Gold medals are always a nice addition to my small pile of treasure; glowing reviews always elicit a big ol’ smile, but nothing warms the cockles of this cantankerous game designer’s heart quite like a play report. The hellsite formerly known as “Twitter” recently hosted one of its famous discourses about the norm of offering community copies on itch dot io, a somewhat popular TTRPG PDF distribution website. A frequent complaint (and one I can empathize with) is that many community copy claimants are merely adding it to their hoard of PDFs (I empathize with this also) and few will actually break it out at the gaming table. It is the greatest ambition for a designer to hear that your ideas are sneaking their way to someone else’s gaming table, but it isn’t something I ever expect. If you’re very lucky and your game is very good, maybe 1 in 100 readers will actually bring it to their table.

Barkeep on the Borderlands has been blessed by the Gatekeeper, the demon-lord attendant of the underworld, to have already found its way into a few people’s games. For instance, my colleague at the Perils & Wonders blog detailed its first three sessions of running Barkeep for Knave 2e in a pair of play reports, which also inspired the creation of a very October-appropriate adventure site, “The Haunted Manor of the Shadow Minister” to insert into any game of Barkeep. But not all who play have blogs where they report their sessions. For those folks, if I’m lucky, I still get to hear about it, whether in emails, in direct messages, or on Discord. And it is interesting to start to see commonalities between these reports.

The People want to run Barkeep as a one-shot. Vibewise, it does seem sort of ideal for a debaucherous night playing D&D (especially if you are using the drinking game included on the bookmark). For instance, “spork_mango” asked the NSR Discord Server for advice for running it as a one-shot for a bachelor party. Similarly, William S. wrote to me to say that they ran Barkeep (and got “proper wasted”) for a birthday celebration at a cabin out in the Poconos. William said that Barkeep is going to be their new travel/party adventure but wanted tips for making it one-shottable.

Despite being only 60 pages, the adventure packs a lot of content. However, based on playtests of Barkeep (ran by my colleague, Dwiz of the A Knight at the Opera blog), running the full 6 days of Barkeep are likely to take 6 sessions of 2-4 hours each (depending on how proactive the players are). So how can you fit that all into one day (or, more likely, night) of gaming? The “easy” answer is that there is no true ending to the adventure–although the timeline contemplates 6 days for The Raves of Chaos festival and the supposed goal of the adventure is locating the antidote for the Monarch, you can reach a satisfying conclusion without either of these occurring. That is because the adventure is written with emergent play in mind, so you are just as likely to take the hook the adventure gives you as you are to set your own goals (“Let’s marry the Heir! Let’s get expelled from the Academy of Sorcerous Sciences! Let’s run for Prime Minister! Let’s kidnap the Bishop and escape by untethering Watchtower Without Wizard!”). In several playtests, players quickly abandoned the antidote quest when something shiny caught their eyes. And the adventure intentionally has a lot of shiny things for players to glom onto. Part of the challenge of finding the antidote is to keep your eye on the prize when there are so many other tempting opportunities. 

However, the advice of just artfully jazzing your way through Barkeep isn’t actually that helpful. But it does take some referee AND player creativity to get through such an overstuffed adventure in a single session. But probably no simple advice could be as useful as seeing how it has been done before. Aforementioned NSR-enjoying discord-user, spork-mango, ended up running Barkeep for their bachelor party (and, like Perils & Wonder, used Knave 2e) and their players found the antidote all in a single session. But how did they accomplish this feat? A whole lot of ingenuity on behalf of spork_mango and their players. I’ll let spork_mango take it from here:

“Had a great time with BotB at our bachelor party last week! We played with Knave 2e and the crew ended up saving the monarch (among other shenanigans). I mostly forgot to freely drop hints as to the antidote's twisting path, but the crew started working down the ingredients before exploiting a magic loophole, so it all worked out! I ended up reading out a lot of the descriptions for the pubs and drinks since the written humor was so good. Play-time was 5 hours (though they got the antidote after 3.5 hours).

We played in “real-time” and I compressed the Raves of Chaos into one night, though the festival activities were used mostly only as flavor while they wandered the keep. The main change I made was to remove time as a resource from the risk die and turn it into a chunky coin flip between sidetracks and sobriety saves. Also I buffed the sobriety die to only decrease on 1 and 2 since we'd be rolling more often and I removed the ability to sober up by drinking water for a turn. 

