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The Vulgar Unicorn, the World Serpent, the Welcome Wench, even the Boar's Head. These names are often more famous that their patrons.
What are some of your favorite bar names from D&D, fiction or even real life?
Hang's Bar in a nameless mill town in the Eastern Frontier is from my homebrew campaign, which also has the Silver Mermaid. .
The Slaughtered Lamb is a real bar in NYC. Werewolf theme.
With all of my creativity, I suck at naming taverns/bars. They are almost always The Prancing Unicorn.
Where is the link for the My Little Pony RPG?
The Red Boar.
The Black Boar.
The Blue Boar.
The Green Boar.
(Hours later...)
The Mauve Boar.
The Turquoise Boar.
The Burgundy Boar.
;)
The Dew Drop Inn.
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The Silver Quill, and the Dagger and the Rose are two we put in my homebrew. My favorite (which will show up in most of my games) is the name also applied to my gaming room: The Fat Cat Inn. Named so lovingly after my grandmother's (who I rent from) cat which would make Garfield look thin. We even added a Fat Catfolk named Morris in his honor.
The Dew Drop Inn.
Run by the Dewitt brothers; Diddy, Willy and Kenny?
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I got thrown out of "The Cat's Meow" on Bourbon Street 3 times in one night, back when I was young and obnoxious.
Holy crap! That was you!
"The Cat's Meow", where the men are drunk and the women are drunk AND uninhibited (especially when it comes to Mardi Gras beads)(and at 4 in the morning on the balcony).
Oh man, there are a lot. I think my favorite is the Crying Witch, which if you look at a Suzail city map (Cormyr, Forgotten Realms), looks like this unimportant little tavern. It's been the focus of my ongoing FR campaign for the last three years. The joke is that the proprietor stole it from the "Witch" on the sign (which is why she's crying). The proprietor's daughter opened up her own tavern in another city, calling it "The Flirting Witch."
The Rusty Nail is a good name for a dockside watering hole (coincidentally also an inn in Dungeons & Dragons Online).
The Thorny Rose is a name I chose for an S&M club/tavern run by a half-fiend/half-nymph.
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With all of my creativity, I suck at naming taverns/bars. They are almost always The Prancing Unicorn.
Me as well. At one point, I asked someone else to name the tavern. They liked the Unicorn name but has some difficulty coming up with a descriptor for it. Since it has a horn, they tried to do something with that and "Hornless" came out.
To which someone else replied -- "The Hornless Unicorn? ... You mean it's a horse."
Ever since then, no one has really given me much trouble for my tavern names.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16
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In our previous campaign all tavern names were variations on the intoxiated rodent theme...
Drunken Rat
Tipsy Beaver
Stumblin' Bunny
Pickled Marmot
repeat ad nauseum
In my current savage species campaign, the only inn the group has been to is the Bloody Bull. Needless to say the Minotaur Character was not happy to discover the specialty of the house was Minotaur steaks.
~Rusty
In my current savage species campaign, the only inn the group has been to is the Bloody Bull. Needless to say the Minotaur Character was not happy to discover the specialty of the house was Minotaur steaks.
~Rusty
Wow. They must have a real tough cook.
In my old Fantasy HERO world's equivalent to Lankhmar, the PCs were generally most likely to frequent The Dancing Dragon ... but occasionally they'd go down to the wharf district and find themselves in The Drowning Rat.
-The Gneech
In my campaigns: The Rollicking Tortoise, the Dancing Pig, the Crippled Elk, the Black Iron Inn. Don't ask me why.
Elsewhere: Bill Bryson takes the cake hands-down in Notes from a Small Island, with "The Buggered Ploughman."
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The Brass Lantern
The Beast & Boar (kudos to any who recognize this one)
The Broke Spoke
The Phoenix (good name for a place that was rebuilt after a fire)
The Shady Dragon Inn
The Plucked Duck
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In my campaigns: The Rollicking Tortoise, the Dancing Pig, the Crippled Elk, the Black Iron Inn. Don't ask me why.
Hooray for taverns named after crippled animals! I have the Crippled Fish, which I think I got from a tavern generator name somewhere.
Chug's Mug - Run by the friendly half-orc, Chug. Has a big mug above the door, pouring illusionary ale down across the doorway.
The Open Gate Inn - The first inn/tavern you get to when entering the town it's in.
Grain, Ale & Wine - My pride and joy, because I do so love puns :)
The Grassy Gnoll - Another of my favourite pun-based bar names. Massive gnoll head hanging above the door.
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I ran a D20 Call of Cthulhu campaign back in the ninth grade, in which the PCs encountered some ghouls in a cavern.
Only, the players thought I said tavern.
Now, several years later, the running joke is for me to name all of my taverns 'The Cavern.'
Interestingly enough, the Beatles' first gig was at a joint called the Cavern Club.
Im always a fan of the "mended drum"
cookie if you get the reference.
