The question of how much to tax the adventurers has come up a few times in other threads. What's clear from textev is that the king in Yves takes at least half of their loot for himself (in addition to regular income taxes) and adventurers likely also have to accept the adventurers guild taking out a sizeable percentage for various services (in addition to guild membership dues of course) and price gouging high-leveled merchants buying high value loot at a low price while taking a premium for their own goods. The put upon adventurers likely end up with a small but still noticeable bit of money, enough to survive on as low-levels with the promise of better things to come should they survive injury and death. I'd recommend a fairer system for the village, with a government and guild combined tax not to exceed 60%. In return prospective adventurers would be trained to level 15, have access to healing as needed, as well as free access to training in various crafts, skills, styles and spells as needed. Guild merchants would act as their stand ins to insure they get a reasonable price for their wares. An oath of fealty to Richter and an agreement to fight for the village in times of war would be a requirement. I'd think it a more than generous deal that most people in the land would gladly take. What do you guys think Richter should do?
At first read through that reads as a national sozialistische or national socialist way of going about it. Are you also thinking of Richter to use the guild as apart of the village? I would only have a induced tax (treasury upgraded via labyrinth store) that requires no overhead and a still charge on a guild. Guild should supply the healer and guild rates on healers or merchants. There is no reason not to combine the visit village with the guild to have the village run by a corporation instead of a kingdom. It would allow for guilds in other kingdoms (like embassy) independent of nation. In this case then you could have corporate socialism where everything you need is provided by the company town but ~100% is taken by the company. Richter would an XO. As long as you are sworn to the company they will take care of you for life, similar to swearing fealty to the lord.
If Richter specialized in something that gave him a near 100 percent in people swearing fealty, then we can talk some other interesting options. Depending on how benevolent ruler levels, if he chose that, he might be at quite the high level. With the fruit of the quickening and unlocking magic, he might have been able to get nearly 100% in the future. But in a city with so many new rug rats, he might have had to spend all day unlocking magic potential.
Spoiler: Buzzwords, socialism and capitalism To me socialism and capitalism have become buzzwords used by scaremongerers on the political left and right, rather than something with actual substance. If something works it works. It does not matter whether its "socialistic" free primary schools for everyone as we know them from every successful modern society on earth or "capitalist" free markets beating planned economies hands down on every front. If anything I think centrism or social liberalism will serve society best in the long run, taking what works from religions and ideologies alike while throwing away the dogma and the myths. Ideologies are written down by men sitting in remote ivory towers, and certainly should not be treated as guidelines for building a successful society. At best they can serve as insight into different views or as the view of intelligent people making a purely theoretical guess at the fundamental forces driving our society. Sometimes useful, but not worth putting ones faith in. In my eyes the primary use the village has for the Dungeon is to generate as much wealth as possible at the lowest possible cost in adventurers. Those are opposite goals as pouring in more adventurers means both more profits and more deaths, hence the ruthless strategy of the Yvesian king allowing all and sundry to enter. While that strategy will definitely generate wealth, it will also generate piles of corpses and social unrest in Law. Training the adventurers and ensuring they have "free" (through the royal guild) access to the resources they need to grow and survive will lead to fewer unnecessary deaths. An additional advantage is that adventurers who survive for a longer period and/ or receive appropriate training will generate more wealth because they can go deeper, hence investing into them leads directly to a greater economic return for society per adventurer. I will add that investing into people to increase their profitability is very much a capitalist idea, at least in the nordic version of capitalism. Tax payers are the governments primary economic asset after all. Its also a socialist and a social liberal idea. Cause centrist get to borrow what works and throw aside the things that don't I think the guild (or guilds) would need a royal charter allowing them to operate within the kingdom as a military organisation focused on Dungeon exploration. Officers and guild leaders would need to owe some form of direct fealty to the crown, otherwise such a guild could grow powerful enough to overthrow the government. No king will willingly allow an independent military organisation to set up shop inside his borders without putting heavy restrictions on what they can and can't do, that's just asking for competition and trouble.
That said, government does an adequate job providing very easy to maintain services. If you want to go hardcore, perhaps they can keep a decent electricity network up and running. Something as complicated as a guild would need to be much more independent to function well. Governments are reactive and slow to change, which is the great as it leads to stability. It also leads to terrible business management as they fail to take the initiative.
Depends from the goverment. Anyhow if all the income is taxed.. then how about we trade for stuff in the dungeon. And take nothing out. F.E. when u go in u bring a potion of +2 Strenght... then trade it for some other loot someone else has gotten like potion of + 2 to agility. trade. drink. profit! Or just brew some potions and use them there. Kinda really hard to go around this.. but still possible.
If they these people that are being trained up and given healing are pledged citizen to the thrown, then yes go for it. They have pledge to Ricther, he should provide for them. He should also provide protection for his mining team. But for Transient guild members that have no connection to the thrown? The guilds can provide healers for them and training and weapons and armor. Unless the village runes a guild for that, but that would just be part of the guard/military... Though by a different name and maybe that's all that matters.
Dungeon trading would be a different business. Its similar to going over to other Dungeons to offload meaning its possible to do so. But since the Dungeon in law takes more than 50% at all exits and that is implied to be the norm at friendly Dungeons elsewhere (probably a bad idea to go to a goblin/kobold/"kill on sight xenophobic race"/ etc. controlled Dungeon), you aren't that much better off. Trading consumables would be a great way to circumvent the Dungeon tax. No doubt some adventurers will develop ways to smuggle the most valuable pieces of loot past the guards. That's to be expected. People won't want to pay a tax on their loot whether its 10% or 30%. The 60% I mention was meant as a hard cap for all government and guild taxes, not a minimum taxrate at the Dungeon's exit. It forces the government and the guilds to remain if not fair then at least within the bounds of reason.
