Banking

[clmckay]

I'm wondering if there are any other players out there who have come up with a banking scheme for their HQ players? I'm getting ready to introduce a mechanism - more or less at the request of the players.

First a tad of background: about 7/8 months ago I got a set of Campaign Coins to use for the in game gold. I was shocked at ow much fun it added to the game, not only for the heroes, but for Zargon as well. We have a nicely blinged out setup with great custom furniture and cards, so it all complemented wonderfully.

We've also gotten past nearly all the canon quests and spend a great deal of our adventuring on custom quests/campaigns. We have an overland map/travel system that has developed pretty well. So....all that in mind, any individual hero may die with some regularity. It's not uncommon for the heroes to not always pickup the fallen heros belonging/gold or for that matter, give it back when a new character joins up. The loss of gold tends to be the biggest barrier to getting that new character up to speed and the request for a way to "save" the money pops up from time to time.

They're getting ready to move into a new corner of the world, and I've got some good quests that I think they'll like encountering and choosing to adventure to. But, I am planning on adding a banking system in this area of the world for them to try out. This is how I have it conceptually planned at present:

1. I got a nice assortment of these to represent Certificates of Deposit or something.

http://www.miniongames.com/store/futuri ... et-16.html

I know they're sci-fi and metal, but they're really cool and the players LOVE clinking things around and having physical representations.

2. Several larger towns in this area will have a bank. Any hero may deposit gold into the bank and ill give them those tokens equal to what was deposited.

3. If they want to buy something at a shop, they must exchange those back for regular coinage. It will be interesting down the road when we leave ths part of the world what they'll do. Will they travel back and forth? Will they cash out?

4. I will consider any of those tokens to be the property of the player, not the character, like the gold currently is. If a character dies, and no one picks his stuff up (or doesn't give it back), they'll only loose whatever coinage they currently have but will keep the tokens and can "cash" them in when their new character joins up.

5. An added perk for me is that ill have a better supply of gold coins to give them. We have a couple of "occasional" players that are at different areas and sometimes I get low on the gold coins. If they deposit them I will have more in the supply.

Thoughts?

[torilen]

I would suggest creating special game characters to run and own the banks, and they should
have much power and/or influence. Study up on the Medici family - they were one of the first
bankers in the real world. Here is a start for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_M ... e_to_power

I would give them something special, too. Perhaps a special trade route that only they use...maybe
a special form of travel or special magic...special architecture that can play a part in the game.

Make up special hand-outs for the characters - certificates given to them from the bank. I know you
want to use those sci-fi tokens...but if I might suggest: Take some normal paper and soak it in strong
tea for a while. It will stain the paper to look like old parchment. Then you can hand-write on the
paper a Bank Note from the owner to the character for the amount, where it is kept, what proof will
be needed to get at the gold, etc.

If you need or want help coming up with characters, let me know. I can work with you on it. I love
that sort of thing.

[Big Bene]

I can't decide yet if I like the idea (banks are a part of the real world I'm glad to forget when immerging into fantasy), but it seems you and your players do, so go ahead and have fun!
I would suggest not to call it "banking". Instead of "bank" use terms like "merchants' guild", "contor" etc. There may be several of those, some accepting the bills of others, some not.

[Anderas]

I like especially the idea of having a super-rich contor family running the system, having influence, and sometimes supporting and sometimes opposing Mentor & the Emperor. I mean, other than the Emperor, they have to deal with several countries, some of them at war with each other....
I mean, why shouldn't they pay an orc tribe here and there if that shortens their trade routes by 30%? Why shouldn't they search for help securing their caravan against other families, or paying somebody to sabotage the caravan of another family?

[whitebeard]

I don't like it. "Bury the treasure men. We shall fetch it on our return." This is your bank. When the adventurer is wealthy and retires he buys a homestead and hides his treasure on the property. There is no insurance, so banking is very difficult and the bank would need to be run by a powerful wizard. And nobody trusts the wizards...

