Tavern

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You all meet in an inn...

"Seems to me the smart place to meet travelers is in a tavern. That way if one party is late, the other party can drink some ale inside."

– Bronn, Game of Thrones

"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."

– Jonathan Swift

Alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars which has an intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms, among them being humans who consume it for recreational purposes. For thousands of years humans have been making alcohol for their consumption and many historians and anthropologists believe that the one of the big reasons why nomadic peoples began to settle down and grow crops 10,000 years ago was the fact that it gave them a ready supply of things rich in sugar to ferment and by settling down, they could ferment more of it at a time. Once agriculture was well under way, people began to specialize their skills. Some people farmed while others wove textiles, made ceramics or got involved in making alcoholic beverages full time and traded these for food and other goods. Eventually as villages grew, some clever brewer decided to set up some benches around their home for people to sit at as they enjoyed a mug of beer or wine, which made said home a go-to place to meet with other people. Thus was created the first Tavern, a pattern which was repeated around the world once population centers reached a certain threshold.

As time goes on and populations grow further, the competition grows and tavern owners begin to do more than just serving beer. They also begin serving food as well and a few of them set up some rooms that can be rented out for the night to travelers, thus upgrading them to inns. Taverns were also prominent social hubs, where people could gather and talk about local affairs, do business and get the news.

An Inn is a type of Tavern which also has rooms for travelers and also serves food. Particularly large inns along major roads which had stables, garages for stagecoaches and teams of horses that stagecoaches could swap out were called Coaching Houses. Coaching houses tended to be more up-scale and catered to nobles and wealthy merchants.

Taverns in Fantasy

Taverns and inns are often the place where people meet other people in fantasy, as well as a good place to pick up rumors, gossip and wenches. In RPGs (one in particular), the tavern is the cliché location in which all campaigns start, almost invariably with that oft-uttered line, "You all meet in a tavern." This meeting usually involves speaking with a mysterious stranger sitting in the darkest, edgiest corner of the building. Said stranger is inevitably the plot hook for the campaign, which the PCs will inevitably kill or ignore (said assault or indifference will lead to them getting embroiled in a conflict or allow events to unfold which will come back to haunt the PCs).

Some common types of Taverns you will encounter on your escapades across fiction.

