I'm not sure how to handle this.

[Railak]

So my party just cleared out a farm of a family of ghouls raised by a necromancer, during their search they came across the deed to the house. I had written in my notes about the house deed so it wasn't something unexpected, and the party was generally pretty happy with the find.
The problem I'm having at he moment is the party seems to be under the assumption that just having the deed gives them ownership of the house. The original owners have at this point died twice. So that's not the issue, I was under the assumption that transferring ownership of the house without the sale/signature from the previous owner would cost something at least.
The original plan was going to be something like 300 gp to transfer the deed, but the party already think the house is theirs.
Not really sure as what to do, just let them have the house, or find some way to let them know they've gotta transfer the deed?

As a side note I have written in that guards do go by the house every now and then to make sure there's no squatters.

[RexDart]

If the original owners didn't have living heirs, the property would go to the Crown, so the local lord could transfer title to the property, with conditions as he sees fit.

[Raz Dazzle]

Maybe have the local authorities waive the transfer fee in gratitude for the party's heroics. The party still gets the reward they expected, but also they understand deeds don't automatically confer ownership.

[RexDart]

Maybe have the local authorities waive the transfer fee in gratitude for the party's heroics. The party still gets the reward they expected, but also they understand deeds don't automatically confer ownership.

If you do this, you should require 1 gp or 1 sp as consideration under the common law of contracts.

[Tiktakkat]

You might want to have a PC make a K (local) or (nobility) check as well so their characters "know" that land transfers require more than just possession of a document.

[AnimeTheCat]

Well, there are a few ways your can target this. In most medieval historical texts, the King or local Lord owned all the land, so you could go the route of the guards see the group there, notice that they're taking care of the property (presumably) and that they don't seem to be homeless or poor (they have armor and equipment), so they take an approach of letting the party know that by order of the local lord, all deeds must be transferred to the new owner's names and all new owners are to pay an initial tax of 300 gold in order to obtain the royal seal of ownership of the land.

Alternatively, you could give the group a chance at a knowledge local or knowledge nobility check in order to know the laws in the land.

Thirdly, you could start some sort of conflict between the party and the local lord that is resolved via roleplay and doesn't end up costing the party anything.

Lastly, you could just leave it be and move on. Is the 300 gp cost really that important to the storyline? What changes whether the party is the new owners of the property by recovering the deed or they pay for it? If there's no difference in the long term, is there any reason do to anything differently?

[Ghen]

Mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity, what happens if the players learn about the 300 gp fee and choose not to pay it? Legally speaking, what happens to the house then?

I would probably enforce a title transfer just to keep a black market from developing, in which any thief who steals a deed suddenly owns the associated property. However, 300 gp seems wildly expensive to me; the common muck-shoveling peasant could never afford it, even if they saved up their whole lives. Maybe the oppression of muck-shoveling peasants is part of the campaign though :)

If you don't think your party will start a deed-stealing crime spree and the fee collection would detract from your game rather than add to it, maybe you should just ignore it. Cut 300 gold from the party loot some time later to keep their resources where you planned for them to be.

[Railak]

You might want to have a PC make a K (local) or (nobility) check as well so their characters "know" that land transfers require more than just possession of a document.

I don't actually know if any of them actually have ranks in either of those knowledges. As far as I know none of them are actually intelligence based.


Maybe have the local authorities waive the transfer fee in gratitude for the party's heroics. The party still gets the reward they expected, but also they understand deeds don't automatically confer ownership.

Funny thing about that, they heard from some random bar patrons that there were people doing some grave robbing. Then one thing lead to another and they basically found a necromancer squatting in the house who raised the family as ghouls. The necromancer was feeding them recently buried people so they wouldn't go out "hunting", they didn't want to draw attention to themselves. They were using magic to conceal their presence from the guards, and as it had only been a short time since the guards last came wasn't expecting the party to just show up.
So the guards didn't really know there was any heroicing needed. They also did receive a hastily constructed reward (I'm actually not even sure how much I gave them, since we use plastic coins and I didn't count them)


Mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity, what happens if the players learn about the 300 gp fee and choose not to pay it? Legally speaking, what happens to the house then?

