Review: Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern

Sometimes, a game comes along that feels like it was written just for you.

Stewpot by Takuma Okada is that game for me. It’s a quiet kind of magic—not the fireball-slinging, dungeon-diving sort I cut my teeth on years ago, but something slower and far more resonant with where I am now as a player and GM.

Stewpot is a collection of mini-games about what happens after the adventure ends. You and your group take on the roles of former adventurers—retired wizards, swords-for-hire, ex-paladins, and the like—who’ve traded in their gear for aprons and open a tavern in a sleepy village. It’s not just a storytelling exercise about pouring ale and chopping onions, though. It’s about change and community. It’s about the hard work of figuring out who you are when you’re no longer who you were.

The structure is simple but brilliant. Each mini-game offers a vignette—a small window into the day-to-day life of your tavern. Maybe you’re trying to cobble together a dish from strange ingredients, or you’re listening to a traveler spill their heart out over a mug of cider. Maybe there’s a fight that needs breaking up, or a town event that needs organizing. The mechanics are light: you’ll be using cards, dice, maybe a coin, but always in service of a narrative that prioritizes character growth over crunch.

And that’s exactly what draws me in.

Stewpot leans into what I’ve been craving more and more in my games lately: roleplay that lingers on the small moments. Not every story needs to be about saving the world. Sometimes the stakes are no higher than keeping a fire going in the hearth, or wondering whether you still feel like yourself without a sword at your side. There’s beauty in that simplicity. And as the tavern upgrades—its food, its ambiance, its reputation—you see the parallel growth in your characters.

That’s something rare in RPGs. There’s no grand antagonist here, no looming threat to defeat. The tension comes from within—can you let go of the battlefield? Can you let others in? Can you make peace with the quiet?

It’s also deeply collaborative. Even though each mini-game has a different structure and sometimes a different facilitator, everything feeds back into a shared narrative. The tavern becomes your group’s collective legacy, a space where memories are made, old wounds are soothed, and friendships grow. You’re not just telling your own story—you’re helping everyone else’s shine, too.

I’ve found myself thinking about Stewpot long after the sessions are over. It stays with you like a warm meal and good conversation at the end of a long day. There’s a kind of grace in it—a reminder that stories don’t have to end with a final boss. They can end with a sigh of relief, the clink of mugs, and the first quiet notes of a new beginning.

You can find Stewpot at Evil Hat, Itch.io, DriveThruRPG, Roll20, and most other places you’ll find RPGs.