Grizzly McSnarl, this huge, lumbering guy with a bad case of RBF. He never takes a hand off the big-ass knife on his hip. If the players dig a little deeper, they’ll learn he’s an anxious kind of guy who worries too much about every little thing, and coasts on his intimidating looks to deter trouble.

Hollister Nimbleprick, a large nosed halfling tailor/thief, looking to join an adventuring group. He’s actually a dwarven fighter in disguise. One the run for the last month, he shaved his beard, took off his boots and swapped his axe for a rapier. If he joins the group, he will complain under his breath anytime they ask him to do thief stuff. He falls every time he tries to climb walls or trips when he tries to sneak around and accidentally triggers every trap he’s tasked with detecting.

A running gag of my campaigns is that they all start in a tavern (or bar, or mess hall, whatever fits the setting).
The barkeep is always an orc (in a modern setting I’d describe him as incredibly tall, muscular man, with a sickly skin tone, etc.) who wipes down the used beer mugs with his apron and puts them back on the shelf.

Colville suggests that starting in a tavern is a chance to show off the setting in a microcosm. Put folks there that represent various factions or attitudes prevalent in the setting. When I ran a Savage Pathfinder game and had my players start in a tavern, I had some incurious off-duty town guards, the dillettante son of the mayor. I couldn’t figure out a way to work in the diabolist church (I set my game in Cheliax), but I did have a choice of several “first jobs” for them to take.

As usual, don’t forget to discuss plot hooks in session zero, and make sure that the PC have an in game reason to work together. We all have heard the horror story about the party of a chaotic evil, a lawful good hating each other while the stict neutral robber has a not my problem attitude which basically makes the whole game a hell.

Knowing how player behave, I would expect that some of these "weirdoes"will be recurring NPC. Some thoughts though

• Just a couple of locals, you know the farmer complaining that there was too much/not enough rain, the other ones thinking that adventurer are crazy and badluck, the tavern maid who wish to marry a rich adventurer to get out of that shitty town, the farmboy who dreams of becoming an adventurer.

• The recruiting sergent escorting a couple of young enlisted to the next-town, and trying to find some others, it’s a great way to tell A war is ongoing

• The travelling merchant with tons of wonders, tales from the town, and potentially a recuring NPC

• The doom prophet, like the half-crazy priest who comes to the town to talk about a great evil coming (a Great way to tell something bad is awaking)

• If the campaign is more fun, the Mysterious and darkly dressed person who in fact is just a teenager in their “all black phase”

• For a mini scenario in the tavern, add a ghost

• The local noble, who pretend to be more important than they are, but you need to deal with them to do anything in that viallage

• The mage and their apprentice travelling for a strange reason in aotally differnet direction