So, your player characters have quickly accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.

How do you figure out ways to creatively make use of this money?
How can they spend it in a way that neither turns them into unstoppable supermen (ie the buying of magic items) nor makes them feel like you're cheating them (ie. "the kingdom has a 90% tax" or "you got robbed by bandits who then immediately spent all your winnings on booze and whores")?

RPGPundit

The old school way.

They're given a lordship, and now they have a castle, and all these servants to feed, and fortifications to repair, and trade missions to fund, and ...

I'd second J Arcane's suggestion: go all old-school-end-game and let them impact the setting through the acquisition of property. Let them obtain land grants from local nobles to build castles, and staff them. Let them hire mercenaries or soldiers, and initiate mass combat battles against threats or rivals, if they choose.

From a player's standpoint, I think there's some satisfaction to be had in making a mark on a campaign - especially a long-term campaign - through PC-constructed properties/domains.

P.S. I hate, hate, a magic shop economy in any fantasy RPG.

EDIT: Also, I should add that some skill-based fantasy RPGs - like the various editions of RuneQuest - use acquired wealth as a means to purchase skill or magic spell training. In the earliest editions of RQ, you could actually get training credit from guilds and cults - with starting PCs already in debt and with a clear motive to adventure and seek out treasure.

IME it's usually inevitable for groups to want to at least go into business for themselves after a certain level of wealth.

They shouldn't be wasting their money buying shit from a magic shop.

They should be RUNNING the magic shop.

Put a hard limit on what kind of magic items can be bought.  Set a gold piece or Caster Level limit.  Healing potions can be bought, but no so with Holy Avengers.  For 3rd Edition D&D, I usually put the limit at 15,000 gp.

Allow them to spend the money on castles, property, hirelings, etc.  In order to avoid paperwork, I'd simply use "lifestyle" costs (gold pieces per month) to maintain, with a tax/income revenue based upon PC skill level.  A Fighter who's a baron, or a thief in charge of a guild, receives gold from services and goods sold by his underlings, who in turn expect protection and lodging from him.  A PC can invest the revenue back into his land/business (in turn getting more skilled help and potentially more profit), on items for personal use, or give it away to causes they support.

This also opens up more adventure opportunities, as with power comes responsibility and expectation.  The Fighter Baron must safeguard his farmers from bandits and wandering monsters, a Thief guildmaster must maintain respect among the criminal underworld and prevent rivals from edging in on his turf.

Depends on the setting and campaign style.

Money works in such a bizarre way in typical (post WotC?) fantasy campaigns I've been in that it's hard to give a relevant answer. It's so... video game rpg-esque. You get parties traveling around with zillions in loot (like a credit card!), there's no currency exchanges or taxation or anything, sometimes there's a bank storing your money that's universally recognized -- even in the middle of lost ruins or forgotten empires, and there's just about zero incentive to invest in anything ('cuz you're on a quest, duh!) except better magic gear.

In such a style, I don't think you can deviate without the play base staring at you blankly. There's been several decades of training to accept that as normal (even though a cursory look at history and current society around would show that it's a bizarre expectation). You'd have to be explicit from the beginning that those video game rpg tropes do not exist in your setting, and then I fear Living or RPGA will come around and invalidate that...

But personally I like old school, where the setting is grounded in some cohesive reality. So investing in a region through titles, businesses, etc., instead of a walking dragon hoard, makes more sense to me. It also gives the party a chance to invest in the setting more specifically, helping world-in-motion develop regional depth now that the party isn't moving around so much.

That and it rips the rug out from under most power creep. When the scale becomes civilization, and the cooperation and delegation and negotiation within it, suddenly extra magic gear doesn't mean so much as a talented retinue. Further class leveling sounds nice, but one man against a thousand plus is still in trouble, thus reliable friends (or at least cowed servants) becomes a greater concern. It just turns the arms race treadmill 'off' and suddenly turns 'on' a dynamic world to run where you like, where power is expressed in new and different ways.

It depends on the campaign style and ruleset being used. In any case, I'm not afraid of PC wealth and frankly ubiquitous magic shops selling powerful artifacts always seemed stupid to me so that's not even a concern. I'm also not afraid of PCs having high power, either.

In fact, I'm not sure what specific problems anyone perceives in wealth existing that need to be handled in the first place. It seems to me carrying around tons of loot presents plenty of obvious problems of its own.

Oh, I didn't really add alternative solutions! OK.

- In kind contributions, corvée labor, or favors as a form of payment to PCs

- Charities (or charity cases, a.k.a. sponsorship or patronage of an NPC)

- Hiring help to delegate a smaller task (paying for hirelings to clear out the local goblin lair while you do something more important for the locale)

- Develop alternate social system of measuring privilege and access, like honor, prestige, piety, etc. -- and in a decadent society make it purchasable.

- Patronage of the arts, hospitals, or similar philanthropy, as an oblique but non-decadent method of purchasing "social virtue" for the above social system

- Hirelings and Followers being your PC fallbacks if your character dies w/o possible resurrection. Protecting and gearing them well becomes important then.

- Delegate plots: assassins, market crashes, rabble rousing riots, etc.

Better?

Its a complicated question, and I was thinking of starting a thread on the topic myself recently. The stupendous amounts of wealth created by slaying your average dragon aren't easily disposed of. I mean sure, in the modern day you can invest the cash in stocks and bonds, conservative government bonds and property portfolios, but back then? It would depend on how advanced the investment infrastructure had become, but of course you'd need to be careful who you were investing with.

