Dungeons & Dragons is often played from the perspective of the daring adventurer, rolling dice to slay monsters, topple tyrannical rulers, and loot perilous areas. Small roles like the shop or innkeeper are typically left to the Dungeon Master to occupy, but a new video game flips the script and lets the players experience the fantasy world from behind the counter for a change. It’s a role reversal that has a ton of potential.
In the aptly named Dungeons & Dragons: The Long Rest Tavern, players assume the role of a customizable innkeeper running a burgeoning business in Faerûn. Despite this angle, your character still takes on one of seven classes: Bard, Wizard, Fighter, Druid, Barbarian, Rogue, or Cleric. How the unique traits of these classes come into play wasn’t immediately evident during my 45-minute hands-on demo, but I imagine it’s more than a mere label.
I begin my business venture by building my tavern. Intuitive tools make laying out my floor plan a breeze; by simply clicking and dragging on a grid, I quickly lay out and construct a large dining room, a closet for storing inventory, and a couple of bedrooms. Decorations include various floor and wall patterns and textures, different doors and windows, and furniture like tables. To add an extra comforting touch, I add a blazing fireplace for good measure. The first and most important element of any tavern is a bar, which serves as the centerpiece of the business.
Once I build and place the bar, I must then hire my first employees: a bartender and a server. Hiring someone involves weighing stats such as pouring speed for bartenders and walk speed for servers. The faster these tasks are performed, the quicker you can flip tables, meaning the more customers you’ll serve during a shift, which always begins at night. During the day, you’ll explore outside to expand or improve the tavern or place orders to ship new inventory to keep the business well-stocked, among other tasks. You’ll even be able to send adventurers on quests to retrieve resources for you.
Each shift sees parties of adventurers and other clientele arrive to drink the night away. As the manager, you need to ensure there are open, clean tables for patrons to occupy, and that there’s enough booze on tap to keep mugs full. I began with a basic ale, but later unlocked a recipe for higher-quality beer brewed using gathered ingredients. Running out of beer mid-shift means turning away disappointed customers and losing money. Once a party leaves, I quickly clean the tables to make them ready for the next group. If your tavern has rooms with beds, some adventurers will stay the night, letting you earn more money from them. At the end of each shift, you earn Renown based on how much money you earned, overall customer satisfaction, and the total number of visitors that night. As your Renown level rises, you’ll attract higher-level customers with deeper pockets.
I had a good, relaxing time playing through a few early shifts and improving my tavern during my demo. The Long Rest Tavern checks the basic boxes for a good shop management sim, but it will take a longer play session for its deeper, more D&D-centric systems to reveal themselves. Once they do, I hope they further separate the game from the myriad of similar titles out there. But even if they don’t, I suspect even a by-the-numbers cozy management sim with D&D trappings will more than satisfy avid tabletop fans. This is a killer concept, though, so here’s hoping it leverages the license to the absolute fullest.