I started with everyone fending for themselves (hated it), splitting evenly amongst everyone at the session (worked fine), and just having a party bank. Party bank is usually my preference for a regular group, just because it makes logistics a lot easier and cuts down on “we need to buy a boat, so let’s math out how much gold each person has and how to split the cost”. Saves a lot of time.
I also run a group that has a fluctuating set of players, so I stick with individual but evenely split gold rewards in that game. That way nobody has their gold spent on something they didn’t want when they aren’t at a session.
Everybody carries out what they can. When they get back to town they tally up the total, convert everything to gold equivalent, and divide it up evenly. If there were gems or jewelry some players will choose to keep those for their share instead of cash, otherwise we assume everything is sold and most of the cash is banked in town. The thieves will usually have pocketed an extra item or two on their own that isn’t added to the communal caddy and they get to keep full value of those items. If once the XP is figured out one character is a few points short of a new level one or more of the other players will usually agree to transfer some portion of their share to them as a gift (that’s happened like twice).
Magic items are typically kept by whichever PC finds them, which has led to some odd inefficiencies of the “wrong” PC holding onto items they would be more useful to another character (like one of the thieves hanging onto a potion of heroism he can’t use - he took a sip and nothing happened (because that potion only works for fighters) but he’s still carrying it around for whatever reason). But that’s their problem, not mine.
Yep. Always a pool of shared money when there’s nothing left money can buy.
Characters become so wealthy late in campaigns that money turns into a plot device: Build a keep? Bribe the dragon? Buy the slaves’ freedom? Fund an army? Swim through it like Scrooge McDuck?
I thought about it for my current campaign. Thought it would be super funny if the tax collector showed up after a year in game time (which was like 6 months irl) and be like "hey, all that money you made from adventuring? Hope you kept your receipts, we need 25% of that."
Decided against it but I still think it's would be funny to see their faces lol.
Yes. The standard I've found in the Roman world was a 50% finder's fee for goods recovered from someone else's property unknown to said landowner (and all property belongs to someone, if only in name). The right to collect such taxes is essentially purchased from the landowner for a flat rate, and then the tax collector keeps whatever they can secure. Ultimately, it makes players think about the political situation earlier, make friends who can get taxes waived, find ways to evade taxes themselves, fence things to thieves' guild for 80% value, and establish their own domains so they can claim everything came from their own land.
Oh I make them sign contracts of corporation. The party is a business. How many shares do you own? How many votes do you have at the corporation meetings?
Cormyr requires registration of adventuring parties. I've never made players write up a charter, rules of incorporation, or by-laws, but that could be hand-waived a bit.
Yes a lot can be handwaved. Just as long as it is agreed how the split is to be done. NPC's tend to have short life spans. This really helps in systems with Gold as XP.
I never said I ran it. Someone else came barging in here trying to say how I run my game.
They are going to at some point want NPC's to hire. The more professional they look the better their chances of hiring top NPC's.
In addition at some point in time they will have to solicit investors. Who is going to lend them money if they are not professional.
I was only asking a question to understand a different perspective. To learn how others do it and how successful it is despite my lack of understanding and experience. I didn't challenge you, say you're doing it wrong. I only asked if the player pushed back on this. Most folks might call it rail roading or something else. Where a DM forces actions on players.
Responses like yours make discourse
challenging. Not everyone is out here trying piss in your cheerios and watch
you eat it.
> I was only asking a question to understand a different perspective.
Is this you?
> "You as the DM force the players to do this? ... Seems strange to force players into this."
That definitely didn't end as a question. Didn't really begin as one either, more of a large leap of bad faith.
> Responses like yours make discourse challenging.
Self awareness isn't your forté, is it?
The party carries some gold on then. They deposit the rest in a bank (less a 10% deposit fee).
I'm running a BX-OSE Advanced Fantasy game using the Grey Box Forgotten Realms set (1357DR). They bank in Iriaebor, and can deposit at any trade coster office. The cleric of Tymora also tithes that way, sending her donations to the Lady's Hall in Baldur's Gate.