I would probably enforce a title transfer just to keep a black market from developing, in which any thief who steals a deed suddenly owns the associated property. However, 300 gp seems wildly expensive to me; the common muck-shoveling peasant could never afford it, even if they saved up their whole lives. Maybe the oppression of muck-shoveling peasants is part of the campaign though :)

If you don't think your party will start a deed-stealing crime spree and the fee collection would detract from your game rather than add to it, maybe you should just ignore it. Cut 300 gold from the party loot some time later to keep their resources where you planned for them to be.

Well I kinda gave a rough guess for the transfer of a deed without the previous owner being alive to transfer it based off several things, one the actual cost of the farm, using the ultimate campaign guide from pathfinder, putting it at around 2000 gp, it's proximity to the capital (I'm not sure what the correct term is) of the kingdom, and a few other things.

[RexDart]

Mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity, what happens if the players learn about the 300 gp fee and choose not to pay it? Legally speaking, what happens to the house then?

I would probably enforce a title transfer just to keep a black market from developing, in which any thief who steals a deed suddenly owns the associated property. However, 300 gp seems wildly expensive to me; the common muck-shoveling peasant could never afford it, even if they saved up their whole lives. Maybe the oppression of muck-shoveling peasants is part of the campaign though :)

If you don't think your party will start a deed-stealing crime spree and the fee collection would detract from your game rather than add to it, maybe you should just ignore it. Cut 300 gold from the party loot some time later to keep their resources where you planned for them to be.

The party would be squatters. Again assuming the family has no living heirs, it's not their property, but that of the local legal authority. Who could sell the house and transfer title (using a new deed) to the party*.

The local lord, or his administrator, might stop by and have a friendly conversation. "Look, it's not that I don't like you folks, but if I let one person take possession of property just because they found a deed, then everyone could do it! Or it looks like we're enforcing the laws arbitrarily, and where does that get us? Anarchy and uprisings! So let's just do this all legal-like and keep things on the up and up, eh? We really don't want to have to send the guard round to kick you out. 'Specially since you'd probably beat them, then we'd have to call on the King for help, and that would be an awful bother...."

Knowledge about deeds could be a simple low-DC Intelligence roll, btw. Someone remembers talk about their family's real estate dealings, or some other family's, etc.

* An interesting side question is, do they really want the house to be transferred to all 6 (or whatever) of them? That could get annoying for their heirs, or if 1/6 of the house now belongs to the Rogue's obnoxious mother after he gets stomped on by an ogre and killed.... Maybe one or a couple of the characters with money would rather buy out the shares of the others?

[Particle_Man]

This is how the party turns to evil and become the villains of the next campaign isn’t it? Over a farm.

[icefractal]

"the party was generally pretty happy with the find" - will they still be happy if they have to pay 300 gp for it? Depending on the PCs' wealth, this might be a trivial amount, but if not, you risk turning a cool find that could give the PCs a connection to the area into either a source of resentment (against either the local authorities, or against you personally if they feel like it was added retroactively) or simply something they skip, because the utility value of a farmhouse to an adventuring party is pretty low.

I'm getting a little bit of "stack of pancakes" vibes here, if you know what I mean. :smallwink:

[JNAProductions]

"the party was generally pretty happy with the find" - will they still be happy if they have to pay 300 gp for it? Depending on the PCs' wealth, this might be a trivial amount, but if not, you risk turning a cool find that could give the PCs a connection to the area into either a source of resentment (against either the local authorities, or against you personally if they feel like it was added retroactively) or simply something they skip, because the utility value of a farmhouse to an adventuring party is pretty low.

