An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Tangible Taverns-series clocks in at 18 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial,1 page foreword, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This review is based on the revised version of the tavern and was designated as a prioritized review by my patreons.

All right, so, the tavern does feature paraphernalia galore, representing the two eponymous animals, but just short of being cluttered. Patrons frequenting the establishment are scrutinized by two guards - Evie, a young human female, and Durgul, a similarly young half-orc - while flirtatious, they both are actually pretty devoted to one another. Food and beverages served are surprisingly healthy and delicious, though, unlike later installments of the series, we do not actually get a proper menu. The second story of the establishment does btw. contain a discreetly-run brothel.

Really nice would be the rather detailed 8 rumors and 8 sample events featured here for the tavern. The NPCs that make this place come alive feature btw. an elven, peg-legged, but pretty attractive and cool lady/pirate turned bartender (using unchained rogue as part of her built) and a fluff-only write-up for the head chef Louisa, the madam, as well as 4 further, nice NPCs. On the crunchier side, we do get statblocks for the kitsune geisha and the ifrit rogue that can be found here...

...and the two guards mentioned before actually not only come with one, but 3 statblocks, with the more advanced ones clocking in at CR 4 and 9, respectively.

It should be noted that the nice b/w-cartography for the place is player-friendly. Big plus there!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant hiccups here. Layout adheres to Dire Rugrat Publishing's printer-friendly 2-column b/w-standard and the pdf comes with solid b/w-artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience and the cartography in b/w is nice for such an inexpensive file. While it does not sport a scale, the default can probably be assumed.

Kelly & Ken Pawlik's Tangible Tavern series has come a long way since its humble inception; comparing this to the more recent additions to its canon does illustrate that fact rather well. "The Bull & The Bear" is not a bad tavern and it can be inserted rather easily into any given city, but at the same time, it is less special, less unique than later offerings. The dynamics of the NPCs are fun and so is the dressing - but as a whole, the place remained pretty pale to me, never really coming alive to the same extent that the other, mostly absolutely excellent installments in the series did. I also expected, to some extent, a fortune/dual-themed or finance-themed angle that never really surfaced here. Anyways, for the fair and low price, this is still worth getting, which is why my final verdict will round up from my final verdict of 3.5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

When I first heard of this product, I was expecting a compilation of various taverns that a GM might use in a campaign. I was surprised to see that The Bull & Bear Tavern is in fact a single tavern, though I am also happy that Dire Rugrat is now working on similar publications featuring other taverns. I am hopeful that once they have written on enough different taverns, they will release them all in a compilation PDF.

In the meantime, Dire Rugrat has put in a great deal of work making the place come alive and supplying GMs with everything they need to build the Bull & Bear into just about any campaign. A fairly full cast of characters populates the tavern, with side references to several more whose details a GM might fill in later if the party shows interest. The little details go a long way in making players feel like this is a real world that exists independently of them, rather than a crude puppet show the GM has put on for their amusement.

My only complaint is that there isn't much explained in the way of what players might actually do in the tavern. The cover features a handsome etching of a bull and bear playing cards and dice, yet there is nothing in the text about gambling being played here. The upstairs brothel rooms are lovingly described, but the practice itself is not elaborated on-- perhaps out of a sense of propriety, but this leaves the GM with little to go on when his or her players (inevitably) want to hire the "tavern lads and lasses" for themselves. A little something to help the GM through what could easily be a very awkward exchange would be nice, even if just a sidebar acknowledging the sensitivity of the material.

For many play groups, the tavern isn't just a place to eat and sleep, it eventually becomes a "base of operations" from which the group plans their next adventures. Many players I've seen even consider buying their home tavern from the publican once they are able. The Bull & The Bear definitely has the potential to become such a "home base", and the various diagrams of the building itself will serve such a group well.

All told, The Bull & The Bear has definitely whetted my appetite for future installments in the Tangible Taverns series. It makes the perfect "classic D&D tavern", and could easily sit in any city in just about any setting. I suspect that future Tangible Taverns will be more "niche" locations better suited for certain types of campaigns.

For full disclosure, this product was provided to me for free.

This short location description seems to do a good job of evoking a unique but solid description of an average tavern. There is a lot of good and evocative description, and the maps are a nice touch, if a bit unrefined. The tables in sidebar are great, and offer a lot of flavor and background information that make the tavern feel unique and lived in. NPCs are an interesting departure from most cliches.

If I had to Something about the location feels too dense (too much of it hangs off of 4-5 of the regulars or staff). I actually wish that there was more description of a wider variety of patrons/staff. There are plenty of hooks for an urban based campaign, and I'd be curious about whatever setting the author had in mind when he wrote this. The recurring theme of having Asmodeus worshippers as people of authority seems interesting, and perhaps aimed closely at the Golarion setting. This is not intrusive enough to detract, however.

That having been said, I do like the interplay and social web that exists within the bar, as it has a lot of possibility for being a kind of hub for said urban campaigns. I could even see a group of enterprising PC's buying the bar outright and keeping it as a sort of base as well.

Unfortunately, the low level of all of the NPC's would make this location difficult to incorporate into an adventure with even 2nd level adventurers, as they would cause untold trouble for the patrons if they were to step out of line, but that is probably a minor point, though I would like suggestions on how to beef up the two bouncers at the very least, as they are the ones that are given statistics.

Overall, this product is well formatted, and has no errors that I have yet caught. I am happy with it for both the reduction in prep time (if I drop it into my game) and for inspiration in the case that I take from it ala carte. I hope that anyone who purchases this will enjoy it as much as I did.