The application of wealth is similar to the application of force, and the local medieval warlords are NOT going to take some unconnected upstarts running around with a large mercenary army in their wagon lightly. Rich people back then had deep family ties with one another which provided a measure of security. Maybe within the cities and their merchant guilds potential might be found, by purchasing chairs or simple funding.

Here's your problem: PCs probably picked up this wealth by being gung ho dangerous men and women of action; you can't just try to force them into being accountants and managers thereafter. Politics and rulership are for the most part exceptionally tedious, and most PCs didn't sign up for that, so you need to find a reasonable route for them to either reasonably protect and grow their wealth without any hassle, or convince them that they don't need wealth to keep enjoying the game. Land grants and armies are bollocks for most players, that's not why they signed up.

Quote from: RPGPundit;610876So, your player characters have quickly accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.

How do you figure out ways to creatively make use of this money?
How can they spend it in a way that neither turns them into unstoppable supermen (ie the buying of magic items) nor makes them feel like you're cheating them (ie. "the kingdom has a 90% tax" or "you got robbed by bandits who then immediately spent all your winnings on booze and whores")?

RPGPundit

I let them spend the money however they see fit. In my campaigns they have to do it in game. No showing up the next sessions with 10,000 GP written down. They have to find the shop or the seller and roleplay the acquisition. This is the not particularly involved in terms of session time unless they want something that is rare like a +5 sword.

I fine this makes the expenditure of wealth a natural part of the campaign.

Finally as for superpowered fantasy characters, by the time they get to such power level the problems with the scope to interest them can't be resolved just by killing everything in reach.

Superpower character is only a problem if the campaign is run the same way as before except with all the number boosted. To make high level work the very nature of what the players are trying to deal has to change.

I few putative "taxation" and other similar measure to be a dick move by a referee. I never did that in my campaigns and never will.

I have had some success with rich pc's spending wealth when the need is there. Looming threat of a Fleet of hostile warships on the way to sack their favorite temple. Pc's look into buying warships of their own, and discove rthe price is quite high. Best if the pc's want to spend the wealth instead of the gm forcing it too obviously.

I don't have thieves rob pc, generally. if they piss off a thieves guild, that can work.

Make them pay for training, so they only get 1xp per gold if they blow it on sword lessons, or spells or whatever.

I think the Barbarians of Lemuria game has something along these lines, except with booze and whores. I can think of worse ways to lose all your cash.

Quote from: RPGPundit;610876So, your player characters have quickly accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.

How do you figure out ways to creatively make use of this money?
How can they spend it in a way that neither turns them into unstoppable supermen (ie the buying of magic items) nor makes them feel like you're cheating them (ie. "the kingdom has a 90% tax" or "you got robbed by bandits who then immediately spent all your winnings on booze and whores")?

RPGPundit

Well, first off, no magic shops. Unless we're talking about something like Leiber's Bazar of the Bizarre, I find them artificial and video-gamey.

Next, I won't arbitrarily have my players get robbed, but if they advertise they have a lot of money (going on spending sprees in a village), word travels fast and they are going to find themselves frequent targets. But my main approach to this is : mo' money, mo' problems, in that the PCs will suddenly find themselves constantly surrounded by suspicious and devious yes-men looking for a handout, rich merchants and lords will suddenly see them as "close to equals" (read: threats), people will begin coming to the PCs with their problems, charitable organizations will pester them for donations, and they'll very quickly get a Reputation, and all the annoyance that fame implies. Basically I'd just look at it as a plot-generator as needed. Otherwise, I wouldn't consider it much different than players ascending to higher levels.

J Arcane wins the thread.

There's a reason I'm infatuated with the old school endgame. It allows me to conceive of D&D as a game of Civilization vs. Barbarism, Man vs. The World, Law vs. Chaos. You take that money and that name-level land-grant and build a castle and a town around it and name it after yourself. Hire a bunch of mercs and clear out the monster-infested woods, hang the brigands, hell, maybe even fix the old roads and bridges while you're at it. Turn the monster-haunted wilderness into towns and farmlands and castles. Pass into legend along with the threats to Civilization you've done away with.

That's what feels "epic" to me.

But I suppose killing the Tarrasque is okay too.

Quote from: RPGPundit;610876So, your player characters have quickly accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.

How do you figure out ways to creatively make use of this money?
How can they spend it in a way that neither turns them into unstoppable supermen (ie the buying of magic items) nor makes them feel like you're cheating them (ie. "the kingdom has a 90% tax" or "you got robbed by bandits who then immediately spent all your winnings on booze and whores")?

RPGPundit

I go for the investment route.  As J Arcane said, I give them responsibilities or opportunities.  I really don't want to strip them of the cash - if they legitimately earned it through good adventuring, then I am not going to be the Jerk-GM that just strips them of it.  After all, it was my decisions that ultimately let them have it...

I can run something in a Border Kingdoms/River Kingdoms area and suddenly give them a small fiefdom to run, giving them all sorts of opportunities to conquer their neighbors and build fortifications and stuff.  The diplomats of the group could negotiate with their rivals or their fighters could sweep down and thrash the bandits that have been harassing our trade routes.  Out maneuvering the other kingdoms and defending against rampaging centaurs could be the start of a new campaign.