I'm getting a little bit of "stack of pancakes" vibes here, if you know what I mean. :smallwink:

I'll echo this. Let the players have their little house-it's a good way to make more hooks and get them invested.

[Particle_Man]

What does “stack of pancakes” mean in this context?

[sreservoir]

Sounds like a plot hook for the party to come into conflict with the local authorities over their ownership of the house.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

What does “stack of pancakes” mean in this context?From this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?495544-Is-an-Acre-to-much-land-to-give-to-a-party) thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=21032271&postcount=3):

"Is a stack of ten pancakes too many pancakes to give to the party, even if most of them fell on the floor and one or two were stepped on? I wanted to give my party pancakes as a reward but I'm unsure if it's too much. The pancakes are also laced with blowfish poison so the party would probably have to get an antitoxin before they could eat the ones which weren't pulverized by shoes."

[Quertus]

Yeah, in short, for versimilitude, give a gentle nod to, "that's not how it's done", have the local lord give them a new deed "at cost" (paper costs how much?) out of gratitude / fear / common sense, include knowledge checks as appropriate to not make the party seem "pants on head", but, above all else, don't turn their happy home into bloody pancakes! And that includes, btw, making the deed simple - the house belongs to the legal entity of "the party", not to its individual constituents.

[aglondier]

This is the sort of thing that can very easily lead to sudden and massive alignment shifts. Sure, use their new holdings as a plot device, but always remember that PCs have a different set of problem solving tools to everyone else...

As an example, in a recent campaign the party pooled their spare gold and bought their favourite tavern that had recently been closed. Shortly thereafter the local thieves guild sent in their spokesman, a tentative agreement was reached as to "insurance" against misfortune. Next thing we know, a guild rep is auditing the tavern so the guild would know, to the copper, what it is worth and what they think we should pay. We didn't like the idea, and booted them out with the directive to get the negotiator back in. Suddenly our suppliers dried up. All pretty reasonable so far...

...except for the fact that half the party are murder hobos, only held in check through the efforts of the character who manages the tavern...

...who, not being a fan of the thieves guild in the first place, suggested to his comrades that maybe burning down the district the guild was based in might not be a bad idea. Planning was well underway, when the party got involved in a fight against a half-fiend otyugh in the middle of the city, and the guild realised that it might not be a good idea to provoke people who could fairly easily kill that thing.

That said, the murder hobo characters are eagerly awaiting our return to the city, since they know that someone will have messed with us in our absence.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If the party is reasonable (for a given value of "reasonable") and not indiscriminately murderous anarchists, the property could be leveraged to get the party to care about both it and the township or whatever it's a part of. And I'm not talking about stuff like being conscripted into an army, either. If you get the party interested in the NPCs of the area as friends and allies, or if they have a financial stake in the place (or both), any invasion or monster infestation or plague could spur them to action to protect them.

Give them some token responsibilities to the local government (preferably in a way that clearly and directly benefits them instead of just nebulously requiring taxes "for the crown," or whatever), and they'll probably feel responsible after awhile. For instance, using the money they would otherwise have to pay in taxes to hire people in the area for directly improving the lives of everyone there (including the party) and considering that money to be a tax write-off might work. After all, making investments that have the possibility of tangible benefits (net increasing the WBL they get after a small period for the work to be done) would seem pretty appealing, especially if you don't have a history of doing cruel fakeouts to the players. Maybe even make it some sort of minigame, where the players hire NPCs to run a business, and you play some card-games to determine how well the business runs in their absence, with the players getting a percentage of the profits, or maybe some magic items produced as part of the business's operations.

Of course, if the players don't like that kind of thing, don't force it, but if you think they might, then go for it!

[Segev]

This is the sort of thing that can very easily lead to sudden and massive alignment shifts. Sure, use their new holdings as a plot device, but always remember that PCs have a different set of problem solving tools to everyone else...