• A Barbarian lodge with a roaring fire where hairy fur clad burly beardy men with broadswords and axes boast of their great deeds and laughing with a horn of beer in one hand and a mutton leg in the other. Be forewarned that though these places have a roudy, energetic atmosphere and throwing axes and knives is among the most popular activities of the patrons. If you want something with a bit more historical backing to it, a Mead Hall is a good alternative, which doubles as the local Jarl or King’s official receiving hall for guests.
• The Village Inn, where local peasants spend a few coppers on local beer in a friendly easy to go setting. Generally more safe and quiet on the whole than most places on this list. Usually has at least one shady corner for mysterious strangers to lurk in undisturbed while waiting for contacts. If travel is especially important in a particular country, there may be Inns placed at regular intervals along important highways (methodically planned out to be one day's journey apart in many cases).
  • The Inn At The Crossroads: The Inn at the intersection of major roadways, often the most important and well-built in the setting, where nobles on campaign talk to seedy mercenary types or important NPCs. Often just simply called the Inn at the Crossroads. There's one in ASOIAF, another in the Witcher.
• The Sengoku Sake-House where old men play go, Noh actors put on a show and the tables are low with tatami mats for seating. Here samurai enjoy a bowl of noodles and a warm sake.
• The Dwarven tavern where the ceiling is about a meter too low, axes adorn the wall, fights happen at the drop of a helmet and the patrons will sing "Gold Gold Gold!" for hours on end.
• The Seaman's Bar where stevedores, pirates, merchantmen and navy sailors on shore leave go to spend their wages on dice, whores and rum. People (especially non sailors) should be careful not to get too drunk and to make sure to check your beer for a shilling before drinking it, lest they find themselves spending the next two years on one of the ships of Her Majesty's Navy loading cannons and eating limes to avoid the scurvy.
• The Wild West Saloon: A prefabricated box of a building with a piano and some guys playing cards that is a home away from home for many a cowhand, bandit, crazy old prospector, town sheriff and similar types. If its a higher-end place with wealthy patrons, there's likely to be a few dedicated gambling tables for Faro, Dice, Poker, etc, otherwise patron will bring their own cards and chips to play with. There's also a spitoon somewhere that may or may not get cleaned regularly. There may be an out-of-tune piano in the back, and if there's extra space in the back, you might have a barber set up shop as well. Just be careful never to say the word "cheat" unless you want two dozen people with itchy trigger fingers to draw their colts. The second floor of saloons are usually brothels, which may have the only women around for miles.
• The Gentleman's Establishment: Mahogany tables, Persian carpets, crystal chandeliers, lion trophies, faded green leather arm chairs who's clientele is a mixture of captains of industry and old officers with huge mustaches drink scotch and brandy and smoke fine cigars while sharing stories. Depending on the size and extravagance of the place, there may be games rooms, live entertainment, sports facilities, a library, and more. Lodgings are available too, as it was not unusual for fresh university graduates to actually live at the club while they were still getting established in the business world. It is staffed by quiet servants, gourmet cooks who can do wonderful things with game and of course some big but surprisingly quiet fellows in bowler hats to keep out anyone who does not have an income in the top 1% from ruining the distinguished member's day. Back in the day, Gentlemen's Clubs didn't allow women in, providing an escape for the wealthy from the stresses of family life, which are exponentially increased when you're an elite who's expected to entertain guests all the time and have a public image to keep up; today though, Gentleman's Club has a **very** different connotation.
  • Diogenes Club:' An example from the Sherlock Holmes stories, a gentlemen's club run by his equally-autistic brother Mycroft, the true power behind the British Government.
• The Railcar Diner: built from converted rail cars, the railcar diner is a favorite local hotspot for downtown city workers. Some are open 24 hours a day, allowing for night owls and night shift workers a chance to unwind and recharge. The railcar diner is a must-have for any Art Deco city. It may not be the classiest place, but its guaranteed to have plenty of comfort food on the menu.
• The Speakeasy: A secret nightclub that's usually built inside of a legitimate front establishment; the direct inspiration comes from the 1920s American prohibition on alcohol, but conceptually, the Speakeasy can exist for any society where a particular vice is outlawed, or else relaxed social gatherings are heavily frowned upon; hence why folks feel like they can let their hair down in the Speakeasy. Besides fine drink and dining, entertainment is usually included, especially music, shows, and perhaps gambling as well.
• The Corporate Crawler: Owned and operated by a larger company, as is the town it's based in. It's clean and neat, but spare and cheap, usually with a few old workplace items hung up for decoration. When the shift ends at the Mine/Factory/Whatever, hard faced workers will trudge in to cash in their scrip and let their woes ease up a bit listening to sad songs and maybe playing a low stakes card game. Occasionally a fight might happen, but for the most part the weary workers don't have it in them. On tap is cheap mass-market beer and some unremarkable spirits for those who want something stronger. Just be fore-warned if you find yourselves in such a place be sure to pay in cash for any drink you have. It's not that the barkeep won't run you a tab, quite the contrary. It's just that the company will have you work it off while charging interest.
• The Cyber-bar: moving into the realm of Sci-Fi. we have a place with a low light level, glowing bar and table-tops and various forms of electronic music getting piped in as patrons show off their newest implants. Simply type in your order and you'll get hydroponic sake, algae ale or a cocktail contrived by a chemist with rice noodles with fried pork fresh from the culture-vat and it will be made by machines and delivered to you table by hidden conveyer.
• The Post-Apocalyptic Version: Tables and chairs made from scrap, drinks poured directly from the still, and a dead radio or a rusty jukebox that needs fixing.
  • The Cafe of Broken Dreams in FO2, where the PC can meet characters from the last game.
• The Shady Den: A variant on any of the others listed above save The Gentleman's Establishment, though you can get it in a more pure form. If it's in the countryside its going to be in a darker thornier forest and will look like (and most likely have started out as) an old run down barn. If its in a city, it's usually tucked in a basement in a back alley in the slums or in a decayed industrial district. It is poorly lit at the best of times and it will be thick with foul smelling smoke. Furniture is either ancient and battered, bodged out of various scraps or both. The regulars include a variety of unpleasant lumps of muscle and fat with a permanent look of droopy disgust and wirey figures who smile a lot in the wrong way that tend to be all too fond of knives. The barman is of a similar breed, the closest he comes to cleaning the glasses is to spit in them and the drinks available include stale beer and a variety of bottles which contain stuff which if you are lucky will simply make you sick instead of blind. This is where hitmen, bandits, conspirators and similar gather to plot dark deeds.
• The Swamp: A tent off in the quartermaster's corner of the army camp, where officers and commissars rarely tread. An illicit still is percolating away, converting sugar rations into something a little more potent if less palatable.

Otherworld Taverns

A popular spin on the old cliche is making taverns a bridge between worlds/planes, and writers/homebrewers use it to genre-bend. For example, the World Serpent Inn , which is both a tavern, and a transitive demiplane that connects to all of the campaign settings. Often combined with other tropes, like in the Sandman comics: A bunch of people from different worlds and eras inadvertently take shelter from a passing storm in an inn called the World's End and tell a bunch of stories to pass the time. It doesn't even have to be a tavern, either, it can be any sort of dimension-hopping establishment appropriate to the setting, like a Restaurant (Hitchiker's Guide's Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Restaurant to Another World), Brothel, a bar where the bathrooms lead to other settings, and even a fucking city.

If you really want to fuck with your players, make the place into purgatory, where they must wait until the party can save them, as seen in... a lot of places, really. Alan Moore wrote a comic anthology where movie stars of the golden age of cinema are tortured with reminders of their past crimes while watching movies about not!pokemon and US soldiers riding giant ants.