Twisted Taverns Review

This article contains affiliate links, meaning that if you decide to purchase a product through my link, I get a Commission at no additional cost to you

Meeting in a tavern is a tired trope of fantasy fiction, especially if that’s how the characters joined up and awkwarness is amplified if the players don’t know each other or are unfamiliar with RPGs. The Seeker’s Guide to Twisted Taverns is offered as a way to spice up a location the players will probably be visiting and re-visiting. Ghostfire Gaming’s Twisted Taverns is a cool mess but I can’t unilaterally recommend it. There’s seventeen different locales for your players to rock up to, so your own question should be how many of the locations can be seeded into your games before you’re happy. If it is one, my Affiliate Link is at the bottom as I am confident you’ll find something. If you’re more discerning, the answer becomes more complicated.

The eponymous Seeker of the Twisted Taverns

As mentioned in my Aberrant Reflections Review a good Hex Feature has:

• Interesting magic items

• Memorable NPCs

• Naturally incentivize players to revisit

• The players prescence breaks the stalemate or equilibrium

• Unique monsters to delineate territory

Review Over — This will be on the test

At the back of the book is a list of five NPCs players could use if they wish as Pre-Generated characters to explore the Twisted Taverns. Four is more likely as the Seeker seems to be ‘above it all’ who is an A+ NPC that surely will have your players fall in love. These NPCs are interesting enough in that they could appear in almost any setting and still have a chance of stealing the show. It is nice to have these NPCs listed as always being able to appear. When your players roll up somewhere, they can bump into someone again and build a relationship with the game world.

Each location has their own NPCs but they tend to fall into two groups: Quest Enablers or Wallpaper. Wallpaper is nice if you need something for the players look at as local flavour but they lack any dimension to hook or enthrall your players if examined closely. The Quest Enablers are pretty cool, as they have to be if they’re going to incentivize your players interacting with them but there are no nifty vignettes for a supplement meant to give character to your local watering hole.

What these locales are are dungeons by chronology. A typical dungeon has encounters relating to the players spatially, as in as they move into the next room you spring the spiders on them. With the Twisted Taverns, your players will be completing tasks for the Quest Enablers, who will then give out the next quest in the quest chain. It feels like a computer RPG of old like Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect or some other Space Opera RPG of “Now that you’ve done that good work, here’s the next quest in my quest chain”. Many of the these locations feel like ‘neutral ground’, which will incentive players to return but unfortunately at the cost of weak Calls to Action for your players to respond to. I understand that safe spaces should exist in the game world, but they should be when the characters are at home doing Downtime. Not while the adventurers are supposed to be out adventuring.

These Shoes are too Comfy to Go a-Walkin’

Another casualty of the decision to make the taverns neutral ground, is failing the requirement of making a Hex Feature populate appropriate monsters to delineate territory. The Dreamscape, as an example, has the highest chance of having patrons and players come to blows but with it being outside of space-time, it won’t affect your game world which is half of the fun. Most of the monsters are listed in the SRD, with medicore bouncers being the creatures unique to it but they don’t do anything too interesting.

Many of the inns are almost too fantastical which bars them from being poured into your game. My praise for Warmachine’s generic setting means that they’re very easy to put in a nook or cranny of your game. It is why I use the boar boys known as the Farrow as a Faction in my game. An immediate example is one of the inns being located under the sea. Adventurers rarely go under the sea because it sucks the fun out of why people play Dungeons and Dragons: Power Fantasy. So unless your players have bought in into pirate swashbuckling and all of its potential dangers, that is a location that is hard to use.

