It occurred to me that having a campaign take place entirely (mostly) in one town gives the DM an opportunity he doesn't normaly get: collecting taxes from the PCs.
The rising taxes under you-know-who's rule could become a real attention grabber if the PCs are held to those same taxes. Aside from income taxes due on the treasure collected in the various dungeons surrounding Cauldron, what other taxes do you think would be inflicted? Seasonal taxes would make the increasing taxation even more noticeable.
I remember there being an excellent discussion of medieval taxes in the old 2nd ed. Castle Guide, but I no longer have that.
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There are two things -
One: You-know-who says he needs the taxes to increase the guard detail, because of increased robberies of caravans. In truth his own bandits are robbing the carvans.
Two: Taxes for real estate - space is at a premium in Cauldron. I even went so far, that all real estate and buildings are on loan from the town.
I like it! Just make sure that the players find out at some point that their hard-earned taxes went toward causing them pain (maybe they find a big ledger book in y-k-w's place, open to a page that highlights their "contribution" to the cause!).
I think it might be particularly fun to note that the players' money funded the construction of the last of 13 you-know-whats (particularly if you have one of the players end up inside that you-know-what!).
'Bones, that's genius. I'd already swiped von Spreckelsen's land-lease idea from an earlier post, but this is going in my sack too.
My characters are looking into buying a grand house (4 to 10 rooms, under the DMG 3rd ed more equipment guide) at 5000 gp's. Under that I figured 100gp a month taxes, and that was 'high' considering all else. How much are you charging for taxes?
My characters are looking into buying a grand house (4 to 10 rooms, under the DMG 3rd ed more equipment guide) at 5000 gp's. Under that I figured 100gp a month taxes, and that was 'high' considering all else. How much are you charging for taxes?
If you want (what passes for) a realistic tax as opposed to a screw your players tax, I'd go for a gate tax. Basically, everything you try to take into the city is taxed. this would be a fixed percentage on goods (every 20th apple for example), and a fixed amount on people and livestock (a couple of coppers for a man, a silver for a horse, etc). You can make this pretty complex. For example, you could tax weapons and armor. You could make certain items exempt (gold or jewels for example, or comon goods like hay).
The advantage of a gate tax from the collector's perspective is that you only need a few people to man the gates and collect the taxes, while you cover almost all your citizens and visitors. A monthly or yearly tax is a lot harder to collect, as you have to have a pretty complex system to administrate who paid what and when. It's also pretty hard to determine how much money someone has, or the value of his assets. Especially with houses that pass on from one generation to the next and are never actually sold.
I like the idea of the gate tax, but I still think that a yearly or monthly tax on all citizens is not unreasonable even in this setting. It doesn't matter who 'owns' the house, the owner needs to pay taxes for at least town services. I wasn't worried about assessing income taxes or such, just property and services. Certain services are private, like fresh water delivery ( or you gotta go get it yourself) and such.