Party has built bridge over a ravine, shortening travel through the region considerably. At first this was just for their personal convenience, but then they had the idea to appoint hireling and collect toll for use of the bridge. The problem is, they don't own the land the construction stands on.
What would be a good way to handle this once land owners find out? Just seizing the construction feels lazy, and demolishing it makes no sense since the shortcut is useful.
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
Owner offers to buy the bridge. Other option is dealing with builders with force. If builders are too strong, do nothing.
Builders (the party) won't be back in the region for a while, so if someone wanted to take the bridge by force they only need to shoo away the appointed tollman. Who could then try to catch up with the party to inform them about the situation. Or they only find out when they come back to collect the profits, finding it "under new management".
Established land owners are two local noblemen, pretty clearly defined because the ravine is on the border of their fiefdoms, the land on both sides of the ravine has little value because it's almost barren, but the shortcut across the ravine is valuable because long way around it is much longer. So if it comes to buy-out there may even be a bit of bidding war.
Bandit seizure may be good idea, it would drive home they can't just leave it behind without establishing some sort of proper security.
Depends. Who is the land's owner? Is there an established owner? If not, have two or three nearby noblemen claim ownership of this newly profitable piece of land. Let players navigate that, maybe come to an agreement with one of the nobles who offers good terms for siding with him and becoming his vassals, maybe having a nice bridge-defense scenario against another noble who's decided that the land is definitely his and won't hear of anything else.
Offer owners a cut of the profits. Duh.
Realistically, assuming the land owner has sufficient force, they just send armed men to occupy it for a bit and replace the current toll collector, who they may or may not penalize for 'stealing' from them.
Your PCs might find out when their toll collector comes and finds them, or when they get curious about missing funds, or when they receive a summons to court for unlawfully collecting tolls - which is technically robbery, by the way.
You can resolve this sort of things in many ways depending on the character of the party, whether or not they made a mistake in earnest, whether or not the landlord is reasonable or amenable to some settlement, and whether or not the courts can simply be bought.
Alternatively, go for a third option. The landlord doesn't know about this pass, but word gets to outlaws. They simply forcibly seize control. You AND the landlord find out at the same time - can you come to a compromise to deal with a problem neither of you want to tolerate?
None of this happened in a game and you are making shit up.
I'm starting to wonder if this is botposting, because it seems like any OP talking about some kind of an in-game scenario prompts at least one reply claiming that it didn't happen. These replies come reliably whether OP's scenario is plausible - which this one is - or not.
A bidding war between two noblemen, or maybe an actual war between two noblemen, depending on how things go, would be my suggestion. Main thing is to embrace players getting invested in a location, even if it is financially rather than emotionally.
More like contrived made up scenarios are the botposting shitting up the board. Reeks of nogames worldbuilding shit, only intended to get others to interact with his made up scenario because he doesn't have an actual game.
Because taking stonemason, carpentry etc skills is never used in games even given its an option when creating or leveling up a character. Right.
If you would've played actual games, you'd know those skills are used for shit like looking for secret doors, weak spots in a wall, how to disable a siege engine and so on and so on. Not to build random fricking bridges or anything else for that matter. Even old skool D&D had high level fighters just materialize their castle from thin air and not waste everyone's time playing pretend lego. Goddamn I hate nu/tg/.
>you'd know those skills are used for shit like looking for secret doors, weak spots in a wall, how to disable a siege engine and so on and so on
No, that's search and disable device. As you would well know if you had ever played D&D.
Those were general non-system specific examples and you know it, you want to argue in bad faith for this nogames shit.
And if you had ever played a game you'd use specific system for your examples instead of making shit up.
NTA but I never mention systems I use on /tg/ because they're so obscure that I'd be embarrased to bring them up.
You sound like a massive poser at best. And at worst you and your friends were worthless combat junkies who couldn’t roleplay themselves out of a paper bag.
Let me guess. You don’t track carry weight? A great reason to build a bridge is when you actually can only carry so much gear and need to bring along enough food, water, rope, and oil to go dungeon delving. At that point time is money, spending a month to build a foot bridge might save you a year going forward as you cut the time it takes to resupply and reach an actually safe area from weeks to days. Even if it’s purely for convenience, in a dangerous high fantasy low development world the less time you spend in the wilderness the better. Something that can level drain you, something that can just instantly devour you, something that could kill and replace you without your party realizing could be lurking just behind that boulder as you settle in for the night.
>At that point time is money, spending a month to build a foot bridge might save you a year going forward as you cut the time it takes to resupply and reach an actually safe area from weeks to days
Nobody does shit like this. You roll a couple random encounters when you frick around in a forest getting to the dungeon, that space might as well not exist and there sure as frick isn't resupply going on nor crossing back and forth. You are grasping at straws for this made up contrived scenario to happen.
