might be interesting to explore.
Also another thing to consider is that Free Charter Merchant Market towns would see value in attracting Adventurers to their Market town for Food, Supplies, Gear & to keep the Roads clear of Monsters & Bandits etc etc so might see it well in their interest to provide a Municipal Inn/Tavern/Lodge or Camp-Site reserved for adventurers.
This reminded me of a book about inns in Medieval France: the church offered free lodging to pilgrims (and to all travelers) along pilgrimage routes.
I'm fairly sure in the Brother Cadfael TV series this meant non gentry types would doss down on the church floor.
Make it a network of some kind of polytheistic individual diety that is specifically dedicated to travelers/commerce/a specific fued or rivalry with another god or nation that justifies a network of relatively well organized outposts that provide things typically considered to be at inns. Could be less commercial under these circumstances of one wanted to choose an angle that way, while still maintaining commerce as an ancillary to whatever mission or purpose
They could be shrines to the God of travelers where there are a few acolytes that upkeep a small inn like establishment. Semi fortified but mainly just well occupied and often hosting nearly a town worth of residents due to how well established they have become in the culture.
If you ask me, commerce feels very modern and anachronistic. Depending on how archaic one would want the setting to feel I would make it appear as if commerce was rare but for the few people capable of getting any coins.
I would have most characters offering services or goods for things they want.
You could recruit a party member by agreeing to help them fulfill a mission after or before doing tasks for you or accompany etc. Especially if those characters were of lower status
@@ForageGardener I love it. Pappa Legba would be a great patron of inns.
In actual history fortified caravan rests were common along the Silk Road. They were essentially small fortresses with lockable gates; you had to arrive before curfew to get in, after which the gates were locked. This served to keep people out as well as ensure guests paid the overnight fee instead of trying to leave before daybreak without paying. These were typically built with around a day's travel between them at typical caravan speeds so that you always had a safe place for your animals and goods for the night due to the constant threat of bandits and thieves
5:58 You know, I’d wondered where a medical hospital and hospitality got their seemingly clear root word from
Origin actually the Order of St John The Hospitaller which built Lodges for Pilgrims on Pilgrim Ways & in Jerusalem.
@@KevinWarburton-tv2iy I wouldn't say origin, but certainly a prominent example
as well as hotel and hostel, which retained their meaning in English for places for travelers to rest
To 'Host'
Take a person under your care/roof/ect.
@@emdivine It is the origin.
Very well-thought-out video. There was no “adventuring class” in medieval Europe because of a distinct lack of dragons with treasure hordes, wizards with lootable labs and libraries, and goblin caves full of plunder for those adventurers to live on. There were dangerous beasts to slay - wolves, bears, adders and even lions in a few remote late-Roman areas threatened livestock and children - but not much reward in slaying them. The real monsters with treasure were all human - the Gilles de Raises and Elizabeth Bathories - and of course those people weren’t interested in keeping up adventurer bands who might put a stop to their wickedness. In a world where humans aren’t on top of the food chain, adventurers make more sense, as do inns catering to them.
The state-sponsored countryside inn-fort has precedent not only in Baldur’s Gate’s Friendly Arm, but in the US military frontier forts of the 18th and 19th centuries. They were expressly intended to protect commerce, and people might camp inside them or just outside the walls, trusting in the presence of the US Cavalry to deter robbers. Ironically, Native Americans were often as eager as anyone else to seek safety from robbers both European and Native by camping near a fort; part of what made the Sand Creek Massacre so infamous was that it was committed in sight of Fort Lyon (although by state militia, not by the US Cavalry), a place that had always before been a safe haven for friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes.
And many of those "momsters" like Bathory were probably just slandered and libelled by their enemies.
The multi-faceted US frontier fort is a great parallel!
Some historians believe Bathory and Rais were innocent.
Medieval Europe certainly had travelling mercenary bands, on a sliding scale towards bandits and pirates. And there was certainly treasure to loot, though it was held by rich people, not monsters. Consider the Vikings, Magyars and Mongols.
@@satansjihad6353 Most don't.
Tom, I really love these history-applied-to-fantasy type videos, really helps me flesh out my world-building. Will be integrating some of these concepts for sure! Btw, music volume was fine, imo.
I agree! I hadn’t actually noticed a music track, but I’m sure it’s there as the ambience is on point!
This is important if you're using the 7 day long rest. You really need somewhere reliable to sleep so you don't get kicked out after day 3 and have to start all over.
I can't wrap my head around sleeping on the ground for half a night and being on watch the other half and getting all your hit points and spells back. Making friends with a lord and staying with him for a week while you recuperate seems more reasonable.
If you look into how the earliest editions of the game were played you find an obvious work around for this. Npc minions.
1st and early 2nd edition had no class specific mechanical uses for Charisma, even though it was an important stat for every class. That's because Charisma was the stat that affected the rolls you made to haggle with NPCs you wanted to hire.
PCs of a certain level hired between 20 and 80 NPCs to carry gear, make camp, hold torches, haul treasure, hold tower shields while standing in front of the wizard, stand in the back and fire arrows at anything out of the front line PCs' range, and a couple hound masters with a dozen dogs each for the nightly watch.
Charisma was the stat that decided if the two dozen NPCs you needed to take into the dungeon with you were each paid 1 gold piece a day or ten gold pieces a day.
It would be a terrible idea to require 7 day _uninterrupted_ long rests in any setting. I can see the value of requiring 7 day long rests in principle, but they should allow for interruption, giving you the benefits of a short rest, and only requiring that you make up the difference. So like if you got ambushed on day 3, you could fight them off using post-short-rest options, and then start resting again and only need to go an additional 4 days.
@@AmoebaInk My feeling on "HP" in RPGs is that you CAN'T play it as though "HP" represents your complete physical condition, that if you are at 1 HP then you are a pile of meat barely holding together. Instead, HP must represent your "resilience," your ability to keep fighting, even though you are tired and in pain. If you reach 0 HP, then that doesn't mean that you have sustained horrible, gaping wounds, it just means that you can no longer stay fully conscious, and an enemy could coup de gras you, or that you _might_ fade away due to the accumulated pain and trauma, but you can also stabilize yourself and just chill at 0HP until you can get your act together.
A fighter at 1 HP is actually in pretty good health, all things considered, he's just very bruised, slightly lacerated, and can barely keep himself _upright._ This is why he has ways of "healing" that back, it's not knitting wounds, it's just gutsing through the trauma and continuing to fight. In that sense, a good night's sleep _can_ allow you to recover most if not all of that "damage," to the point that you have no problem doing the same thing tomorrow.
Now a DM might choose to call out certain attacks, especially crits, as dealing grievous physical wounds, and these should not heal up over night, those would be special story circumstances to deal with outside of the HP system. Some other RPGs do take physical trauma into effect, like the Palladium system, in which you have two health pools, one that rises and falls casually like HP, and another that is only touched by certain attacks or when HP reaches zero, and that is treated more as your absolute physical structure. If you take injury to this second pool, then it does take a long time and serious medical intervention to recover it.
@@AmoebaInk Well with enemies you can have more fun with it, hack and chop away, they aren't getting back up anyway. But for players it should be less serious, so even if a character takes like 25 points of damage, that wouldn't be like a sucking gut wound, it would just be a nasty cut on the arm or to the side that you could put a bandage and poultice on and it wouldn't be too distracting as it healed to full.
