Epic Encounters: Local Legends Review – Legendary Bar Stories

For many TTRPG groups, the campaign opens with the phrase, “you all meet at a tavern.” It's a quick and easy way to establish tone and group dynamics while introducing players to low-stakes challenges. It's a cliché that is at the heart of Epic Encounters: Local Legends. A series of products all about helping bring personality and style to various fantasy watering holes.

What is in Epic Encounters: Local Legends?

Epic Encounter: Local Legends is a spin-off product of Steamforged Games' Epic Encounters boxes. It is made up of two different sets, which use the Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition ruleset.  The main set is the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Tavern Kit. It contains three books detailing ten different fantasy taverns, 60 unique NPCs that make up both staff and clientele, ten tavern maps, ten playmats, and a deck of cards printed with quick references. The second set is the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Encounter boxes. These contain miniatures, stat blocks, and battle maps for encounters hinted at in the Tavern Kit.

How Helpful is the GM material in the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Tavern Kit?

When starting a fantasy TTRPG campaign, a tavern does a lot of atmospheric heavy lifting. It covers many important world-building details and can set the tone of an entire campaign. Are the patrons friendly or defensive? Is the atmosphere rustic, austere, luxurious, or seedy? What happens when patrons get rowdy?

For veteran players, these details can be taken for granted. After a while, cultural shorthand is developed and everyone at the table locks in. But for new players, making a compelling tavern experience can be bland and forgettable at best, or non-existent at worst.

The ten different establishments in the Tavern Kit do a fantastic job covering its bases. Warm, rural inns packed with ale, pipe smoke, and hearty stew. Shady suburban retreats where clients come to coordinate heists and fence stolen goods that also happen to serve excellent bread. Dens of vice packed with well-dressed temptations of flesh and chemical escapes. Bloodstained fight pits where patrons drink, fight, and place bets. The list goes on.

Of course, people provide personality to a place. Every tavern has six NPCs with distinct personalities and attitudes.  Each entry also has rewards and punishments for conversing with them alongside modifiers to the persuasion DC. These aren't background extras, but they don't completely overshadow the players' antics; a perfect balancing act for a TTRPG supporting cast.

My favorite inclusion in the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Tavern Kit are various games that can be played at each tavern. Generally, the games are light variations on parlor games – one is effectively Blackjack with dice rolls. They work great for establishing a theme and give players something to spend their gold on.

Lastly, the Tavern Kit's Inncounters Book gives GMs the tools to set up conflict at these establishments. They include dealing with drunken patrons up to getting into a bar brawl. The rules presented lean more into light cinematic presentation than tactical play, swinging on chandeliers, setting things on fire, a giant bruiser showing up, etc., which keeps things light and breezy.

How Challenging are the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Encounters Boxes?

Generally, the Epic Encounters: Local Legends Encounter boxes provide small, compact battles. Each encounter has about 4-5 miniatures and one battle map. In addition, the contained booklet includes adventure hooks and modifiers to keep things exciting.

On their own, these encounter boxes are packed with variety and delight. With the Tavern Kit, they become a wonderful jumping-off point for a new TTRPG campaign.

Because of this, expressing the quality of all eight boxes in the set in a single review is a major task. Thankfully fellow dice goblin, Giaco Furino, and I delved into that dungeon together as a team. Here are our thoughts.

An Owlbear Was Sighted... Setting Traps?

From Tyler: Those who watched the D&D movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, know just how powerful Owlbears can be and according to whispers in the Nodding Dragon tavern, one is actively hunting and terrorizing local hunters.

This is curious since Owlbears generally aren't intelligent. But this one has dug traps, set up ambushes, and has been seen using magic.

This encounter is a great mix of boss battle and mystery story. What is going on with this Owlbear? How can the player stop it? Throw in a river hazard and some unexpected bursts of magic to the arena and you have a memorable forest brawl.

Descend Into A Wraith's Dungeon Lair

From Tyler: For fans of spooky ghosts, the Wraith Encounter has you covered. Patrons at The Silver Purse gambling parlor have reported seeing a mysterious ghost-like entity. Those who see it report sickness and memory loss. These coincide with rumors that The Silver Purse was built on a forgotten temple.

The central gimmick is a ghostly encounter combined with a dungeon maze. Enemies use the Frightened condition to push adventurers into the maze's traps and keep them away from potentially helpful items.

The Wraith encounter is my favorite encounter box in the set. It delivers an atmospheric setpiece, puts a novel spin on a classic D&D concept, and presents it all as an elaborate combat puzzle.

Ghost Pirates Aren't Just After Your Gold, But Your Lives

From Tyler: For those who want a more nautical spin on a vengeful spirit, the Ghost Pirate Encounter is for you.

