Getting Started

Tavern Tales is a fantasy-themed tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) that invites players to take on the roles of powerful heroes who fight dangerous monsters, explore exotic locations, and interact with amazing characters. RPGs have no winning condition. Players don’t win or lose – they simply make decisions and see where the adventure takes them. An RPG is a collaborative story where everyone affects the outcome, guided by the results of dice-rolls.

Tavern Tales is played across one or more sessions which typically last several hours. Past that, it’s up to your gaming group to determine the scope of your game. Tavern Tales supports one-shot, single session games just as well as it supports long-form campaigns which last months or years.

Before you Start

You’ll need a few friends, some way to take notes, and three twenty-sided (d20) dice. Roll20.net has a Tavern Tales character sheet designed to facilitate note-keeping and dice-rolling. Discord.gg is an excellent way to communicate with friends over long distances.

Make Tavern Tales Your Own

Tavern Tales is designed to be malleable. Look at the various systems and subsystems in TT-CC-Smooth and TT-CC-Crunchy and mix and match to fit your playstyle. Ignore rules you don’t like, introduce new rules, tweak default values. It’s your game.

Work Together

You’ll see the word “Collaborate” a lot. It means: “Work with your group to decide…”.

Many traits require collaboration to determine exactly how they work in your world and how powerful they should be in your game.

The end result is, you get a game that suits your particular power-level and style.

The GM and the Players

One of you plays as the Gamemaster (GM). The GM facilitates the game, sets up situations for the characters to react to, establishes challenges and acts the part of all non-player characters (NPCs).

Every other player will create their own player character (PC) that they will use during the game.

In Tavern Tales, players have more creative authority than in most RPGs. When a player gets a bad result on the dice (a bad tale), they get to decide exactly what happens, including the introduction of new threats.

The rule of Cheese and Infinite Loops

It’s up to the group to curb gamebreaking behaviour and loophole exploitation. This is especially clear when someone chooses the same bad tale option over and over again, or if they pursue repetitive behaviour which exploits trait combinations.

At any time, the group may call “Cheese” and ask the offender to change their action.

Community

Jump into the conversation at the subreddit or on the Tavern Tales discord server.