D&D 3.5 Keep Finance DM problem

[Gerner]

Hey all..

So my players (10 lvl Paladin, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric), have taken a keep from an evil Baron. Which is fine with me as I thought they just use it as a form of a safehouse.

Now they have stated that they want to "optimize" this with increasing taxes and building mines etc.

So my problem is how to balance the tax and income from mines (when build).

To simplefi I have given them options on tax (no tax, low, normal, high and very high) I have split the citizens in to 3 groups Noble, merchants and workers giving each a average income pr. month. multiplied with the tax this gives the tax income. The problems comes with the mines how due I make a system on the income on this in a balance way?

[Studoku]

Mines take a long time to dig, so it's going to be a while before they start making meaningful returns (and until then, they have to pay and supply the miners from somewhere- i.e. the tax income).

There's also the issue that this is a fantasy setting- if you start digging, you will inevitably dig up something dangerous and/or dig into somewhere dangerous. There are dozens of potential adventure hooks which are more interesting and profitable than Mines & Moneylending.

On the taxes, why wasn't the evil baron taxing the people to the hilt to begin with? It's the kind of thing they do.

[Saintheart]

Not to mention that raising taxes is a pretty oppressive thing to do to serfs who already only earn about 1 copper piece per year or something :smallwink: The paladin doesn't want to be the next tyrannical ruler in the piece, does he?

On the mines, maybe it's a matter of the deeper you go, the higher the income, but the higher the risk of a calamity like a mine collapse which destroys all the income of the mine, or a monster being awakened, and so on. Or indeed a peasant revolt.

[JBento]

It's been a while since I read through it, but I think the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has something on that matter.

Also, on mines: is there stuff that's actually minable?

Because if there isn't, that's just them throwing money out the window.

[Gerner]

The problem is not that they want to raise or lower taxes etc...

And yes the evil Baron did tax people...

The problem is they wanna manage it, and I just dont want it to become a game of management of keep finance...

So if any had an easy way to keep this and not make the keep to a money making machine.

And good point about the adventure part of the mining :)

[pffh]

Do the characters have any experience in running a keep/governing people? If not have them perform some blunders (for example digging mines when there isn't anything to mine) and then have the advisors offer to manage the day to day responsibilites of management.

[SpaceBadger]

The problem is they wanna manage it, and I just dont want it to become a game of management of keep finance...

Tell your players this. Just because players want to do something doesn't make you their slave required to run that game for them. The DM is allowed to have fun, too.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Charge upkeep on their area. Also, keep in mind that they will, as landlords, now have to pay taxes to their local noble. A lot of it. That'll offset and balance the influx of cash with necessary expenses.

As far as mines go... they produce raw resources necessary to keep their smitheries going. They also have high upkeep costs. Excess ore is sold to somewhat mitigate this process.

Random die roll (d100?) to determine what sort of ore they get, with a small (less than 5%) chance of hitting Mithral or Adamantine. If they do, then they have a small supply of said ores to make custom weapons with, at fair market value. After all, if you don't pay your artisans, particularly artisans capable of working with said materials and making mastercrafted equipment for you, then you need to pay them fairly.

Also make sure it is clear you won't allow this to provide them with enough cash to Monty Haul themselves. If they get too successful at it, tragedies will occur that will cost significantly. i.e. 'mine collapse! We need (amount of money that you want out of their pockets) for repairs, funerals for miners, and construction necessary to make the mine functional again. Mines will not be producing for (1d6) months while this is being accomplished. For twice that amount, we can get it done in half that time. If you pay for a Lyre of Building, plus pay a competent musician to play it, then it will be done in as many weeks, rather than months.'

[Tyndmyr]

Hey all..

So my players (10 lvl Paladin, Wizard, Rogue and Cleric), have taken a keep from an evil Baron. Which is fine with me as I thought they just use it as a form of a safehouse.

Now they have stated that they want to "optimize" this with increasing taxes and building mines etc.

So my problem is how to balance the tax and income from mines (when build).

To simplefi I have given them options on tax (no tax, low, normal, high and very high) I have split the citizens in to 3 groups Noble, merchants and workers giving each a average income pr. month. multiplied with the tax this gives the tax income. The problems comes with the mines how due I make a system on the income on this in a balance way?

This is fine for starters. Add the usual problems for the higher tax rates(more people cheating on taxes, people leaving for other areas, starvation, unpopular, etc).

