Crit Academy has the pleasure of being joined by the amazing Chris van der Linden, the genius behind the popular roleplaying game product developer Loresmyth! He discusses with us his amazing Remarkable Inns and Their Drinks!
Every story has a beginning, and more often than not they start in a tavern! Now you can turn boring tavern visits into memorable, exciting roleplaying events. Populate your world with taverns and NPC’s your players are wanting to return to… for another drink!
88- Pages, For Any RPG system
Writers: Greg Rycerz, Katie Rose, Richie Lewin, Chris van der Linden
hardcover, softcover, pdf
Remarkable Inns! Interview Questions with Chris van der Linden
Chris, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hey I'm a creative workaholic that has played a lot of DnD over the years, and ever since I created my first adventure The Claws of Madness a few years back, I got into creating roleplaying products. LoreSmyth was born and people seem to like what products I release.
utomik.com
What is your most memorable D&D moment?
I have very fond memories of Shadowdale back in the AD&D era, it’s not particularly epic but I still have a lot of memories of the adventures we had.
Can you tell us a little bit more about Loresmyth and how it came to be?
It really started pretty unassumingly. I made an adventure book because I thought it would be fun to do. It turned out to take a year cause I am not a skilled writer, so if not for Ben from Goblin Stone, I would have never finished it. Then the adventure became a best seller, and people wanted more. That’s how it all started really, so if it wasn’t for Ben’s encouragement and help, Loresmyth would have not materialized. Recently I returned the favor to a young aspiring publisher Poison Pot Press, who, with my help launched their debut adventure Shore of Dreams, which also went best seller in a week!
What is Remarkable Inns?
It’s a glorious inspirational source book on taverns and everything in it. From food to drinks, npcs, rumors, mysterious things, wonderful things. Its 88 pages and is really made to give DM’s something to browse through often and find little nuggets of things to put into their campaign.
What makes Inns so important, that they needed their own supplement?
I think it contains much more than people would assume from the title. It has over 100 unique story hooks, memorable NPCs, ready- made drinks and dishes with special effects, lists of services and their prices, how to string together a bar brawl. There’s a lot of inspirational stuff, that makes it far less situational than one might think!
Why do you think people should purchase this item or creating their own content?
Well, everyone’s busy and preparing a good session takes time. This book will make it a lot easier to create a memorable experience next time the players burst into a tavern. You will have no problems letting them know what specials are on the menu, or what NPC brings itself to the attention for a spinoff quest. At the very least, this book will inspire you to create your own memorable content
Can you walk us through the process for its development?
Inns took a year to develop from initial idea to release. I started with a general idea of what the book needed to be about. Together with writer Greg, we listed several taverns and how they could each be very unique. I then moved on to think about what other things seemed relevant for taverns, like Songs, Drinks, Gossip, Fights etc. Those all turned into their respective chapters, which made the book grow in scope a lot. I then hired artists and started creating the book layout. The kickstarter secured funds for further art and manufacturing. Everything together was a massive amount of work, and kept me busy almost every evening of the week for a year. It was that intense.
What kind of challenges did run into?
Writing an editing a book of this size is really daunting. There’s so much you have to take into account, it’s really a mountain of work. Creating the book layout with so many illustrations and overflowing text was also difficult. All in all, things went well, I have experience creating books. But it was a monster for sure.
How did you overcome those challenges?
Most of it was just powering through. I def. learned a thing or two for when we decide to do another.
Unearthed Tips and Tricks! (We give you creative content for your next adventure)
Character Concept:
Listener: Justin Dameron Character concept: Lethal Ribbon Dancer I have played this character in a one shot but it takes some reflavoring and agreement from the dm. Mainly because if you grapple an opponent normally the players movement is reduced. Basically the concept is that you work for a traveling troupe of dancers where you learn the lethal art of dance. You learn to control the sharp metal ribbons that twirl and flash around you as you dance. We reflavored a whip for the damage but the best part is the grapple. With a twirl you wrap a ribbon around the opponent if they fail the grapple save, they are restrained until they break the ribbons with a dc 15 Strength check.
Monster Variant: Arctikuna
Origin: Hippogriff
Immunities: Cold
Ice Feather Blast (Recharge 5-6). The ice shard covered hippogriff beats its wings at a point it can see within 60 feet of it. Each creature in a 10-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw, taking 14 (4d6) piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The area becomes fill with jagged ice shards becoming difficult terrain. If a target is knocked prone in this area they take 4(1d6) piercing damage.
Encounter: Rainbow River
Heroes arrive in a town along a beautiful rainbow river.
They are quickly recruited by a local wizard to eradicate some fugly mutated humanoid monsters as she is too busy to deal with them herself.
During their time in the village, they learn that many travelers and even villagers have been getting sick and many disappearing.
Make sure that the players make Con saves when they eat or drink anything in the town. Start really low dc like 5 and for every day they drink or eat the DC increases by 5. The longer they are there the likelihood that they will become a mutation.
Players learn that the wizard's experiments have tainted the drinking water that has caused many to become aberrations. Use Dretch and Manes demon stat blocks.
Magic Item: Roland’s Radiant Rum
An old beautifully carved slightly shimmering wooden box with five small bottles inside. Each bottle contains a different type of rum from a long-forgotten brewer.
You can use an action to drink the contents of one of the bottles.
Roland’s Roaring Recovery Rum: You regain all spell slots of 3rd level or lower.
Roland’s Rushing Rum of Vigor: You gain advantage on all saving throws for 24 hours.
Roland’s Cough Syrup: You can immediately spend up to half your hit dice to heal.
Roland’s Royal Rum: Your charisma becomes 20 for 24 hours.
Roland’s Rum of the Righteous: You take half damage for 1 minute.
Taking of one of these bottles empties it. You must make a DC 10 Con saving throw or gain one level of exhaustion. The DC increases by 5 for every drink within a 24 hour period.
DM Tip: Magical Barriers
With magic everywhere, there are undoubtedly magic wards and barriers throughout the world.
Most likely to protect things of value - Treasure vaults, Nobility, Buildings
Contain magic users - Prisons with anti-magic sigils
Not only to stop prisoners from casting magic but prevent others from just teleporting in
Wards to prevent Mind controlling effects
Player Tip:
Plant evidence
Sometimes outright murder isn’t the best option, especially when it comes to political intrigue.
Just taking out nobility who runs a slave ring, or is just terribly corrupt doesn’t actually fix the problem.
Sometimes you need to let the law handle it. Often they are used to hiding their tracks, but if you can gather evidence and plant it on them or in some other way incriminate them.
Not only can you expose them for the monsters they are, but you can also expose their entire operation and never have to take a life.
This is a great solution for someone who is less into killing their foes.
If you have any feedback, unearthed tips and tricks, or topics you would like us to discuss, please send them to us. You can email them to us at critacademy@gmail.com or find us on Twitter and Facebook @critacademy.
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