Other examples of locales being too mystical was a bar located in the space between realities, a wizarding bar more in-theme with Discworld’s Anhk-Morpork than any other setting or a treetop village run by Fey which players should know not to eat Fey foods. The worst offender is an inn at first sight appears to be shoddy but appropriate for any moderately sized village. If the players take a shine to the location, at the end of the quest chain your players would find themselves against a creature appropriate for levels 17-20 which is incongruent with the charming ramshackle presentation. Characters at levels 1 to 7 know they can make a difference in peoples lives, characters at level 17 are too busy saving the world to help prop up an inn. Yes, it could be fixed by changing the baddie but I’m of the belief that paid products should require minimum preperation because they’re already paying you to avoid the prep!

these Taverns neglect bender’s favourite things

Another casualty of being too setting specific is the bar in a train. Does your setting support the necessary Diesel-, Steam- or Tesla- Punk? It is a pretty known factor that the reason why trains aren’t used in RPGs is because they limit player agency. What made Jacquaysing a verb was the game designer who incorporated loops and alternatives in her dungeons. You know what highly limits that? Train cars. Trains depicted in fiction make the protagonists look cool as they pull off their schemes but it does not translate well to RPG spaces. Rooms do not have multiple exits on a train, there’s the next car and the one you came from. Kick down the door, clear the baddies and then repeat until the train stops moving. If you do want to mimic the great train heist, then you’re asking to split the party and while it is possible, there’s a reason why cooperative storytelling games stigmatize that. Or worse yet, have a bunch of bad dice rolls result in a character falling off of the speeding locomotive and be left in the dust.

Some of the locales I had to rule out because they were too specific. With my players homebase being a Dwarven civilization, I couldn’t use the Dwarven-themed restaurant in a mine. Again, safe spaces are for Downtime not when adventurers are out doing their job aka your players playing the game. The Japanese tea garden inspired location couldn’t easily be shoe-horned into my West Marches because I made the mistake of not including a metropolis in my game, a decision I do regret. With my map being landlocked, I couldn’t use the boat with a pirate theme restaurant. The desert oasis is a political intrigue locale but requires seeding my game of camelfolk but since my players resist traveling to the desert, I knew that’d be a bust. I would have loved to plop down the viking longboat turned inn but again, that’s foiled by my players lack of interest in going to the frozen North.

Another tavern that was an immediate unfortunate casualty was designed by Logan of Runesmith. It is a tavern located atop a gargantuan beast that walks to various places by stretching space-time, meaning it arrives at different locations incredibly quickly but in a route. That’s a cool idea, having a hotel that takes you to a variety of areas. As a base for a ‘dungeon of the week’, this concept gets full marks from me but I’m looking for something easy and charming to plop down onto the game world. Unfortunately, what sunk it was a lack of a Speed listed and I’ve already used up charm with a Howl’s Moving Castle in the form of The Wandering Manor of Zekame by Max MacDonald (2021) One Page Dungeon. Without having a Speed listed, easy wasn’t possible for me as I couldn’t insert it in my game knowing that it’ll be back once every X days with Y stops. Give me a number and permission to break it so I can justify another kaiju-size beastie roaming the backyard. If I have to do work, then the hotel would need to get in line behind The Ambulatory Temple by Robin Gibson (2022) OPDC or The Trojan Pig by Glynn Seal (2020) OPDC.

Enough Macro — Adjusting the Microscope

Of the seventeen locales, I found that I could only really use four for my game. There was one that was simply too generic which I guess is good for a ‘starter’ tavern but I signed up for Twisted Taverns. I read over the other locations but these four I delved in deep. The Bloated Bounty, the Dungeon of Darkness, the Fungal Grotto and the Tavern at Death’s Door.

Out of all of them, I think The Bloated Bounty was the best written. It’s a smugglers den that doesn’t have quest chains but scenarios your players can get up to. That feels far more like a place than the rest with their quest chains. With it being a smugglers den, you can use the location as pure Wallpaper for a meeting place but surprise your players with depth if they ever decide to get in deeper with the NPCs. There’s multiple characters that can pull interference with the Bloated Bounty in many directions. The location even has a semi-regular event which your players can use as cover or as an excuse to meet a particular NPC you wish to introduce.

I really like the Dungeon of Darkness as it is how you do insidious properly. The barkeep is a tall, silent skeleton in a pink apron who is cordial. The tavern entreats adventurers to get ‘high scores’ like it is the fantasy equivalent of Laser Tag, as they can go into the obviously fake dungeon to fight real undead. This means that the map provided gives away the game but many of the locations are also drawn so beautifully. The Dungeon of Darkness has vignettes written, which is nice, as it shows growth of the place to your players. If the players decide to delve deeper into why and how such a place exists, then another event unfolds which brings your players in contact with a dangerous boss… whose stat block is incomplete.

