Veeky Forums Should Tax policies be important when you play?

Yes, every time I read LOTR I wonder about Aragorn's tax policy. I also wonder about how the baby orcs would have been treated. Would they have been slaughtered, or would there be an attempt to reform them?

I'd argue that you Mom sucks a mean dick in the morning.

you don't consider a post-scarcity society might have something beyond currency?

Those are pretty good plot/story hooks. But they don't really deal with tax policies as other than a story telling device, which is fine.

But I think what OP is implying is that actual tax policy should play some fundamental point in a game. Actual tax policy is kind of irrelevant to the game. If a region has a 10% sales tax, then it is no different that just saying a sword cost 11gp instead of 10gp, in terms of effects on the players. Just because actual adventures would be concerned about estate taxes and the like, that level of bullshit does not add anything of value to a campaign or session.

Do you know what Aragorn's tax policy was my friend?

>Should Tax policies be important when you play?
No. Not even if your playing a modern or futuristic setting specifically based around political intrigue are the specifics of the tax policies interesting to anyone.

And in a medieval setting it's downright bizarre to have a complex tax policy. In medieval Europe, if the king decided he wanted to tax a region, he would announce the amount of gold he sought, then bandits would bid against each other for the right to collect the taxes -- the lowest bidder winning as what they bid was the amount of time they would need to collect the gold -- and their payment consisted of whatever extra gold they managed to steal from the people during that time.

Depends on the game. They can be completely absent in casual games, generally in the background with occasional plot hooks like a typical D&D game, or completely central like in certain Exalted games. On average I tend to run games that fall toward the middle of that range unless the players make it important to their characters by taking economically focused skills or traits or do things where it would naturally come up a lot such as establishing or assuming the lead of a government or business.

I normally assess taxes and tariffs quietly, vaguely, and in the background, often going so far as to assume that appropriate fees will be deducted by the characters automatically when accounting their treasure or whatever. If they make a point of saying they cheat on their taxes or hide unreported income I make a note of it and it may come up and I might use taxation (and the agents thereof) to establish something like having to undergo a thorough inspection and pay harsh tariffs when entering a new city to establish that it is strict or unfriendly or giving them an opportunity top pay off inspectors to illustrate corruption, but actual policy is something that rarely comes up in my games outside of Robin Hood or extreme inflation scenarios unless the players make it their business

That's vastly incorrect for much of the Medieval period in much of Europe, as far as I know. While taxes were levied by force, it was usually by men in the local lord's employ, not a strange bandit auction. And goods weren't typically stolen, they were solicited by threat of force.

>And goods weren't typically stolen, they were solicited by threat of force
That is how you steal, user.

No, it's robbery.

That's just a specific form of stealing.

no, but Tolkien was a linguist, not an economist, so it's probably either horseshit or perfect.

You do realize his comment was not intended to literally be autistic about tax policy in the Kingdom of Gondor and was more to point out how a lot of the background stuff in Lord of the Rings was just left to the background so we could enjoy a nice simple story of good and evil, right?

Don't get me wrong, this guy is not nearly as good at writing compelling stories as he thinks he is. But just like Tolkien was upset with the idea of people trying to force allegory into his work, let's not do the opposite and pretend that Martin's comment was a face-value thing.

We don't need to understand the taxes of Aragorn's Kingdom to enjoy the story revolving around it because of the perspective the story is trying to give us, whereas Martin is so reliant on internal politics and scheming to drive his plots that the taxes of the Seven Kingdoms are actually somewhat important.

What's his problem Veeky Forums?

Very important.

Because as we all know there are a lot of great movies that had "regulation of taxation of trade routes" as a premise.

To be honest, i think all fantasy should be about same themes. It's less confusing that way.

Might matter in the niche sort of game where the players have become major property holders, or in a game that centers around political intrigue. Otherwise anything about taxes is either flavor text or a plot hook that could have been achieved another way.

Stealing is specifically taking something without right to it. Rights only exist with a social framework, so within a social framework in which a sovereign or state has the right to levy taxes the collection of taxes cannot be considered theft.