@@AmoebaInk Yeah, like I said, you can do that, but it's outside of the normal "HP" system. I mean, applying some basic healing tools to him should not then cause that arm to regenerate to full condition, even if you can get his HP to max. An archer with 30 HP who loses an arm might lose 25 HP, and be close to passing out, but then if he gets healed to full he would still be missing an arm, just more steady against getting knocked out again. Actually recovering or replacing the arm would be a separate quest.
An unscrupulous merchant looking to build their town’s relationship with adventurers for cheap could recruit groups from other towns for jobs those groups are too green to handle to artificially create the “I heard these goblins are sitting on a *pile* if gold” situation
An unscrupulous merchant who is facilitating the employment of adventurers on the behalf of an anonymous benefactor who's motives are yet unknown
This is brilliant and I'm stealing this!
Patches is that you?
I really like the idea of inns and such being owned or sponsored by local lords or groups, and needing a written pass to be allowed to stay. Gives it a real kind of touch, especially the Roman like fortified ones!
Yes Lords would find it in their interest to attract adventurers to clear out Monsters & the Inn would be great source of Income/opportunity to recoup expenditure on the Adventurers Jobs.
A few things to add from my experience:
1. It's not widely known, but monasteries (traditional ones) since they changed very little over centuries, still offer accommodation literally for adventurers, as they did in medieval times. I lived in a monastery for a few years and I met many kinds of people who were stepping by as part of an adventure. Bikers, artists, travelers, people seeking their meaning of life, etc.
Chances are, if you visit a monastery today and ask for a bed as a traveler, you'll get one with food and stuff. Just remember it's rude not to participate in the monks' prayer while you are there. (Also since phones were invented it's better to call them before.)
2. I wouldn't say such taverns never existed, maybe not during medieval times, but rather later. Maybe the fantasy trope was modeled after modern taverns? I live in a small agricultural town in Central Europe, there are similar taverns there, a house with pub in the basement, a restaurant downstairs and a few rooms above. It's not like a hotel, the focus is on the restaurant and the pub. With less shady characters though.
A big reason to take in travellers would be entertainment. Hosting a group of adventures could get you some news from the next town or city, new stories, maybe a song you haven't heard before. These things are pretty valuable.
Yeah, my group handeled it that way. We paid for the food and Entertained people who took us in. (We had so many singing and dancing and painting character's, we were practically a boy Band on tour)
I do like the idea of inns being sponsored by the local lord. Mainly serving as points for travelers to rest safely from the horrors of the nights. I imagine they'd also be resting and resupply points for soldiers that would be patrolling important roads to keep them clear of dire bears and goblin tribes. I think it would be also very fun to use the inns to indicate how dangerous the general area it. The inn is a few scattered buildings surrounded by a short fence? Not much more than wolves here. The inn it a bunch of buildings that are in a circle and the only entrance is through the central courtyard? Goblins, maybe some dire bears. The inn is a stone keep with patrolled walls and several towers with balistas? Might be some of beasties of the big scaled and fire breathing variety around here.
I've had the wayside Inns appointed by the king of the nation at that point, they were spaced at about 25 miles apart, around the same distance for Pony Express stations, though there were exceptions when there was something else that the courier system could utilize for their stations. Local nobility had to keep them stocked/provisioned to some extent. it also meant that the kings people could use them as needed for their business.
You mean a caravanserai. Like a designated waypoint and loading station on the trade paths or compound where loose sailors, teamsters and guards can stay without forming an unregulated slum.
Actually the Witcher 3 has a great take on this, one of the rural taverns you go to for a quest acts like a pub, something you would probably see in medieval taverns, you can sit down with your ale, get some bread and a bowl of pottage (literally whatever was in the pot) and this model is seen especially in England with taverns hundreds of years old keeping the same business model, and if you were a traveler as the dialogue says in game “ye can sleep in any bench” taverns may offer the space for travelers after curfew, a cheap place to sleep indoors with a fire. Of course it’s not a merchant inn with posh beds, but most people back then didn’t really have beds anyway
Witcher taverns in the game did not even have beds so in a sense they were historically accurate. In the books however there were the usual fantasy taverns simply because the book Geralt had to sleep sometimes.
@@kacperwoch4368 in the books some did, Gerald stays a lot using the laws of hospitality, but yea, my point being that a bench near the fire is a hell of an upgrade to camping outside with the monsters
They do have "bed", but it was just some straws, leaves, etc and then covered with some fabrics. Like cotton or linen sheet.
It was the equivalent of sleeping in like.. Japanese Futon.
You sleep on the floor. With some stuff for your body to rest. Not directly touching the floor.
@@elskaalfhollr4743
Even if you are sleeping on the dirt floor, just being out of the elements is always going to be a nice upgrade
Yes!
I want to consider: Why a party of 4? In my mind I think a world where it's a common superstition that all tasks need 4 people to tackle them.
Hypothetically, it's the minimum number of people who can have all the required skills. More people would mean smaller shares. Less people would mean eventually lacking some vital talent.
True, but I like to think that if you saw one lone adventurer about to set off from a tavern, the random people nearby would remind him or her that there need to be four people and possibly offer to join as one of those four. It would be like how we think of 13 as unlucky and maybe 7 as lucky.
Wasn't it the case in classic D&D that parties would often have multiple "hireling" characters around to carry loot and poke at traps? You might have four players and four "heroes," but the actual "party size" might be 8 or more.
Because getting 5 players to get together is exponentially tougher than 4
@@timogulYou can hire as many goons as you like. A henchman is like a junior apprentice adventurer. They got a class level and typically half a share of loot and xp. They do pretty much what a PC does. Hirelings includes mercenaries, level 0 caravan guards who guard your expedition on the road and secure base camp. They are more like second line spear-carriers.
Two important facts about "inns/taverns" are that magic and the economics of adventuring shatter any hope of maintaining historically accurate business models.
The average conception of a fantasy tavern might be closer to a modern hostel or a Victorian/Renaissance era inn than anything that existed in the dark ages, but actual medieval inns never had sporadic visits from teams of mercenaries with no functional idea of the value of the coins they are dropping.
The average rural townsfolk will spend a couple of copper coins over the course of a month. At most.
The average adventuring party will walk into the town where these townsfolk live, pay ten gold pieces for trinkets and random trash the village grocers might have priced at one copper piece for anyone else, tip five gold pieces to any random person who lets the adventurers stop and interrogate them for forty-five minutes, and buy single apples from the local children for one gold piece each.
Adventuring parties that just slayed a dragon and ransacked its hoard display their wealth the same way the rulers of the Mali Empire displayed their wealth while on pilgrimages to Mecca. No local economy along their travel route was spared.
There's an old Order of the Stick comic where an ordinary village and its people are going about their day when a rider gallops through town screaming about adventurers coming down the road. Everyone drops what they are doing and runs around preparing. One child asks their father what's going on, and the man simply says they have to do what must be done and not to look down on the village adults for what's going to happen. The final frame of the comic is the party appearing on the edge of the frame while the townsfolk are standing on their porches holding signs and products for sale. Every single sign has listed prices in gold pieces and claims they are offering their goods at a special discount to celebrate the visiting heroes. The reality is that every single purchasable good in town has been marked up by at least eight hundred percent of what the locals would pay.
