And you suggest adding a theater to the Broken Bell (well opening the theater); I don't see how that's consistent with your logic. You feel there are too many spots to roleplay in and too many inns, but you want to add a second theater when we have a functional one with its own faction already in Dementlieu. This would make them redundant and we don't have the server population to maintain two active theater troups. The Broken Bell Theater was created a long time ago when the server was still Vallaki-centric and had no other domains; it was created to generate roleplay of a different nature in the city and somewhat turn the Broken Bell into an alternate hub. Now that we have the Mist Camp and Dementlieu, we already have those alternate hubs so the Broken Bell is just another inn now and its theater can be used occasionally.
I completely missed this reply before, sorry.
First off, you are completely right about The Gaping Wound. Do keep in mind that new players (and possibly a large part of the existing players as well) do not posses any of the prior knowledge about taverns that may seem like common knowledge to the veteran player, they only see a bunch of empty taverns. But you are right, as The Gaping Wound is usually locked it should not really influence player behaviour.
And I suppose places like the Angler's Dive or The Drowned Rat are not actually places our characters are meant to be spending the night at.
Come to think of it, why do the NPCs there not return home at night (despawn) like they do in all the other shops in Vallaki? Wouldn't all the cafés and fish shops also lock up for the night?
Opening up the theatre would not increase the number of taverns nor the amount of spots where your character could end up spending the night, which was the concern in the original post, so that is consistent with earlier posts. It is just an additional unlocked room in an already existing inn. And you would still have to pass through The Broken Bell Inn to get in and out of the theatre, right?
Whenever my characters finds himself inside an empty building for the night checking the adjacent public rooms for other roleplayers is often the first thing I do.
I was suggesting to open up the theatre to give The Broken Bell Inn more of a purpose and some kind of unique selling point. Most of the other taverns all have their own unique attraction (gambling, brawling, exotic dancers, etc.) as well as their own niché, like being the go to place for shady folks or being the go to place for non-humans, but The Broken Bell Inn doesn't really have anything going for it. You could argue that The Broken Bell Inn is the go to place for ethnic Barovian commoners, but the same can be said for 6 of the other taverns. With the 'bard throne' in the Lady's Rest also being gone I thought it would be nice to have a tavern within Barovia that caters towards artistic characters more.
If the dev team believes it would be better to reserve The Broken Bell Inn's theatre for DM events, like with The Gaping Wound's fighting pit, fair enough. I was just throwing out some ideas.
I don't think you have to be worrid about The Broken Bell Inn turning into competition for any theatre in Port-à-Lucine by the way, the social scene in Dementlieu has always catered to a pretty specific (and different) type of roleplay. And everyone playing an artistic non-human character will still end up choosing Port-à-Lucine by default. Regardless, I didn't mean to suggest turning The Broken Bell Inn into a supported faction base or starting a theatre group.
By the way, isn't there a lot more competition closer to home that the Théatre de la Cathédrale should be worrying about? L'Artiste, the opera house, the outdoors theatre in the bay, that café for poets, the museum and probably a few more places within Port-à-Lucine itself all appeal towards the same type of artistic characters as the Théatre de la Cathédrale does. A Barovian inn with a theatre attached where throwing rotten fruit is considered modern is probably at the bottom of said list.