>What's his problem Veeky Forums?

He ditched his plan for his novels after A Storm of Swords and has written himself into a corner that takes him longer and longer to write his way out of each time because he no longer has a coherent outline for where his fiction needs to go and he has to spend time and pages servicing all the things he's added that weren't part of the original plan.

Yes. All the NPC sellers charge GST and PCs have to keep receipts and file tax claims for business expenses.

Yeah, no. You want to read about tax policy, go read the Domesday Book.

>was more to point out how a lot of the background stuff in Lord of the Rings was just left to the background so we could enjoy a nice simple story of good and evil
That's not at all what GRRM said, though. You should probably check out the quote again as he makes it explicitly clear that he enjoys LotR *except* for the fact that Tolkien left such details to the background and made the story a simple tale about good vs evil.

I genuinely ended up doing this as a GM, mostly by accident, when the PCs suddenly changed their minds from 1700s pirate campaign to merchant campaign.

It's a terrible idea. But I don't know how else to run the game so they get the opportunity to not pay taxes and get in trouble with the crown, cause they also wanted to track how much money they had, exactly.

Honestly dunno how i should've tackled that one

Nobles have checks set up on roads they maintain and protect.
Serfs pay one tenth of their average income to the lord.
The local lord also owns the marketplace and every merchant has to pay a fee to rent a space.
Trading outside the market is only allowed in shops that pay a smaller fee to the local lord.

That's about it.
Normal citizens didn't start to pay taxes until very recently.

Occasionally you need to pay up hefty taxes to get rid of some of the hugeass treasure you just found. That's the only time these things come up in my game.

Is it evil to force the peasant to pay taxes

Yeah

I do design the taxes rate of each place in the background. But I do not mention it unless the PCs attempt to derail the campaign into becoming merchants. If they want to own a store or something,

As with everything.
If it provides an interesting narrative hook, yes.
Otherwise no.
Usually it's "no" in this case.

This, a lot of details like that are good when worldbuilding, but most of the stuff like that is for the GM and not for the players.

A lot of games would go smoother if the GM would just realize that any worldbuilding he does is for himself (or another GM running his setting) to use as reference.

Naheulbeuk has a tax on dungeon plundering and its fucking stupid

You have a duty to your liege

Martin is a bad writer, A Song of Fire And Ice is a bad series that has been dragged out for way too long.

Sounds like a plot-hook to overthrow the unjust nobility

>Actual tax policy is kind of irrelevant to the game
Of course, that very much depends on what game you're playing. If you're using a fairly abstract economic system, say, CofD/nWoD, then sure, that granularity might not actually matter (since it would be poorly represented mechanically regardless of how the story goes). Conversely, if you're playing Traveller, for instance, which eschews character improvement for economic improvement, then yes, counting pennies is integral to the system and setting, and thus tax policies are extremely important.

Even in D&D you could have a player be granted/conquer a fief, in which he may be obligated to pay a tax to a liege lord. Now maybe he doesn't want to deal with that, but certainly tax policies could be a plot hook for peasant unrest or even rebellion.

Everyone pays taxes. It is a duty

It depends on the game. Personally, I would love to play a swords ,sandals and sorcery game where my party was thrown into intrigue one time due to a group of civilised men using us to help evade or Ake advantage of tax policies. There's plenty of ways to involve it but it depends entirely on what your players enjoy.

A good old fashion toll booth while escorting a merchant or someone looking to fence an artifact is always a good plot hook. Pay the fee and now you got a quest to recoup losses before the loan sharks the client that hired you comes to collect and his friends means business as in they will skullfuck you type of business. Or take the long route and come under attack by a party of well prepared bandits who have spent years preying on people who takes the long way around.

Taxes and tariffs and always great hooks for greed based plots

Since when were LotR fans so butthurt by GRRM's comment that they feel the need to spam about it on /tv/ and Veeky Forums all the time now?

What happened exactly? Is it one mad LotR fan who only just now discovered the tax policy quip?