Small villages on the roads between major population centers and known ancient ruins would most likely maintain sizeable inns for a number of reasons.
Having a big hotel out by the road into town pulls in anyone who extracted piles of treasure from the dungeons. That's the entire business model for the Yawning Portal in Waterdeep.
The big hotel for mercs also keeps the dangerous and armed outsiders and anyone trying to assassinate them isolated from the rest of the town. At least at night.
As for remote inns at isolated crossroads. They'd be fine in most mid to high magic settings.
If there is a god of travel, horizons, pilgrimages, or journeys in the setting, that means everything from a roadside mile marker shrine to a full service tavern at a major crossroads point is holy ground.
Going around ancient Greek and Roman roads and taking hammers to the phallic parts of the statues of Hermes/Mercury at all the crossroads and mile markers is a sure fire way to earn the wrath of the god who could and would follow you literally anywhere. You just don't do it.
Even if there are no travel gods in the setting, there's still probably at least a couple archfey who claim to be "the lord of the crossroads." If you burn down a tavern/inn/carriage house located at a major crossroads layline, be prepared to dodge at least a dozen mid level warlocks and hag covens. Having multiple immortal tricksters with limitless magic gunning for you only ever ends one way. You'll eventually get what's coming to you.
Edit: "What's that? You're saying the lord of slumber had one of his Dream Walker Assassins tattoo a dick on your forehead while you slept? You need to leave our town. We can't harbor dead men."
Much like the Mali pilgrimage an adventuring party dropping gold on everyone would be rare. There wouldn't be any known ancient ruins with stuff still in them. Most adventurers wouldn't actually spend like that. They would pay taxes for legitimacy and safety. There is plenty to protect the economy.
@@yaelz6043 Your points assume a static world with little to no magic. Ruins are Dungeons. They get moved into by the peoples and factions that can't or won't take up residence in the "civilized" cities. Those groups gather resources. They stock up on weapons, gold, and goods.
And that's ignoring the possibility that several Dungeons might be sentient and actively restock their treasure hoards on a regular basis.
The existence of dragons with a stereotypical hoard breaks all concepts of a medieval economy just by itself. Even if we are assuming that the average dragon converts most of their hoard to copper coins just so they can fill a larger volume of lair space, the sheer number of coins it would take to make a nest/bedding for a creature the size of a dragon is astronomical when compared to the economy of a peasant village that frankly shouldn't be using coins in the first place. They'd still be on the Barter/Reciprocity system.
As for the fantasy of the "tax paying adventurer"... what the hell are you smoking and where can I get some? Once you get far enough into even tier two levels you get tax exempt status by default. A level 12 wizard isn't paying taxes for their safety. They are demanding a tithe from every being living within sight of their tower so that nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than that wizard tries to move into the region.
Edit: The point is that the existence of adventuring as a profession and the stealing of wealth hoarded by the enemies/targets of adventurers would drastically alter the economics of all surrounding civilizations. The average Murderhobo squad might not put out as much gold as the actual Emperor or Mali, but the towns and settlements frequented by adventurers would without question adopt the pricing models we see in modern tourist trap towns and destinations.
You think the town that springs up next to a mega dungeon with seemingly endless treasure hoards isn't going to set prices the same way resort hotels price the flip flops and headache pills they sell in their gift shops? You think peasant shop keepers will never figure out the trick that allows Dasani to sell water bottles in Disney World for upwards of ten times what they sell them for in any Kroger?
Design of inns would be affected by those that stayed there. .e.g. Centaurs, orcs, etc.
@@brodriguez11000 Sure, non standard customers that frequent the area would impact some of the offerings and facilities. Probably about as much as the need to harness local or leyline magic for protection would alter such things.
You know what's the funny thing?
Tourist traps nowadays are exactly like the comic you mentioned...
Selling an espresso in italy gor 8€ to americans... 400% price increase
In Vinland Saga, season 2, the landowner has a small pallisade fort with a small stable and communal house and puts up so called "Guests" which are basically just landed bandits who protect his farm from other danes
Interestingly, the old meaning of hospital that you mention here is wjere our modern "Hostel" comes from.
Not to mention “hospitality” and “hospitable.”
@@HelotOnWheels very true. Hostel (and got that matter hotel) were just the first ones to pop to mind haha
Also Host & Hostage LOL.
@@KevinWarburton-tv2iy host makes sense, I didn't know hostage though
@@Crits-Crafts in the old days (mainly antiquity, a bit in the middle ages too), a hostage would be treated like a host, it's just that they couldn't leave
hostages were usually noblemen given as part of peace or alliance treaties, so you wouldn't want to be treating them rough
The lowest ranks of titled lords in europe were watch tower lords. A lot of them were just that. But those who operated inns are the ones who were able to transition into the bourgeoisie. They often wpuld become richer than their liege and force a wedding favorable to them.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for some time. Adventure's guilds have the exact same problem. Enter a place of business, grab a quest off a billboard, go to a receptionist to accept the quest... and dodge all the people eating and drinking at a combination bar and restaurant, plus the inn upstairs, and sometimes there is even more things here like an arena or an upstairs guild-only shop for adventurer stuff. Like, an entire town is crammed in this one building.
Thats because a place like that existed in pretty much every city in northern and central europe. with a very prominent one in London.
A Typical Hanse tradepost had a billboard, drinking halls, a restaurant and places to sleep for poorer traders and workers.
Also alot of gambling and whores..
If adventurers were real, that would kinda be exactly what happened though. You'd get these towns within towns, going wherever the rumours said monsters were. Same thing happened with nomadic traders historically, you got large buildings where all the traders would set up shop when they came into town, and it was more efficient for locals to go there to sell to and buy from nomads rather than have the nomads visit ten different shops dotted around the city. If you've got adventurers about, you're not going to just stay home and hope they visit your alley to stock up, you're taking a wheelbarrow of goods to wherever the adventurers are and selling whatever you can.
I really like what you bring up in this video, especially in part of DnD party forming more connections by finding places to stay instead of just waltzing up to the local inn/tavern to get a room. I also like the idea of these "mini forts" that behave as inns on the road that could easily turn into castles.
In a world of monsters, every village has either a small castle or residents that are all level 5+ barbarians.
I love all of this!
RE: Punishing toughing it out in the wilderness repeatedley, I find the easiest method is to just take up the Gritty Resting Rules from the 5e DMG. 8 hours is a Short Rest, and a Long Rest requires 24 hours of little to no activity, iirc. If you take up One D&D's exhaustion rules in combination, then long travel and excursions into the wilderness slowly wear them down, and the longer they're away from civilization the longer they'll have to recover in it... and some lords might not be so patient with these ruffians staying here for the next week.
I generally divide inns as places for travelers to stay and taverns as neighborhood places where locals can gather to drink and socialize. If there are any lodgings in the tavern it will be reserved for locals to sleep it off as they would be known to the tavern keeper and not for strangers t stay overnight. Adventurers can go to taverns, but they may be given the cold shoulder and eyed with some suspicion as strangers similar to wearing your team's logo and going to a sports bar frequented by the fans of a rival team. The taverns will also serves as the strongholds of any neighbor organization or gang so enter at our own risk.
