Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nytmare" data-source="post: 5911450" data-attributes="member: 55178">I am looking for other people's insights as to how a situation like this might be handled.Two allied, fledgling, city states are bordered by a roughly 200 mile wide expanse of inhospitable, infertile, badlands.  They pool their resources and hire a group of explorers to map and establish a trade route across the barren wasteland.  They know what's on the other side of it, they just want a safe and fast way to get from where they are to it, and vice versa.The explorers, played by a handful of modern-thinking, capitalistic, Americans, immediately attack the original contract with a vengeance and want cold, hard, figures to denote what percentages they can expect from whatever claims and prospecting rights they can grab up during their adventures.At this point, neither one of these cities really has much interest in expanding their borders, and depending on where the hypothetical resources are, I can't see either city wanting to expend the resources needed to claim, protect, and gather them.  Is there any kind of precedent for something like this in the real world?  What would even begin to make sense in a situation such as this?  I had been expecting to let them keep whatever it was that they found for themselves, but their expectations of only being able to keep a small fraction of what they find has led me to believe that I'm being overly generous.</blockquote>