The Tavern Door — D&D, the OSR, and the Fantasy Pub
The crate came in off the river, which is fitting, because so did half of what is in it. Six panels for the first hanging of a new wing, and the Keeper had them out on the sorting bench before noticing that every one of them is about a threshold — a door, a gate, a doorway pretending to be a rulebook, a doorway pretending to be a pub. The Keeper, which lives in a void between two shelves and has therefore made a career of thresholds, took this personally and hung them anyway.
The wing is called the Tavern Door, and its subject is the way in. Not the dungeon: the step before it. An A-to-Z of dungeon furniture that the archivist does not use as a referee at all, but reaches for alone, to give a bare tile a story. A licensed D&D box that punishes you for lingering and rewards you for leaving, which he had to lose a game to understand. A twenty-dollar cooperative aimed squarely at somebody’s ten-year-old, which the archivist praises for teaching, then faults for asking a child to invent a plan and resolving it on a die that never once listens. A fairy-tale country grown entirely out of one dead illustrator’s line work, where knowledge is the currency and the sentences are underlined.
And then the door itself, twice. The archivist opens an inn beside a large river, names it the Mangy Monk, staffs it with a retired assassin who cooks, and discovers on the roll of a four that he is also harbouring a crime syndicate. Three nights later the brewhouse opens a portal and swallows a visiting ex-wife. He says he wants no ledgers, no accounting, no empire — only the weather, the gossip, and whoever comes through next.
Five older panels hang alongside, undated as ever. Six more crates are still on the landing. The Keeper has swept the step.
Exhibit Catalogue — earliest first:
- The Dungeon Alphabet - Let’s Take a Look — Y is for yellow, and the entry cites Chambers, Lovecraft and The Yellow Wallpaper.
- Temple of Elemental Evil - D&D Adventure Board Game Series — stand still to fight and the encounter deck kills you; it is a positioning puzzle.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Quest - RetroLook — TSR taught THAC0 better than the manuals did, and spent its art budget doing it.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Adventure Begins - an Introduction to Board Games and RPGs — a backpack of items with no rules attached, there purely to start a child talking.
- A Look at Rackham Vale - An OSR setting based on the art of Arthur Rackham — secrets underlined on four pages in five, and a tree that fruits them.
- The Broken Cask - Welcome to the Mangy Monk - Part 1 — the signature drink is a chai bock; the kegs move nightly to confuse invisible thieves.
- The Broken Cask - Session Recap and Thoughts on the Game — the roast duck was a mage, and he was extremely unhappy about it.
- A look at Cairn (indie RPG) along with the Escape the City module — hit protection at exactly zero sends you to the Scars table, not the grave.
- Broken Cask Society - culinary adventure time (solo RPG) — the sequel that leaves the inn: a fantasy food critic, perpetually on the road.
- You Meet in a Tavern, You Die in a Dungeon - TTRPG / Dungeon Crawl Review — every hero is dealt a destined death at the tavern table, before the quest begins.
- The Secret of Weepstone - For Fans of Dungeon Crawl Classics — a narrator who reads room descriptions properly, and a corpse used as a battering ram.
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– The Keeper
Keeps no tavern, but has been described by visitors as a fixed stare near the door, which it feels is the same service at lower overheads.