Improve taverns, food, and drink

[PlayaCharacter]

Since we're about to move into a new setting, this is probably the best time to make this suggestion. Wall of text incoming, the TL;DR is at the bottom.

The warmth and light of a tavern should normally be the first destination for battle-weary travelers. On nearly every NWN server I've ever played, however, it's always the same: like a moth to flame, adventurers seem inexorably drawn to the areas just outside the entrance of whatever the main settlement happens to be (the main gate, the bridge, etc.). By contrast, taverns and inns are usually empty and desolate; they're good places to go if you don't want to be bothered by anyone for a while. Furthermore, EfU has all these great poisons for food and beverages, but hardly anyone ever uses them because no one ever eats or drinks.

I'd like to offer a few suggestions for improving this situation. I don't even like all of these ideas, and some of them are contradictory or mutually exclusive. I'm just putting them out here to get a conversation started, because I think we can all agree that there's room for improvement in the tavern department. The point of these suggestions is to give people a reason to visit taverns. In my opinion pretty much anything that makes people want to enter a tavern, even if only briefly, is an improvement over the status quo.[INDENT]1. Give bonus XP for being in taverns. Much like the XP tick for players under level 6, there could be a small XP tick for higher level players who are role-playing in a tavern.

2. Give bonus XP for eating and drinking. Even a 1 XP award for drinking an ale or eating a loaf of bread would encourage people to eat and drink more (though I think it should be higher than that if there's going to be one). The addiction system that is already in place ought to be sufficient to discourage abuse, and it would be trivial to add a limit to the number of times per day this was effective.

3. Implement hunger and thirst. Nothing fancy or tedious, just a simple script that applies a -1 to STR or -1 CON respectively if your PC hasn't eaten or drank water in the last 24 hours. Simply make food and water necessary, nothing more. Obviously this would not work alongside suggestion #2.

4. Put the sending systems inside taverns. It baffles me that this isn't already the norm. If I owned a tavern, I'd think of any way I can to bring more customers through the door, and what better way to draw adventurers than by having a sending pedestal in your establishment?

5. Rentable "loot rooms." Set aside places specifically for the purpose of safely dividing loot after an adventure. Even something as simple as a room with a timed lock inside the door would suffice. On top of that, a gold divider, a container device that would split gold into even piles based on the number of times you pull the lever, would be trivial to script.

6. Rentable storage lockers. Let be honest, the real reason people want player housing is so they can store their heaviest equipment when not in use. Give the people what they want! Even if a storage locker only held one single item, I guarantee people would rent them out. A tavern or inn is the natural place for such a thing. As a bonus, it's another gold sink to keep the player economy from inflating.

7. A larger role for bards. I've never been much of a fan of sitting and reading what amounts to someone else's poetry, which is the closest a bard can ever get to singing a song on EfU. But what if DM NPCs hired player bards to write or perform a song that contained clues about an upcoming event? What if this were the standard practice for rolling out a new plot line? People would start to pay a lot more attention to bard songs then, and it would also be a good way to reward the most interesting and eloquent bard PCs.
[/INDENT]TL;DR: The gameworld would be richer and more immersive if taverns were something more than just places to stop for a 30 second rest before questing.

[Random_White_Guy]

This is up to PCs to do. For a long time EFU has had a rich history of performances, fight nights, and more.  That kind of lapsed with "end of the world" but it's something people always enjoy and there's always a PC spot to play off of. Bards have always been keen on information and wandering with adventuring troupes and I've seen Bards more welcomed in most cases with the implementation of the new songs.

Performances can be boring if just poetry but you can do a lot of things to spice it up, involve the crowd, get other PCs to perform with you,etc.

That being said: Crimson Mare for all your bard, drug, and tavern needs.

Scripted food/thirst is excessive in my opinion though.

[Deception]

Too much realism i.e implementing hunger/thirst systems does nothing but break my immersion. I don't think that this is a great issue, the playerbase isn't really composed of taver-mongering commoners. Adventurers tend to loiter about where oppourtunities arise.

[Blue41]

PC's and PC-initiated events make me want to come to taverns, not scripted systems. As has already been said, you don't need a hunger/thirst leash to bring people in, Pissing Crone, Wanton Wastrel, etc. had plenty of draws to pull in a crowd, and PC's were usually behind them. That's the way it should be. It may not always be the case, but play what you want to see, right?

More rentable storage lockers would be cool, but I can go without.

[Vlaid]

I really prefer being lead to a tavern because it makes sense, not because of OOC mechanics that make me need to go to a tavern.

Fight nights, bardic storytelling contents, songs, ect.

[Kinslayer988]

Performances can be boring if just poetry but you can do a lot of things to spice it up, involve the crowd, get other PCs to perform with you, etc.

