Hey, welcome back to the podcast Evil Dungeon Master Universe Podcast.

I'm your host, Evil Dungeon Master Vince, it is Friday.

It's time for another podcast.

The weekend is upon us.

Hopefully you'll have a game going on out there.

If not, hopefully you're doing something in gaming, if not planning or reading or something.

As long as you're doing something as far as AD and D or your favorite game, then you're pretty much doing something.

And that sounds silly anyway.

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Alright, I think I'm done.

Anyway, today we're going to talk a little bit about something that most DMS kind of, you know, forget about.

And I found a really cool article in an old Polyhedron magazine number.

I believe it's 30.

Let me flip back here.

38.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Listed as #38 and that is the role of taxes in your campaign.

Now a lot of D Ms.

kind of forget about the whole tax situation and it's also I know with with the whole training and everything that's the way to get the gold away from the players.

I understand that not a lot of people I know with you play with the training aspect for leveling up, which is fine.

Your, your campaign, your rules, you do what you want.

But there has to be a taxation system with society.

There is a taxation system.

I do a taxation system in my games with the monthly tax thing going on.

That's listed inside the ADDDMS guide.

But there is another one in polyhedron #38 called The Role of Taxes by Rodney J Paddock.

Paddock, I don't know, pronounce the last name.

And this is the example that they give you right in the beginning.

And I'll just I'll read that and go over this kind of briefly and I'll include the screenshot of this one page in the notes for this show on my website.

So you can kind of look it over yourself but it says DM after counting the last of your treasure you find you have 10,000 gold pieces and upon receiving your reward it will total 15,000 gold pieces.

Party good, we go to the king and ask for our reward.

DM.

The king deducts 15% tax from your reward and gives you the remainder party taxes.

What are you talking about?

So one of the puzzling things about campaigns in the last.

In fact parties or mercenaries go through light whatever at paying a copper in tax prices it says here.

And why is this?

This article answers the questions and provides a system for taxing PCs.

So why have a taxation system?

This is what it lists.

Throughout literature and history, people have taxed in one form or another.

Kingdoms and baronies are expensive to operate.

For any king, the money is needed for the upkeep of an army, food, land, or gain through taxation.

However, some kings take things one step too far and overtax their people.

Over taxation can however prove fatal for some monarchs.

This is 1 factor of taxation which may give players the room for some unique and ingenious role-playing.

And it goes about how you can implement a tax system, how you can use it.

Taxing gold and coins, gems and jewelry, furs are even magical items.

There are some ways to exempt certain things and you can make up the laws and rules for that.

And then that gives you another way for increasing taxes and reasons why you increase tax maybe because of war or food or shortage, supplies of supplies.

And then obviously corruption is the big one.

So there are different ways that you can implement taxes into your campaign.

And obviously the King's cut like I read in the beginning is a big one.

But I was thinking a way as how you can implement it in your campaign.

You can have the tax collector MPC introduce an MPC tax cluster.

He may be fair and honest, or maybe he skims off the top.

Either way, he becomes a familiar face at the end of each quest asking for a little bit of tax.

Now I have a running joke in my basic fantasy campaign where every time the paladin goes to the church, the collection plate comes out and they kind of go and slide the plate in front of the paladin.

So he has to donate something.

And it's just it, it's more of just a running joke.

And he usually puts a gold piece in there and that's all it is.

But it it's just a running joke of how silly tax and collecting could be when it comes to these situations.

Another one is a toll bridge, a river crossing a heavily guarded bridge.

To pass, each Venturer must pay a set fee or hand over a gem.

The toll goes to fund the local army, or maybe straight into the captain's pockets.

That is a perfect way to implement some type of tax on land area.

You have this bridge that goes over this giant Canyon.

You want to use said bridge.

Well, you can use the bridge, but you got to pay some taxes to get over that bridge.

Why you got to pay taxes?

Well, the bridge needs maintenance and it has to have people guarding it so people don't cut it down.

And you know, this is a good choke off point in case, you know, evil people try to run across it or good people depending.

So yeah, that's the reason why you would have a toll bridge.

Toll bridge have armies that will take advantage of this.

So why not?

I don't know any Baron, king, count, whatever in the area that would not take advantage of a bridge that crosses over through the land that he is on.

He would definitely use that as a taxation area.

The goods tax.

If the players sell the treasure in town, the Guild master informs them there is a 10% sales tax.