Once the first 14 quests are over I'm going to require the Heros to carry a limited number of artifacts. By decree of Prince Magnus, if the Heros fell and these items were lost, the benefit to the enemy would be too great. So the loss of one or two characters can allow them to go "shopping" in Magnus's vault. Because the remaining characters want their new partners to be aptly equipped... And having IOUs from Magnus's vault is otherwise meaningless.

How does a new character have access to the gold of a dead character? They are relatives? Seems like you keep at most a small fraction as it is divided up among the other surviving relatives.

[cynthialee]

I like especially the idea of having a super-rich contor family running the system, having influence, and sometimes supporting and sometimes opposing Mentor & the Emperor. I mean, other than the Emperor, they have to deal with several countries, some of them at war with each other....
I mean, why shouldn't they pay an orc tribe here and there if that shortens their trade routes by 30%? Why shouldn't they search for help securing their caravan against other families, or paying somebody to sabotage the caravan of another family?

Now we are talking!

Politics and social ties interfering with what should be a simple hack and slash is the best.
I like to set the players up with situations that leaves them wondering who the bad guys really are...

The Emperor may be the most powerful visible citizen of the realm, but there are far more powerful forces at play.

The bank in my game is run by a particularly shrewd Red Dragon with a ring of polymorph and a keen skill at generating profit for the shareholders, who are mainly other dragons and a handful of powerful persons.

One of the Laws of the Land for my games is that only currency of the Empire is legal tender. When heroes find vast amounts of ancient coins they must surrender them to the bank and the bank will credit 90% of the coin value to their accounts. Then said coinage is poured over for valuable rare coins before it is melted down and reminted as new coin of the Realm. (Registered coin collectors may have rare coins from ancient realms but these coins are not to be used in trade.)
This provides my players with an opportunity to commit the white collar crime of money laundering. But the fear of being killed by the Currency Security Council's enforcers has kept them honest so far.
This also serves as adequate reason for the games PTB to start watching heroes that become wealthy.

[clmckay]

Thanks guys! Love the ideas!

I actually agree with Whitebeards assessment on this. I've never like the concept up till now, because part of the motivation to avoid risky behavior was the threat of loosing your gold and items. Since we've gotten in the habit of performing custom quests on a larger scale - with sometimes, some pretty wicked issues, I'm more forgiving than I used to be. If it seemed like this was due to recklessness or greed, I wouldn't go with it. It does break with "realism" somewhat that the following character that player makes would have access to the "Bank Notes (or what have you)", but I couldn't come up with an good in-world way to explain it, so I was willing to just go with it (Hey! maybe the "bank" can recogize the reincarnated soul of the original depositor! ). The player's don't normally consider any replacement character they have to make to be related to the previous "dead" one. I'm not a huge fan of endless custom Heroes, but if they have an idea and it's not overkill, we try it.

I really like calling it the Merchant's Guild or something less world-y and having special characters there to interact with. That'll definitely happen now! I even have a nice "Merchant's Guild" map from Heroic Maps that I can use! Perfect!

[cynthialee]

Have the Heroes walk into the middle of an armed robbery the first time they go to the merchants guild. Set it up so that there is a chance of property damage and if the heroes can pull off stopping the bandits with minimal damage to property they may earn the favor of the Merchant Lords...

[Anderas]

The Heroes can get a change after they have been in the bank. "Pay the owner of this paper 1000 Gold Coins on behalf of Merchant Dagobert" They could give it to somebody else as well, he could retreive the money.
Like this, there is still the possibility to lose the money, which is the disadvantage from heroe's point of view, but in exchange for the risk, after death somebody else can take it and give it back to the next player's Hero.

[Diggin]

Have the Heroes walk into the middle of an armed robbery the first time they go to the merchants guild. Set it up so that there is a chance of property damage and if the heroes can pull off stopping the bandits with minimal damage to property they may earn the favor of the Merchant Lords...

Somehow this reminds me of Colour of Magic, where Twoflower is trying to sell 'insurance' to an innkeeper, who then sees profitin burning down his tavern (spoiler, read the book man)
Theres a quest in there somewhere. or more even, just write down the layout of the bank and then everytime the heroes go to that particular bank, they first have to fight off the robbers, because the bank is always getting robbed just when the Heroes come around ..