You've toppled the King. Now What?

[Kae'Yoss]

In one of our evil campaigns, we got ourselves a city state. We first started working for the old rulers (not actually popular chaps - they were all followers of the dead god Myrkul, and went all fatalistic with the populacy) to get rid of rebellous forces (Lathanderites), and then got rid of said old rulers and took over ourselves. We then made a lot of improvements, jump-started the economy, got people work, encouraged trade - and got toe to toe with the Zhentarim (did I mention this City was on the Moonsea?), first, because we offered an alternative trade route, then because we started sabotaging their traderoutes (on really high level, we started sacking their lesser cities).

I think we decided to move on after things got really ugly. I do remember that we got ourselves Fzoul Chempryl (Bane's Chosen), trapped his soul into a gem and used that gem as a toilet stone. That's what we called "adding insult to injury".

 

[Nightfall]

We take its stuff!

That works too!

Pillaging and running away work for me as well.

 

[hong]

We wait for him to respawn.

 

[James Heard]

Bed the Queen, slaughter parliament, sell the peasants into slavery, and offer the land up to the highest bidder.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Another problem with the "bully the government into submission" idea is that this sends a signal to other adventurers and other countries that this country can be bullied - so these other people will probably attempt to do it as well, further weakening the realm.


A strong nation, on the other hand, will probably (a) raise the killed ruler and (b) set a very large price on the heads of the killers (after all, they do have the wealth of a kingdom at their disposal).

 

[James Heard]

All the more reason to quickly bed the queen, slay parliament, sell off the peasantry, and exact some coins for the land...on the way to the country next door.

 

[hong]

All the more reason to quickly bed the queen, slay parliament, sell off the peasantry, and exact some coins for the land...on the way to the country next door.

Your fiendish plot is foiled. The country next door... DOESN'T HAVE A KING!

Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!

 

[James Heard]

Killing people in D&D is intrinsically profitable. It says so in the Treasure Tables.

 

[hong]

I've often wondered about the thermodynamic efficiency of dungeons. If we consider a dungeon to be a heat engine for converting monsters into XP and gp, where is the optimal operating level? Is it better to have lots of little monsters, or a few big monsters? What if you couple dungeons together?

 

[Whisper72]

coupling dungeons?.... eeew....