Profession: Money Lender - Is it possible?
- Thread starter Robb G
- Start date
While it's not his primary profession, my primary character has loaned large sums of money and extended serious amounts of credit before (more often it's "this magic item or ritual scroll for X gold to be repaid over Y period of time" than pure coin, for reference). Here's my take on your list:
1. Yep, big capital is an important issue. This will scale with your level, though, and quickly jumps up esp. if you go all craftsman other with a MWE.
2. PCs who play generally gave no problems with repayment terms. I doubt you would have any issues hiring *other* PCs to help deal with "problem debtors", either.
3. This is definitely an issue. Most players simply don't have a need for a bunch of coin. I find that you are far more likely to make money by investing yourself in items/scrolls/production items whenever you get a chance, and expect to sell/loan those items instead of pure coin. The opportunity to spend a big chunk of gold just doesn't come up often enough to make a pure moneylender viable, at least not in my experience.
4. This is the biggest issue I've run into. Big loans take OOG years to repay, so you need to be in it for the long haul. My (unfortunate) experience is that out of 10 loans / batches of credit that I give, 4 or 5 will never get fully repaid due to the character retiring/quitting before the end of the loan. You will want to seriously consider your credit risks well, because you have no method of enforcement for a player who simply stops playing that character, unlike the real world. Also, make sure you have a good OOG feel for the average lifespan of a character in your chapter - not to permanent death, but to simply stopping being played.
5. Craftsman:Other x 200 for a MWE is a pretty solid start. 20 gold a day before doing *anything* is incredible income. You will however want to think OOG of what this means for your chapter. That's a really hard thing for them to have to support, simply because your character will be sucking up a *lot* of OOG resources in the form of hard coinage.
Hope these thoughts help!
-Bryan
1. Yep, big capital is an important issue. This will scale with your level, though, and quickly jumps up esp. if you go all craftsman other with a MWE.
2. PCs who play generally gave no problems with repayment terms. I doubt you would have any issues hiring *other* PCs to help deal with "problem debtors", either.
3. This is definitely an issue. Most players simply don't have a need for a bunch of coin. I find that you are far more likely to make money by investing yourself in items/scrolls/production items whenever you get a chance, and expect to sell/loan those items instead of pure coin. The opportunity to spend a big chunk of gold just doesn't come up often enough to make a pure moneylender viable, at least not in my experience.
4. This is the biggest issue I've run into. Big loans take OOG years to repay, so you need to be in it for the long haul. My (unfortunate) experience is that out of 10 loans / batches of credit that I give, 4 or 5 will never get fully repaid due to the character retiring/quitting before the end of the loan. You will want to seriously consider your credit risks well, because you have no method of enforcement for a player who simply stops playing that character, unlike the real world. Also, make sure you have a good OOG feel for the average lifespan of a character in your chapter - not to permanent death, but to simply stopping being played.
5. Craftsman:Other x 200 for a MWE is a pretty solid start. 20 gold a day before doing *anything* is incredible income. You will however want to think OOG of what this means for your chapter. That's a really hard thing for them to have to support, simply because your character will be sucking up a *lot* of OOG resources in the form of hard coinage.
Hope these thoughts help!
-Bryan
Alavatar
Exemplar
Robb Graves said:
The problem I have seen with negotiating with your chapter for IG compensation (i.e. large sums of coin for Craftsman or even Merchanting items) using an alternative method is transferability. I see many players not wanting to deal with anything other than coin/production because they transfer everywhere, but things such as "10 Gold of Barley" or "20 Gold worth of Wine Casks" or even "20 Gold worth of Gold Ore" type tags / notes aren't seen as "official" and therefore are skeptical about being able to utilize that financial resource in another chapter.
Just something to keep in mind.
Robb,
I can't speak for anyone else in the NE, but if you created that character and had the capital available I would use you constantly and would probably be willing to give you a loan to help start you out.
The ability to have a pile of liquid cash available to help buyout critical scrolls/catalysts would be invaluable considering their scarcity and the intense competition (at least on the NE).
As for "bad debt," the fear of losing access to an additional source of needed coin should be a deterrent enough to most of the people who would use the service in the first place.
The Tagged Coin items would be fine with me as long as I knew that I could have a "merchant" turn them in for coin. I would think that if a chapter makes that decision and agrees to give you paper tags in place of real coin (that you are entitled to per the rules), then they would be very likely to honor those tags. I wouldn't expect the tags to transfer, but that's not a huge deal. If someone takes coin from you, then they just need to take an extra step.
As a completely seperate aside... thise character would totally compell you to get a really badass ledger or something like it. I think that would make a really awesome prop.
Stephen
I can't speak for anyone else in the NE, but if you created that character and had the capital available I would use you constantly and would probably be willing to give you a loan to help start you out.
The ability to have a pile of liquid cash available to help buyout critical scrolls/catalysts would be invaluable considering their scarcity and the intense competition (at least on the NE).
As for "bad debt," the fear of losing access to an additional source of needed coin should be a deterrent enough to most of the people who would use the service in the first place.
The Tagged Coin items would be fine with me as long as I knew that I could have a "merchant" turn them in for coin. I would think that if a chapter makes that decision and agrees to give you paper tags in place of real coin (that you are entitled to per the rules), then they would be very likely to honor those tags. I wouldn't expect the tags to transfer, but that's not a huge deal. If someone takes coin from you, then they just need to take an extra step.