I know typos can annoy the reader and massive documents are rife with them despite dedicated eyes pouring over the pages. I don’t mind them as uyo be subpsired hwo qucilky uyro bairn cna uncsrambel tpyos, at least for those who don’t suffer from dyslexia (Sorry if you have dyslexia for making that point). I don’t mind gaps in storytelling either because life is messy or something unrelated can be used to fill in the gaps in the players minds. But having an incomplete stat block, especially for the piece de resistance is incredibly egrigous. I am fine with rolling up my sleeves to tinker with a product, as that must be done to fit your own games, but as I stated before I pay for prep to make sure I have the least of it possible. The “Mors Ursi” is a Huge Undead creation using a bear that is the capstone to the ‘Laser Quest’ competition for players. Incidentally, on my Patreon I am releasing a Huge-sized Undead creation using a bear named Deadbear which may or may not reduce prep you need for the Dungeon of Darkness.

Done Schilling, Back to Review

Aside from that glaring error, I found the other two taverns delightful. But again, I only did a deep dive on four of the locations, I am not certain if the other sections are rife with errors or the Mors Ursi is just an unfortunate mistake that slipped through the cracks.

The Fungal Grotto is a nice palette cleanser in comparison to the Dungeon of Darkness as it is a daycare for sentient mushrooms that make all the food and drinks by chopping off their own bits. It is harmless for the mushroom people and the mushrooms, with a cute in a creepy kid way, explain that in the end the mushrooms will make a meal out of any living creature. So these Shroomfolk feel making a restaurant out of themselves is an appropriate way to ‘pay it forward’. This would be a perfect respite for an Underdark Pointcrawl. My players are rightfully afraid of the Underdark but they might end up in another section and the Fungal Grotto would be a great node to put down.

The last is the Tavern at Death’s Door Death which I am keeping in my back pocket. With West Marches having various parts of it not adjusting for the characters levels, there’s always a good chance that the entire party might get wiped out. If that happens in the middle of a session, instead of cutting the session short with a downer, you can have the characters walk out of darkness into this tavern. Here, you can challenge death to resurrect yourself or walk off to be at peace with death. Really cool.

What adds to the charm of The Seeker’s Guide to Twisted Taverns, aside from incredible art and maps is wholly unique menus. Each place has a two page spread with prices of unique items. I am not too fond of props but I come from a wargaming background, not being a theatre kid. Some of them may eat that up wholesale, I am more worried about verisimilitude being broken because the meals are so much more expensive or cheap compared to the rest of the game world.

In Conclusion

As I stated in the beginning of the review, if paying $30 USD for one location seems like a good deal, then I encourage people to use my Affiliate Link below. Otherwise, the price point begs how many ‘ready made’ locations, that you will still need to do prep for, is your breakpoint for satisfaction? With the average cost of a smaller digital module being between $5 to $10 USD, the answer seems to lie between three to six. Between all of the art, unique scenarios and lovable NPCs, Twisted Taverns is squarely a deal if a standalone tavern were in the $10 range. With all of the locales I’ve rattled off, if three can be used to spice up your game or had you immediately thinking of exactly where such a place would go, Twisted Taverns is easily justifiable. If more than that spoke to you, than The Seeker’s Guide to Twisted Taverns is an incredible deal. I’ll readily admit, that if my players ever do end up in the Frozen North or slum it with Ariel under the sea, those safe havens would be awesome to have up my sleeve and make this book an even better buy.

When Ghostfire Gaming came up with its sequel for Kickstarter, about interesting travelling merchants, based off of their other products but mostly this one made me snap back it.

Onto the e-begging, if you found my review to be helpful there are multiple ways to offer support; such as, using my Affiliate Link if you decide to purchase Twisted Taverns as I receive a portion of the sale, sign up to my Patreon where I have a design of the Mors Ursi Deadbear, throw a few bucks into my ko-fi tip jar or share the article with your personal nerd collective.