Stop me if you've heard this one

A priest walks into a bar and meets a warrior, a wizard, and a thief. They proceed to beat on some monsters and acquire fame and fortune.

The tavern. A fantasy RPG staple for longer than I've been alive. Don't know how to get your group together in game? They meet in a tavern. Need a place to drop a rumor? Patron or bartender in the tavern. Taverns are rather easy to drop in a campaign and the problem with that is it leads to laziness. And that is why, I believe, tavern starts have such a crap reputation in the RPG sphere.

However, with a little work, tavern starts are perfectly fine. The game I'm playing started, well, outside a tavern, but still. The game I'm running has had quite a bit around the Vulgar Unicorn tavern. It's where two of the party members met during the practice session I ran with them. (Of course, they're both new players, so a tavern start isn't just another generic beginning to them, but still) It's also where I introduced the PC who took the spot of the guy who ended up not being able to play. I worked on that introduction, though. The party was asleep, so I gave them a dream, and that's where their characters first saw the new player.

And that's really all that you need to do to make meeting someone at a tavern into something special and different. Sure, the actual meeting of the characters happened there, but now it has an air of being something that was destined to happen. Especially because I also tied one of my campaign's (planned to be) ongoing themes into it. It's not Joe Schmoe meeting up with Jane Schmoess and then randomly going out and killing stuff, there's an actual reason they knew they had to get together. Of course, there was more going on in that dream than my PCs know. They don't know there were two separate endings and one person didn't have the dream at all (well, I guess one person doesn't know that). But that's just because they didn't talk about it much.

In fact, this holds with all cliches and overdone things. They're cliches and overdone for a reason, and that reason is because they work. All you have to do is put a little thought into it, and wiggle some neurons into discovering a way to give your cliche enough of a change to make it feel different enough without changing it so much it's unrecognizable.

You sit by the crackling fire in the mostly empty tavern. The bartender wipes the bar, seemingly distracted by a passing thought. You light your pipe weed and open Sam's tattered diary to the third entry and read...

Man, it sure seems like I have been waiting in this stupid, smelly bar for a whole month! But, it worked out in the end. Ole tatted face showed up, I made friendly, gave him a decent chunk of gold, and heard his story. He claimed that Kraig was drunk and walking down the road. Ole Tat followed, as he's quite the good citizen, and saw him pass out in the middle of the road. Ole Tat, despite being roughly the size of a barn, was unable to move him and went off to find help, only to discover that Kraig was gone by the time he got back.

I don't know how much I believe this story, and felt it wasn't worth my 10 gold. So I played up being merry, and encouraged some drinking, while cleverly pouring my beer into the mugs of the people at the table when they weren't looking. Once ole Tat was drunk enough, I relieved him of my gold, and made my exit.

The party and I had a quick brain session, and decided to send in the most expendable most gullible most likely to survive if all went kahoonie shaped to play bait. So the monk went back in the bar, and rolled to see if he got drunk. He didn't. He ordered something stronger and rolled to see if he got drunk. He didn't. So he got a big mug of whiskey and rolled to see if he got drunk. He burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. Er, wrong story, I mean he did.

Playing his part perfectly, Ethel then left the bar, and wandered down the street towards the site of Kraig's disappearance. He was approached and talked to by an honest citizen like myself, who declined to speak with him further. Can't say as I blame him, it's always a chore to talk to that one. The rest of Ethel's journey to the site of Kraig's last known location went without further interest. Confused and without orders, Ethel then sat down and started singing.

I approached the honest citizen, learned his name was Jim, and tried to strike up a rapport. I mean, Sam and Jim. Doesn't that sound like a perfect match? He took me down the alley, and this huge orc jumped out of a door and tried to clobber me. While I was distracted by poking this jerk with my rapier, Jim stabbed me in the back. It made me angry, so, after dispatching the big guy with some slight support from that snobby elf, I informed him of my displeasure.

Fortunately Jim saw the light, paid the fine for engaging in nonguild thievery operating a business without a permit, and told us of the goblins. It would seem that they lurk in the sewers and come out at night to waylay people and drag them back into the sewers.

So, we went back to the shithouse with the Manhole Cover of Unopenable Force, dragging that big jerk's body with us, and put it there as bait. We waited around, and sure enough, some goblins came by with a victim, and decided to take both with them. I watched them somehow manage to open the manhole cover, and then disappear into the sewers. Now it's time to follow them in, find that Kraig guy, and hopefully get some damn coin for all this trouble.