If there an adventure guilds why wouldn't they build an adventure inn and hall for them and take on quest.
Quest that Watchmen, reeves, guards and knight are put to the side, too busy to do, out of border, difficult terrain or things that want to keep secret. That doesn't interfere with the local law enforcement.
@@majesticgothitelle1802 The thing is, both can happen I think
A specialized guild or adventurer inn could be built in order to offer them special services, but I think it would only be localized on very highly frequented locations, such as big cities or important crossroads, since setting a specialized inn in a small town or on the road toward middle-of-nowhereshire wouldn't be financially tolerable due to lack of activity frequency, while the generalist inn could offer lower quality adventurer services while also being useful for townfolks and other types of travelers
Otherwise that would be like setting a castle in the middle of marshlands, there may be a lord for this castle but nobody would come to it since there is about nothing useful to find
@@pricel141l but you have to remember adventure are more temp, mercenaries and odd job workers. They would be less likely to be welcomed in by the locals due to being strangers. Adventure would be like nomad in real life.
They would have local warriors, shaman, priest and whatever class as the one part of the community doing the hunting, search in the Territory, and serving of the community and noble. You have to come up with a reason why they won't have a town wizard officer. shaman that deals with spirit and undead. a priest and church for the country god in a town. A scout that patrol and maintain the wild life population and hunting.
Adventure would be a special guild having wondered if long distance would require outside of the Territory for long periods of days. That would be needing an inn outside of town and village. While the guilds hall would be in the city and town where it is safer and the local government watches over and tax.
This is one of my favorite dnd Chanels I do more world building than minmaxing and re-examining tropes is such a pleasure thinking deeper on them and I often spend a couple hours mauling over the video maybe even researching the topic
Already worth the listen by the halfway mark.
The Roman predecessor to a medieval inn would be a mansio. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansio The mansiones were state-sponsored and intended for the use of people on official business, who were expected to provide a passport to identify themselves.
There existed also privately-owned similar venues, but they were somewhat disreputable, frequented by thieves and prostitutes. They would surely be visited by adventurers as well, if Rome had any.
I'm pretty sure a fantasy equivalent of the roman empire would have adventurers for 2 reasons :
- One, they had rampant corruption problems among official guards, so the average politician would be very pleased to be able to pay some shady guys to "take care" of their opponents
- Second, if there were a roman empire equivalent in a fantasy world, it would have passed through the same monsters and races problems as its medieval counterpart, thus creating an untiring need of adventurers to take care of those issues as well as maybe explore some untouched lands rumored to be plagued by monsters guarding huge treasures
Have you talked about the idea of the city watch or city guard at all? If not, could be a good video topic.
It sometimes comes up in games where a player says "why wouldn't we go to the city guard and they can deal with it?" and besides the narrative reason of "it's boring" it can be a little difficult to come up with a verisimilitudinous reason that the guard can't or isn't willing to involve themselves where the adventurers should.
So like, going into how a city guard would operate, their interactions and relationship with adventurers, how big a town needs to get before they have a standing guard, etc..
The way I rationalize the one problem, by the way, is that the city guard reasons that instead of sending a squadron of 20 good men into cult-infested sewers to get potentially stabbed by traps or turned gibbering and inside out by eldritch magics, they can just make a deal with 4-5 insane but terrifyingly competent schmoes to go in and clear everything out, then send in the squad afterward to clean up the mess.
My players once got an abandoned warehouse at auction, and when they got there it turned out to be full of ghouls. I thought they would deal with it themselves, but they boarded it up and handed the problem to a previously mentioned Paladin order nearby.
Legitimate solution to the problem, but they missed out on the loot the undead had, and their new property was damaged in the fighting.
Any choice they make is valid, but all choices and non-choices have consequences.
In medieval times, most towns didn't have permanent street guards
Of course they had some militiamen employed to watch at the town's outer doors and walls making sure to spot eventual threats, but nothing even close to some sort of police force
So if you even wondered how could the guards be unable to take care of an affair within town just think about this : In reality, lords didn't usually paid full-time guards to watch the streets and take care of common folks problems, it's overwhelmingly expansive for people that are in fact not productive at all most of the time (and you NEED as many productive people as possible at this time)
As for intown monsters problems, I think your usual militiamen aren't fit for a fight against ghouls, mages of even, why the fuck not, full fledged vampires
They could keep them at bay for the time being, waiting for actual professionals, either true knights from a nearby big city, mercenaries or passing adventurers, to take care of the problem directly, which is also a way to avoid having to deal with the problem of dead or injured townfolks which the local lord then would have to take care of, instead of being able to simple send the adventurers fuck around once their job is done and their pay given
It's also worth noting that even a Level 1 player character is a cut above professional. This goes back to the stories of Conan the barbarian (who is often described as shrugging off things that would have killed three "lesser men"), Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (best thieves in the world-central city of Lankhmar), Errol Flynn's celluloid swashbucklers (fencing with three men at once) and so on. Player characters *start* as remarkable (at least in D&D and similar settings), and get tougher from there.
To use D&D 5th Edition as an example: a typical guard is CR 1/8 (that is to say, a squad of 8 of them are considered a modest challenge for a group of four player characters); a fully-trained knight or veteran is CR 3.
Quite often, the question of: "Why don't we call the Guard?" can often be answered by a wry: "Do you think they could handle it?"
The big thing stopping a “city watch” from dealing with an issue (at least for a town that doesn’t have a Cleric that can create food and water out of nothing) in a medieval or ancient town is the fact that it is possible that there are only 3 full-time guards per 100 members of the population, or even fewer, with the rest of the “guards” just being random men of the town who have been told to fight crime that day by the sheriff, or the “see something say something” guys who organize opposition to a criminal they see (for reference, see X-Men Apocalypse where Storm is hiding out in Egypt and steals a loaf of bread, and a bunch of men see this happen and chase after her, ready to cut her hand off as punishment for theft). Similarly, you could try gleaning from how the Taliban runs their government, where the people at the top do nothing except act as figureheads until they need to fight, and otherwise arrange their society around the men in general having power, where the man of a house is expected to be personally responsible for maintaining the obedience of everyone in his household. Later, this can result in proverbs 31 type situations, where the men sit around and talk at the city gate while the women do all the work.
In light of such situations, it makes sense that those men want to stay in town where they feel safe and powerful, and so an outsider man can be quickly sent to deal with the monster situations while those townsmen get to remain comfortable.
Consider how much money Amazon makes off of making it convenient to receive stuff, and now adventurers suddenly make it very convenient to deal with scary situations for a price, and the townsmen will provide the adventurers with Prime-subscription level revenue.
I don't know what the requirements for a "fantasy tavern" are to you but even a wild west saloon feels pretty close... 200 years ago and for quite some time before, taverns/saloons were built as hotels and drinking/eating spots and towns were literally built around them. The tavern was the community forum of its day, the US Marine Corps was born in a Tavern, men were recruited in taverns. So minus the elves, and I guess middle-earth movie styling, fantasy taverns aren't all that "fantasy".