For mines, well, do they have any indication that such things exist here? They need to invest in hiring diggers and the like. Give them some choices for how they intend to go about it, but this ain't free.

They've chosen a life of keep management, which, honestly, has a lot of potential hooks. It means that those serfs and what not are important to them now, and threats to them must be dealt with, or their income is at risk. Politics now matter. Whoever is in charge of the kingdom probably wants his cut. Black market not paying taxes...bandits interfering with trade...

Seriously, the potential plot hooks are endless.

Edit: Also, just give them the financial results of their decisions. Make it clear that managing their finances is their job.

[Lord Vampyre]

Shneekey has the right idea. After the player's pay the upkeep and the taxes to the king, they won't be netting a lot.

You may also want to consider that the king might be just as tyrranical as the baron, if not more. The baron could of been merely a symptom of a much deeper problem.

You also should have them consider hereditary rights, there is bound to be someone who believes that they are the rightful heir to the baron's power. This individual is probably more capable of managing the barony than a bunch of adventurers.

[MukkTB]

#1 Players dig into something bad that now threatens the landscape. Adventure time.

#2 The King demands their leader pledges fealty to them. He then wants taxes and for them to show up in the army with a sizable number of men and fight for him. Adventure time.
I In addition the King is Evil and must be stopped. Adventure time.

#3 The peasants are revolting. Evil Adventure time.

#4 The neighbors are invading. Adventure time.

#5 The rightful heir to the evil baron has made a claim with the king.
I The PCs must travel to court and fight a legal battle. Adventure time.
II The King sees the PCs as an invading army and marches against them. Adventure time.

There are a ton of easy ways to go from what you find boring to more adventures.

[Gavinfoxx]

I would tell them, flat out, "Guys, I do not want to run an economics and management game. Besides, anything you could possibly make in the mine, you could make substantially more by Lesser Planar Allying an Elemental or three, and Plane Shifting with them to the Elemental Plane of Earth to mine some real valuables. You have a freaking Level Ten Cleric. Act like the superheroes you are, and delegate the mundane things to mundane people!"

[Kaveman26]

1. Have them watch one episode of Gold Rush, where people mine for gold in alaska. 14 hours a day running dirt through a sluice for a entire week followed by an entire day or sifting mud through a gate to extract 4 ounces of gold dust...not nuggets...DUST. Ask them if that is what they want to manage in game...

2. Have them act as a psuedo board of directors for the barony. I.E. they appoint a governor or rightful heir to the barony to run the day to day stuff and they have once or twice a year input on main directives. That way they can be "running a region" without you having to sift through mountains of details. They occasionally get status updates and requests for more money to expand or fix projects and sometimes their "updates" happen to be adventure hooks for what you do want to plan.

3. If they still want to micromanage the region then its time to either bring down some nasty consequences i.e. railroad them into something else, or tell them flat out you arent looking to run that style of game and someone else has to take over.

On a side note I would have a blast running something like that. My group only ever went that route once and it became a sprawling nightmare of engineering and fun. Level 12 bard with a lyre of building a level 12 dwarf wizard with Stone Shape, and a level 12 rogue with trapmaking. They took over a small stone mountain stronghold and instead of moving to next step of adventure they dug in and reshaped it into a highly defenseable stronghold.

[TypoNinja]

It's been a while since I read through it, but I think the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has something on that matter.

Also, on mines: is there stuff that's actually minable?

Because if there isn't, that's just them throwing money out the window.

The SBGB does cover that, check out cost modifiers, I think it uses a diamond mine as an example.

Completed strongholds produce 1% of their base cost (the mine modifying the base cost) yearly, after upkeep if memory serves. So use this for adventure hooks rather than any serious income source.

Like most mundane professions its profitability is pathetically low compared to the gains from adventuring. a 200,000GP stronghold is expected to make a PC 2k a year. A first level party can probably do better than that in a weekend. You really don't have to worry about your PC's getting filthy rich from operations like this.

[Saladman]

The problem is they wanna manage it, and I just dont want it to become a game of management of keep finance...

I'm sympathetic, and I think this places you in the majority of roleplayers. And yet, one of the strengths of tabletop rpgs over computer games is the possibility of handling unexpected tangents without running up against the walls of the fictional world.

I think the way to square that circle is to find or create some system you can use to knock out the accounting in between sessions or in a short burst at the beginning of the session, then move on to the real adventure.

