Eolin said:
First offish, the character is still adventuring and has an Empire to upset. He's busy. I may find a man of buisness to do the leg-work and take a chunk of the profits. But I dunno if any can be trusted.
See, now it becomes a problem. you want to invest money, but don't have anyone to trust, and don't have the time to manage the money. hmmmm...bummer. Nothing is good then, nothing. No matter what you do/get, *someone* needs to manage it. Either you, or someone you trust.
You need to find people that benefit if you benefit.
Find a Craftsman that can't afford a shop, You buy him a shop, and he gets paid to work in it. If he makes you X amount of money, or works X amount of time, he gets to keep the shop.
Do this 10 times, and hire someone to look after all of the shops, if the shops do 10X amount of business, then he gets a big bonus.
Buy/start a town, let people rent the land for cheap, invest in infrastructure. After X years, when the town is big, sell the land at a huge profit. Share some of the profit with your renters.
In DnD, however, the best 'investment' is to buy lots of magic, and go adventuring. The extra magic should make adventuring easier, and it is by far the best ROI in the game.
OTOH, you can utilize insider trading. Since you 'know' that the empire is going to become...um...'upset'. Find out what role they are playing, or what needs will increase when they are gone, and invest in that.
ex. The 'empire' has ruled that there is a huge tax on weapons. (to keep the populace weak), well invest in a bunch of weapon makers, when the empire goes away, the demand will skyrocket!
Maybe there is a huge slave population farming, and they will disappear post-empire. Invest in farming, or invest in ships to bring in food to sell.
Etc.
Etc.
(land)
Problem: who would ever sell it?
Same people as always.
The overcommited and can't afford it
They overcommited and can't manage it all
They want to move
They are tired of doing X
They want to fund a different endeavor
Some expense has come up and they need to sell.
They aren't looking to sell, but you offer them enough. (especially if you let them rent it back fairly cheap.)
They want to get something bigger.
They want money to get away.
They think 'bad things' will happen, and want to cut and run.
etc
etc
Anyway, it sounds like a vertical monopoly on some important product is a good way to go.
Yes and no. What this *will* come down to is "Does the DM want you to suceed/fail, make/lose money?" Any of these investements may or may not work, so pick the one that sounds like more fun, or better adventure hooks, or more 'lawful goodish' and run with it. This is really an investment in 'roleplaying', if you only look at the financials I think you will be missing out.
enjoy
