Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern
A downloadable game anthology
Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern
Stewpot is now live on Backerkit!
If you already purchased Stewpot here on itch.io, you should still have access to the current version files, and you'll be able to download the final PDF through this itch.io page after the campaign!
Thank you all so much for supporting Stewpot this far. I've been working on it on and off for over six years now, and I couldn't have gotten the game to this point without your stories and feedback. I'm looking forward to sharing the fully polished version with y'all!
What is Stewpot?
Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern is a collection of small games for groups of three or more players. Each game lets you, a retired adventurer, play out different parts of running a tavern and settling down in a town together with your old adventuring party.
You'll be scrambling to cook something edible with random ingredients, bartending for troubled souls, calming down a tavern brawl, going shopping for all the things a tavern needs, and more in a variety of slice-of-life scenes! Typical play time depends on your group and how long you spend on each game. Most likely, the shortest playthrough will be about a 3 hour session, and a longer playthrough may take multiple sessions.
Stewpot takes design inspiration from similar mini-game collections such as The Sundered Land, Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands, and The King is Dead by Meguey and Vincent Baker.
If you're playing Stewpot online, you can use the Google Sheets character sheet made by Libby Horacek, linked here. Just make a copy of the sheet and you should be good to go.
The Games
The First Step: Before you decided to put down roots here, before you found this group of friends, what were you doing? What was the first thing you learned about how to live in town?
NPC Sidequest: Your adventuring days may be over, but there are plenty of people in town that could use your help.
Wear and Tear: There’s always something to fix, or clean, or pay off.
Market Day: You never would have guessed how many things you need just to keep a tavern running.
Homegrown: There’s something special about using ingredients grown nearby. Why not give growing your own a try?
Sliced: Sometimes supply routes get disrupted. Or maybe you just want to stand out from the rest of the taverns. Whatever the reason, you’re playing this game because you want or need to do one thing: cook with monster parts.
Romancing a Stranger: Someone in the tavern makes eye contact with you, and their gaze lingers a little longer than you’d expect. Your co-workers urge you on, and make every excuse they can to send you over to talk to the lovely Stranger.
Off the Clock: Where do you go after the tables are wiped down? Who’s heard every story you have about the worst people who have walked in?
A Friendly Tavern Brawl: Every tavern has its rowdy patrons. You know they’re good at heart, but sometimes when the ale is flowing and spirits are high, things get a little out of hand. How do you handle the situation?
Festival Day: Your town has a few festival days a year, and they’re some of your busiest. How do you prepare? How do you handle the influx of people?
A Bard's Tale: During your time as an adventurer, you accomplished many daring deeds. In fact, some of those deeds are retold to this day by travelling bards.
A Glass of the Gods: Sometimes a troubled adventurer will come in, looking for answers, and letting them drink themselves into oblivion is the wrong answer. It's up to you to mix the perfect drink, something perfect for the situation that can push the adventurer to look inside and find the answer on their own.
A Distinguished Guest: Someone important is in town, and they’re already almost here. The tavern has to be at its best for this guest. After all, they might leave a generous tip.
In the Rhythm of Things: Time passes. Rough edges are sanded down. Before you know it, life in town has become like breathing. You gather in your favorite part of the tavern and wonder where the time has gone.
Development log
- Stewpot on Backerkit!Apr 17, 2024
- Stewpot v0.5May 02, 2022
- Stewpot v0.41 Release!!Mar 12, 2021
- Stewpot v0.4 Release!!!Oct 27, 2020
- Version 0.3 out now!Jul 19, 2020
Comments
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I'm so disappointed by this 'game'. Calling it a "Tavern Simulation Roleplaying Game" is deeply misleading to anyone familiar with RPGs. It's a Simulation Roleplaying Game in the same sense that Game Changer is a Humorous Roleplaying Game. Because its a game wherein actors play roles and humorous situations are simulated. The words are all technically true but completely unaware of their context.
The art is amazing and the idea of playing retired adventurers working out the next phase of their life was really intriguing. Someone should make an RPG about it.
Any idea when the full game pdf will be available to those of us who purchased it here on itch?
Just read through the PDF of the souped up version, great work by everyone involved! A question about how this plays, although I have not played yet so this obviously could be less of an issue than it is in my head: it appears there are only a small handful of minigames that use an adventure experience, and those minigames use a proportionally high number (only one per character but up to four opportunities). Is it the intention to more or less require those games to be played to wrap up the adventure? Am I just missing a lot of places where adventure experiences are used? Thanks!
Now that the Backerkit funding has ended, what's the status of this game? When do you think it will be available for individual purchase?
hi! thanks for your interest! production is close to done and I believe Evil Hat is trying to get stuff shipped out this month. The game won't be available to purchase here, only through Evil Hat, so I'm not really sure what the timeline is on that, but probably only a few months out at most?
Nice. Okay thanks for the update.
what is going on with the game? is it still happening? I haven't seen anything about it and it sounds fun.
This looks so cute! But it's sad that I can't buy this until EH releases it. Any chance I still could purchase/obtain a playtest copy?
I tried purchasing here but get a 404 page. Is it still possible to purchase here or not until Evil Hat release? Can't wait for both! : )
finally had a chance to play this game after wanting to for soooo long and it was totally worth the wait! Thank you so much for making this, it's a delight.
hi! there were no more community copies left when the playtest launched, and the playtest is free to join! there will be community copies from the crowdfunding campaign at a later point that will be available here when that happens as well.
I would appreciate a community copy of the game. I wrote you a message but you didn't answer at all.
The playtest materials are free!
This is a beautiful warm hug of a game and I will treasure the story I told with it for a long time.
Me, too!
