The game that I am running will move to Taldor pretty soon and one of my players has told me of a plan that I have no idea how to deal with. She wants to try to buy out the banks in Taldor. Now I am not opposed to this, I have allowed some fairly crazy things. But I have not idea how to set this up. Not set it up to let her succeed or fail but to put the information together and see what the party does.
What she is wanting to do is gain power in Tador though owning the banks. Which is not a bad idea. But I have not found much information on the banking system in Taldor. Sadly this nation has little info on it. And yet this is an important place in my story. Along with one of the main locations for the party to gain patrons, allies, and minions for the final fight.
Taldor is a crumbling empire with a lot of old money in the Nobility. I know there are a lot of merchants, sailors, soldiers, and entertainers. These people are the types to put their savings in the bank versus in the mattress to get stolen. While the Nobility might not have all their funds tied up in the banks some houses most likely have loans.
How do you set up a banking system in Taldor, the decadent and crumbling empire. Should the banks be in a bad spot and need the monetary backing from the PC's. Should the Crown hold it? Or perhaps other people or creatures (Dragons are fun!) have already done this and secretly hold much of the dying empire in their sway thanks holding the money.
Thank you in advance.
whats the governing body look like? I did something similar in which i had to set up on paper trade/money-paper-trail that a secret council tended to. This was Katapesh though, and there's more solid information about how it works over there, being a nation built on monetary possession.
'Crown.' Do the ruling royals control the finances in the kingdom? I assume they do. Because of this it might be/should be harder for a regular adventurer to buy something like that, as apposed to a privatized business.
If so, there can be a good diplomacy/trade plot-line in there. If Taldor is in a very real and visible decline, it might make sense for them to "sell" off power in exchange for money and services. Being an adventuring group, any popularity/power they have would be known to people of power, and i'm sure theyd be willing to align themselves with the party to help the empire.
As a GM, you can do many different things. Just think about it as a whole. Whats Taldors stance? Go from there
EDIT: I'd also recommend leaning on the side of arch oriented play. As in, instead of putting a price tag and calling it a day, maybe there can be a known collection of treasures valuable to the Royals that they lost possession of and don't have the man-power/strength/balls to get it back. Or, assuming Taldor hasn't made nice with any and everyone, there can be some international style requests that fit there main goal. Probably the revitalization of a once great empire.
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There may be some secular banks, but I would think that much of the banking industry is handled by the church of Abadar. If you go that option, then they should be in decent shape, as the church of Abadar spans the Inner Sea region and beyond. So each bank has the backing of an international organization, like if the Fed here in the US was multinational.
That's a very different scenario than the one you have envisioned, but it opens up a different line of plots. It's more likely that the nobles are the ones in debt to the bank rather than the other way around. The banks may be in a spot of trouble with a decadent and declining nobility as clientelle. The High Priest of Abadar in Taldor may be messing with inflation/deflation in a bid to recover; perhaps that's not working out so well and the bank isn't as stable as it otherwise would be, along with involving the church in a scandal.
If the player wants to take control of the banks, they may need to discredit the entire religion of Abadar throughout Taldor. If they could prompt a bank rush, it could crash the market, at least temporarily, like what happened with the Great Depression.
Human Puppet I rather like the fetch quest and I might actually be able to use that. I have a fun fight that I have been trying to figure out how to bring to the groups attention and this could be a good way to do this. Hehe :)
The selling of power for services or money will totally be a thing.
The Dread Pirate Hurley I like the Abadar idea! this is awesome. I did not even think of that.
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Actually, throughout history many nobles were land-rich and cash-poor. Money-lending families like the Rothschilds were the banks of their period. They held tremendous influence, helping finance estate improvements, wars, weddings and other bits of conspicuous consumption.
If you look up what the Rothschilds were doing in the Napoleonic era, you'll have a great basis for your banks in Taldor.
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Human puppet has it. Set up a series of goals for the player and party that coincide with the actual adventures:
tl;dr Global structure:
A. get noble
B. get on banking concern board
C. get rid of rivals
D. profit?
A. Get Noble
1.) Players will need to be noble in Taldor, and Taldor nobles cannot be made from new people.
2.) There are two "lost" noble houses and getting named heir by either of them would get the job done.
3.) One noble house is actually all dead (work to find this out), but raise dead or forgery plus critical lost artifacts could get the title (work to get this done)
4.) The other house's sole representative is held captive by demons/pirate demons/ninja pirate demons. Rescue plus refinancing the noble plus awkward marriage to another richer house gets the title.
B. Get on the banking concern board
1.) Corporations are controlled by people, people who don't like you, you upstart foreigner noble! But you don't have the generations to waste waiting to be an old family! So time to get on the board.
2.) Make 5 powerful NPC's, each with very different backgrounds. Make 1 good, one very evil and 3 in the middle. Create a system by which the PC can either:
3.) Ally with the good guy and find a way to get rid of the bad guy while also being discovered as a massive hero in town so that public pressure gets them on the board.
4.) Convince all 3 neutrals to vote someone else off, who then becomes an eternal enemy.
C. Get rid of rivals
1.) the problem with the rest of the board members is that they have their own interests. you can't control the banks until you have replaced them with lackeys...er...uh...I mean...upstanding individuals that mirror your own interests.
