D&D General Advice how grandparents would force player take on familiy business

[Eltab]

My conniving manipulative (probably slave-trader) grandparents are trying to pull my strings - or yank my chains - to make me take over the family business?

Solution obvious: hire some Zhent muscle as backup, and explain that the only condition I can consider is if the family agrees to bankroll my adventuring. Show business plan that indicates I will be the company's biggest single expense. Let them think that I will turn the family business empire into a wholly-owned Zhent subsidiary.

They will want me far from the business.

 

[Harzel]

My first thought on seeing the OP's subject was that instead of ENWorld you should be writing to Dear Abby.

Oh, I see you are from München. Well, google it; I'm sure there is a German equivalent.

 

[ccs]

$$$.

The Grandparents set up a very generous trust fund for the PC & their sister, or some organization the PC would deeply care about that will be lost if xyz isn't done.
Part of xyz involves successfully running the family business.
Another part of xyz involves nothing "unfortunate" happening to Grandma & Grandpa....

 

[Larnievc]

Get a good faction to offer him the job of double agent. Work with the grand parents to learn all he can (so you can get an arc out of him learning the ropes) with the ultimate aim of bringing the whole thing down.

Obviously his grand parents are not the big bads, just the tip of the iceberge.

Maybe he gets to comfortable, maybe he grows to like the new life or maybe seeing it up close disgusts him.

Either way, he’s less likely to ignore it as a plot point.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

TL;DR: Looking for ideas how grandparents would force their eldest son back into family business.

One of my players is the son of the Rosznars. A noble family of Waterdeep which once was banned because (their) slave trading was declared illegal but now returned. His father and younger brother are missing since months. He doesn’t know what happened to them but assumed their vanished after they tried to establish new connection in Skullport to hide that they still trying to do their slave trading.

After they gone missing his grandparents took over family business again. Pushing his mother (which married into family) into unimportant corner and forcing his sister to become the perfect noble. What nobody knows until now is that she is the Black Viper (a notorious thief) while keeping up with her perfect appearance.

He himself is kind of the black sheep of the family. A gambler and adventurer who doesn’t want to get pulled into the family business. I don't want him to quit his adventurer career. I just want him (and his family situation) to get more involved.

Do you have any suggestions how the grandparents would want to force him back? What I did was that he “suspiciously” is always the victim of (false) robbery and sometimes other bad luck – an attempt of his grandparents to get him tired of his adventurer life.

But I need more. In rare cases his visits home because he needs something. Seems like a perfect chance but direct attempts of intimidation will get ignored. Maybe I need something seductive? Heeelp!

Maybe its all a big misunderstanding and their "slaves" were team4star style slaves (far planes aliens of midget stature) ala the parody of the first broly movie and short of genocide (due to their extremely high rate of reproduction they cant simply be banished either) there is no way other than "slavery" (which they are suicidally depressed without) to stop the rascals from spreading their extremely large number of magically incurable stds all across the continent in an uncontrolled random fashion. So really this is preventative and doing a favor to people on all sides (as the little rascals really hate not being enslaved). Except for puritans. You cant please everyone. You could make it comedic. Maybe they could originally be a servitor race that loviatar made originally by twisting tye exemplars of some plane of pleasure that she cast aside and forgot ages ago because they were TOO submissive and TOO glutonous for torture and punishment to even be useful to her or to be to her liking as they would intentionally screw up anythinf she told them to do just to get whipped. Too masochistic even for the lady of lashes. Maybe she gave them all collectively a safety word which they all have forgotten long long ago as they 100% never needed it.

 

[Leatherhead]

They name him as the owner of a branch, which then gets audited.

He is on the hook for anything that the branch might have done while he wasn't around. He can't just sell it till the branch is in the clear. And should the branch become bankrupt or close, everyone ( his family, ex-workers, government officials, and the debtors) would come gunning for him. Extra bonus points if it's a key business that would crash the local economy and ruin the lives of the town should it go under.

The best options at that point would be to find one of his missing relatives or somehow manage the buisness to the point where it could be sold off.