The AD&D DMG had guidelines for this, as did some of the 0e books. I never have understood why they were taken taken out in the first place. I realize not everyone used them even back in the day. And yet, a good subsystem should actually be faster than trying to wing it in an area you haven't given much thought to. So that's just the kind of resource I'd like to have available. (Though, come to think of it, I'm not 100% sure the AD&D version was in fact actually fast. But I never got practiced with it either.)

Alternatively, Adventurer, Conqueror, King (http://www.autarch.co/) has the best modern implementation I've seen. The book's not actually released yet, but the pdf is available.

If you do take it on at all, just talk to your players about your concern. Set some boundaries on how much time you're going to spend on it in prep, and how much time the group is going to spend on it in session before getting to the more classic adventures.

On the back end, realize it's okay if it makes a net profit and provides some modest ongoing income. It's okay to let the players accomplish their ends sometimes. And yet, it doesn't have to be an easy cash cow for them either. In the short term, unless they just pillage the place in a way that makes the peasants cry out for the return of the Evil Baron, a captured domain is not an instant treasure trove. If anything, especially with a paladin in the party, they may want to amnesty taxes for a year, and even spread some largesse if the people are starving, perhaps undertake overdue repairs and maintenance, things like that. In short, impose some immediate costs, with the possibility of long-term profit.

Taking head-on the question in the first post on how to balance the income... "Taxes" on a real-world feudal domain (which D&D doesn't have to parallel, but as an example) amounted to either a large fraction of the peasants' harvest, or else the peasants worked on the lord's plots for a certain number of days in addition to their own, which came to the same thing. Out of that produce the lord fed his own household and retainers for a full year, sold some to keep himself in a style appropriate to his station, and outfitted himself and his soldiers for war. Moreover he could be expected to provide bounty, feasts for his peasants twice a year, or more often for notable occasions like a birth, marriage, knighting or ennoblement in the family, charity in times of poor harvest, etc. If this sounds like a lot of book-keeping, the takeaway is the net income in hard coin may just be zero. The players perhaps get a stronghold and an appropriate number of servants without paying hard gold out of pocket every month, a title de facto if not de jure, and never have to buy their rations again if they can reach the larder. But the actual profits can be hand-waved as equaling expenses.

Or if you want to vary it at all, that can be as simple as a die roll. On a yearly roll, 25% chance of a poor harvest, incur costs on relief or the populace suffers famine and resentment of your rule, 50% chance normal harvest, 25% chance of a bountiful harvest and income boost. It's hard to pick numbers without knowing your game, but as a placeholder I'll throw out d4 thousand gold pieces as the (optional) cost of famines and profit on a good harvest. Possibly the normal harvest provides d20 x hundred gold pieces only after the domain is ordered and prosperous.

Mines are potentially more profitable, but also riskier. Again, it's hard to attach numbers blind, but conceptually you can tie it to whatever initial costs you impose. Say in round numbers it costs 10,000 gold and 3 months to sink a mine to where it may start paying off. You then make up a d20 chart like what follows, rolling once every quarter of a year (so the players may have to find other projects while they wait for their sweet, sweet profits):

1 Disaster!, cave-in or flood, pay d6+1k gold in recovery costs or abandon, as well as d4k gold in labor and costs regardless
2-3 no pay-off, pay d4k gold in labor and costs [1]
4-6 weak vein, break even with no profit or loss [2]
7-12 average vein, d6k gold in profit [3-4]
13-15 rich vein, 2d6k gold profit [5]
16-17 Mother-lode!, 3d6k gold profit [6]
18 Theft or complication: bandits plague the countryside looking for their cut, a horde of orcs tries to take over the mine, Johnny-Depp style sky pirates seize the ore outright, cultists posing as union organizers infiltrate the miners, or whatever else you can think of. roll [d6] for mining result
19 Delve too Deep!, major monster encounter per the DM, roll [d6] for mining result only if it's contained quickly enough to save the miners
20 played out, roll [d6] for mining result this quarter but no later profits will be possible

Okay, that... certainly could use balancing, and the exact numbers for costs and profits should be adjusted to fit your game, but if I've done it right the idea is they're likely to see a profit eventually, but without a guarantee, and they'll have to throw some treasure at it to start, and possibly to keep it going. (If someone wants to double-check my probabilities to be sure I've done what I intended I won't be offended.)