2.) Become a pirate unofficially and drive that shipping family to their knees.
3.) win a series of convoluted social encounters to force someone to demand a duel while also looking the victim.
4.) win a military campaign for the king instead of your rival.
D. Profit?
1.) the problem with owning the bank is the work of keeping it profitable. Greasing the right wheels, being present at every social engagement, stopping people from meddling, etc. Plus, this new dangerous adventuring party just came to town and it looks like one of them wants to get into banking...
It's the circle of life.
Awesome! Thank you future Goblin Bride!
Hehe Get Noble. This amuses me. Also ninja pirate demons and an awkward marriage. Basically your whole post was amusing to me. And for that I thank you. Making them have to be noble would be awesome! I have a Kellid human thing, a goblin, a half orc, and a really old dwarf.
Bah so many freaking options and I still have to get them to the actual plot which is so far from banking.
Awesome! Thank you future Goblin Bride!
Hehe Get Noble. This amuses me. Also ninja pirate demons and an awkward marriage. Basically your whole post was amusing to me. And for that I thank you. Making them have to be noble would be awesome! I have a Kellid human thing, a goblin, a half orc, and a really old dwarf.
Bah so many freaking options and I still have to get them to the actual plot which is so far from banking.
If the party is all interested in the banking thing, make that your plot.
You aren't telling a story, you are creating a world around the center, which is the PC party.
As for banking, how much money do these characters have??? Wow.
It's one player currently. And it will be a lot of money, a few Dragon hoards are going to be part of it. And the party in game is aware of some of the baddies. This is one way this pc is wanting get more money and I am trying to figure out how to approach it
It's one player currently. And it will be a lot of money, a few Dragon hoards are going to be part of it. And the party in game is aware of some of the baddies. This is one way this pc is wanting get more money and I am trying to figure out how to approach it
Sounds like kingdom building to me.
Campaign guide maybe?
It's one player currently. And it will be a lot of money, a few Dragon hoards are going to be part of it. And the party in game is aware of some of the baddies. This is one way this pc is wanting get more money and I am trying to figure out how to approach it
It can mesh nicely depending on what the other players want. Perhaps one wants in on a guild of some kind, or another just gets pissed off at a noble who may or may not be in the way ...
Feel free to probe the other players on their own plans. Sewing subplot strands together can be fun!
Don't forget there are going to be plenty of people that want to separate the PC's from their money. These can be your standard rogue guild baddies but don't forget stepping into the business world their are plenty of slick business people that will sell you London bridge if they can get away with it. Have some serious bad guy politician set up schemes that present the PC's with supposed "amazing opportunities" that are nothing but smoke and mirrors letting this person get away with the PC's loot legally, so the PC's have no legal recourse.
Most of these banks will be separate entities, and many of these will have several people you'll need to buy from. Since they are in competition, these banks will watch what happens to each other. The player might get part of a bank or even one bank pretty reasonably. After that people will start seeing what the player is doing (unless he's really good at hiding it) and charge more. Some will sell at inflated prices to make money, others will refuse to drive up the price. I expect that at least one will try to build up an empire of their own to stop him.
It seems to be a complete campaign on its own to collect the necessary capital, negotiate with the banks and use some less nice means to 'convince' them. Did I mention the assassins nervous bank owners might send?
Do the other players have a real reason to support her? Else it will be rather boring for them... Perhaps do it the other way round. Let her adventure as usual, with the primary motivation of gathering capital. During the adventure she might SLOWLY build up some useful connections. At level 20 (or 15 or whatever), when the usual adventure is done, she could go for her bank plan. Probably alone, probably with the help of some now underused fellow adventurers. If she is patient enough to wait till then, that is. I'd give her one morsel every session or so, to keep her motivated...
Wow lots of replies. My campaign is a lot of subplots woven together. I try to include the random stuff they want into the plot, so far this has given me a richer and deeper plot.
To my knowledge it is one player but that could change. With the end game I have planned they will have a lot of money. Enough to raise an army or outfit their group and the cohorts with +6 or higher weapons.
Should this happen it will not be easy or cheap for them.
Bear in mind that the title of an archbishop in the church of Abadar is "Archbanker". Abadar is the Master of the First Vault. He's almost synonymous with banking. They have access to Divination spells and can play all manner of games with the stock market if they felt there was some manner of illegal dealing going on. So if your PC tries anything underhand, he's going to be found out fairly soon.
If it's anything like the last crumbling nobles of a great empire (Britain), the nobles held most of their wealth in land and borrowed against it (and eventually went bankrupt when the merchant classes overtook them). So yes, the PC could gain a lot of indirect political power over those indebted nobles, if he could control enough of the banking system to stop them moving to another bank. OTOH, this might be perceived as an unwanted foreign intervention, though the ultimate investors in Taldan banks are quite likely to be foreign already (from Druma, Cheliax, Qadira, Osirion, Andoran, etc)
Like the rest of the country, Taldan banks might be rather old-fashioned, inefficient and living on faded glory, compared to those of Druma and Andoran. It wouldn't surprise me if the Bank of Cassomir was owned outright by someone in Westcrown or Katapesh.