The (Nuptial) Hook

The Jolly Crew returned to the keep for their party’s former alchemist’s wedding on the day of the Raves of Chaos festival. The Groom is now a mixologist at the Bar at the Beginning of the Universe (when on this plane). The Groom explained that the Monarch has been poisoned and will die by 2am tonight unless delivered the antidote. If he dies a period of mourning will last 3 months, forcing the Groom to postpone the wedding. Find the antidote or bring the Groom all 4 ingredients. We find our crew at the start of the evening outside the Ship of Thesis.

The (Jolly) Crew

• Finnius Foxlack, a halfling carpenter and unemployed bartender.

• Stilton “Pinky” Pinkerlish, a halfling beekeeper and affluent busker.

• Feldspar Clinkscales, a dwarf jailer and guild criminal.

• Marius the Magnificent, a dwarf puppeteer (Bozo) and potion dealer.

• Bartlett Grefent, a human investigator and food critic.

The (Lengthy) Recap

• The crew entered a mostly full the Ship of Thesis. Marius befriended a despondent stage magician named Torsten who joined the crew for the night.

• After chatting up the occupants they learned rumors that the Boss escaped from prison and that a giant was locked up, and therefore left headed for the Royal Wine Cellar.

• On the way they stopped at the Three’s Company and were joined by the Heir and their entourage. Marius attempted to ingratiate himself with the Heir in the hope of information sharing but was rebuffed and the Heir reminded him of his place as a mere assistant in their noble quest, establishing an early disdain. After the Heir left the crew was quickly weirded out by the sitcom antics and left in disgust.

• After dealing with an ornery mime, the crew continued on to Off-Central Park and grabbed some skewer/grog combos where they grilled the bugbear vendor about where they could find the Boss. The vendor mentioned that they dropped off their protection payment at The Warm Shoulder, so the crew changed course. (I skipped the maze since we weren’t tracking game time.)

• The crew crossed the river, Feldspar blacked out, got into an argument with some racist dwarves, and stopped at The Whirling Mummy. Inside they heard about the dance contest’s fantastic prize of a wish and decided this was the quickest path to success.

• (I got confused with how to run the dance-off, so I mistakenly settled on a 1v1 crew battle and let them pick their rival crew.) The crew challenged the noble trio and put Feldspar up first thinking it would keep him out of trouble. Feldspar took things easy, sobering him back up, and still crushed all 3 competitors, establishing him as a dance god. During the competition the other crewmates noticed the Incumbent leaving the bathroom after a loud trieste.

• Ellie escorted Feldspar to a confession-style booth in a backroom where he was able to converse with Madam Smiling. He obviously wished for the antidote to the Monarch’s poisoning and after some quick GM consideration a magic window through space opened up to him. Feldspar saw the Bishop inside the Sacred Speakeasy greeting the Heir and as the vision closed the Bishop looked up to see Feldspar scrying on him. (I thought this was a good compromise for a wish that gave them want they wanted without ending the adventure outright!)

• The crew set out for the Sacred Speakeasy, only stopping as Bartlett blacked out and to let a funeral procession pass. Inside the music was blaring and silent cultists passed out wine, but the Bishop was nowhere to be seen. The crew determined to investigate and with a clutch smoke bomb snuck into the backroom, slipped on cultist robes from the rack, and descended into the basement.

• In the basement, a cultist organizer gestured for the crew to pair up and compete in the beer pong competition. Feldspar and Pinky quickly won their game, a drunken Bartlett and Finnius failed to advance, and Torsten proved to be a ringer, pulling himself and Marius to victory. The winners were ushered down a guarded staircase to the tabernacle.

• The winners witnessed the Bishop concluding a sermon about spilling blood to release the Gatekeeper into this realm, ushering in a new age of chaos, and were shuffled into a queue of willing human sacrifices. I established to sacrifice 2 cultists per turn and put alpha team of the crew at the end of the line after 6 cultists. Through whispers they decided to let the cultists thin themselves out a bit before jumping the Bishop. (We’re fully off the rails at this point but letting it play out!)

• In the basement, prime squad of the crew failed beer pong twice more and were eliminated from the competition. After their total failure they decided to strongarm their way down. Bartlett lured the guards over by breaking the silence and drunkenly called them over before he jumped them with a steak knife.

• Meanwhile the 4 winning cultists joined the sacrifice queue in the tabernacle and alpha team deduced backup wasn't coming. Once Feldspar was at the front of the line he flung back his cloak, revealing his piercing eyes to the Bishop for a second time just before Marius stunned the crowd with a quick burst of pocket-confetti.

