Lord Zardoz
Explorer
I am sure many of you have heard of Bernard Madoff and his massive Ponzi scheme. If you do not know what I am talking about, take a moment and enter "Bernard Madoff Ponzi" into google. Dont worry, we will wait for you to get back.
Up to speed? Good.
Now, what if your D&D group wanted to run a Ponzi scheme on NPC's in game? How would you try to run it? If you have ideas, just pick your favored edition and run it. Heck, if you prefer Shadowrun, D20 Modern, or some other system, go ahead and lay out how you would express the plan within those rules.
And as a DM, how far would you let the players run with it, given the potential for the players to obtain huge and unbalancing amounts of wealth?
For my own thoughts, I would probably work out a series of Bluff and Diplomacy checks as a reasonably difficult skill challenge, and make the players run through a few specifically chosen targets to obtain victims. They would actually have to work out how to get the money to and from each investor, and they would need to operate in a reasonably large city. Something closer to the larger cities in the Forgotten Realms setting in 3rd edition than the standared 4th edition 'Points of Light'. After a while, I would probably let the skill challenges be ongoing within a given city, and work out a formula to determine how much of the cities wealth they could tie up before the scheme collapses in on its self.
END COMMUNICATION
Up to speed? Good.
Now, what if your D&D group wanted to run a Ponzi scheme on NPC's in game? How would you try to run it? If you have ideas, just pick your favored edition and run it. Heck, if you prefer Shadowrun, D20 Modern, or some other system, go ahead and lay out how you would express the plan within those rules.
And as a DM, how far would you let the players run with it, given the potential for the players to obtain huge and unbalancing amounts of wealth?
For my own thoughts, I would probably work out a series of Bluff and Diplomacy checks as a reasonably difficult skill challenge, and make the players run through a few specifically chosen targets to obtain victims. They would actually have to work out how to get the money to and from each investor, and they would need to operate in a reasonably large city. Something closer to the larger cities in the Forgotten Realms setting in 3rd edition than the standared 4th edition 'Points of Light'. After a while, I would probably let the skill challenges be ongoing within a given city, and work out a formula to determine how much of the cities wealth they could tie up before the scheme collapses in on its self.
END COMMUNICATION