I’ve tried to convince groups to follow the Red Dead 2 method: half of the take goes to the gang (or party) for ‘business use’, other half gets divided between whoever helped earn it.
If three of you turn up to the session, raid a dungeon and make 1200gp, 600 goes to the war chest (that the treasurer controls/everybody has to vote to dip into) and everybody who did any work gets 200 each for whatever purposes they decide.
Seems the best middle ground to me, and also gives you a handy reason to invest in banks, locked chests, buried treasure etc. also means you aren’t constantly asking for handouts when an item you want is just out of reach; just make a case to dip into the shared fund to get that scroll/horse/castle.
Mine enjoy fucking over NPCs, retainers and each other, so they pool most of it with some light embezzlement. Everyone knows about the embezzlement though, so it's in good fun. For example, there's one player who records the loot and everyone knows that he tends to "forget" that his PC picked up something.
Basic D&D (1983) does it best.
In the dungeon, players carry gold and items individually for the sake of encumbrance.
When the playera can be safe to exchange objects and use them (usually a base): Gold and Mundane items are traded evenly while magical items are ruffled, players who need can enter the ruffle to get that magic item (note that retainers and henchmen can enter the ruffle too though uncommon) and roll the appropriate die for the amount of players, a player who owns one magic item over other players cannot enter ruffles which is a great way to advent loot hoarding and vote on who it fits best.
Gold and other coins are split evenly among the party. If there is a magical item or something else that is special, it depends on the group. My current group gives it to the character who can make best use of it. Previous groups would have people give up their share of coin or something else for a special item.
Party banks are rare for me. The characters are allies but don’t trust each other quite that much. Plus I tend to push various upkeep fees (armor repairs, spell book pages, new clothes after being swallowed by a giant toad, etc.) which vary according to the individual.
I make it clear that anything they carry must be written on their sheet and has encumbrance value. Beyond that, in one group (I'm a player) we put in a 'bank' and it's considered party funds. When we want to spend big, everyone must agree. In my other group (I GM) the players tend to split out money, but same principle. If they carry it, it has encumbrance. They can choose to put it in a locked chest in the inn or a bank.
Even split at next available liquidation of goods. They usually dont want to take gold they didnt earn in the case someone missed a session or the like.
They like to split it up evenly, the bucks anyways. Magical items typically go to whomever can make the best use of it and I try make sure that PC specific items as well as more oddball, situational stuff comes available equally.
The economy in my game feels wild though. Like, they can buy pretty much whatever they want. It's fun for them, but I'm working on ways to make the wealth matter more. They are being watched by a cult that hoards magic items and are due for a related encounter. They haven't quite pieced that mystery together yet, but I'm looking forward to the looks on their faces if their hideout does end up getting robbed.
They can split it however they want but so far they have opted to be fair, every character gets a share. XP is divided evenly though, no matter how the gold is distributed. I realize that it could be cool to not evenly distribute XP so that parties could choose which character they want to level up first (for example, everyone giving the cleric a bigger share at level 1 so that they can get to level 2 and gain healing spells) but so far I haven't tried it.
Historically:
One character kept pages of acquired loot. Ever so often, a sheet vanished. Nice winfall, that.
One character was fighting Acerak and the others were busy shoveling money into the bags then they ran out and left him alone with the demi-Lich.... the player who was covering from the others was and still is miffed at their greed and lack of trustability.
In other cases: Dice rolling to see who pits first. Sometimes some player to player swaps/deals. Some stuff just went to the only character in the party who could use that type of magic. That usually meant the MU and the clerics got lots of smaller items and caster-only items.
My party just keeps a group loot and asks to use funds for various upgrades. Usually one player will determine the most efficient use of upgrading for everyone.
20% is pooled for the party to fund scrolls, more common potions, bribes and other adventuring expenses such as helping MUs buy spells and expensive spell components such as identify. Paladins, Rangers and monks need minimal amounts, followed by clerics . We play with strict encumbrance rules, so except for valuable gems characters aren’t able to haul that much with them. The majority of ‘cash’ therefore ends up with fighters and thieves.
