Hello Roleplayer Guild.

I'll skip the part where I introduce myself because I already did that here. I'd like to talk about something I experienced a lot of when I frequented gaiaonline for my roleplaying. This was a long time ago and I was quite young, so make fun of my choice of website if you want - I won't be offended.

The concept is simple. We called them "Tavern/Inn Roleplays" and they were, essentially, directionless and without story and setting beyond a simple tavern/inn in a fantasy world of some sort. That's about as much as the person who started the thread would ever give you, aside from some additional information on the surroundings of the tavern and details about the world it is within if they decided they wanted to be a bit more specific.

In a Tavern/Inn Roleplay, almost anything seemed to be fair game. There was almost always an incredible rainbow of character variation. Vampires, werewolves, magicians, elves, demi-gods, you name it. We might roleplay one character or we might roleplay a half-dozen characters. The setting forces interaction between almost all characters involved due to proximity, but also allows for privacy with the addition of the Inn component. A fight might break out outside of the Tavern, and that was fine too. Somebody might be inclined, one day, to create a character that has showed up because of some hatred for another persons character -- or maybe an irrational hatred for Taverns -- and try to burn the place to the ground. Maybe he comes with an army of skeletons. This is the freedom of the concept - we drive the story and we create the lore. There are very few predetermined parameters/restrictions.

Would you guys be interested in such a concept? If I were to start one here, I would hold it to a moderate-to-high standard. We don't need novels (although sometimes a good wall of text written by the right person is downright awesome) but just due to my personal preferences, I'd like to see some meat to a post. Some meat with proper grammar.

If you have any questions about the concept, I'll gladly try to answer them.

If you're looking to recruit players this is the wrong spot. You need to check out the Interest Checks for such things.



If you already know that this is strictly meant to get people's opinions however...
I can see such a thing working, but you would need a good reason to explain why everyone is stuck in the Tavern.
Even something as cliche as "A Mad wizard casted a spell, trapping people in the Tavern for his own enjoyment" works though.

I do apologize if this is in the wrong section. I suppose I am trying to check if people here would be interested in such a thing, but I am also looking for their opinions on the concept in general -- like yours. Some did try to explain the fact that there was a bunch of people who never seemed to want to leave the Tavern with something like a spell. Others left it to the players to decide for themselves, some were wandering vagabonds who found love at the Inn and simply never wanted to leave, while others were employed there, and some opted to live in the forest nearby, or in a house in the closest city. It allowed for some flexibility and avoided the potential issue of forcing a story on the players, as I'm sure they would be curious as to who this evil wizard is.

Years ago I remember this website had something pretty much as you describe. I guess the best way to describe it was like the arena but with talking. They were never really my thing due to the innate lack of direction but it always seemed like a popular place for people to exhibit their characters. I remember this website also tried to set up a PW a couple of times which in a way was similar to the Inn concept except with worlds. That was awesome for the month where it worked, you had like six plots going on in one setting and multiple settings. It was just too much to run though and inevitably collapsed. The Inn thing sounds totally doable though.

Bosch said
Years ago I remember this website had something pretty much as you describe. I guess the best way to describe it was like the arena but with talking. They were never really my thing due to the innate lack of direction but it always seemed like a popular place for people to exhibit their characters. I remember this website also tried to set up a PW a couple of times which in a way was similar to the Inn concept except with worlds. That was awesome for the month where it worked, you had like six plots going on in one setting and multiple settings. It was just too much to run though and inevitably collapsed. The Inn thing sounds totally doable though.

Not years ago. It was still going strong, from what I remember, up till the "old" site was lost. Can't remember offhand the title of it, I just remember having to bow out my character due to my having to move, and the loss of my internet access. I seem to remember something like 54 pages or more... fantastic interactions, we even had a whole storyline going on involving a religious cult that murdered anyone they considered sexually deviant. My character got "taken out" during an attack on a nearby beach. One of the RPs I was most sad to see lost.

As for tavern/inn threads in general, I have to say, they're my fave form to RP in. Get a good group together, like we had on the old guild, and it can go fantastic places, story-wise.

Seems like a great RP to start and feed through interest checks as missions come and go. Can't see why this wouldn't be a popular idea.

There's an RP type on another Forum that's similar, we had a Community run GM rule. In which a vote system was used, though we've already knew most of the RPers on the board so it went rather well. And we handled everything like adults, so bickering was kept to a minimum. The plot for the RP was player driven with no actual GM. Ours was Faction based not location based.

A idea like this though could work around a town or city in which the Tavern could be located. Allowing the RPers to go about their daily lives and convene for a night of relaxing or finding a room for the night.

I know exactly what you're talking about. There used to be chat rooms like that. The "GM" would start the room and describe the setting while playing the pub-landlord/innkeeper. And people would just come in and roleplay. They would describe their character's physical appearance in first thing and then jump right into interacting with whoever was there. It was full of improvisation and great fun. But I don't know if you could pull something like that off in a forum.

I am the Black Wizards said But I don't know if you could pull something like that off in a forum.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we did pull it off. Quite spectacularly. And I've RPed in plenty of "tavern" threads elsewhere, so the "format" is quite... playable.

There are some styles and concepts though that require the right mix of people to make a community out of.
Which is normally helped/enhanced by using another forum site to really focus/specialize in it.
The issue is most people on the Guild don't want to go off site, so trying to set up such an RP relies on getting lucky with the Interest Check and being able to manage it all on one thread.