Even the king?

They used to say Death was inevitable too

till we killed him

He pays it to his people in blood.

Metaphorically; the king and his family fight and die to protect the kingdom

Oy, I've never seen no king fight to protect me.

Good, that means it's working.

So Veeky Forums, this a small reminder to you about how taxes worked in places before income taxes and voluntary compliance.

The tax man would show up to your home, unannounced, often with a pair of thugs at his sides. Those thugs aren't there to force you to pay, they're there so you can't kill the taxman. But they're ultimately still thugs, and might get a little rough with you if you step out of line.

When he shows up, he appraises everything you own and then gives you a bill for what you owe the lord. Part of why he had to show up unannounced was that you can't hide shit from him. Then he tells you how much you owe. Maybe payment will be demanded immediately, maybe payment will be due in a short period of time, but either way the tax collector has told you how much you owe the lord. And if you don't have that much, it falls on you to sell your shit in order to make payments.

Tax collectors are easy villains in these old settings because of how the practice worked. Low oversight, dangerous job, and lots of money changing hands. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a tax collector to set high prices in order to make sure he could skim some off the top without getting noticed.

Oy, this guy says the king doesn't pay his taxes!

Tell me, do you poop?

I've pooped most of my life. Are you telling me the king doesn't poop either. Is that why he doesn't have to pay taxes?

Has the king seen you do it?

...

The king watches people poop?

He sees all

Money is irrelevant.
Money is as a trade tool that is a sign that the central economy is capable of projecting enough power.
You don't hoard money. You hoard rare metals(coins, sculptures, bars) or you hoard things that is more valuable per gold: THE TOP TRADE COMMODITY, i.e Silk, oils, Myra,

Also this. Taxes is a postmodern thing for common people.

This can't be a genuine opinion, but at the same time it doesn't really work either as a joke or as provocation. his leaves me somewhat confused.

>Also this. Taxes is a postmodern thing for common people.
No they aren't user. Obviously systems of taxation have changed over the course of millennia, but most organized, relatively centralized nations in the history of the world have had some kind of an official tax policy. Like, the Old Kingom of Egypt had a system of taxation with speciic, well-defined obligations for the common folk.

Just plain old trolling.

This.

Unsurprisingly, the taxman (fut or fogd) is a stock character in Norwegian folk stories, where he's almost uniformly depicted as brutal, unfair and at times corrupt. Especially because he represented the Danish or Swedish king for a long time. He's often likened to the wolf.

They also had some legal authority, making them even more powerful. Add in stuff like the hated Shoe Tax of 1711, where you were taxed by the number of shoes in your household, and you get why they were often hated by common folk.

Also unsurprisingly, taxmen were fairly regularly killed, especially in the early days of a union. Not to mention multiple tax revolts.

Taxes can have a place in a campaign. Not any campaign, but it's not out of place in something historical or political.

You nordics are sure savages

Taxes? Sure, I'll have them in my game, via HIGH LIVING, with it being presumed that some of the money spent is on taxes. D&D 5e has a similar "expenses" system.

Tax policies? The only time this will come up in my games is if I intend to start a Robin Hood sidequest.

It's one thing to tax a man's home and produce, but when you go after his shoes you've gone too far.

Have an illustration from a folk tale, in which the taxman is being abducted by the Devil. The Devil notably doesn't wear shoes, presumably for tax reasons.

This is one of the worst rules I've ever had the displeasure of reading.

Do you?

T. Libertarian

They could.

It was kinda hard to tax something directly and effectively before technology reached a point where a government could discern what was happening on its territory. For example, Spain taxed mercury to target silver and gold, for one needed the first to produce the latter.

Idiosyncratic taxes based on things like number of windows or good teeth, escaping collectors, smuggling silkworms or corpses, acepting quests to find alternative sources of something controled by the king, escorting tax chests, all these might provide amusement and quests while being based upon tax policy.

Try putting a low level group buying a tax chart and attempting to farm cunning peasants that can't be killed and please a lord whose favors are essential.