This could spark some role-playing negotiation.

Do they pay?

Do they smuggle?

Do they bribe?

Do they go to the black market?

I don't know.

So there's always that.

I mean, you know, you could do that.

Sales tax is one of the most common things that you could do.

I don't know about 10%, maybe a little bit lower than that, but 10% is pretty high.

The church's share, like we were discussing before with the paladin in my campaign with the joke, the temple demands A tithe, payments on recovered gold, claiming divine ownership.

Refusing might mean the loss of healing or blessing.

Pain could earn future favors.

So while the paladin in my campaign is doing that is just basically kind of a silly joke that we've all laughed at, this could be something serious.

You know, maybe there is a town that they're using as a kind of a base of operations and they're going on quests and finding, I don't know, maybe they're finding gold in old temples or crypts or something.

Well, the church has decided that you know that is that is define gold that you found there.

So you must tie some of that back to the church.

You can have your share for finding it, but the church needs its money back.

So and then the property tax hook the players buy, keep a tower or land.

Property taxes kick in.

Missing payments lead to guards or bounty hunters at the door or a rival noble seizing the land.

In my basic fantasy fantasy campaign, I've implemented this system as well.

When it comes to there's a Guild hall.

They have their Guild hall inside the town where their base of operations is and they pay a land tax once a month.

And I was using the rules based out in the AD and the Dungeon Masters Guide.

So there are some ways how you can implement tax in there as far as on items and gold and stuff like that.

So looking at the article, it's not that big of an article, it's just going to give you some ideas how to move forward with taxation in the campaign.

And I think it's it's something you may want to try when it comes to your campaign.

It may not be the best idea, but you know what?

It does make sense because campaigns have taxation.

I mean, worlds, fantasy worlds do in some cases have taxation and I've seen it in various fantasy novels.

Now, it may not be the focus.

It might be a background thing.

Let's say that they're paying their taxes or they're giving money to certain people for certain reasons.

But we all know various TV shows that we've seen with the have a fantasy basis with it or a cartoon or something.

A lot of times it does deal with taxation and things like that with evil kings over taxing or evil barons, whatever you want to call it, or people owning land.

And remember Robin Hood, men in tights, they they stole his entire castle because he didn't pay taxes for all those years.

So yeah, I don't know.

Tell me what you think about taxation in your campaign.

Do you follow any rules?

Like you follow the AD and DD miss guide when it comes to taxation and, and rent and stuff like that.

Once a month fees that you should charge your players.

I'm just curious if that's something that you've looked upon and, and use in your campaign.

I, I like to use it not to, to steal gold from the players because the, I'm not after doing that, but it, it makes the world feel a little more realistic as far as being grounded onto the world.

And I, I like that because I don't, I when I try to do worlds and I tried to build a campaign, I want the players, when they play their characters to feel like they're in the world and the world is actually living and breathing.

In the past, I was just kind of like, Leh, you know what?

Here's a town, Here's the guy that runs the town.

Yeah, there's a king somewhere who cares.

And those campaigns, while they were probably a lot of fun, didn't feel like the world was alive.

And I'm trying to, I noticed as I'm, I'm getting further into gaming in my, my life, my career, my life, I want worlds to feel more realistic and alive.

Now I'm going to talk about realistic is in real life.

Realistic is in it feels and lives and breathes and a taxation system.

While most people probably think it's dumb, I think it's an interesting idea and it makes it does.

It just makes the world feel like it's alive and the players are actually part of it and making decisions as far as their characters are concerned versus the world.

So I'll, I'll throw the screenshot in there.

The role of taxes on the website theevildm.com, my website with this posting.

And don't forget to yeah, head over to Spotify if you want to comment, you can.

There's a full blown comment system there.

Now you can comment on YouTube when this eventually gets up on YouTube as well.

I know that's been having the feed has been having so many issues lately and YouTube is just being a royal pain in the tuchus when it comes to trying to get it fixed and they don't.

The people that instant help support basically read off of scripts and give canned answers.

So that does nothing to help me.

So I've been trying to tackle it on my own.

So if you see the video for the feed go private and then back to public and then private again.

It's not me doing it.

It's YouTube doing it because there's something messed up in their feed system and they just won't admit it.

Anyway, I'm going to head out.

That's it for today.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Keep original, keep it old school.

Goodnight, God bless it.