That being said: Crimson Mare for all your bard, drug, and tavern needs.

[Talir]

XP for sitting in a tavern, eating or drinking I think I can safely say won't happen. Hunger and thirst I wouldn't mind, if the option is voluntary.

Rentable storage lockers sounds very good. We tried it with the old market hall where people could rent three of them from the master merchant, but I'm not sure how many made use of the opportunity (on either side).

When it comes to taverns, you set the norm. If you hold your quest forming, loot dividing, seedy backroom-plotting, events and tournaments, public speeches and otherwise make the tavern there your base of operations; people will use them more. We can make endless scripts to make it more feasible, but only you can decide to use them.

Bards too are in your hands. Where are the lore seekers unraveling the greatest mysteries, orators who turn the crowd to their purpose, minstrels that fashion songs and poems about famous and infamous people alike? If anything, bard is one of those classes which has the potential to be so great for the setting if you utilize its role. Some people do that, and it's amazingly contributive to the game world.

[Zango_Unchained]

The rent-able chests and the aberdenn farms were unused due to the fact that it was so complicated to use, make a npc you rent from that pays directly into the pocket of the pc group and they will be used /a lot/ more.

[PlayaCharacter]

I had no idea at all that it was possible for non-faction PCs to rent either the farms or the master merchant chests. I thought those were benefits exclusive to their respective factions. Somehow I missed that one, because I certainly would have used them had I known.

[Spiffy Has]

The Farms weren't used cause people still destroyed the crops out of spite cause they couldn't harvest them.

Or people had stolen Aberdenn Keys and looted them.

Regardless, it was cool when they were added and provided flavor to the server.

As for the master merchant chests, only the Master Merchant could assign chests to people, soooo you needed to have a master merchant around to do that.

[MirrorMask]

I agree with the above immensely.  also, people will always visit markets for their needs, but I think putting some key if not all ingredients needed for the crafting systems in taverns would help spread the traffic of characters as well.

[Vlaid]

I had no idea at all that it was possible for non-faction PCs to rent either the farms or the master merchant chests. I thought those were benefits exclusive to their respective factions. Somehow I missed that one, because I certainly would have used them had I known.

Same.

[Ebok]

We never questioned the value of taverns back in the underdark days. The Townhall was for the speeches and sending systems, outside the town hall was where you gathered for quests. And people always migrated to the Inns because when you were tired of standing around something was always happening in both places.

But moreso due to the fact that they were ideally located, had comfortable light, some quests, and usable rooms. Lots of people came by just to rest, but since we were always using them in some fashion or another, they were very rarely left barren. However, there was quite a bit of hate that fell down upon the people that did nothing but tavern dwell all day, and I never really understood why that was.

It could be interesting of factions could rent rooms, so that more then one person at a time could hold a key for the same room / chest. It would be a great place to start up a small business or player faction.

[Dillusionist]

Ultimately it should be fun interaction that draws people to a place. People hung out at Musk roots and the Square because there was a greater chance if bumping into an interesting person or event.

If you want go increase foot traffic in taverns, though, cheaper resting might do the trick. Most people in Mistlocke often avoided using the mists end, especially as easy gold dried up, in favor of the crypt, dells, etc. By virtue of them being free (of course they were also more dangerous to reach.)

[Caster13]

When it comes to taverns, you set the norm. If you hold your quest forming, loot dividing, seedy backroom-plotting, events and tournaments, public speeches and otherwise make the tavern there your base of operations; people will use them more. We can make endless scripts to make it more feasible, but only you can decide to use them.

Some suggestions for taverns/common areas (still under construction or yet to be open) based on my experiences with the Pissing Crone, Last Stand, Kingsman's, and the Mist's End:

-Multiple private rooms of various sizes and with various number of furniture inside them, so that way we have small rooms for sitting scheming, larger rooms for large semi-private gatherings (quest planning, cleric lead prayers/rituals, etc), and large rooms with ample floor space for loot dividing.

-Lockable private rooms for one time resting a la the Last Stand! These could be rented at a premium compared to a common resting room.

-A dueling arena with a healing station was definitely convenient and useful. People are much more likely to engage in duels if they don't have to worry about using up their own healing supplies which they'd rather keep for real emergencies.

-A more dedicated public speaking area. I might be wrong, but it seemed to me that the top of the ziggurat and Mistlocke town square made for ridiculously laggy, frame-rate tearing speech areas once everybody crowds inside them because our computers would also have to render the rest of the area. I think inside the town hall back in Sanctuary made for a less teleporty/warpy place for speeches. Multiple exits is a must to facilitate riots (and or escaping from riots).