I think rather than a fortified inn, what would make sense in a very fantastical setting would be an inn attached to a wizard tower or some other accommodation of a powerful magic user. This would likely be the greatest form of protection for travelers as magic users would likely be able to detect any kind of monster or shape-changer trying to sneak into the inn and the inn itself would be protected by the magic user themselves if it ever came under attack. The relative isolation of the inn would mean that if the magic user were ever to have some sort of disastrous or explosive complication in whatever magic research they might want to do, they would have it away from any densely populated areas. Having such an inn on a major travel route or between two large cities would allow the magic user to purchase common supplies from merchants passing through while also allowing them to commission adventurers staying in the inn for rarer objects or monster parts. The inn could also serve as a form of income for the magic user so that they could better fund whatever magical research that they may be interested in. The magic user could run the inn in any number of ways, from having apprentices work at the inn, to staffing it entirely with the undead or even making the building itself a living being.
Totally agree, especially on the last part with the forts. It makes so much sense in a world full of monsters. Do you have a video on how rural living conditions might be? By taking this thought further, in this type of monster heavy settings dispersed farms make no sense. Fortified villages would concentrate most of this frontier population. I think this is an interesting topic for a video
Taverns have been around since ancient greece called taberna. They were equivalent to the American type type of bar/saloon. They served alcohol and food and was the location of local gambling. They did provide a place to sleep a bed roll in a corner. Not very popular in western Europe but was every where in spain, Italy, and greece.
Interesting ideas, I already used a fortified inn once, makes sense in more dangerous areas.
So many of your videos have superb ideas that I will take as inspiration. I am now imagining an order of Hospitality, fortified inns and healers on routes for every major settlement.
This is, by far, one of the best made and we'll thought of videos on this subject I have seen.
From beginning to end it is informative and thought provoking.
Thank you so much for making this video.
I really like this in context of your adventures guild video. Instead of an in town location the “guild hall” rather being a small fortress a day’s journey between towns. The angle that the person running the adventure guild is actually the local noble, looking for at least some +1 swords for his town guards just makes it that much better.
I tried to tackle this problem myself when I was coming up with various fantasy styled stories, and discovered that when you look into the historical ways people traveled and needed accommodations, you really do see where various types of inn might be necessary. In my story, I came up with something called a Wayfarer's Inn; the entire thing is on thick stilts in the form of stables, and a larger area for storage of wagons/carts with a dedicated stable hand there to brush down the beasts of burden, care for their feet, get them some food, clean water, and a place to bed down for the night. The area is blocked off after nightfall, but the inn above is a place of respite, and a trading hub. If you have barrels or boxes of food, linens, extra weapons you don't need, or anything that might fetch a nice price, this is the place for you.
With the building on stilts, and with its fenced wall (albeit of treated redwood) any creatures/bandits/monsters attempting to attack will find themselves quickly taken out by archers (the family who owns these types of inns are former adventurers or have guards on hire from the local militia) or the owners themselves. Every type of item, weapon, good, and service can be purchased from the wayfarer inn - including a bath in their open air bath house. Aside from these, I've done the same with temples, hospitals, and random inns across the world, with some being sanctioned only by the local lord, baron, earl, duke, or king.
this video is so inspiring, your different examples were planting seeds in my head for potential campaigns that could be potentially very grounding and engaging in my opinion. Awesome
Video request/idea: I would love to see how societies would form, given the adventurers existence as a social class/role, and how this role would come to be.
For example, army as an institution got established as means to protects the land from intruders and to conquer others, clergy - because people needed a place to gather and feel that they belong in the community, and later because places of people gathering created leaders who had political power. So I wonder where did adventuring should "historically" come from, if we assume that it had developed to the heights of adventuring guilds and such
Well it would have to revolve around monster hunting, catching powerful criminals and invading/counter attacking places the state didn't want to actually occupy such as the under dark.
@@yaelz6043 it could, but also why would the government want to hire adventures for this if they can have a regular army that is much more obedient and consistent? I have some ideas and a even fewer solutions, one of which I've implemented in my world, but they all seem pretty niche to me, so I'd like to see a deep dive into the topic
@@nin0f well the adventurers don't need to be hired, just told that a monster's horn or horde are valuable. You wouldn't just pay them to kill something, they would kill it and sell you something of worth that they got off it.
As for a regular army, losing population or even just farming time is really bad, no one will miss adventurers when they die in a cave somewhere.
@@yaelz6043 Yeah, but then why not send your own army of trained people to get the treasure if it's valuable enough? Of course some adventurers might go look for small-sized treasures, but that is not really sustainable, nor does it lead to development of adventuring as a stable institution
In my world the reason why the adventuring is cool and armies don't exist is because there are literally NO countries and states, because humans and monsters have mostly a predator-prey relationship. That means that if any settlement becomes big enough to become a state, it almost immediately gets overrun by hungry monsters. Because of this big settlements are much more akin to the ancient polis (Greek city-state) and can't afford a regular army, since they don't and can't exist long enough to create an army institution. That is one solution, but, obviously, it is very specific and can not be even remotely generalized for a medieval Europe type of setting
Ex soldiers turn mercenary killing monsters and acting as bounty hunters for cash and as a bonus it's a lot freer and than being a mercenary in a war with less time constraints since you won't be traveling as much in general and when you do you get to chose where.
The Prancing Pony is referred to an an inn and not a tavern in the Lord of the Rings . . . Just sayin' . . .
I have been looking for something like this for months
So the Fantasy Medieval Europe is just 18th-century England?
How is this the first time Im seeing your channel?! THIS is the fantastic kind of DM inspiration content Ive been looking for! Well thought out detail, and reason behind each decision.
My/Our World Of MIDORIS is of heavy influence in many areas of Western Europe/British Isles 1215 - 1415. A Hamlet will have 8-16 farms/homes/huts including any merchants/businesses within a 16-25 square mile area. A small Village will have 16-24 farms/homes/businesses within a 16-25 sq.mile area: a large Village will have 32-64 farms/homes/businesses within a 25-64 square. mile area: A small City will have 49-144 farms/homes/businesses within a 36-81 sq.mile area, and a large City would have 81-400 farms/houses/businesses with a 81-121 sq. mile area. Now, Its largest cities across its largest Continent, Arethya, have populations of 1) 240K residents, (2) 210K, (3) 180K, (4) 150K, and (5th) in population having 120K population. While there are a couple dozen more cities across the Continent, the majority of these cities have a population ranging from 4K to 12K. It also often appears that Only these larger cities offer the most durable types of armor such as Plate Mail or Full Plate, as well as other objects, foodstuffs, clothing, and the like of the highest quality!!😊😮
Adventurers would want secure accomodation, VERY secure. The price of their kit is usually counted in the thousands of gold pieces and if anything get's stolen? You do not want a group of trained killers blaming you... They would almost certainly have some animals (familiars, mounts, animal companions, etc) but possibly very exotic ones and so can you accomodate an Owlbear, a Pseudodragon or even an Ooze? I would imagine some capacity with magic would be essential (either to limit it on the premesis or to offer services, e.g. better security, magical services, etc) and also some arrangement with merchants who trade in magical items (usually these sell for massive sums compared to to non-magical items). The parallel with mercenaries is a good one, they tended to travel in large groups due to hostile populations and were not popular, and so an adventurer group might disguise itself as say, a troup of actors or merchant with guards in order to fit in better. Guild membership might also afford adventurers a more acceptable social position and stronger ties to an area e.g. armourers, weapon smiths, etc)
A good example of the day's ride apart concept is the California Mission Chain on the El Camino Real from San Diego to Sanoma. Only a handful were walled, relying more on a handful of soldiers stationed there to dissuade those with bad intentions. For my world the ground floor of my Taverns or Inns have a Hostel style common room with the upstairs for for small groups (party sized). These Taverns and Inns are the primary way information is spread (and plot hooks dropped) as they rely on travelers to share what is new "down the road". Consider the local Lord that collects a bed tax in exchange for protection from the outside baddies. Everybody wins.