I knew it. God I’m glad I don’t have players like you. My party loves managing resources, we’re in the middle of a hexcrawl to find an artifact and they spent a whole two sessions just preparing and striking deals to have armed caravans find them to ensure they can restock on food and water and offload anything juicy they do find to be escorted back to their guild for storage. Taking a whole caravan would be more trouble than it’s worth, better for them to act as pathfinders for smaller resupply trains to follow in relative safety.
You're speaking very forcefully with the assumption that your specific group's specific playstyle is the only one that exists, rather than what it really is, specific to your group only. Once you get a few decades of experience in this hobby you'll inevitably realize that no two groups play the same, even if they play the same games they will be as different as night and day. You get one group that literally cannot conceive of someone caring about the world and for another group the whole game is all about that. You get one group that can't conceive of someone tracking all the resources down to the lint in the characters' pockets and another group for that is the whole appeal. And so on, for infinite variables. So it is for all games where the number one rule is "make shit up lmao".
>If you would've played actual games, you'd know those skills are used for shit like looking for secret doors, weak spots in a wall, how to disable a siege engine and so on and so on
There is LITERALLY no reason you can't use them for their civilian applications if you want to. Just because you run games that are 24/7 murder marathons doesn't mean everybody does.
My wizard has carpentry as a skill. He uses it to build vardos that are bigger on the inside than the outside. His work has become so popular on the Sword Coast that he could retire from adventuring entirely and be insanely wealthy just selling vardos. Instead it got the group dragged into a wizard war with a rival wizard trying to undercut his business.
This is normal table shit, anon. Or should I say no-games anon?
Fricking have a nice day
Against my better judgement I'll bite. Why do you think this scenario is contrived, anon? It wouldn't surprise me to see something like that at my table.
Did you know that not all games are dungeon crawlers? Building shit or having shit built is, in fact, something that happens in games.
If these no-games accusations aren't botposting - and I'm still not convinced the aren't - I wonder what kind of gaming experience anon or anons behind them have. There seems to be a bizarrely narrow view on RPGs behind them.
How is land owned in your setting?
If it's like a common d&d fantasy medieval setting, and this is out in the wilderness I'm not sure anyone really has a great claim in it.
Is it in Kingdom X?
Then maybe the king's tax collector would simply collect a tax from them, but would see it as some kind of homesteading.
I think it would be formalized that they own it, but have to pay a share of the toll to the liege.
>The obvious correct answer just... uhm... feels lazy
Look at yourself in the mirror and figure out why you're too lazy to even make a convincing justification for your timewasting. You could be doing something enjoyable, anon.
Even if it's useful destroy it, that's how an intelligent person would behave.
I don't think a party of adventurers are qualified to build a stable bridge that can be used by many
This posted said it best why this is nogames shitposting. Not in any game ever there was an adventuring party made up of masons and civil engineers just randomly setting up shop for a year to build a bridge.
A single wizard can build a perfect bridge in a single spellcasting.
>party member is dwarf
>party member is strong barbarian
>party member is tinkering gnome
I can think of a billion reasons d&d characters would be willing and able to construct a foot bridge.
Hell, even a wizard might decide it’s worth saving the spell slots to magic up a permanent bridge instead of just flying over the ravine for whatever reason.
I think the interesting way to play this could even be the clashings of jurisdiction.
>The Local Lord who technically owns the land feels they are entitled to the bridge's toll earnings as it's their land, even though they had ignored and even persecuted others who had tried to build a bridge before.
>Another Local Lord in the neighboring fiefdom actually feels the bridge is highly important as it helps with trade and movement of troops between them, even if the first lord doesn't like him.
I run a Renaissance tech level OSR world,
If they built on someone else's land it belongs to the landowner.
If there is a sufficient legal systems he can sue them for damages and cost to remove the vandalism.
A bridge like this would damage their proper with new travelers and no supporting road network.
A corrupt local sheriff would easily be paid off to give the players hell with local law enforcement.
Because letting players enjoy fruits of their labor is a bridge too far, huh?
What I'm more concerned about is in what world is building a functional, practical bridge considered vandalism. The textbook definition kinda specifies destruction or damage and building a bridge is the exact frickin' opposite of that
A lawsuit threat can sometimes be a pretext to obtain a settlement. The settlement in this case being "I now own the bridge you built. Don't like it? Find enough gold to defeat me in court! The court fees will cost more than the bridge!"
The application of the law is stupid, but valid, and a good lawyer would tell the party to see if they can negotiate some kind of small payment to hand over the bridge.
Counterpoint: The party is a group of wandering vagabonds who somehow have the resources and ability to build a functioning bridge across a ravine that presumably no one else could/bothered to and managed to do so without anyone knowing. You COULD sue them, but they're just as likely to skip town after unbuilding the bridge.
Pun intended?
nobody owns the land any construction stands on, it belongs to the king, the point is moot
>player characters
>ownership rights mattering at all
What a joke, I cast fireball on the landowners.