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THE FICKLE MERMAID
This one is in Caer Callidyr in FR. I believe Mel Odom's novel, The Lost Library is its first appearance. It's always been my favorite name. Asprin's Vulgar Unicorn in Sanctuary (already mentioned) is a good second, followed by The Nauseous Otyugh (Best of the Realms).
Often, though, I try to think of a horribly memorable atmosphere, Styes or Sanctuary worthy. Then give it a real mundane name -- like SALOON. Or even a benign name, The Little Rainbow.
-W. E. Ray
I too suck at naming taverns. The only one that I've come up with so far that I've been at all pleased with is the Alemental.
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I like to start by visualizing the sign. Since my world trends fairly medieval, I assume that most people don't read. That means that the sign needs to be graphic.
Some of the signs are painted and two-dimensional; some are carved into three-dimensional shapes. Two that I like:
The Brass Tankard, whose sign is crudely painted on a rough board, is known to most as "The Brazen Drunkard". (The clientele isn't, shall we say, exclusive.)
The Gilded Unicorn, a higher-class place, has a carved rampant unicorn with gold paint. But some years ago an ejected drunk took offense at being bounced and took some revenge on the sign. The bar is now usually referred to as "The Gelded Unicorn".
I have always wondered what is the real difference between a pub, tavern, saloon, bar; etc; some people talk as if they are individually different; any thoughts;
mine;
Dry Gulch Saloon
Cowboy Feng's bar and saloon; cant remember the whole name;
The Whistle Stop
Pandamonium bar and dance hall
The Beast & Boar (kudos to any who recognize this one)
Heh. Did you get flooded this year at Pennsic?
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The most frightening pub of all.
Well the first tavern name i ever used was the Golden Griffon pub and the first Inn was The Cat's Bell.
and one i've always wanted to use, but never thought it would go down well.
The Unladen Swallow. XD
then there was the Blue Door. that later became the Dragons Eye Gate, after a brawl sent someone sailing out into the street (plus one gate around the neck.)
ummm yeah...
Scum and Villain
The Dwarf Eight Saloon
the player favorites from my homebrew
The Bargewright Inn from the Realms.
Personal experience: the Copper Cup in Waterdeep. Been burned down once, then smashed flat in an extended fight with some conjured critters including a shambling mound. The best place in multiple campaigns to go in the city for a raucous good time.
I usually have an obligatory Green Dragon Inn...and it usually gets burned to the ground, exploded, craterified, shunted into the Nth dimension, crushed, imploded, etc. When the characters reach the green Dragon Inn, they know there will be trouble....
Other than that, I look around the room for some inspiration. This morning, as I haven't drunk enough caffine, I spy a calendar, a french press, chemical books and catalogs, a bottle of Advil, and my Get Fuzzy calendar...
...hmm....
The Alchemist's Cat?
The Sleepless Apothecary?
The Sleepless Month Inn???
OK, perhaps I should do this when I have more coffee....
the Brass Monkey
the Monkey's Claw
Xanadu
Bare Necessity
Da Peoples Church
Grape Harbor or Arbor
The Beast & Boar (kudos to any who recognize this one)Heh. Did you get flooded this year at Pennsic?
Yes! It was ridiculous! I don't remember ever being so miserable at Pennsic. It seemed like it rained every ****ing day! It was either baking hot or we were getting soaked. And as soon as I'd get in the tent and get dry, I'd notice that our tent fly was sagging from collecting water...so I'd have to go back outside and tighten up the lines again. And we camp near the lake, so the temperature is usually fairly tolerable, but this year it was nigh miserable. I think my wife and I are actually going to skip Pennsic next year and do something different for a change.
How was your war?
*sorry for the threadjack*
The Stumbling Kobold. It's a franchise in our campaigns, even crossing Game Systems and Settings.
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The Stumbling Kobold. It's a franchise in our campaigns, even crossing Game Systems and Settings.
In my games, its the Frothing Otter. Open 24 hrs, hires twins/triplets almost exclusively to maintain the illusion of the same person there all the time, and is the inn/tavern equivalent of McDonalds. Often it's the only place open late at night when PCs tend to come stumbling into town.
My players LOVE the place because of the obnoxiousness and fun, but their characters usually end up hating the place. Frothing Otter has crossed campaigns, editions, genres (D&D to Iron Kingdoms) etc. Its a staple in my games.
Cowboy Feng's bar and saloon; cant remember the whole name
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. My favorite Brust novel after Agyar.
The Kings Arms
The Black Bull
The Brown Cow
The Green Dragon
The Green Man
The Horse and Wagon
The Jolly Taxman
The Red Lion
The Crossed Keys
The Goats Head
The Nags Head
The Fox and Hound
The Mad Cat
The Black Sheep
The Flying Handbag
The Crystal Palace
The Cock and Bottle
The Quiet Woman
The Slug and Lettuce
These are real pubs in the UK.
Grain, Ale & Wine - My pride and joy, because I do so love puns :)
Maybe its because it is getting late, but I think I might need a little hand holding for this one.
Tam
As in, how is it a pun?
Grain, Ale & Wine = Rain, Hail & Shine :)