This is brilliant, thank you for the inspo!
We were asking ourselves this with a friend of mine literally yesterday: really glad this popped up. Awesome work.
Love your deep dives into aspects of Lore and world building, Tom. Keep it up :)
So, one idea I had for a realistic inn and tavern setup in a small village would be to have the inn and tavern close by, possibly next door to each other or across the street. Depending on the setting and if you wanted to get fancy, there could also be a thermopolium (ancient Greek/Roman take-out restaurant equivalent) close-by as well, and it could possibly be a food supplier for the tavern. Put this in proximity to a market square and you've basically got what would function as a "traditional" fantasy tavern.
You are forgetting that the medieval era happened outside of England too.
In Germany there where Wirtshäuser and Gasthäuser which very much and very closely resemble the Prancing Pony.
So your points are pretty mood.
By the 18th century England has adopted the style of tavern/inn from the mainland.
A couple of further thoughts on fortified inns being a days travel apart:
* In wilder, sparser parts they could be a day's ride apart so that while walking travelers have to rough it most nights they do get an option to sleep inside walls regularly. And travelers with horses (or camels, etc) can get to them every night and they are also more likely to be able to afford paying for the better accommodations.
* If there are known to be bandits or monsters in the area (but not enough to stop traveling completely) organizing a convoy for the day would come naturally to most? Just set off from the inn together in the morning, and keep the same pace if possible. This reminds me of something Chaucer wrote... that is to say: our group of intrepid adventurers will often travel together with others a few days at a time. Side characters coming and going, lore learned, news told, etc. And can we trust them all? hm.
* Just like in the Wild West and the Roman Empire, if there's a courier/postal service, those would surely also be using these subsidized inns? Might be one of the funding sources for the inn keepers.
Final thought: The time from when Rome fell to the end of the medieval perdiod has the lack of all this as a minor but still sort of defining feature. Traveling wasn't unheard of, no, but it wasn't common at all for almost everyone. Never going further than the next village over wasn't weird.
Fantasy taverns: never existed.
Me (DM): **Don't care**. There's a bartender who's the owner, a server who is probably the owner's kid etc., private rooms, a common room the players will never use, a stage with a randy bard, unique food and beer, a loudmouth local that will pick a fight with the players but then get intimidated into submission, a dragon's skull on the chimney above the fireplace, rumors, and diner booths in the corner that are in shadows but have a view of all the exits. And the players will be sad if there isn't one of these not-taverns waiting for them after a dungeon slog.
Fantasy taverns will have more than this, but the above is as much of a foundational requirement as dice.
Comment section: You're a bad DM with no originality!
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8:50 honestly proper vision would be sort of like a mix US Marshall service mixed with mercenary’s and bounty hunters. We have some sort of judicial authority after all.
I love how well thought out this is! It makes me want to run a game with this in mind.
I enjoy all of The Grungeon Master videos
Adventurers are a special case indeed. Recently I was playing a 12th level (Pathfinder) Sorcerer and some yokel villagers were going on about the inn or whatever. My PC was horrified and teleported to the nearby city to stay in a nice hotel. Bunch of slobs. Call when you need me to nuke some fools. You have a good point about friars and tinkers being acceptable to locals and not adventurers. Our Barbarian was a giant, roaring maniac, our Rogue looked and behaved like a ninja assassin, my guy flew everywhere, breathing ice blasts, you get the idea. I've no idea if we'd be welcome at a roadside tavern, but the landlady was not in much of a position to say no.
We paid and tipped well, to be fair. Had to pay for an alarming amount of repairs too.
Amazing video, thank you for bringing this up and putting it together.
Some people have mentioned it but we have more recent real world examples that still exist. Taverns come from Roman Tabernas which still exist in Greece as taverns, a place to sit and have a meal and drinks. A fortified Inn is a caravanserai. There is one next to the castle near me. It was a walled enclosure with rooms for rent for merchants and goods. They were specifically built, not just converted villas.
If it was full, camping was available inside as well. You were paying for the security of the walls, for the most part. And its not in the castle for safety reasons but right next to it so the local lord can shop and levy taxes without having to go far. Lords are just as involved in commerce in their lands as anything else.
Huh! Great video, my mate. Got it randomly recommended and watched the whole thing. I don't have a lot to say but I want to leave a comment for algorithm to feed on. I might add that I really like your tone of voice and choice of words, on top of the matter obviously. I'm leaving a Sub so see you next time and GL out there because this channel seems to be deserving more attention surely.
This actually kinda helped me nail down a gameplay loop for a Tavern Management game that I have. The concept of a Hamlet or a Small Fort beside a town or city for all types to gather is wild.
Could you imagine an inn on a well traveled and protected road. Giant pot of food simmering, local beer, and small rooms available to rest under a roof. I can't imagine these didnt exist. Its seems like such a no brainer.
I think its because most people didn't travel much at all and stayed in their villages.
Wasn't it rare that anyone travelled in their entire life more than about 30km from their birthplace? @@valasdarkholme6255
Love the focus on inns! It was a big sticking point for my current world building to get these right! For a resting mechanic, I’d introduce fatigue back as a mechanic (perhaps retooled) that requires players to make checks/saves when resting rough. Such checks are helped/hindered by supplies, weather, condition, etc. or outright negated with certain things like special items, comforts, food (to encourage cooking/cooking classes if allowed). On the topic of hospitality, when inns aren’t available, things like favors or helping with chores like cooking would be a great way for adventurers to find accommodations.
Someone with leatherworking proficiency can more easily score room and board with a local tanner, or be put up in a large family home when a cook, or even nab a room in the alehouse if a brewer! And the more artisanal skills might offer one extended stay at a local lord’s manor in exchange for an art piece or restoration or appraisal!
The more academically minded might be able to house in the local wizard’s tower in exchange for swapping spells or scrolls (though for price that would be an extended stay or guaranteed hospitality on future visits). Or perhaps universities offer room and board for varying reasons. Students might have be charged to their grant or their own school foots any bills (if perhaps they’re adventuring for semi-academic purposes like archeological digs and delves), or are welcomed on standing for graduates, or in exchange for guest lectures on niche or highly specialized topics like ruins, spellcraft, runework, potions.
Of course a world might give special titles to especially famous and successful adventurers and their parties for services rendered, and as a way to bridge (or keep control over) their social class as very wealthy and skilled people. Thus at some point said adventurers might simply impose on lords directly, or be granted hospitality by even royals! But before even that, if someone like a fighter is a military veteran room could be provided at forts, guardhouses, or barracks. Mercenaries might have a code of hospitality to friendly companies.