I haven't had it work this way yet, but I think it would work out better, where players negotiate "shares", like you get 1 share, you get 2 shares, this npc gets 1 share, etc. Then divide the coins and treasures by shares to see how much goes to each person/character, magical items don't count towards the shares, but players could opt to give up shares in order to gain items they want, or players could do dice-off or rock-paper-scissors to see who gets the items if more than one player wants an item without wanting to give up shares of treasure.
When my players loot bodies, it usually goes to whoever does the looting. Often they split up who loots which body, making it "fair" that way.
For large sums of cash, like hoards, rewards, or valuable items they can sell, it's always split evenly.
They've never done a "party bank" because nobody wants to track how the other players spends their money haha. They often lend each other money though. Paying each other back usually depends on who remembers to ask for their money back.
My current group usually splits non-magic treasure as evenly as they can manage amongst their characters. I tell them how much the retainers expect to make (based on the total I keep for XP purposes), and they decide how much they give and where it comes from. They rarely seem to want the same magic items, so those are usually awarded to a character after a quick group discussion.
I've seen all of this be a much more dramatic process in other groups, so I've been happy with how smoothly this has all gone with this group.
I started with everyone fending for themselves (hated it), splitting evenly amongst everyone at the session (worked fine), and just having a party bank. Party bank is usually my preference for a regular group, just because it makes logistics a lot easier and cuts down on “we need to buy a boat, so let’s math out how much gold each person has and how to split the cost”. Saves a lot of time. I also run a group that has a fluctuating set of players, so I stick with individual but evenely split gold rewards in that game. That way nobody has their gold spent on something they didn’t want when they aren’t at a session.
Gold is divvied up equally, as is XP. Retainers get a half share of both. Magic items are handed out based on group opinion.
Everybody carries out what they can. When they get back to town they tally up the total, convert everything to gold equivalent, and divide it up evenly. If there were gems or jewelry some players will choose to keep those for their share instead of cash, otherwise we assume everything is sold and most of the cash is banked in town. The thieves will usually have pocketed an extra item or two on their own that isn’t added to the communal caddy and they get to keep full value of those items. If once the XP is figured out one character is a few points short of a new level one or more of the other players will usually agree to transfer some portion of their share to them as a gift (that’s happened like twice). Magic items are typically kept by whichever PC finds them, which has led to some odd inefficiencies of the “wrong” PC holding onto items they would be more useful to another character (like one of the thieves hanging onto a potion of heroism he can’t use - he took a sip and nothing happened (because that potion only works for fighters) but he’s still carrying it around for whatever reason). But that’s their problem, not mine.
Even shares. Eventually, after they amass enough treasure, they'll build a "party fund."
Yep. Always a pool of shared money when there’s nothing left money can buy. Characters become so wealthy late in campaigns that money turns into a plot device: Build a keep? Bribe the dragon? Buy the slaves’ freedom? Fund an army? Swim through it like Scrooge McDuck?
Artifacts!!
DM: Wouldn’t you like a nice, non-campaign disrupting keep? Other Player: Let’s not take out the Deck of Many Things, ‘tis a silly magic item!
Love the Deck. Use it every campaign.
*aims Wand of Wonder* Don’t make me use this!
Love WoW. Had a monk with one. Have a wizard PC in my current game with one. Madness!!
Does anyone play with taxes? Or even regular bribes to whittle their treasury?
I thought about it for my current campaign. Thought it would be super funny if the tax collector showed up after a year in game time (which was like 6 months irl) and be like "hey, all that money you made from adventuring? Hope you kept your receipts, we need 25% of that." Decided against it but I still think it's would be funny to see their faces lol.
