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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4149797" data-attributes="member: 3146">I think that you and others are making the mistaken assumption that tax collectors require a strong empire. Yes, Rome had tax collector during the empire. However, there were massive corporations who farmed the taxes for the late Republic as well. In fact, resentment against the tax collectors was one of the major factors that helped Mithradates two wars against the Roman Republic. (And curbing the abuses of the tax farmers was considered one of the major accomplishments and evidences of Lucius Lucullus's early virtue).That said, the Romans were hardly the only people to collect taxes. The Hebrew kings collected taxes. The kings of high middle ages Europe collected taxes. King Alfred collected taxes to pay the Danegeld. (And all of those seem  much more akin to points of light settings than the Roman empire or late Republic Asia Minor). All that is necessary for tax collection is an authority structure that wants money (or wheat or rice--tax does not need to be in money) and that has a military to collect it.In the default points of light anti-setting that people are talking about--small villages in the peripherary of the city state with perhaps a few more out on the frontier where they are likely to be overrun and perhaps a few more separated from the tribes of marauding gnolls by the richer and more powerful city state but far enough away that contact with the city state is minimal, the arrival of a tax collector-- perhaps along with a lieutenant and some sergeants looking to conscript a quota of able bodied men into the city's army--seems like a perfectly viable possibility. In fact, the less civilized the land and the less direct control is exercised over the village, the more likely it is that taxation will be infrequent and irregular.</blockquote>

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