And of course established adventuring guilds may be the ones tasked with operating these remote, rural, and wayward inns. Such groups might require constant communications and run vast networks, thus their letter & parcel runners need guaranteed lodging. Such in s might also be joint ventures with merchant guilds for the shared purpose of travel safety, and might even double as factories, farms, or ranches given sufficient land. Even without a direct investment from a merchant guild these things might still be found among rural inns simply as a vast revenue source, a way to keep up food supplies both for normal patronage and for emergencies. Some of the best vintage might come from such places disconnected from the density, grime, and waste of urban centers.
Many of these inns can also be villas that are owned (if not also operated or lived in) by local or distant lords. Perhaps even royals invest in villas that double as inns for revenue, with separate accommodation for the owner. Perhaps these are even operated by the manor lords as real resorts on beaches or hot springs!
The possibilities are endless!
I really would recommend you check out 1st and 2nd edition.
Because that thing you talked about about the fortified Manor houses possibly being gifted to adventurers. Once they are famous enough.
Remind me quite a bit of a feature that fighters had until 3rd edition.
Copied from the aD&D 2e player's handbook
When a fighter attains 9th level (becomes a “Lord”), he can automatically attract men-at-arms. These soldiers, having heard of the
fighter, come for the chance to gain fame,
adventure, and cash. They are loyal as long as
they are well-treated, successful, and paid
well. Abusive treatment or a disastrous campaign can lead to grumbling, desertion, and
possibly mutiny. To attract the men, the fighter
must have a castle or stronghold and sizeable
manor lands around it. As he claims and rules this land, soldiers journey to his domain, thereby increasing his power. Furthermore,
the fighter can tax and develop these lands,
gaining a steady income from them. Your DM
has information about gaining and running a
barony
Adventures are basically an independent militia that deals with problems that are too much for the peasantry to handle, but are below the military to deal with. Basically bounty hunters of a sort.
sweden did have something fairly similar to fantasy taverns, although it should be noted they werent nearly as expansive in scope as what tabletop games portray. They were fairly simple establishments meant to provide food, beverage, a bed and a change of horse. Often they served as a local gathering spot as well but this wasnt universal and a crucial detail being they were 'rarely' found in larger settlements, seeing as they grew out of simple horse stables intended for couriers to have a place to rest for the night. They still exsist to this day and are interesting places to visit as a tourist
The 'Adventurers retreating to the Hospital' was, interestingly, the 'Retreat and Resurrect' place in the 'Neverwinter Nights' game by Bioware, back in the day.
The city center had an actual inn (which also served as the local brothel and bathhouse), but the 'main retreat and recovery' point was the Temple of Tyr which served as the hospital during that game's initial setting.
Making a really good argument for murder hobos, adventurers closest proxy in medieval society would indeed be bandits.
That being said imposing upon your own social class for hospitality might be very difficult depending on just how free that social class were. In an actualy medieval setting you would likely be restricted to monasteries if you weren't travelling with a retinue of some wealth, even a farm owner probably too high on the pecking order to put up with you.
These are really great ideas. another is the roman period mansio. they were specifically stops placed about a day's march apart, for messengers, couriers, and the higher ranking members of society. basically anybody involved with the government or military other than common soldiers, and paid for by government tax, as long as you're from the government or military, or by donation, if you just want a place to sleep the night and have cash on hand. it matches your fortified inn description quite well.
Great content! I like all the concepts, from the charter-based justification to the RP potential of trying to find a connection in order to shelter for a night.
So I have had in the past, not sure if I still do, several terms for various types of places offering various types of reprieve.
The regular "play to stay" list was
1. Hotels
2. Inns
3. Taverns
4. Hostels
5. encampments.
Places like staying with monks or peasants were also options
The idea is that the nicer you go, the better treatment you get and therefore the more of your stats get replenished and less likely you are to be attacked.
You can do this with other things too.
Is it a Vineyard? A distillery? A brewery? A bar? An alehouse? All of those are different levels of (pretty much) the same thing. Vineyards make wine and so they are the most expensive, but best for your soul. Alehouses are rolling the dice (literally) on if this new drink will help or actually hurt you
I finally did it! I made the channel. Thank you for inspiring me to take the first steps. I couldn't have done it without you.
My friend had An Inn And "Tavern" in our main city the Inn was essentially a large hotel near the cities public bathhouse, across from the castles gates within the walls, the tavern was outside the walls in thr village, and was only open select days while the Inn was always open, they didnt serve beer until after around 6 pm equivilant, the rest of the tavern acted as a gathering hall for the guilds to post jobs, where as the upstairs had the rooms for rent spacous enough for each to host a part of around 4, it was the central building aside from the proper castle/fort and the church happened to be next door closer to the gates, the bathhouse nextdoor close to the docks where merchant ships and the fishermens guild was setup, behind it was the crafts guilds marketplace, each of the actual craftsmen had thier shops proper outside the walls. I really liked thebserup it felt like this Inn was the centeral hotel and town somewhat an extention of the town square between it and the gatehouse leading to the inner walls and castles moat, you entered the city via the gates passing the church before encountering the Inn and the townsquare infront of it, the docks led straight to the town square, and you could see the bathhouse just off to the corner of the Inn, was always odd having to go around the inn for the marketplace, he should ofnset it up on the docks
The Hungarians call the period in which they plundered all troghout europe, robed, pilladged, and rped, the 'time of adventures'.
I hadn’t thought of that in my world. But it gives me ideas.
One country of my world is highly magically developed and has a main road that runs between most towns and cities and has guard posts, but the towns can be days or even weeks apart on foot. Thematically, the army and adventuring guilds are used to dispose of any “aggressive” creatures found near this road or any villages. This leads to many adventuring-type guilds each having their own theme that leaves them unique in either a type of magic or in the type of jobs they take. Some a para military while others are effectively just hired guards for traveling merchant and crafting guilds.
This leads me to the idea that there would also be another guild within all of those, a type of travelers guild. They build small inns within a day’s travel of each other along this main road. And these inns would generally have a shared room or two along with a private room or two and a small stable and even a special barn for special cargo. Anyone using this barn would be given a special necklace with a key on it. This barn would have a special lock that would only open to that key and the inn keeper’s master key. However, if anyone was to open the door or get into the barn without that special key being present an alarm would be set off that would alert the inn keeper, wielder of the key, and nearby guard’s post.
Along with all of this these inns would have nightly prices. Though, most guilds pay for reduced prices by paying a weekly or monthly fee for certain individuals to always have certain privileges.
For example: the special barn may cost a gold for per night, making a week long trip cost a whopping 7 gold. Which is too expensive for those traveling to only make a low amount of gold overall, but for those selling fine silks and magical wares is fairly cheap for the nightly protection of guards and a warm bed. So a guild might pay 5 gold per week to the traveler’s guild for special medallions that they give to their highest profiting merchants, to ensure their safe travel. With of course multiple options for those needing only stables and a bed or wanting private rooms.
Thoughtful talk-out of a tavern essay. After listening to your points I would now imagine that the 'inn/tavern' that is welcoming 'adventurers' would most likely be in a mercantile district as opposed to a jovial residential situation. Along with that they may even have a writ restricting them to that portion of the city.