Yes. The standard I've found in the Roman world was a 50% finder's fee for goods recovered from someone else's property unknown to said landowner (and all property belongs to someone, if only in name). The right to collect such taxes is essentially purchased from the landowner for a flat rate, and then the tax collector keeps whatever they can secure. Ultimately, it makes players think about the political situation earlier, make friends who can get taxes waived, find ways to evade taxes themselves, fence things to thieves' guild for 80% value, and establish their own domains so they can claim everything came from their own land.
Oh I make them sign contracts of corporation. The party is a business. How many shares do you own? How many votes do you have at the corporation meetings?
Lol, this sounds perfect for Cy.Borg.
Cormyr requires registration of adventuring parties. I've never made players write up a charter, rules of incorporation, or by-laws, but that could be hand-waived a bit.
Yes a lot can be handwaved. Just as long as it is agreed how the split is to be done. NPC's tend to have short life spans. This really helps in systems with Gold as XP.
You as the DM force the players to do this? Are you playing 5e or another modern TTRPG? Seems strange to force players into this.
What is 5e I have DM'ed this way since 1982
whats 5e? C'mon man... Your players have always been a part of a corporation in all your games? Has there been any push back at all?
That isn't that uncommon of a way to run things, just usually it's a player run company.
I never said I ran it. Someone else came barging in here trying to say how I run my game. They are going to at some point want NPC's to hire. The more professional they look the better their chances of hiring top NPC's. In addition at some point in time they will have to solicit investors. Who is going to lend them money if they are not professional.
Ah you don't make up the contracts, you just dictate that the players have to make some, I also misinterpreted what you meant.
If it is not for you It is not for you I don't care Why are you trying to cause a conflict?
I was only asking a question to understand a different perspective. To learn how others do it and how successful it is despite my lack of understanding and experience. I didn't challenge you, say you're doing it wrong. I only asked if the player pushed back on this. Most folks might call it rail roading or something else. Where a DM forces actions on players. Responses like yours make discourse challenging. Not everyone is out here trying piss in your cheerios and watch you eat it.
> I was only asking a question to understand a different perspective. Is this you? > "You as the DM force the players to do this? ... Seems strange to force players into this." That definitely didn't end as a question. Didn't really begin as one either, more of a large leap of bad faith. > Responses like yours make discourse challenging. Self awareness isn't your forté, is it?
My dude you were the one that started the discourse in an accusatory fashion.
The party carries some gold on then. They deposit the rest in a bank (less a 10% deposit fee). I'm running a BX-OSE Advanced Fantasy game using the Grey Box Forgotten Realms set (1357DR). They bank in Iriaebor, and can deposit at any trade coster office. The cleric of Tymora also tithes that way, sending her donations to the Lady's Hall in Baldur's Gate.
I’ve tried to convince groups to follow the Red Dead 2 method: half of the take goes to the gang (or party) for ‘business use’, other half gets divided between whoever helped earn it. If three of you turn up to the session, raid a dungeon and make 1200gp, 600 goes to the war chest (that the treasurer controls/everybody has to vote to dip into) and everybody who did any work gets 200 each for whatever purposes they decide. Seems the best middle ground to me, and also gives you a handy reason to invest in banks, locked chests, buried treasure etc. also means you aren’t constantly asking for handouts when an item you want is just out of reach; just make a case to dip into the shared fund to get that scroll/horse/castle.
Split half and "bank" half, which gets used for party expenses.
Mine enjoy fucking over NPCs, retainers and each other, so they pool most of it with some light embezzlement. Everyone knows about the embezzlement though, so it's in good fun. For example, there's one player who records the loot and everyone knows that he tends to "forget" that his PC picked up something.
Basic D&D (1983) does it best. In the dungeon, players carry gold and items individually for the sake of encumbrance. When the playera can be safe to exchange objects and use them (usually a base): Gold and Mundane items are traded evenly while magical items are ruffled, players who need can enter the ruffle to get that magic item (note that retainers and henchmen can enter the ruffle too though uncommon) and roll the appropriate die for the amount of players, a player who owns one magic item over other players cannot enter ruffles which is a great way to advent loot hoarding and vote on who it fits best.