Since GRRM has shit for background, tax policies especially. Dude can't even decide whether royally funded roads are a thing or not on his main supercontinent.

I disagree because I am running a game has tax evasion by a duke as the kick off reason for events in a campaign.

In D&D magic items cost a lot of money to make. So how valued is a high volume mine of highest grade enchanting reagents? The answer that I am going with is large share of major country's GDP sized. Something that profitable is clearly going to be taxed heavily. The duke in question came to the idea of not paying said tax. The cover up of the operations of the mine would be a net saving verses paying up.

Kings road

yea. Robert spent fat stacks on it and never got anything more than a dirt path.

>Should Tax policies be important when you play?

No.

They CAN be important, if the players look like they actually give a shit about them. But a DM should never push a potentially boring issue onto the players if they're not on board with it.

Half the point of being an adventurer is that nobody knows just how much money you have in order to tax it, and nobody knows for sure where you were born or to whom you owe taxes.

The other half is that anybody who'd be inclined to tax you anyway is also probably a little bit scared that all the other adrenaline-fueled psychos who crawl into holes full of monsters to steal their shit instead of farming for a living may not like the precedent being set.

Literally the whole point of being an adventurer is that rules only kind of apply to you.

You don't owe taxes to the place you were born at, you owe taxes to the place where you live and work.

Also, successful adventurers don't carry all their riches with them.

So how would one go about taxing a pocket dimension?

Not all settings have pocket dimensions.

In fact, I've never player a game in my life that had pocket dimensions as something mundane that an adventurer could obtain and use for storing shit.

So you've never played D&D? Portable holes are kinda standard at mid levels.

Even a fantasy campaign can have this as a starting hook when your town you are living in hits the motherlode and just as your village about exploit the newfound wealth the taxman comes into town demanding a large cut from your party because they found the mothetlode and thus lays claim to it and demands it to be paid before they send an army's worth pf bounty hunters on you.

what was his original plan?

Even in D&D games I've played (which are few), the DM houseruled portable holes away because of the party consensus. We feel that they detract from the experience.

Consequently, we don't play D&D anymore.

Medieval tax policy would focus on land taxes and income based tribute from city residents, so it wouldn't affect adventurers much. At most they might deal with customs at borders.

depends on the setting and type of game
if we're playing murderhobo4000
probably not very, unless as a premises to cause them trouble when they refuse to pay

if we're playing POLITICS: intrigue & bullshittery
quite a bit, do they control them, and if so to what extent, who do they keep happy? and at what cost?

if you get what I'm saying

While we are at it, can you explain to me how the peasant was meant to earn gold to pay his taxes? He works the field, and the king/duke/count takes the harvest for the king.

So, how does the peasant or his wife, even live?

Fat people shouldn't write fantasy because all they care about it taxes and food.

And bowel movements.

Hat Tax and Window Tax were also popular in britain for a while.

>And If so How could they be implemented in-game?

Whenever the PCs have too much gold :^)

How does anyone take FAT PINK MAST SHITTING BROWN WATER man seriously, again?

Taxes are bad, but have you heard about Inn-sewer-ants?

They don't take all of the harvest, just a portion.

5%-10% tax on treasure recovered from dungeon. There is you functional tax policy if you insist on having one.

According to interviews he was originally going to have a time skip after A Storm of Swords to put everything into place for the latter half of the story but instead ended up writing out the intervening events, which is when the narrative seems to go out of control.

>And If so How could they be implemented in-game?

Make the players the ones setting the tax policy. Give someone a bit of land and they'll be keenly interested in how much wealth they can squeeze from it before they have a revolution on their hands.

Even in more traditional itinerant-adventurer games, I do like to see a generic lifestyle tax like the high living rule mentioned above, just to ensure that PCs aren't spending all the loot they risked their lives for on nothing but shinier magic armour.

I hear it's a gnomish scheme to profit from the misfortunes of others. Insurers should be hanged alongside usurers, if you ask me.

...did you seriously think they took 100% of the food?