Communal or Party Resources

[EggKookoo]

Anyone running any games where the entire party shares ownership in a significant resource? I'm thinking like a home base. A keep, or a manse, or even an inn the PCs run their adventures out of (and perhaps draw side income from). Is there a simple way to handle decisions about it without session boiling down to meetings and votes and whatnot?

Or howabout a ship, like a frigate? Do you assign a captain? How does the party decide where to sail next?

I guess it all comes down to roleplaying and social interaction.

[GravGunner]

Well, a lot of that roleplaying will come down to either voting or a meeting(a simple "let's go there" is technically a meeting/voting in disguise)

For my party we build a home somewhere, we all agreed on the basic rooms(library, workshop, cellar, garden) and registered our wishes(some of which we have to fund privately, if it serves no party interest)(eg. upgrading the workshop so our crafter can make better items serves the party, but someone upgrading the garden so he has a pond does not)

Playing together means meetings or votings in a less formal way(no agenda, structure etc)

[pwykersotz]

I guess it all comes down to roleplaying and social interaction.

Pretty much this. A current party has a cabin with a great number of secrets that they're slowly uncovering. I just figure out the world, they figure out what to do with it.

Sometimes I have to referee arguments, like when the cleric wants to destroy the wizard spell book and the wizard wants to keep it, but that's usually limited to saying stuff like "If you want to roll initiative, your action stands. Otherwise, you apparently have enough self control to not polymorph him just because you're frustrated."

[RickAllison]

Since we have yet to have any time in one place, the only communal resource is a group fund. That used to hehe primary repository of gold, until my characters of... Questionable morality started stealing everything that wasn't nailed down (and even some of that). It was in-character, they were aarakocra who loved shiny things and had no sense of personal property! When the second got sucked into a portal to the elemental plane of earth while trying to get reinforcements, they found out that all the hoarding he had done actually gifted them more gold for the group than the group fund and everyone else's reserves combined.

My new character will probably pull a similar stunt, but at least his funds will be legally gained! I will be interested to see if we learn some cooperation with resources.

[Calen]

I have run 2 campaigns where the party had communal resources.

The first was a game where they found a large windfall of cash and decided to invest in a dwelling. They jointly decided on what they wanted and could afford. It was pretty basic and the game ended before they got into upgrades and other stuff.

The second game the party is the crew aboard a ship and they have a community pool of resources. The captain and some of the crew is NPC's but the PC's decide where to go and what projects to fund. (The alchemist asked them to fund a lab for her.) So far it works well.

[Dark Ass4ssin 1]

I love giving my players a small fortress of village to expand and fortify throughout the game. Especially because in 5e mountains of glistening coinage are just shiny piles of trash.

With things like that all players need an equal stake in the land, and equal say in what goes where. So yes the party will need to go through a discussion to decide who gets what, and how the previously mentioned mountains of money get spent.

[MrConsideration]

Most players will simply jointly administer a 'party base' as a team. Most parties share gold or potions or other resources, surely the same co-operative, democratic urge is going to apply to a ship or castle or floating sky-fortress or whathaveyou.

[Kane0]

I'm part of the council in a kingmaker game run pretty much by the book, but I'm also part of another game where we run a fort along the shore.

We designated PCs and NPCs to key roles (Fort commander, field commander, logistics, defence, intel, medical, spokesperson, training, R&D, etc) and entrusted them to keep the small cogs running smoothly while we focused on the bigger issues in the area. If at some point one of us or our delegated officers messes something up we step in as a group and hash it out, nominating or hiring someone else if need be.
Its a nice balance between getting to micromanage projects and people without having to number crunch everything. The most I have to do as Logistics officer is track supplies, personnel and cash flow.

[Knaight]

I've never done this in 5e, but it doesn't seem like something too system specific. Outside of 5e, I've done it repeatedly and it has never caused problems.

[MaxWilson]

Anyone running any games where the entire party shares ownership in a significant resource? I'm thinking like a home base. A keep, or a manse, or even an inn the PCs run their adventures out of (and perhaps draw side income from). Is there a simple way to handle decisions about it without session boiling down to meetings and votes and whatnot?

Or howabout a ship, like a frigate? Do you assign a captain? How does the party decide where to sail next?

I've seen joint ownership of a spelljamming ship, which led to joint ownership of a space colony (and much table time was spent recruiting more peasants for the space colony). There wasn't much contention over where to go with the spelljamming ship (whoever was piloting usually just decided for everyone), but there was a bit of contention over who was going to be the mayor/sheriff/tax collector of the space colony, receive the revenues, and be responsible for defense. It was settled via an election in which both PC and NPC votes were counted; NPC votes were allocated by margin of success on a Persuasion check, and PC votes (including all characters in each player's character tree, even the offscreen ones) were allocated as the player decided. It was pretty close in the end but once someone was elected everyone was pretty happy with the result.

I don't know of any way to resolve a social dilemma that doesn't involve either a dictator or meetings and votes between the players, either formally or informally.

[DiceDiceBaby]

In the biggest campaign I am currently in at the moment, we have 10 active players (and more than 10 active PCs because some of us have an alt aside from out main character) and our first session involved all of us going, Fellowship of the Ring style, into an old, abandoned Goblin tower and removing the creatures that nested in the ages of it being unattended. It was a fun first episode, I assure you.

Mechanically, what that means for us now is that, despite our busy and conflicting schedules, any of us who is available can go to the DM's quest of the week (or month, as it were) and participate in advancing the plot (or opt to skip a session). We usually end up being four to five PCs at a time and go on a minor quest that usually results in an NPC joining us in the Tower. Any PCs who are not going to our sessions are assumed to be having downtime, and we keep an FB group to inform each other as to what our characters are doing (or chat with the DM secretly to further our nefarious goals, bwahaha).

The only real problem is that maintaining the tower costs a lot of money, and our party is in perpetual poverty. It's even worse by the fact that our DM's campaign is a post-war campaign which left most of us with PTSD and unemployment. Our DM also seems to be fond of having NPCs steal our items (it's happened at least twice now). As for communal resources, we don't really share anything except the cost of living in the Tower (which is currently falling into disrepair). Seems being an Outlander Barbarian is the only way to survive this campaign. Though I am going to try sharing some of my items with members of the party and see how that goes.

Oh, and our DM uses milestone experience and lets PCs who go on quests level up every one or two sessions. Those who don't attend also don't get to level up, so this is more or less fair to everyone. As for decision making, we usually have a poll on FB for this sort of thing, and the DM usually makes several quests for any given day so the party has a "choose your own adventure feel" where we reach a consensus on where to go (next village or on the side of the mountain?) for the next adventure. It's more or less communal, and occasionally our DM allows solo adventures if only one or two people attend.