[Gerner]

Thanks you for all the feedback...

I will have a look at the Adventurer, Conqueror, King...

I have talked to the guys and we agreed that the management of the keep is not the focus of the campagne, but they want the campagne to focus around the keep as they intent to grow and to conquer more lands which is fine with me.

[Acanous]

I actually just finished doing a bunch of this in a campaign. Got my grubby little hands on a Lyre of Building, and have access to Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron and Move Earth.

Peasants? I don't need peasants, I can do all the labor myself in 1/24th the time!

If your players want to seriously run this and you don't want to micromanage, use the base craft rules.

1: Players sink 1/3rd of what they intend to make on the keep.
2: Players now get to make a check during down-time. Maximum of 1000 GP per day can be earned this way.
3: When the GP from a project is exhausted, repeat.

As the DM, you can assign the flat DC of 10 to "Kingdom management", have however many players want to do it per day of downtime roll, then it's d20 result*10/14 in SP.

So basically it's just like any other profession or craft skill, except that it can be made untrained and each player can pull it off.

Maybe allow them to make a Diplomacy check as a craft/profession in this case. Even assuming a result of 80! on the D20 check, that's only 5.7 GP.

Of course, lots is being done around the kingdom. Stuff's being built, upkeep paid, Taxes and such taken care of. That's just the leftovers.

[Rejusu]

Thanks you for all the feedback...

I will have a look at the Adventurer, Conqueror, King...

I have talked to the guys and we agreed that the management of the keep is not the focus of the campagne, but they want the campagne to focus around the keep as they intent to grow and to conquer more lands which is fine with me.

That's good then. I was going to suggest that if you wanted to steer the game away from being a keep management sim without use of DM fiat you could simply have something arise in the mines that'd require them to deal with it. Once they emerge from the mine they find their shiny new keep in flames, perhaps spy a dragon flying off to the east. Two hooks for the price of one and no more pesky keep to manage.

The conquering thing sounds quite cool too though. Just simplify the keep stuff into giving them a fixed income and then have them deal with politics, invasions and invaders instead.

[zanetheinsane]

I see it as an alternate form of the same game. Adventure = Money for a lot of D&D games. In this version, the "adventure" is running the mines and all the *crazy* things that happen around it. In return, instead of looting dungeons they're getting their "loot" from the returns on the mine.

Of course it's not all "set it and forget it". Here's some things to add to the adventure hooks:


At first things seem great and the mine is starting to pay out money. Problem is, the previous owner (who wasn't exactly a standup fellow) wasn't owning up on his share to the higher ups... and they've sent someone to collect backpay. Maybe the old owner was paying the right guys and now they still want their slice of the pie. Don't just send a huge goon squad. Start off with a couple of charismatic brothers who prefer to stand. One of them is rather clumsy. Everything breaks, don't it? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlyHf89470I#t=2m)
Miners have started going missing recently. It's costly to replace them! Or alternately there's a strange disease killing miners.
The bid bad was digging for something. Miners occasionally whisper rumors about it that get back to the players but nobody can confirm anything. Have three or four different "versions" of the rumor that people swear are the truth because they heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy. Perhaps these miners find "it" and any number of mysterious things start happening.
At the NPC managers' suggestions, the players renovate a little bit (you don't like skull flags and blood cauldrons in the main hall?) During this, they find a "hidden" room or floor, etc that contains a secret revealing that your big bad was up to more than meets the eye. Perhaps he was in league with an even bigger bad. Demons, etc.


I'm sure there may be a greater story in your game that you really want your players to get back to, but you may be missing the forest for the trees, in a way. The players have expressed a great deal of interest in this, and a noncomplex system would be great because it only has to work for a little while. Everyone knows the life of an adventurer is never this easy, and sure for a bit the business ledgers are settled (by a very helpful NPC who likes to do ledgers) and money is coming in.

And if you need to get back to your story, simply have the story come to them. Whatever the big bad guy was doing there, surely his plans were more sinister than just "mining" for ores or precious stones. Perhaps a secret stash or hidden chamber that the "renovators" find when the players outfit the keep holds the secrets.

Whatever the case, you can probably easily modify your current story to make sure the players stay on track without spending too much time playing Sim-Castle. Meet them halfway but don't let them run away with it.

[Hirax]

The DMG2 has rules for managing a business. As written there's some glaring flaws, but it's a workable framework.