Don’t hesitate! Choose this game for your next rpg session, you won’t be disappointed. I love the structure of this game, the way the tavern and characters develop over the course of the introduction and minigames. The gameplay tends to be full of humour and earnest emotion, and often leads to deeply satisfying resolutions and the kind of collaboration that builds a sum far beyond the individual parts.
Also I highly recommend the amazing excel character sheet linked on the comment below by horrorcheck - so useful and helpful!
Played this, was so good I bought it so I can play it again.
In "The First Step" it says every character gets a Town Experience. Since it doesn't also have them use an Adventure Experience, is it correct to assume they aren't crossing one out then?
yes! you're meant to end the game with 4 town experiences compared to the 3 adventurer ones you start with, so the first one you get in first step is kind of a free one.
Thanks so much, so excited to finally play this.
Just played this with my friends to start easing them into the world of alternative ttrpg's, and they had a blast with it!!! Thanks so much for making this.
I picked this up and played it around the time that it was shown on Friends at the Table and it has been one of my favorite and most satisfying experiences of playing a game at a table with a few friends. I cannot recommend it enough
This is one of my favorite games! I've had so much fun playing this with friends and family! "Retired adventurers" is such a great concept, and I love the mechanics of moving from your adventuring skills to your retirement skills.
I DM a weekly D&D game and just grabbed this with an intention to use it after our current campaign ends (which isn't far off), as an epilogue for the survivors of the existing party before we start a new one. Lots of smiles reading through it and I can't wait to go through it with the group.
Just had one question though: under Sliced's Tasting the Dish section, it says "Resolve the prompts," but there aren't any in that section. Is it referring to the prompts indicated by the dice in the previous section? That section already has a sentence indicating "Follow the prompts," so I just wanted to see if I'm missing something.
Yes! That's referring to the dice placement prompts sorry, I know some of the rules are a bit clunky as I've kind of re-designed a lot of the games, they'll get cleared up in a future update.
Hey, honestly most of it's pretty intuitive, and that's of course the assumption I was going to work with. Thanks for the reply!
My game group picked this up as a break from some heavier games we've been running, and it's exactly what we needed. We are now a close-knit found family running a cafe out of a giant's discarded teapot and nothing hurts. Utterly charming game, 10/10.
i just purchased stewpot and im very excited to play with my housemates, but i also have a question about a piece of language in the game.. the 'smoke breaks.' it took me by surprise to see it though i immediately understood the intent of the rule, but i sort of wish there was an alternate term used as a former smoker about a year off. at home i'm probably just going to ask us all to use different wording to avoid making my brain get stuck on cravings more than the fun of rp.
my question i guess is, is this way of referring to it necessary? it's fine if it's integral to the vision of the piece, but it's not something i was expecting to see.
EDIT: i just saw another former smoker mention the issue, i'm glad i'm not alone and that you're open to changing it!
I've played this game a couple times now and I absolutely love it. The setting and concept is wonderful and the game really has a great emphasis on worldbuilding. The mini games are all extremely fun and each time I've played we were able to create a meaningful and wonderful story and setting together. This game has a nice, easy pace and is both enchanting and relaxing to play. I'm looking forward to seeing a second version!
Hi! Stewpot looks really great and I'm excited to play it with my group. Love me some slice of life fantasy.
I had a bit of a problem with the text though. I'm a former smoker and whenever I read about smoke breaks I get huuuuge cravings. To the point where I'm considering editing the PDF to change it to just "break." I of course understand that "smoke break" conjures a very specific image of the length, duration, and amount reflection you're going for.
Have you thought of any alternatives at all? "Take five" might work too and also reads grammatically like a pbta move which is fun. All that being said, I don't want to make you feel like changing it is necessary if "smoke break" is something you feel is key to the identity of the game. I don't know if there's a great solution at all (even a content warning maybe seems overboard) but I just wanted to bring it to your attention.
Either way, thanks for the lovely game!!
no that’s super valid! The thought did cross my mind recently that it might not be the best word choice for ex-smokers and this only confirms that. Will look into alternatives for the next version!
😄
I really enjoyed playing this game. There were some parts that were a little confusing, maybe because none of us had played a mini-game-collection like this. We still had a wonderful time. I especially loved the ending of the game, sharing the memories we had just created and reflecting on how our characters had changed <3
I played my game online, and I typically use Google Sheets for online play. In case anyone else might find it useful, here's the play sheet I made, including Tavern sheet and Character sheets (with drop downs for the various jobs and experiences).
Thanks for this! I'm going to use the sheet tonight and play for the first time with my friends. One good thing about quarantine
Hey! This game is so lovely, I'm really looking forward to playing it. I have a couple questions about how Festival Day works. First, how are challenges chosen / distributed to players? Second, how / when does the game end? I keep looking and haven't been able to find an answer in the text. Thank you for any help!
players just choose whichever challenges they want to do, in turn order! if you run out, players can choose something that was done already. The game is over when you’ve succeeded (won a number of coins equal to the number of players+2) or when every player is knocked out (when every PC/named NPC has had a coin flip come up tails)
Excellent. Thank you!
Hey there! Really excited to play this with some friends, I just have one question. I think I'm blind or have missed it somewhere, but in the materials section the PDF mentions having a copy of the tavern sheet and I can't seem to find this anywhere. I got the character sheet from the demo download but this tavern sheet seems to elude me. Appreciate any help in finding it!
oh I’m so sorry I forgot to add it, I won’t be able to until after the con I’m at but I will soon!!
also it’s not really a ton of information you can just write it down on a blank piece of paper, you really only need to keep track of ratings and NPCs and then keep whatever notes you need
Excellent, thank you for the information!