I have a concept I want to run by those of you who play or have extensively played D&D specifically.
So I was going through some old boxes at my Dad's place and found some old cassette tapes of Adventures In Odyssey and it gave me a really great idea. See, I was listening to Piano Man while I was going through the boxes and when I saw the cassette I was suddenly reminded of the smoothie shop from Adventures In Odyssey which is kind of the focal point of most of the stories, Whitt's End. At this point I thought how cool it would be to have a bar in D&D called the Whitt's End but with a Piano Man sort of mood to it.
So here's what I came up with. The bar itself is actually the interior of a permanent Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion spell but slightly bigger to accommodate for an upstairs living quarters for the barkeep. The bar itself acts much like the Tardis from Doctor Who being semi-sentient and being capable of appearing in at any point in the past present or future. Of course however within the bar time seemingly has no effect and even those who are dying from fatal wounds become locked in a state that keeps them just alive enough until they leave. Though it's not always the case the bar should generally dispense patrons back to their own time when they walk out the door.
Now I also set up some rules for where and when the bar can appear. For instance it will generally only appear to those experiencing a very stressful or traumatizing moment in their life such as their own death, the death of their most cherished loved one, or perhaps making a decision that could irreparably change their lives. You get the idea. The bar of course will appear as just a door either standing alone or set into an object such as a tree or cliff face. Generally speaking I'd say most people can only ever see Whitt's End once in their life, though I'm sure there are a few exceptions.
Even more mysterious is that the barkeep doesn't know where the bar came from. He's basically going to be a pretty close take on John Avery Whittaker from the show, though obviously changed a little to fit the more somber tone I'm going for. He'll dispense kindly old man wisdom to what few customers he gets and clean the shop in his free time. His story is basically that when his wife died he, being grief stricken, got drunk and stumbled out into the forest with a rope to hang himself or something.. honestly not really sold on that part yet. Anyways while out there he drunkenly stumbles into the bar and passes out and the rest is history.
I'm thinking of making this the hardest part of a completely optional bar crawl for my players.
