Maldin said:
ROFL!! In my own campaign, a party found the deed to one of the properties they "adventured" in, and wanted to register the deed so that they could move in and use it as a base of operations. ....The ridiculous steps that they had to go through are ..... if you want to torture your players with thesame sort of bureacracy ;-)
I generally don't torment my players with bureacracy. At least, not if they make a few Int checks to see how feasible a given activity is. "Finders Keepers" can be justified with a bag of coins but things are different with property.
IMC the party stopped a band of demons from opening a gate, but not before they had killed off a small town. The Rogue was going to claim "salvage" on the whole place. The general who's forces had exterminated the bulk of the demons found it an amusing concept.
He explained it would require the approval of the Baron of Town, Count Towny, Duke Townland, and King of ThisLand. This particular region is part of an ancient property swap with ThatLand so the King of Thisland has to get permission, or at least notify, the King of Thatland.
Thistown is the largest asset in the Barony of Town and Baron Town would not give it up willingly. It gets even more complicated since the Baron of Town is also the Count of Overthere while the Duke of Townland is a Baron Overethere. Land taken away from the Baron of Town may result in repercussions to the Baron of OverThere (aka Duke Townland). Only the King could overrule the Duke of Townland and since it would also irritate the Count of Overthere he would be highly unlikely to do so.
This ignores the rights of guilds and churches have towards the property belonging to their organizations and members. The nobility are a breeze to deal with compared to Teamsters, Ditchdiggers, and the Priesthood.
Were the party to manage the amazing political tightrope walking required to acquire the township, they would be responsible for providing the dozens of soldiers required to protect such valuable land. Furthermore, every time land changed hands between commoners that taxes were paid and the tax load on property transfer is roughly 60% of its annual revenues. For Town that would be several thousand gold coins, due prior to acquisition.
The owners of Town then can't go selling or giving anything away to raise cash; all sites that have been the place of slaughter and especially fiendish incursion are put under quarantine. Regular ills like filth fever are bad enough but devil chills and even less savory plagues may be birthed in these defiled corpses. Graves will need to be dug, animal carcases burned, wells cleaned out, priests hired to re-sanctify the churches, buildings used as part of the rituals razed, and all this done under the aegis of quarantine.
It will cost tens of thousands of gold coins to get the place back to a functional state and then who would live there? You'd need to entice the churches and guilds to return and likely have to offer tax incentives to tenants, a tax burden the Count is unlikely to let pass, meaning you'd have to cover any losses out of your own pockets.
About this time the Rogue gets on his knees and begs the man to stop before he dies of red tape poisoning. The rest of the party points and laughs. The party was given several letters of commendation, an officer's rank in the militia, a sizable bag of money, and a fairly large, fully furnished house for their troubles.
It's been about four years since then and the party has only stayed in the house one winter but have used their rank and letters of commendation time and time again as a way to bypass the low-level bureacracy they can't stand. Very little says "take me to your leader" like military insignias and paperwork bearing a royal seal.
