Managing a City

[Matafuego]

So my players have finally reached the higher levels and are now in charge of a Small City (grew to 10.000 population last year, will be growing gradually depending on their adventurers success and the world development).

We have been over the DMG (both of them have the Leadership feat) and their personal plans.
One is a DragonHunter Paladin, another is a Civilized Barbarian of great renown amongst the fighters and finally a soon-to-be Saint Wise Old Cleric.
There are also some wizard PC's who have their tower but are not thinking of handling the city. The city doesn't have lots of resources but it's a very important city in a well travelled route and has one of the main temples of the worlds actual most important religion.

Have you got any ideas on how to handle the city, its taxes, its population comfort/discomfort (Most of them we have established are LG/NG).
Any books?

Thanks a lot!

[Edit:One thing to add is that they are in charge of this city since it was only a 100 people Thorp. They've seen and made it grow. They built and re built a Castle along with two City Walls (now one is inner and one is outer) and it's major temple. Back in 2e they lost like 50k a year making the city grow, it drained all of their resources and I guess our estimates weren't really that accurate, that's why I'm looking on some help.]

 

[Arnwyn]

Have you got any ideas on how to handle the city, its taxes, its population comfort/discomfort (Most of them we have established are LG/NG).
Any books?

Heh. Good luck. This has long since been an ignored area for years, and only recently have a few companies even bothered to look at it.

The two generally accepted resources that have some form of "kingdom management" rules (as noted by the various responses here at ENWorld) are:

- Fields of Blood (Eden)
- Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (Expeditious Retreat Press)

I recommend both of them, as their scales are slightly different. Fields of Blood handles a larger scale, while MMS:WE handles much smaller manor/thorp sized lands.

With a little bit of work, however, both can be scaled surprisingly well to whatever you need. They are also fairly easy to "add" to (ie. different factors that might affect your campaign more than others), and info from one can be adjusted to work with the other.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I would suggest having the characters hire functionaries to do it and just kind of say that the city runs smoothly or does not, depending on what you want.

I cannot imagine anything less exciting in an RPG than the day to day management of a city.

 

[Delemental]

One book I could recommend is A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe by Expeditious Retreat Press, which details exactly the kind of things you're describing (they're even having a sale on the book through their website, which is at:

http://www.exp.citymax.com/page/page/1396734.htm

One thing I'd be curious about: have the players begun planning to make the city self-sufficient? It seems that they've been pumping a lot of their personal money into growing this city. By your own admission the city doesn't have much of its own resources, other than perhaps as a trade city. What happens when the PCs 'pull the plug'? If the characters are going more into administration than adventuring, it sounds like the city's cash flow will be diminished.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Now you have jobs for all those henchmen!

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Have you got any ideas on how to handle the city, its taxes, its population comfort/discomfort (Most of them we have established are LG/NG).

I'm going to have my PCs running a small town soon: I'm going to calculate everything from how much money I want the players to earn from the city.

The city will earn roughly double that amount. About half of it is needed to keep the city running smoothly. Work out where it comes from - farming, tolls, taxes, etc... Then cook up various categories to spend it on. Security, civic works, charitable stuff, kings taxes - whatever sounds suitable to you.

If they want to cut into the running budget I'll give them more problems to deal with - related to the budget they slashed.

If they want the city to make more money, then there are plenty of hooks out there? Clearing out some (Moria like) mines, getting new trade contracts or whatever.

As far as the rest of it goes, use it for interesting plot hooks... Keep the players involvement down to really big problems - godzilla attacks, orc invasions, negotiations and the like.

It may not be very detailed (or in any way accurate!). However, I didn't want the bookeeping to get too involved.

 

[Matafuego]

Thanks for the replies. Of course the Henchmen will be the ones in charge of the city (as will some of the cohorts and allies and retired PC's) but the active PC's want to take an active role in the development of the city, earning money and making a big reputation (one of them even wants to eventually become a king) so that's why I need to come up with some ideas. I'll have to check out those supplements.

The city is self sufficient (if that considers food, water and some wood to work upon) but has to rely on trade to get almost anything else (that will change in the future if the Players discover the TRUE nature of their city, a place of Legend). They have taken care of that magically and non-magically, but since the "big growth" we'll have to look upon those numbers again.

 

[Evilhalfling]

My fall back rules for running government are in the expert and companion
books of Basic D&D - decent rules on population happiness and income in terms of service owed vs actual cash. It focuses on cash from land use, not cities - I have never seen as simulation for trade taxes. I really like MMS -
but it has a blinding complicated income system.
Good Luck