As an example, in a recent campaign the party pooled their spare gold and bought their favourite tavern that had recently been closed. Shortly thereafter the local thieves guild sent in their spokesman, a tentative agreement was reached as to "insurance" against misfortune. Next thing we know, a guild rep is auditing the tavern so the guild would know, to the copper, what it is worth and what they think we should pay. We didn't like the idea, and booted them out with the directive to get the negotiator back in. Suddenly our suppliers dried up. All pretty reasonable so far...

...except for the fact that half the party are murder hobos, only held in check through the efforts of the character who manages the tavern...

...who, not being a fan of the thieves guild in the first place, suggested to his comrades that maybe burning down the district the guild was based in might not be a bad idea. Planning was well underway, when the party got involved in a fight against a half-fiend otyugh in the middle of the city, and the guild realised that it might not be a good idea to provoke people who could fairly easily kill that thing.

That said, the murder hobo characters are eagerly awaiting our return to the city, since they know that someone will have messed with us in our absence.


If the party is reasonable (for a given value of "reasonable") and not indiscriminately murderous anarchists, the property could be leveraged to get the party to care about both it and the township or whatever it's a part of. And I'm not talking about stuff like being conscripted into an army, either. If you get the party interested in the NPCs of the area as friends and allies, or if they have a financial stake in the place (or both), any invasion or monster infestation or plague could spur them to action to protect them.

Give them some token responsibilities to the local government (preferably in a way that clearly and directly benefits them instead of just nebulously requiring taxes "for the crown," or whatever), and they'll probably feel responsible after awhile. For instance, using the money they would otherwise have to pay in taxes to hire people in the area for directly improving the lives of everyone there (including the party) and considering that money to be a tax write-off might work. After all, making investments that have the possibility of tangible benefits (net increasing the WBL they get after a small period for the work to be done) would seem pretty appealing, especially if you don't have a history of doing cruel fakeouts to the players. Maybe even make it some sort of minigame, where the players hire NPCs to run a business, and you play some card-games to determine how well the business runs in their absence, with the players getting a percentage of the profits, or maybe some magic items produced as part of the business's operations.

Of course, if the players don't like that kind of thing, don't force it, but if you think they might, then go for it!

These posts highlight an important OOC discussion you should have with your players: What do they see having the farm as meaning to their characters, and how do they want to play with it? What do they want to do with the farm, and how do they want the farm to benefit them?

What their goals and expectations are will tell you what they care about and what will be fun for them to be able to game to try to eke the most out of, versus what they'll find tedious, too much trouble, or otherwise unfun to have to put up with.

The thieves' guild thing is a good example of plot hooks. It's not the DM out to get them, just some trouble and a chance to prove to the thieves' guild that perhaps the PCs are, in fact, more badass than previously estimated. Or remind them of it.

It can be fun playing the ones reminding the world that Lloyd-kun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppose_a_Kid_from_the_Last_Dungeon_Boonies_Moved_ to_a_Starter_Town) may be a sweet kid who doesn't know when he's being bullied, but that bullying him is still an incredibly bad idea.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/c2/d7/51c2d7a679d596165fba66a07e6858f9.jpg

It can also be fun to play sim city with your farm, figuring out how to make it do as much for you as you can get, and the challenges that arise from that create neat gameplay. As well as letting the DM introduce NPCs who the PCs might come to like and want to help out, and enjoy making happy. Note that you don't need to threaten NPCs the PCs like with horrible fates, either: they can be quest-givers for positive reasons, or they can have minor problems that take some creativity to solve but won't ruin their lives by themselves.

[Railak]

Yeah, I have absolutely no interest in making it a burden or causing problems with it.. using as plot hooks, and a place for the party to basically live for "free", minus a small tax fee that won't happen often, like maybe end of harvest season, cause that's when farmers would actually have money. Turns out a farmer actually gets about 50 gp off an acre of land per year just growing wheat. Now I know almost all of it generally goes back into the farm, but yeah end if harvest season is when farmers would have money.