Very interesting stuff to hear, especially as someone trying to conceptualize a fantasy world in a more modern setting. How I've thought of it is a set of guilds that are privately owned but part of an organization, licensing adventurers & handing out quests. Most guilds also house inns, bars/restaurants, maybe an emergency clinic for the injured, and sometimes an info broker to sell valuable intel. They could even help out with things such as currency exchange, travel guidance, translation, or the search/distribution of equipment. Essentially an almost all-in-one fantasy tavern with a bit more structure.
Just as a thought, perhaps the inns would actually be slightly closer (or trying to fill in), and have it be something like the Pony Express where it's basically the distance to run a horse to near exhaustion as a messenger system there as well. While there's magic for faster communication, it's more difficult to send packages and similar or deal with some things that might be needed that way.
The JRPG Another Eden has both inns and taverns as separate establishments with few exceptions. Because of the time travel plot, these institutions exist even in the distant past and the future. There even is a tavern beyond time and space named Time's Forgotten Stop which is a key recurring location. The inns serve as a common way for player to heal their party of companions and can get an expendable package of food for a total restore in the field. Taverns primarily serve as gossip points, locations were quest events occur, or (beginning in part three) bounty postings. Time's Forgotten Stop also includes a equipment blacksmith's shop, bards that retell the events of earlier adventures of the player (i.e. replay cutscenes), and a person that can that can upgrade character classes or unlock parallel versions of characters from parallel timelines.
Athas, the setting of Dark Sun, is full of these establishments you describe. The caravanserai or Merchant House fortress is often the only "safe" place you'll find in the wilds.
For games that involve lots of travel between points of light, this is a great, flavorful way to present the world.
In the summer of 2008, I drove to Spain with a friend on holiday. After spending one night in Denmark, we drove south and came into a small German border town close to Belgium. Everything was closed there, so we decided to head straight into the Ardennes, prepared to sleep in a tent if need be. We came into a small Belgian town with a WWI memorial in the centre, and there was a pub/inn right next to it that was open. They had a room, we got a meal, and some excellent Belgian beer, and it remains one of the fondest memories I have of a journey that took me to Bastogne, Bouillon, Paris, Bilbao, Lugo, Santiago de Compostela, Leon and Burgos.
When I did the West Highland Way in Scotland there are a few of these wilderness taverns still in operation. It's a great way to put yourself in the shoes of a fantasy adventurer
I love to write fantasy and always made fun of the tavern troupe, but still found myself falling back onto the concept time and again.
You have given me a new way to think about how I incorporate them. I can turn it from tired troupe to interesting concept!
Thanks!
Thanks for this vid. :) In the MMORPG, Pax Dei, our guild, The Order of the Blood Brothers, is forming from within, a group of us who will be going out to investigate, and possibly hunt, supernatural creatures in the Pax Dei world - and possibly be hired by others to guide and protect them through the mythological monster's territories. Even though the name of our guild may be intimidating, it actually denotes our loyalty to each other and alliance guilds, and free peoples of the realm. That being said, we won't be the type of adventurers who are rowdy and out to make trouble. Decent mercenaries do exist in us. :)
Excellent work, as always, Tom!
Well that was very informative, got a bit of a history lesson/camping guide to go along with future campaign ideas.
The most realistic medieval tavern/inn I've seen was in The book of the new sun by Gene Wolfe, which is strange, because it's sci-fi. Nowhere else I've seen unacquainted people sharing beds in an inn
Along overland trade routes you also got a special kind of “inn” which catered to caravans. They look a bit like basic fortresses that you rent overnight. Walls around a central courtyard, a water source, stables, someplace to unload merchandise, someplace to cook and shelter for setting up your sleeping gear. Little or no staff. They might be locked up until you pay, or they might be open and free for use as sponsored by the local authorities.
Caravans are perfectly capable to set up a fortified camp anywhere, but this is much safer and more convenient. Presence of fantasy monsters would make this more true.
Cheers
I really think having a calibration of rest periods account for the need of such a proper resting, within a safe-ish structure is something very enriching for fantasy RPGs
D&D does have fortified inns - famously the Friendly Arm Inn which is basically a fortified ring wall with a gate house surrounding a major central keep.
But yeah, adventurers having just vanquished the local dragon or other monster threat and made off with its hoard of wealth would be akin to a group of people all having just won the lottery. Could make running an inn very profitable when said adventurers with more wealth than they know what to do with return to your inn at the end of their adventure and tip you a few months or years worth of salary - like we see happens at modern day casinos. (D&D makes it pretty clear that the gold value of loot is often astronomical compared to the yearly salaries of a farmer or innkeeper or waitress. Like on the scale of a yearly wage being a couple gold pieces and a haul of loot for even a fairly low level adventuring party can be worth a couple hundred gold pieces.)
Especially since the adventurers could be returning with so much loot that they pretty much have to get rid of it, even when doing so comes at a massive loss of the "theoretical" value of gemstones or other items that are hard to just immediately sell. Because it's hard to haul around several enchanted swords / pieces of armor / gold crowns everywhere.
I have used adventurers's halls as a base of operations. I really like the idea of fortified inns in the wilderness between major towns.
I have also seen an adventure group room that has a small apartment like space with a common room with 4 individual bed chambers. I have made specialized inns for adventure groups that have premium rooms like this. They are more expensive but generally better for groups.
In my setting, a wilderness inn is a rarity. Mostly only major trade hubs have inns for travelling merchants and mercenaries. The few that are out in the wild are always fortified. One inn that played a repeat role in the campaign was a front for local military intelligence. The kingdom underwent civil war, so the nature of the troops there changed a couple times, but it always had some heavily armed presence and was well fortified. These fortress-inns were well known landmarks along the major roads where they were located.
In one of my past campaign settings, it was a law that the Lord of any commoner who posted a bounty for an adventuring guild (usually in wheat, animals, or heirloom items) legally had to either deal with the problem with their own men-at-arms, or pay out the bounty and offer the coin equivalent, essentially doubling the posted reward. The nobility were also legally required to keep a conspicuously placed and prominent notice board to accept these bounties, and so taverns were essentially a kind of one-stop mercenary emporium where an adventurer could buy and sell weapons, get drunk, find good paying jobs, and recover from injuries sustained the field. Since Adventurers are essentially traveling mercenaries with more firepower than a small army, taverns devoted to serving adventurers double to also serve to keep those walking, talking WMDs as far away from the average smallfolk as possible. As such, many taverns would be operated tax-free, or even be sponsored by the local lord, and adventuring companies who became especially distinguished may even be offered direct sponsorships themselves just to stick around on a more permanent basis to assist in the local lord's more unorthodox problems.
Another option for where Adventurers might rest, especially in larger towns my be guild halls. If there were guilds for adventurers or specific groups (i.e. Sellsword/fighter fort, Priest's cloister, Mages guild) that could be another option for where members of the party might rest. Leave quest requests on a job board outside the town hall. I do also love the idea of a specific type of inn developing around adventurers as well as seeking shelter with the local lord because they're the only one with the money & authority to pay for them.
I love this! It is bice to have idea to bring travel to life and bring ppl into the heart of the world. I would love to hear more about your mechanical set ups and other world building to make finding good places to stat nore important, raising the stakes!