It was supposed to be a quiet drink after work but arriving at the pub last Friday I was quickly accosted by a pack of snarling vampires. Fortunately, a hulking knight known as Edwin leapt to my defence. He drew his sword, shouting “Huzzah!” through a mouthful of scampi-flavoured crisps.
Prepared for an unusual night on the town, I was about to throw a javelin at the nearest bloodsucking creature when a bartender plonked a Guinness down in front of me. “£6.50 please mate,” he said, waving a card machine in my face. In one of the strangest evenings I’ve had in a London pub, the only familiar thing was the price of a pint.
Clearly, it wasn’t your typical London pub. All of the above unfolded during a game of Dungeons and Dragons at RPG Taverns, a bar in the Elephant and Castle themed around the tabletop role-playing game.
The game has become increasingly mainstream in recent years
FLORA LUNA
For the uninitiated: D&D is a story-driven game where a team of players create their own characters by choosing a race (elves, dwarves and so on) and a class, such as a paladin or a wizard. A dungeon master outlines the plot and presents the group with conundrums, such as how to proceed with a quest or which enemies to fight. Players use dice to determine the outcome of combat and their success at tasks that their characters are doing, from leaping across a table to lying to other characters.
RPG Taverns is nestled under a block of flats with no fancy signage and outside walls in need of a lick of paint. But inside it’s a magical haven. There are six large rooms hand-decorated to look like an old ship or a cosy inn from a Terry Pratchett novel. In one designed as an enchanted forest — complete with giant toadstools — I talk with the founders Shaan Jivan, a finance worker, and Kenny Ho, a menswear consultant.
The pair opened the tavern as a hobby with two other friends just over a year ago. They wanted to provide a place to go amid the chaos of city life. “There’s a lot going on in the news that people want to escape from,” Jivan says. “London can be a really lonely city too, so people can come here and bond over something they enjoy.”
Both Jivan and Ho acknowledge the challenge of opening a business in a period of financial uncertainty. Hospitality in particular is in hot water but RPG Taverns has managed to find success. After funding start-up costs like rent and staffing, the owners are now averaging revenue between £15,000 and £35,000 a month through drink sales and tickets, which cost £15 for about four hours of play.
The pub’s enchanted forest room, complete with toadstools
FLORA LUNA
Around 300 regular players attend the venue multiple times a month. Ho says this is propelled by people desiring real human connection, which has been lost to the ubiquitousness of social media and smartphones. “People treasure getting together. There’s a friendship that blossoms through the D&D community and that’s important to people. The game is a vehicle that deepens people’s connections,” he says.
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More 18 to 27-year-olds are swerving alcohol too, and Jivan believes this has helped RPG Taverns, as people can socialise without having to drink.
The pair say attitude towards D&D has also changed, increasing the public’s appetite to get involved. When it was created in 1974, the perception was that the game was for socially inept nerds. In the Eighties, the satanic panic swept America and people believed D&D players worshipped the devil.
The venue has about 300 regular players every month
FLORA LUNA
Today the game has been catapulted into the mainstream by TV shows like Stranger Things, in which the main cast play it, and popular video games like Baldur’s Gate 3, which borrows D&D’s rules. More than 50 million people, including celebrities like the actor Vin Diesel, play the game.
“Loads of cool kids play now,” laughs Ho. Looking around the tavern, it’s hard to pin down what a D&D player looks like. City slickers in suits, heavy metal fans in leather jackets and Shoreditch hipsters in trainers and chinos all mingle. Jivan says: “When you’re at the table, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for a job. It’s all about who you are in the game.”