Heman and his invisible item hiding space/cubby f.e. I bet there are millions more if u have chaos points!
As an extreme measure the ones entering from the mist side could be barred entrance until the made a vow about paying their taxes
Really Drastic? Not really based on Wondering Faust book. So letting Everyone in and allowing them to slaughter everyone, like Last Two Times!!! Two times!! Sonorej and gobo prisioners.. was just an inconvenience?! that was ok? This should be Mandatory oath binding. You have to do this. If u dont wanna go f*** yourself. Even with these oaths there will be basic imbeciles who will break the oaths. With different degrees of damage to MV. Oaths are a super useful and underused/ignored mechanic of the land. With these oaths you will never have betrayals.. or easy betrayals. Actually 3 times we should have had deaths from ignorance of oaths. Heman should have offed Richto.
There have been no instances of someone breaking an oath as I recall. Heman had not sworn anything. The murderous thugs had not sworn anything. Sonorej had not sworn anything. Most natives take their oaths extremely seriously. Its part of the feudal mindset. To the medieval mind an oathbreaker is about as bad as a vicious, murderous pedophile is to us. The punishment from the land is just part of the consequences, the true cost is the loss of relationship ranks with everyone who knows about it and the difficulty in building trust afterwards. About the only ones I expect to break their oaths willy nilly are chaos seeds. I think you might be right poke Of course @ShoughtLoud was talking about forcing adventurers to swear not to cheat the government out of part of their loot.
While I can see the attractiveness, you really don't want to weave your restrictions so tight that the adventurers start resenting it. A balance between reasonable precautions and outright tyranny must be found. I'd put that line well before demanding oaths to not cheat on your taxes. Besides, the treasure chamber takes 10% of the value of loot and resources as taxes. From there it shouldn't be too much of an issue for an accountant to make an estimate of the total value over the course of a year when calculating the taxable income. The big attraction in smuggling loot past the guards would be that the government doesn't know what you found, just the value. If you managed to bring a bunch of stuff out of the Dungeon without having anything confiscated, well there's a fat tax bill coming your way. They might even go for a system where adventurers can hand over loot now or pay part of the value later on in cash. Once the chamber is levelled to 3 they'd be able to take an immidiate tax of 30%. Assuming the guild takes 25% of the remaining loot (as is the tradition in Law) they'd be getting pretty close to a defacto 50% tax rate. Richte has also set a settlement wide income tax, which adventurers would have to pay like any other citizen. That tax can currently be raised to 10% without any penalties. Cap of 60% tax + guild fees won't be that hard to reach, Richter would have to lower the chamber tax rate to stay below 60 percent if he raises the settlement wide tax to 15%.
So Oath of not harming or wishing ill will unless it will be done to you. Oath of secrecy not to tell anyone about anything seen or heard in this town. Oath of taxation. Some other oaths.. So who will brake the oaths: Ignorant Chaos seeds, Arrogant Nobles who are above the law, really stupid villagers & drunks, "persuaded" oath takers to betray their oaths(Like Richto forced an oath form the thief)... Not sure about the punishment, if its death then MV will be safe'ish more or less... if its just smelly breath... I bet some potions or enchantments will fix that. Depends on that oath you are braking I suppose. It's super easy to swear an oath when you have no idea what you are doing. Holding to that Oath its a totally different matter..
Mmmm how many opportunities I seance!! 1. Create our own guild! We will get taxes additional 25%.. and joining the village will give new guilders insane benefits form specialization! 2. Hire Mercs! -> Make them join the Guild! -> Send them to the Dungeon! hehehe personal army bonded by oaths and sent to mine $ for us and get stronger! Also their magics will be awakened! 3. we really need to open portals to every possible location and start trade, sure we do need a Marketplace too.
Oaths that are effectively enslavement likely will be broken eventually. Can only push people so far. No one will willingly swear an oath of taxation or similar. Fealty will have to be good enough, along with trust.
You are making the oath while you stay in the MV. Or as long as Oathtaker is alive it lasts i suppose. Plus if ur not wiling to take an oath to pay taxes.. don't let them in. I see no harm in that. If they don't plan to pay taxes.. then they won't like the oaths. Id use them much more frequently. For self protection. There are enemies everywhere. noone knows who is who and whom can you really trust. Plus possession/charm spells exists... so really a dangerous place to live.
The thing is, to get into the Dungeon you would already have sworn fealty or at least would have been peacebonded, so the village would already have the max protection an oath can bring. As for cheating on your taxes, how are you going to do that then the government knows down to the copper the value of every reliquairy you've been taxed on by the chamber? Sure, they won't know the exact content, but they'll know the value in coin. Good enough for taxation.
I like the idea of Ricther sponsoring any and all needed facilities that the MV needs. With Ricthers villiage specialty being in adventuring he should greatly benefit from an adventurers guild. Ricther also needs as much gold as he can get. In my Capitalist line of thinking he could charge a rather hefty sum. The Lords Adventurer Guild created by the Lord of a place of power with an adventurers specialty and said Lord being a master of the Dungeon at that place of power could create a nice synergy. Sworn vassals, MV citizens, and Denizens looking to join the Lords Guild should all qualify for different membership cost. They should also have different advantages to their membership. Personally I think Ricther should undercut Laws dungeon and guild charges. That alone should entice and grow Ricthers dungeon and villiage. Do you think that the number of members could have any bearing on benefits? Or could the number of guild members in the dungeon at one time have a benefit?
Not sure if we are at the point where intel about the Dungeon can or will get MV killed?! Secondly, anyone can enter.. if they can traverse the mists.. multiple entrances exist So ether we will tax the adventures to the max.. or they will get killed when they leave the forest and lose all the coin..
