Carousing in Skara Brae

In other posts, I've alluded to the BX megadungeon I run off and on, and wanted to share some specifics about it.

First and foremost, the main entrance to the megadungeon is a morning's walk away from the port city of Skara Brae.  Yes, of Bard's Tale fame.  If I close my eyes, I can still picture 10-year-old me sitting in my Aunt's (mostly) finished basement, playing Bard's Tale on her Amiga.  She would play, as well, but we each had our own party of adventurers, mine consisting of such notables as Galahad, Lancelot, Merlin, Gandalf, Orcrist, and other people named after whatever fictions I was reading at the time.  At some point years later, I learned that there was a real place called Skara Brae, but it is long uninhabited.

The map from the computer game.  My version certainly doesn't look exactly like this, although there may be some overlap.

From that point on, Skara Brae has been the city of my various campaign worlds, never quite fleshed out, and only roughly mapped. At some point, I adopted the description of Portown from Holmes for Skara Brae.  This has worked well enough for me over the years, as I have memories to riff on. 

Background complete, I've used Carousing houserules since discovering them years ago at Jeff's Gameblog.  To be specific, I used his table word for word and the players have had fun with it, despite burning down large portions of Skara Brae as well as the Green Dragon Inn (where PCs stay between misadventures), so when I use the megadungeon and the carousing table again, the fire entry is going to be revised.

I bring all this up because I recently encountered another set of Downtime and Carousing rules at Goblin Punch, and honestly, may end up using these (plus other houserules alluded to in the article) or some combination of the two.  This led me down the rabbit hole of skim-reading other blogs' versions of carousing:  Kill it with Fire, The Things We Do for XP, Sheep and Sorcery, Back in the Labyrinth, Blessings of the Dice Gods.  

Regardless of source, I enjoy Carousing rules because they are a roleplaying shortcut.  Yes, everything on every carousing table could be role-played out in agonizing detail, but for those lacking the time and/or desire for such play, a die rolled provides more PC history and color, more player laughter, and occasionally a new NPC along with the XP that is the point of such houserules.  When paired with the "I know a guy" houserule, the city kind of builds itself.

I'm aware that the 5e DMG contains some rules for Carousing, on page 128; Xanathar's Guide expands them a bit, starting on page 126.  Reading them over, the Xanathar options are better than the base rules, but overall, feel lacking.  So if you want to make use of Carousing in your 5e game, port over Jeff's or one of the others.

Just think long and hard about the fire starting option.