It is a familiar tale in the Salt & Kraken tavern. A pirate captain seeks new crewmates. Except that captain has been dead for thirty years. Worse still, the people he recruits either show up years later barely alive at best, and dead at worst.

Generally, it is a solid swashbuckling encounter, if by the numbers. The arena is packed with environmental hazards and magical mist which can break caster's sightlines and keep martial classes on their toes. Not to mention the captain and his crew go after whoever has the most gold. Do with that what you will.

Night Hag Summonings Might Be More Than Your Party Can Take

From Tyler: The Night Hag encounter may be the most deceptively cosmic encounter in the set. It involves the titular hag setting up an elaborate ritual in the leyline-infused Adventurer's Rest tavern. If she is not stopped, she can tap into an infinite well of magic in its foundation and transcend to godhood.

This is an ambitious encounter against a CR 7 monster that low-level parties might not be prepared for. There is a clever environmental mechanic where characters can interrupt the ritual and buff casters, players can also take out the Hag's minions, permanently reducing her maximum HP.

It's an encounter that would be right at home in a Planescape campaign and fits with the whimsical high-fantasy vibe of The Adventurer's Rest tavern. If you like your fantasy stories bold and bombastic, pick this up.

A Hungry Green Dragon Might Be Simple, But It's A Classic

From Giaco: Of the four Local Legends mini-encounters I received for review, this Green Dragon encounter might be one of my favorites (even if it is the “easiest” encounter of the group). Tied to the Huntsman’s Stag tavern as seen in the Tavern Kit, this adventure begins with food going missing from the inn’s larders, large footprints on the central table, and tales from exhausted hunters who can’t find “the green devil.”

That green devil is the titular Green Dragon of this encounter, a juvenile dragon who wants nothing more than to get a bite to eat and play innocent pranks on anyone who would hunt for it. As adventurers in this mini encounter, the goal is - first and foremost - to find the Green Dragon as it hides among Mangrove trees! And from there, it’ll swoosh and fly around the battle map, nipping at characters playfully and trying to knock them into the murky, cold, stagnant water of the Mangroves.

Fun and full of personality, this (potentially) combat light mini encounter delivers on the promise of these box sets - to surprise, delight, and inspire GM’s and players alike!

A Party Running Up That Hill Giant

From Giaco: For this Local Legends mini encounter, much like the Green Dragon encounter, this one’s not an out-and-out fight. Banjo the Hill Giant (great name) has made a nice little life for himself harassing the miners working in the pioneer town and frequenting the Draughty Rabbit tavern.

The fun twist on this mini encounter is how the Hill Giant uses the natural world around him. Once players track him down and find him standing at the top of his hill, he’ll continually roll giant boulders down the hill at them - inflicting some serious damage if they collide. It’s not until the adventurers schlep their way up the hill that the true fight begins, with Banjo trying to smash them with a giant bag filled with treasures.

Evocative and inventive, this is another Local Legends mini-encounter that feels much more memorable than a simple fight. It’s not really about squaring off against Banjo, it’s about avoiding his boulders and traps!

Bat Demon Out Of Hell

From Giaco: This Local Legends mini encounter centers around the Shady Nook tavern and the local thieves guild that frequents the town. Drawn out by grief and suffering, this mini encounter features a fiend known as the Diaemus and the giant bats it calls down to attack the adventurers once they lure it out.

Of all the adventures I received, this one is - for me - the least compelling. Though there’s a bit of story to be pulled from the fact that this creature feeds on fear and despair, overall this isn’t much more than a rooftop battle. The miniature is nice, but other than that this one doesn’t truly break the mold like the others we’ve checked out.

Epic Encounters: Local Legends Efreet Encounter

From Giaco: With a challenge rating of 11, the Efreet at the center of this Local Legends mini-encounter is by far the most challenging of the four I’ve checked out and it has one of the most interesting, closed-space encounters as well!

Taking place in the illicit but well-heeled Velvet Dreams tavern, the Efreet was summoned long ago and is stuck here. One of my favorite moments in any of these guidebooks is the suggestion that this Efreet was perhaps summoned by an intoxicated magic user who eventually sobered up and… forgot to banish the Efreet!

What a great concept, and now this terribly powerful and terribly angry genie is out for blood! With an incredible miniature and a truly difficult combat encounter within, this could easily have been expanded into a larger Epic Encounters box set -- but I really appreciate that it’s been kept contained within this easy-to-run, approachable box.

Should I pick up Epic Encounters: Local Legends?

If you're brand new to GM'ing or dread creating interesting, bespoke taverns and inns, I highly recommend the Epic Encounters: Local Legends products. The Tavern Kit is a great resource for those behind the GM screen, and the encounter boxes are fantastic for providing bite-sized excitement to players at the table.

All Epic Encounters: Local Legends products in this review were provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken by the author during the process of review.