Fleshing Out A Cult...Stock Market...Skill Challenge...Dungeon...Idea?

[DragonBaneDM]

Hi!

I am having the weirdest most niche writer's block with my newest dungeon.

I'm working on a new cult, a combination of a dwarven banker guild, pirates, and even some dragons all competing in a huge bank/cult chapel trying to gain the favor of an aberration giving them the ability to produce gold from thin air. (Midas is it's working name, we'll get there.)

Effectively I want to make the cult layered, each layer revealing more and more of the horrors underneath.

Layer 1: A bank heist/infiltration challenge for the party to break into a seemingly normal bank, with a few interesting characters.
Layer 2: The Cult of Coin. A mimic colony posing as a mix between a stock market and gold dungeon, featuring aspiring cultists frantically trying to acquire as much wealth as possible to ascend (well technically descend) up the cult's ranks.
Layer 3: Blood Money. The façade of this place being anything close to normal fades away, and the party encounters cultists who have "ascended" amidst halls of bleeding golden walls and organ-like architecture.
Layer 4: The Dungeon that Collects Dragons. Hostage dragons and the bones of deceased dragons, animated by tiny mimics taking the form of golden coins.
Layer 5: The Midas Version of the Beholder God By Czepeku (https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/604b6935987d8e384e0009cb/1615696030943-D9G311E6Z2V0NO38H5X5/gl_lairofthebeholdergod_gold4154.jpg?format=750w)

Layer 2 is where I'm having the hardest time thinking this through. I don't want it to be "Alright, time to fight this army of mimics and gold-obsessed cultists." I'd rather have it be a skill challenge of some kind where they lie, cheat, and steal to get the amount of wealth necessary to move on to the next part of the dungeon, while having a peak behind the scenes.

I drew a lot from Kill Six Billion Demons here.

Thing is. I have NO IDEA how to make "Go to the stock market and do a business" into something fun for my table. I mean, I get that it would be half insane cultists making promises of power and alliances and betrayals for INSANE sums of gold coins (that are actually little baby mimics), but how would you present this to your players to signal "Hey this is a thing y'all can jump in on if you'd like to keep getting deeper into this dungeon." ?


Thanks Playground.

[Gtdead]

Those damn "stock advisors" that get assigned to you by the broker whenever you join a CFD trading platform would be perfect as cultists trying to ascent. The main difference with your idea is that they don't invest their own money, instead they are trying to invest the client's money (in a fairly aggressive fashion, sometimes begging you, other times making you feel bad about "missing" on opportunities, and a myriad other predatory tactics) and, according to them, they only get payed by the company if they make successful deals for their clients, although I seriously doubt that this is the case.

The beauty of CFD trading is that you can have half your clients winning and half your clients losing, so you don't lose anything while you make money off the commission fees. The cultists could be oblivious to this fact, so the best advisors ascend and learn the truth, leaving the stock trading business and being assigned in positions where their skills will be more important, like managing the cult's investment funds.

Yea I'm stopping now cause this will turn into a rant of me hating on stock advisors. They really make CFD trading a terrible experience, as if it wasn't shady enough in the first place. ^_^

[MrStabby]

So firstly - this sounds awesome. I kind of envy your players here.

Unfortunately, what follows is a bit of a poorly organised brain dump.

1) Some kind of aura of law. Deals made are binding. Your word is power. Maybe just a really high level spellcaster zone of truth over the place would work, but maybe something tied with punishment if you try and break it. The idea is you may need to make deals here, but the deals are binding rather than bluffs. You want to persuade people that what you offer is valuable rather than just lie.

2) Greed for gold is just part of it. Fiends and hags and whatever barter for souls. Lawyers barter for the lives of their clients. Everyone barters for power.

3) NPCs that need help. The condemned man needing to barter for his life - he has assets but no lawyer and doesn't know anyone with whom to strike a deal. The dwarf who made an "investment" that went south now he must make good on his debts or his life is forefit. The mage on the edge of a breakthrough of a major discovery but is sick and dying and wants to barter for a bit more time to finish his research or to see his family.

4) "Investors" that don't play the market but shift it. They make bets and hire adventurers to make their predictions come about.

5) At least one powerful creature that wants to offer a warlock style pact to the players (be good to have a homebrewed pact of greed/pact of the coin ready)

6) Someone wants information on an NPC they know and like to better have them murdered

7) Someone offers infromation on the location of a great treasure or great secret that the PCs might want as their next quest

8) A mummy is seen depositing coins. PCs may know about the curse of the mummy's treasure and need to take steps to not be paid in any of them.

So for layer 2 - I see this as being a really RP heavy bit of play. Find the cultists looking to make deals to ascend. Find what kind of deals they want to make. Understand their desires. Make counteroffers. Find opportunities for arbitrage between cultists or running a Dutch book. If you give the players some things to trade before going in - some obvious like a great stonking heap of gold, some subtle like information and see what they are willing to part with. Part of any deal should be helping the PCs ascend/descend. To keep it fun, rather than an excercise in accounting make sure the things being raded are evocative - are the PCs willing to trade in souls? To act as intermediaries? If there is a contract of indenture, essentially making someone a slave, will they trade that away? Some things given up should have in game consequences that drive the plot forwards, others should be safer. If some of the "deals" are essentially insurance - a payment made if a ship sinks or whatever, it can be a good reward for players who have attended to the details of the world and moreover it can involve rolling dice in some quite high stakes games.

Still, nothing wrong with a bit of combat here. Maybe some guard golems beating up a debtor that they want to recue or something. You might want them guarding a specific area so the players can retreat from them - a show of power and an incentive to RP the session rather than fight it.

Trade in intangebles might be better than trade in gold because of the impact later in the campaign. If you have gold everywhere, there is a risk the pCs can walk out with so much cash that money just isn't a object for them and it diminishes the incentive to explore your world. Trading in things that can be used to drive the plot forwards could be fun.

[Phhase]

Try mixing the themes into combat. Perhaps you can buy off combatants with competing offers. Perhaps what combatants will take for payment changes as the stock market shifts. Perhaps you can tell how the market is shifting by what the pseudo-druids they employ are currently wild-shaping into bulls or bears. So it's as much a bidding war as an actual war. Perhaps you can make clever bets with combatants for currency - "I bet you (x) that (cleverly worded bet)".