Quote from: mightyuncle;681254The players in the last campaign I ran ended up owning and running a tavern as a base of operations (and as a hiring pool for new blood). After a while they were more content sitting around and trying to maximize profits instead of going out and adventuring so I threw taxes at them. I also had someone steal their precious ale recipe, leading to a pretty fun romp through the city sewers.

Why?

Why didn't you just say, "Okay, you run a modestly successful inn for the rest of your lives.  The end."

Or "I thought this was an adventure game.  Aren't the adventures fun?  What do I need to do to change them?"

Serious question.

Quote from: jadrax;682412Arguably it did not actually work. Trade clearly diminished in the Spanish Colonies due to this.

So why is this tax difference so high? Is owner of Santa Domingo collecting war taxes? Is he funding social works? Is perhaps PaP's economy so good that they can afford tax cuts? Or is PaP trying to bankrupt SD economically, by stealing it's trade away from it? [/Quote]

It was Spanish policy at the time that its colonies would have to fund their own defense and this is historically part of how they went about it. The double normal rate (actually it was closer to 20% on imports and 40% on exports but I simplified it) was imposed across all their colonies, but Hispaniola was the only one that had major competition on the same island.

The Spanish also did not do much production, Port-au-Prince was heavily surrounded by French sugar plantations to make money. In Santo Domingo they did not even bother cutting the jungle back.

But world building aside (which is very interesting in its own right) I am still interested how people would model this kind of thing *In Game*. For example, would you charge people 10% more in Santo Domingo and 10% less in Tortuga? Would you only do that on bulk purchases or bulk sales? Would you just gloss over it and rely on description to set the scene?[/QUOTE]

Probably exactly that - adjust the "world price list", if there is one, by the taxation.

Quote from: Old Geezer;682417Why?

Why didn't you just say, "Okay, you run a modestly successful inn for the rest of your lives.  The end."

Or "I thought this was an adventure game.  Aren't the adventures fun?  What do I need to do to change them?"

Serious question.

Because for some of us trade is the adventure. Crawling around dungeons and scaling aeries does nothing for us and we want a change of pace into a city game with intrigues (or travel game, or management game, etc.). 'Adventure' has a far broader meaning across tables.

Quote from: Opaopajr;682444Because for some of us trade is the adventure. Crawling around dungeons and scaling aeries does nothing for us and we want a change of pace into a city game with intrigues (or travel game, or management game, etc.). 'Adventure' has a far broader meaning across tables.

I think it was JibbaJabba who said one of the best games he had ever had was when the group spent the whole session haggling in a shop. A lot of fun can be had just roleplaying. Although intrigues sound great too.

Quote from: Opaopajr;682444Because for some of us trade is the adventure. Crawling around dungeons and scaling aeries does nothing for us and we want a change of pace into a city game with intrigues (or travel game, or management game, etc.). 'Adventure' has a far broader meaning across tables.

This is more my style.  My players actually generally go 'adventuring' 1/4th of the time.  The Igbarians were bequeathed a small manor and property and adjoining farms that are expecting their protection, and are working on that heavily, as well as funding their Church on the Godstraat for the last 3 sessions.

Quote from: Opaopajr;682444Because for some of us trade is the adventure. Crawling around dungeons and scaling aeries does nothing for us and we want a change of pace into a city game with intrigues (or travel game, or management game, etc.). 'Adventure' has a far broader meaning across tables.

Along with numerous others I fully agree with this.  In addition, if the DM can't come up with plenty of ways to involve this smart party in adventures, then someone just isn't really trying.  Think about it, all the times that the characters have sat around a tavern and planned their next dungeon crawl (does the party now owning the tavern overhear the plans).  Or maybe the PCs overhear a plot against the crown/the mayor/local lord/big time temple/whatever.  Or all the times the party started/was involved in a tavern brawl (imagine the fun now that the tables have turned and it's other adventurers who are breaking everything in sight).

This tavern setup sounds like such a really fun time.

Quote from: Opaopajr;682444Because for some of us trade is the adventure. Crawling around dungeons and scaling aeries does nothing for us and we want a change of pace into a city game with intrigues (or travel game, or management game, etc.). 'Adventure' has a far broader meaning across tables.

Exactly.  I don't run an "adventure" game.  I run a roleplaying game.  My wife's been doing solo runs for years now, with the most powerful wizard in my campaign's history.  Having pretty much BEEN there and DONE that on half a hundred battlefields, those sessions have been heavily dominated by her running her small estate, raising her two small children, and the most fun she has is when she plays hooky and lives out of a vardo in a Gypsy encampment, or when she puts on an apron and cooks the evening meal in the family inn.

Now this is a character who doesn't merely talk to emperors and archprelates, they listen respectfully to what she has to say.  She's still as potent on a battlefield as she ever was, but she's been through three Armageddons so far, and the small-scale roleplaying tickles her fancy.  She'd much rather put the smackdown on that bunch of soldiers harassing the pacifist Gypsies than on the Demons of Alternity on the Island of Madness in the Lake of Soulfire.

Quote from: jadrax;682412But world building aside (which is very interesting in its own right) I am still interested how people would model this kind of thing *In Game*. For example, would you charge people 10% more in Santo Domingo and 10% less in Tortuga? Would you only do that on bulk purchases or bulk sales? Would you just gloss over it and rely on description to set the scene?

I agree that a +10% surcharge, by medieval standards, is positively mild.

But to answer your question, the players really shouldn't see any evidence of this at all.  So you're buying a cask of rum in Santo Domingo, and the shopkeeper charges you 19 shillings.  How many players are going to scratch their heads and say, "Hang on, didn't that cost 16 shillings sixpence in Barbados last month?"

Or look at it this way: how much do each and every one of you know how much you pay out in taxes on items you purchase?  You know that most clothing and shoes are made overseas, right?  Did you know that there's about a 10% tariff on all of those?

True, for all talk of sales taxes, I often end up rolling it (and inflation) in together with the price; I don't provide itemized receipts unless the setting allows and the players care (usually modern investigation).

And with property taxes (fiefs, fees, tolls) would have been negotiated at the transfer. So my players characters would need to agree up front when they reach such. Unless they are total foreigners, and blissfully ignore the locale, it would be hard for PCs to be "surprised" by such taxes.

In most historical periods of a typical fantasy setting "sales taxes" were not something that usually happened; except at times in the form of a specific tax on specific products.

Anyways, in most fantasy games I would presume that a 'sales tax' is already factored into the cost of equipment.  In a lot of games I won't worry about taxation at all; but in Dark Albion I use the LotFP taxation rules; and in Arrows of Indra there's historically accurate rules about how taxation worked in vedic India.

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