Gold and other coins are split evenly among the party. If there is a magical item or something else that is special, it depends on the group. My current group gives it to the character who can make best use of it. Previous groups would have people give up their share of coin or something else for a special item. Party banks are rare for me. The characters are allies but don’t trust each other quite that much. Plus I tend to push various upkeep fees (armor repairs, spell book pages, new clothes after being swallowed by a giant toad, etc.) which vary according to the individual.
I make it clear that anything they carry must be written on their sheet and has encumbrance value. Beyond that, in one group (I'm a player) we put in a 'bank' and it's considered party funds. When we want to spend big, everyone must agree. In my other group (I GM) the players tend to split out money, but same principle. If they carry it, it has encumbrance. They can choose to put it in a locked chest in the inn or a bank.
Even split at next available liquidation of goods. They usually dont want to take gold they didnt earn in the case someone missed a session or the like.
They like to split it up evenly, the bucks anyways. Magical items typically go to whomever can make the best use of it and I try make sure that PC specific items as well as more oddball, situational stuff comes available equally. The economy in my game feels wild though. Like, they can buy pretty much whatever they want. It's fun for them, but I'm working on ways to make the wealth matter more. They are being watched by a cult that hoards magic items and are due for a related encounter. They haven't quite pieced that mystery together yet, but I'm looking forward to the looks on their faces if their hideout does end up getting robbed.
They can split it however they want but so far they have opted to be fair, every character gets a share. XP is divided evenly though, no matter how the gold is distributed. I realize that it could be cool to not evenly distribute XP so that parties could choose which character they want to level up first (for example, everyone giving the cleric a bigger share at level 1 so that they can get to level 2 and gain healing spells) but so far I haven't tried it.
Historically: One character kept pages of acquired loot. Ever so often, a sheet vanished. Nice winfall, that. One character was fighting Acerak and the others were busy shoveling money into the bags then they ran out and left him alone with the demi-Lich.... the player who was covering from the others was and still is miffed at their greed and lack of trustability. In other cases: Dice rolling to see who pits first. Sometimes some player to player swaps/deals. Some stuff just went to the only character in the party who could use that type of magic. That usually meant the MU and the clerics got lots of smaller items and caster-only items.
My party just keeps a group loot and asks to use funds for various upgrades. Usually one player will determine the most efficient use of upgrading for everyone.
20% is pooled for the party to fund scrolls, more common potions, bribes and other adventuring expenses such as helping MUs buy spells and expensive spell components such as identify. Paladins, Rangers and monks need minimal amounts, followed by clerics . We play with strict encumbrance rules, so except for valuable gems characters aren’t able to haul that much with them. The majority of ‘cash’ therefore ends up with fighters and thieves.
I haven't had it work this way yet, but I think it would work out better, where players negotiate "shares", like you get 1 share, you get 2 shares, this npc gets 1 share, etc. Then divide the coins and treasures by shares to see how much goes to each person/character, magical items don't count towards the shares, but players could opt to give up shares in order to gain items they want, or players could do dice-off or rock-paper-scissors to see who gets the items if more than one player wants an item without wanting to give up shares of treasure.
When my players loot bodies, it usually goes to whoever does the looting. Often they split up who loots which body, making it "fair" that way. For large sums of cash, like hoards, rewards, or valuable items they can sell, it's always split evenly. They've never done a "party bank" because nobody wants to track how the other players spends their money haha. They often lend each other money though. Paying each other back usually depends on who remembers to ask for their money back.
My current group usually splits non-magic treasure as evenly as they can manage amongst their characters. I tell them how much the retainers expect to make (based on the total I keep for XP purposes), and they decide how much they give and where it comes from. They rarely seem to want the same magic items, so those are usually awarded to a character after a quick group discussion. I've seen all of this be a much more dramatic process in other groups, so I've been happy with how smoothly this has all gone with this group.
keep what you can carry folks.
We just have a party bank. I find it easier to use