Establishment Generator

Generate fully detailed establishments for your campaign — taverns, inns, shops, temples, guild halls, and more — with proprietors, menus or inventory, pricing, rumors, and quest hooks. A single generation produces everything you need to run the location in a session.

Quick Start

1. Navigate to Generate → Establishment Generator
2. Choose an Establishment Type
3. Set Settlement Size and Economic Level
4. Optionally add a name, notes, and atmosphere details
5. Click Generate Establishment (or press Cmd+Enter / Ctrl+Enter)
6. Review the result, then click Save to Library

Establishment Types

The generator supports 21 types. The most common appear by default; expand the list to see all options.

Common types (shown by default): Tavern, Inn, Shop, Temple, Guild Hall, Barracks, Manor, Warehouse, Stable

Civic and military: Town Hall, Prison, Guard Tower, Monastery

Arcane and exotic: Wizard Tower, Thieves' Guild, Ship, Cavern, Catacombs, Pyramid, Library, Arena

Each type shapes what gets generated. A tavern produces a food and drink menu with a proprietor and optional patrons. An inn adds room types with nightly pricing and optional staff. A shop generates an inventory with quantities and prices. Other types produce content appropriate to their function.

Shop Specialty — if you choose Shop, a second field appears for the specialty:

• General Store — adventuring gear, supplies, rations
• Weapons and Armor — martial equipment, shields
• Smithy — metalworking and repairs
• Jeweler — gems and fine goods
• Magic Items — potions, scrolls, minor magical items (requires City or larger settlement at Wealthy or higher economic level)
• Apothecary — herbs, medicines, alchemical supplies
• Books and Scrolls — knowledge and maps
• Clothing and Textiles — fabric and tailoring
• Temple or Shrine — religious items and blessings
• Custom — describe your own specialty in the notes field

Settlement Size and Economic Level

These two fields set the scope and price tier of everything in the establishment.

Settlement Size affects inventory variety, staff count, and what types of establishments are plausible:

Economic Level applies a pricing multiplier to all generated prices:

All prices round up to the nearest copper. Amounts less than one gold piece display as silver and copper only (e.g., "5 sp 3 cp"). Amounts of one gold piece or more display as full breakdowns with zero suppression (e.g., "1 gp 2 sp" not "1 gp 2 sp 0 cp").

Unusual combinations: Hamlet with Wealthy or Aristocratic level generates a soft warning. The generation still runs — use it for a noble's rural estate or a hidden safehouse. The magic item shop restriction is a hard block: it requires City or Metropolis at Wealthy or Aristocratic level.

Optional Inputs

Custom Name (up to 100 characters) — your own name for the establishment. Blocked names (Yawning Portal, WotC location names) are flagged before generation.

Custom Notes (up to 500 characters) — context that shapes the result. Examples:

• "Rough dockside tavern frequented by sailors and smugglers"
• "Run by a retired adventurer who never talks about her past"
• "Known for a single legendary dish that draws visitors from far away"

Atmosphere — Feel (up to 3 selections) — atmosphere tags grouped by Condition, Atmosphere, and Character. Selecting contrasting tags (e.g., Welcoming and Hostile) triggers a soft conflict hint.

Atmosphere — Intents (up to 3 selections) — what the establishment primarily does for your campaign. Options include Rest, Food and Drink, Commerce, Entertainment, Worship, Information, Criminal activity, and more. Selecting intents can suggest a fitting establishment type if you haven't chosen one yet.

Link Existing NPC — choose a saved NPC from your library to use as the proprietor instead of generating a new one. The NPC must be in your library and owned by your account.

Cultural Flavor (optional) — apply a cultural overlay (Imperial Roman, Feudal Japanese, Viking, and more) that shapes names, social dynamics, and atmospheric details. Cascades from your campaign settings if linked.

Campaign Link — link the establishment to a campaign for session prep and content organization.

Generation Options

These checkboxes control what additional content the generator creates alongside the main establishment.

Generate Staff (inns only) — creates lite-detail staff NPCs with name, race, occupation, and a personality snapshot. Town inns get 2 staff; city inns get 3; metropolis inns get 4. Staff are not given combat stats.

Generate Notable Patrons (taverns, town and larger only) — creates 1–3 flavor-text patron descriptions for atmosphere and potential plot hooks.

Generate Rumors — creates 2–4 rumors with GM metadata: truthfulness and tone. Trueness and tone are visible in GM view only; player-facing exports show the rumor text without those labels.

Generate Quest Hooks — creates 1–3 adventure seeds tied to the establishment.

Include Secrets — adds hidden information for GM eyes only: a secret about the proprietor, the building, or its history.

All options are enabled by default. The entire generation — proprietor, staff, patrons, rumors, hooks, and secrets — counts as one generation credit.

NPC Detail Tiers

The generator uses three levels of NPC detail based on narrative role.

Full detail (proprietor) — complete 5e stat block with ability scores, saves, skills, personality traits, ideal, bond, flaw, background, and equipment. CR scales with economic level: Poor establishments generate CR 0 proprietors, Aristocratic establishments generate CR 1–2.

Lite detail (staff) — name, race, occupation, and a 1–2 sentence personality snapshot. Enough for interaction at the table, not designed for combat.

Flavor detail (patrons) — name, race, role, appearance, and a demeanor note. Adds life to the room and provides a quick improvisation hook.

Export Formats

PDF — GM Mode — all content including secrets, rumor truthfulness and tone, and full proprietor stat blocks.

PDF — Player Mode — everything visible to players: menus, room listings, patron descriptions, and proprietors. Rumor GM metadata and the secrets section are excluded. Safe to share or hand out at the table.

Foundry VTT — journal entry format with separate pages for Overview, NPCs, Menu or Inventory, Rooms, and Rumors and Hooks. GM content is flagged with visibility permissions.

Roll20 — handout format with HTML formatting. Player-visible content in Notes; secrets and GM metadata in GM Notes.

Using Existing NPCs as Proprietors

1. Generate an NPC in the NPC Generator and save them to your library
2. When generating an establishment, select Link Existing NPC
3. Choose your NPC from the dropdown
4. That NPC becomes the proprietor — no new NPC is generated

The linked NPC must be in your library and owned by your account. If the NPC is not found or is the wrong content type, the field shows an error before generation runs.

Tips for Better Results

Start with Comfortable economic level. It uses standard PHB pricing and is the easiest to run without adjustment. Move up or down once you know the settlement's character.

Use the Notes field. A single sentence of context ("the owner is desperately in debt to a local merchant guild") produces far more interesting proprietors and rumors than leaving it blank.

Unusual settlement-economy combinations are features, not bugs. A poor hamlet with an aristocratic inn is strange — and that strangeness is a story hook. Use the soft warning as a prompt to add backstory.

Link a villain NPC as a proprietor. Using an existing villain from your library as the innkeeper or shopkeeper is an easy way to seed plot threads into ordinary session prep.

Generate multiple establishments and compare. Each generation uses one credit. For a major city, generate three taverns and pick the one that fits best, or combine elements from each.

SRD Compliance

All generated content uses SRD 5.2-compliant terms. The following are blocked automatically:

• Trademarked named NPCs: Elminster, Drizzt, Mordenkainen, Bigby
• WotC location names: Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, the Yawning Portal, and others
• Trademarked creatures: Beholder, Mind Flayer, Yuan-ti
• Setting-specific terms: Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and similar

Standard races, classes, creatures, and generic location names are all allowed.

Related Documentation

• NPC Generator — Create detailed NPCs to link as proprietors
• SRD Compliance — Full list of blocked and allowed terms