Dragon Tavern

Dragon Tavern was a speculative game pitch written up by Bungie game designer Jaime Griesemer, some time after the release of Halo 3 in late 2007. Little is known of the game's premise or intended mechanics, as it never made it out of Griesemer's speculative pitch.

Griesemer worked on the pitch for some time in parallel with Jason Jones, who had recently returned to the studio after his long-term absence during the production of Halo 3 after being persuaded to begin considering ideas for Bungie's next project. Jones and Griesemer worked on their own individual pitches in parallel, sharing ideas with one another. Griesemer felt he needed to get as far away from Halo as possible to have new ideas, so instead of a sci-fi first-person game, Dragon Tavern was a third-person, multiplayer fantasy game that he described as a "shared-world experience." Players would have adventures with and against other players in a somewhat MMO-ish way out in the world, and when they were done they could retire to their private tavern that they could decorate and invite friends to visit. Griesemer connected with engineer Chris Butcher who had some ideas for how to matchmake players. Jones was working on the next evolution of the first-person shooter. Bungie only had the resources to make one of their games, and as one of the founders of the company, Jones had more clout so his game became the clear favorite. As such, Griesemer joined the pre-production team on Jones' project and made sure that it adopted the good ideas from Dragon Tavern. This game would become Bungie's successor series Destiny.