Set Up A Cozy Tavern And Dispatch Adventurers In Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest

Preview

Written by Andrew Stretch

Published: September 3, 2026 11:00 AM

"The party meets in a tavern" is a somewhat overplayed concept in Dungeons & Dragons, but for the newly announced Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern from Homo Ludens (Blooming Business: Casino) and publisher Dotemu, you'll be the one setting up and running your tavern in the Dalelands in the Forgotten Realms.

Prior to the reveal of Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern, I was able to sit down and play an early development build that let me name and move into my tavern, begin the work of reshaping it to become my own, and start setting up brewing and cooking facilities to run my very own tavern.

From the jump, you're introduced to William Oldfather, a ghost who lives in the tavern and will serve as your initial tutorial guide. This is just one of the main characters that you'll experience as the story of D&D Long Rest Tavern develops.

Gameplay for Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern is split into two segments: the days where you'll be designing your tavern, expanding it, or placing required objects like tables and lighting, deciding what you'll be brewing or cooking, and picking out your menu. It's here that you'll also hire staff to run your bar/kitchen, or waiters who'll bring out food to the paying customers.

These design choices can only be completed during the day, as once you move to nighttime, the business is moving forward on a timer. Any mistakes you make, such as not lighting tables, not having enough food and drink stock, or not having enough to pay your staff, will result in an impacted evening.

D&D: Long Rest Tavern is very forgiving with letting players make mistakes and then correct them. Having no knowledge of what was ahead of me, I immediately placed the bar and tables in places that forced them to take up more space than they needed. Everything that you place can be easily moved, rotated, and even sold for the same price that they were initially purchased for. No mistake is irreversible, so you can spend more time enjoying playing the game without stressing over making the "right" choice.

Interestingly, there really isn't that much to do at night, except that for some reason, the owner of the Tavern is the one cleaning the tables after customers leave. On the flip side, it lets you sit back and enjoy the relaxed vibes of the many bard songs that D&D: Long Rest Tavern has to play at night.

The shift will conclude, you'll get an earnings report and customer satisfaction report, and from there it's daytime again. Something that was a bit annoying with this report was the satisfaction; on most days, it was at 100% for my food and drink offerings, but every now and then, it might have been at 80-90%. There was no indication of what it was about the Tavern that caused this value to drop, so there was no way to take that criticism and try to do better the next night.

It wouldn't be Dungeons & Dragons without some dice rolling, and there are elements of chance in the game, such as your staff getting Critical Successes with their pours or cooking, providing an even greater experience for the customer.

After setting up lodging for adventurers to stay at your Tavern, you can then send them off on adventures the following day. Each region will have a few quests to complete and associated levels. The region and level will determine the difficulty, and a roll of the dice will let you know if you were successful or not.

Interestingly, the dice roll looked incredibly similar to the dice roll animation of Baldur's Gate III.

The best part about sending off the party to the lair of a beast, or an exploration through a forest, is that they wouldn't come back with gold or magic items, but instead new ingredients to create more recipes from. As you obtain new items, you'll get hints about new possible recipes. It took until a party had successfully defeated an Axe Beak before the oven prompted me to mix a 'meat' and a 'fruit' to create a dish called Axe Beak A L'Orosk, which I knew I could take the Axe Beak Drumstick and the Orosk fruit to create a new dish.

The gameplay loop of D&D Long Rest Tavern was incredibly satisfying. A Day of assigning drinks to be brewed and food to be cooked, expanding the tavern with more dorm space and seating where possible, then an evening of cleaning tables, and then having adventurers go out in the morning to obtain rarer items to grow your tavern further.

I do hope that as you progress further through the game, you're able to either automate the table cleaning, as it's mostly just a point-and-click mini-game currently, or that there might be random events that occur that can improve or ruin a night.

The idea of a high-fantasy tavern simulator certainly isn't unique in itself, but one set in one of the most well-known D&D settings, even if it's a bit further off the beaten path, is an exciting touch. 

Dungeons & Dragons Long Rest Tavern has just the right level of detail to really appeal to the business sim fans while also holding the hands of players new to the genre enough that they won't get lost. In addition to that, each of the elements of the game comes together to support another in a way that no matter what you're doing, you'll always feel like you're making progress in the right direction.

Dungeons & Dragons: Long Rest Tavern was previewed with a code provided by the publisher over 1 hour - All photos were provided by the publisher

Andrew Stretch | Senior Content Manager

Andrew has written Video Game and Entertainment news, reviews, and guides for 10+ years. As Senior Content Manager, he assists in creating and editing… More about Andrew