D&D 5E No good deed goes unpunished

The situation: A few game months ago in my campaign, the party happened upon a small village while on the way to another destination. This village of maybe 70 souls was having an issue with a group of hill giants who had been extorting them for their livestock. The party, being the heroes that they are, vowed to deal with the giants.

They did, handily killing the giants and scooping up a nice haul of 1200gp in the process.

And then they promptly gave the 1200gp to the villagers and rode out of town without a second thought, patting themselves on the back for being such good fellows.

Now this was just supposed to be a quick side quest to break up the travel, but once they handed all that cash over to those villagers it got me thinking.

These are peasants, suddenly with more gold on hand than they could ever expect to see in their lives. What sort of effect would that have on these humble folk? I decided that it wouldn't be good.

The village elder was left with all the gold, but what does he do with it? Does he split it evenly? Does he split it by person, or by family? Do the families that have lost relatives or livestock to the giants want an extra share? There's got to be infighting among the villagers as to how this is going to be split, and that could get ugly fast.

Does the elder have a roustabout brother or son that wants to steal all the gold for himself?

And what about the local bandit gang? What will they do if they get wind of the villages sudden influx of wealth?

And this doesn't even take into account the local nobility who is sure to want his cut!

My PC's have no idea of the chaos they have wrought in this once peaceful village among folk who were once friends and relatives, but they are going to be traveling back through it soon and I would love them to ride into this town, expecting to be hailed as beloved heroes, only to find barely anybody left, and those who remain wanting nothing more than to spit on their feet.

So what I'm looking for is scenarios. How would 1200gp throw a village of peasants into a spiral of murder, theft, mistrust, and doom? I have a few ideas, but I thought I'd throw it out to the evil peanut gallery and see what comes back.

I'm not sure that's the kind of money likely to result in complete anarchy. Yeah, it's a lot of gold for these folks, but I think most people would do little more than harbor resentment at the loss and get back to their normal lives. Still, the consequences of the party's charity definitely has some good story potential.

Personally, I like the idea of someone absconding with the wealth. When the party catches up with him or her, most of it has already been spent on gambling/trinkets/etc. Or maybe he's hiding out somewhere that segues into the next leg of the main story.

How long in game time has it been since the party left the village with the gold?

Agree. I'd say the village elder says he'll spend the night working out how to divide the gold. In the morning he and the gold are gone, along with the constable's prized warhorse. He rides off to the city, rents a room at a brothel, and stays there drinking and whoring for as long as he's able.

The party finds out a week or more later. Maybe one of the villagers runs into them on the road or in a neighboring town and blames them for corrupting the elder.

Just to play angel's advocate for a moment, why not have the elder use the money for the good of the town, such as building a windmill for grinding their grain?

You could still have an adventure where a scoundrel absconded with the remaining gold (possibly murdering the elder in the process) and now the villagers are calling upon the adventurers for justice.

However, if you just have this good deed cause misery for the town, then you're likely going to discourage the players from performing good deeds in the future. Your intent may be for them to be more careful with their good deeds, but that's not necessarily how they will interpret it. Before you go down this path, be certain that it's a road you want to go down.

My big concern would be about giving the players a moral lesson that the only people they can trust with money is themselves. That could lead to unheroic behaviour in the future! That said, I do agree that this is a cool plot hook. I’d maybe aim to have a split in the village – those wanting to use it to start an orphanage or something equally benevolent, and those wanting to use it for the personal gain of the families who lost people to the giants. That way the players have to make a decision: do they agree with ‘help the community’ or ‘provide recompense to the families’? Those are both motives that your players will likely agree with on a fundamental level, and should mean that your players will drive the action themselves, with only limited input (NPCs, action scenes, etc) needed from yourself once the scene is set.

Fanaelialae said:

Just to play angel's advocate for a moment, why not have the elder use the money for the good of the town, such as building a windmill for grinding their grain?

You could still have an adventure where a scoundrel absconded with the remaining gold (possibly murdering the elder in the process) and now the villagers are calling upon the adventurers for justice.

However, if you just have this good deed cause misery for the town, then you're likely going to discourage the players from performing good deeds in the future. Your intent may be for them to be more careful with their good deeds, but that's not necessarily how they will interpret it. Before you go down this path, be certain that it's a road you want to go down.

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I'm with Fanaelialae here. It's a good idea for them to be aware of the ramifications of carelessly changing people's lives, but not so much that the good deed is utterly destroyed.

So the elder distributes wealth to help with losses, to get farms back into shape, and repurchase livestock. He's wise, so he sets the rest of the gold aside for a rainy day, like another such event, or a drought, or a rough winter. There could be some greedy souls in town who are angry that the money is just sitting there.

This gives the players the obviousness that yes, their good deed went to good hands, and the elder is seriously thinking ahead, but also still shows human frailty and greed.

I like the Seven Samurai approach. The people remain good enough but word of their wealth has attracted bandits and/or treasure-hungry monsters.

1200 gold is not that much money.
A skilled hireling earn 600 gold a years.
It is enough to buy a honest herd of cow or sheep.
For sure a tribe of orc would start to rip each other for that money.
But common folk may react more wisely.
I suggest you to stay away from the “Dm that show hard lesson of life to players.”
Build a good story that seem plausible with what players know.

It's not unreasonable that some people wish to use the gold for selfish purposes.

But Giants have recently been stealing their livestock yes? I would think their first thoughts might turn to A: buying replacement cattle, B: getting long-term security.
Now, there's definitely room for Townsfolk to take advantage and be taken advantage of here. Perhaps when they go to town to buy 10 more cattle, they come back with 1, having wasted their money on ale and women. I doubt this would be enough to get the town pissed at the party though. The latter has some good room though: the town hires some "heroes" (aka: mercenaries) to protect their town, and these mercenaries turn out to be greedy, abusive drunken jerks who use their status to extort more money from the people, physically harm the townsfolk and generally be drunk and useless. (say, allowing a bandit raid).

The party comes back to town and:
A: Is rewarded for the good deeds by seeing the town tried to spend their gold wisely.
B: Encounters the "heroes" hired to protect the town, maybe has to beat them up.
C: Finds out the gold is stolen and has to recover what's left.
D: Maybe gets some 'tude from some of the townsfolk.

This shows that the party did the right thing, and the town tried to do the right thing, but needs some extra help.

I agree that if you're not very careful, you're likely to just teach the party that the townsfolk are ungrateful jerks, and make the party less inclined to be helpful in the future.

shidaku said:

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I agree that if you're not very careful, you're likely to just teach the party that the townsfolk are ungrateful jerks, and make the party less inclined to be helpful in the future.

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I know there's a temptation a DM to toss in a twist on the PCs' good actions. I've done it myself. But over time I've come to realize that while it makes an interesting story in and of itself, it doesn't serve what the game's real purpose is - telling the story of the PCs as wise and competent heroes (unless they're not). Twisting the story in this manner just shows the players that they were stupid to of given the villagers the money. So a good act of altruism on their behalf becomes a mistake. What purpose does that serve to their enjoyment of the game?