How to Make Your Players Love Paying Taxes

Do you charge taxes?

I got a chuckle from DaveW’s post on the RPT Discord about levying taxes on the characters:

My current campaign has a silver per wheel and copper per leg toll for the fortified town the players start in.

An ox pulling a four wheeled cart is 4 sp, 4 cp to pass.

The PCs don’t pay even at first level as they are favored by the baron.

This is an excellent idea. I can see all kinds of fake, one-legged, first-level PCs in my future now. 🙂

It also reminds me of how I used to tax characters in my Waterdeep campaign. Locals called gold pieces Lions. It was free to leave the city, but 1 Lion to enter. And 10 Lions to get in after the gates close as dusk – 2 for the tax and 8 for the bribe.

Players hate taxes. I don’t blame them. Risking limbs and death just to have the bureacrazy take your loot?

To soften the blow and make this world feature interesting for gameplay, during the Waterdeep campaign I also:

  • Fleshed out the gate guards as NPCs
  • Had the same guards at the gate most times
  • Roleplayed the interactions about half the time
  • Granted a boon chance after each payment
  • Created a party reward of getting in tax-free

By making the guards recurring NPCs, the characters started building relationships with them. They’d greet each other by first name, the tax became a rolling eyes inside joke between them, and we’d roleplay this interaction more often than not.

The guards then became involved in other encounters with the party. One time a couple guards were off duty and joined a bar brawl on the PCs’ side. Another time one of the guards had a delicate problem and he came to the cleric for help.

The boon granted was based on a roll so there was no certainty of getting it each time. And the boon most often took the form of a lore drop – a clue, useful detail, or world discovery moment.

This made the transaction more enjoyable, took the sting out of the tax, and served as grist for the roleplay. The party started asking guards to look out for enemies entering and leaving and any weird visitors recently arrived. That cost them an extra Lion each time, but the PCs were happy to pay because the intel was always fresh and solid.

Finally, after a couple levels in this campaign, paying the tax became nothing to the PCs who now had 100s of Lions. So when they helped the masked city council with a job they were awarded free entry to the city for life.

The main tip here today, methinks, is that resource depletion moments are great gameplay opportunities. Add an interesting potential boon and some roleplay. Adding a dice roll for outcome never hurts either!

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!

P.S. When you are ready, here are +4 vorpal ways I can help you with your campaign:

+1 Get My Campaign Logger App Free to Make Prep & GMing Easier|
For GMs of any system looking to run deep, detailed, and immersive games, Campaign Logger lets you take session notes at the speed of thought in your unique GMing style while improving your preparation experience so you can focus on the parts of the game you enjoy the most.
Get your free Campaign Logger account here.

+2 Level-Up Your GMing With My Books

+3 Get the Demonplague (with 62 5-Star Ratings so far)
A complete level 1-20 campaign D&D 5E adventure path that offers intense roleplay, sandbox and hexcrawl play, cunning combats, and fiendish monsters.
Click here to see more details and to order.

+4 Get More GM Loot
Visit the Roleplaying Tips DriveThruRPG store, or browse books and courses to level up your GMing at the RoleplayingTips.com store.

Join a private community with Johnn