• Marius sprinted up the stairs to call for aid, only to find a drunken slapstick brawl with ping pong balls causing mass-slippage. Feldspar quickly patted down the Bishop and lifted a glowing potion from their doublet. Trusty Torsten tied the Bishop’s feet together with a scarf chain from his sleeve.

• Bartlett and Finnius dispatched a few cultists, breaking the morale of the rest of the beer pong players. Marius returned to the tabernacle only to find the crew retreating. As they retreated Torsten focused his innate magic powers summoning a wall of fire (rolled randomly!), securing the crew time to chain the doors together and make a clean escape. The crew strutted out onto the club floor and doffed their robes in cinematic slow-mo.

• Outside Marius confirmed the potion’s healing properties. With success in hand (and plenty of time in the evening) the crew decided to take a victory tour on the way to the Groom at the Bar at the Beginning of the Universe. While crossing the bridge they exchanged rude gestures with goblins who were dumping booze into the river.

• Across the bridge they saw the Heir (secretly an impersonator) showboating for a crowd. Drunk on success (and otherwise), Feldspar and Pinky tripped the Heir into the river who quickly dropped the royal accent. A black-out Bartlett decided swimming looked like fun and jumped in as well. Finnius dove in to save the very drunk Bartlett, trading some of his sobriety.

• The crew grabbed a roadie at the park, Pinky attempted some busking after joining the blackout gang, and the party pushed on towards the Untipper’s Nook. The PCs grabbed some gross spritzers as the MOMs stressed out the regulars. Pinky finally found love with one of the MOMs after striking out twice earlier in the evening.

• Outside of Quasi-Parliament, the Censor Morum approached the crew and enlisted them to murder the Shadow Minister in exchange for membership. Inside they got trapped in a filibuster about dwarven racism. Pinky attempted to argue with the filibuster but only ended up making it worse.

• Marius and Bartlett engaged in a ruse using a Detect Thoughts spell to discover that the Shadow Minister has a shellfish allergy. They rubbed some shrimp cocktail on the inside of a glass delivered to the minister, causing their prompt and sudden death and a break in the filibuster. The Censor Morum granted the crew membership and handed out voting tickets (though most voted for a Pinky write-in).

• The crew finally reached the Bar at the Beginning of the Universe and delivered the antidote to the Groom working the bar. In celebration the Groom gives out free Portal Porters to the crew, causing them to teleport to various pubs around the keep!

The (Brief) Reflection

The adventure worked great as a one-shot location jam packed with more content than we could get through in a single evening. I think I got lucky with the wish spell coming into play and closing the loop on the mystery, since it led to a very satisfying conclusion in a timely manner. If I was to run it again I’d add some sticky notes on the pubs to remind me of the clues about what happened to the antidote. Excellent writing, great theming, and my players loved the silly situations they stumbled into. Cheers to Prismatic Wasteland and the rest of the jolly contributors!”

And cheers to you, spork_mango, and all of your players! And mazel tov to the groom!

The Monarch’s Bastard

The aforementioned play reports from the Perils & Wonders blog had one idea so good that I’m kicking myself for not including it in Barkeep off the bat. From Perils & Wonders:

“Having rolled such ‘highly respectable’ characters, I had to throw away my first idea to start the campaign (which was to have them be regulars of one of the Iron Fens pubs, and friends with one of the bastard offspring of the Monarch, who wanted to find the cure to ingratiate himself and thwart the efforts of the Heir).”

“Bastard Offspring of the Monarch” should have been one of the 36 starting backgrounds for the jolly crewmates. It is genius because not only does it immediately plug into the default hook of the adventure, but it also effortlessly fleshes out details about the Monarch and Heir (characters that became more interesting with each sidetrack or situation that implied something or another about their parent-child relationship). So here is an optional hack of my own adventure:

If two or more players roll the same backgrounds, the player who rolled their background last may instead pick the “Monarch’s Bastard” background.

00. Monarch’s Bastard

You start with: A regal profile, a borrowed rapier, secondhand clothing, a hooded cowl, a single doting parent (deceased), poison brewing equipment and 1d6 gold coins

UPDATE

Zedeck Siew, the author of one of the pubs in Barkeep, suggests another approach to running the adventure as a one-shot: using a single pub. Here is his play report of using the pub he wrote as its own one-shot.