As a completely seperate aside... thise character would totally compell you to get a really badass ledger or something like it. I think that would make a really awesome prop.
Stephen
The biggest issues I see with "tagged coin" not being transferable is that the chapter must make sure it can honor those commitments in coin.
Consider: Over 10 events making 20 gold per day you've amassed 300 gold in "tagged coin" (having spent or loaned out the other 100 gold). Another player breaks into your strongbox and, gasp, steals the tags! If the player cannot trade the chits in for coin, you may have a customer service problem, in that you *should* have (by strict rules wording) gotten coin, and therefore *they* should be able to get coin.
What might work better is to work with your plot team to have some in-game mechanism, whereby you get 20 gold but can immediately turn it in for IG "letters of marque" drawn upon other Plot-driven institutions. Then it's up to the thieves to get those institutions to honor your letters if they steal them. But it's an extra hoop for Plot to jump through and, at the end of the day, you really should be getting 20 gold in coin that is then available for other players to do bad things for. Having that 20 gold just "disappear" is tough to explain away without either OOG logistical support (in that the chapter is willing to "cash out" the tags if another player gets them through nefarious means and wants to take the gold out of chapter) or IG Plot support (in that there is a motivating IG reason why these slips of paper are useful locally but not able to easily take elsewhere to spend).
-Bryan
Consider: Over 10 events making 20 gold per day you've amassed 300 gold in "tagged coin" (having spent or loaned out the other 100 gold). Another player breaks into your strongbox and, gasp, steals the tags! If the player cannot trade the chits in for coin, you may have a customer service problem, in that you *should* have (by strict rules wording) gotten coin, and therefore *they* should be able to get coin.
What might work better is to work with your plot team to have some in-game mechanism, whereby you get 20 gold but can immediately turn it in for IG "letters of marque" drawn upon other Plot-driven institutions. Then it's up to the thieves to get those institutions to honor your letters if they steal them. But it's an extra hoop for Plot to jump through and, at the end of the day, you really should be getting 20 gold in coin that is then available for other players to do bad things for. Having that 20 gold just "disappear" is tough to explain away without either OOG logistical support (in that the chapter is willing to "cash out" the tags if another player gets them through nefarious means and wants to take the gold out of chapter) or IG Plot support (in that there is a motivating IG reason why these slips of paper are useful locally but not able to easily take elsewhere to spend).
-Bryan
Robb Graves said:
I don't know what kind of return I would need.
The more I think about it the more I imagine this as a hilarious IG sales discussion. Normally negotiations with a bank don't have to take into account the likelyhood of the banker's permanent death.
As far as "how much" it would likely depend on how much liquid coin my team had on hand, but I couldnt imagine starting with less than 25 gold at a clip.
We'd have to chat about it. :emo:
evi1r0n
Exemplar
Alavatar said:The problem I have seen with negotiating with your chapter for IG compensation (i.e. large sums of coin for Craftsman or even Merchanting items) using an alternative method is transferability. I see many players not wanting to deal with anything other than coin/production because they transfer everywhere, but things such as "10 Gold of Barley" or "20 Gold worth of Wine Casks" or even "20 Gold worth of Gold Ore" type tags / notes aren't seen as "official" and therefore are skeptical about being able to utilize that financial resource in another chapter.
Just something to keep in mind.
I have seen people lowball gems before and those transfer for the most part. If it's not coin, people get super nervous.
Personally I would support a PC driven bank/loan shark. I don't think I could pull it off but more power to anyone who wants to try.
I have done a lot of business with Bryan's primary. There is active trade in the NW among the various teams and high level characters. I would love to see something like this but (as stated) the physical resources would be a strain on a chapter. There would have a to be an alternate paper currency in place.
As for what is a fair return, the last deal I made was for 7 components. The deal was I would have to repay the components plus 1 within a year. The reason I wouldn't hose the character I made the deal with is two fold. I wouldn't screw over someone who does good trade with my group and that character can kill mine (that definitely helps).
Alavatar
Exemplar
evi1r0n said:
Gems only transfer "for the most part" on the WC from what I have heard. We just happen to have a WC Evaluate sheet that is shared among 3 chapters since we have so many that travel between them (at least, I haven't heard of an EC or MW version). It also made gems not as scary to WC folks. But, as you said, if it's not coin then people get super nervous.
Inaryn
Virtuoso
Even 100 levels of OCS on a character is rough on a chapter.
The reason the WC ID list works is because we reverse engineered the system. Rather than generating a new number for every single item that goes out that's just basically a tagged TP value, we have a list of values and tag stuff based off the list.
Could people cheat with that system? Yeah. But all you have to do is stop putting out the tagged TP value items for a few events, or some other variant on that idea, and you'll either catch the person real quick or they'll get the hint.
A national list would make tagged TP value items less scary to players in general, if they could be assured it would transfer everywhere. Then you could have chapters putting out tagged TP value items rather than burning copious amounts of TP on magic items so that they can meet policy for the weekend. :whistle:
The reason the WC ID list works is because we reverse engineered the system. Rather than generating a new number for every single item that goes out that's just basically a tagged TP value, we have a list of values and tag stuff based off the list.
Could people cheat with that system? Yeah. But all you have to do is stop putting out the tagged TP value items for a few events, or some other variant on that idea, and you'll either catch the person real quick or they'll get the hint.
A national list would make tagged TP value items less scary to players in general, if they could be assured it would transfer everywhere. Then you could have chapters putting out tagged TP value items rather than burning copious amounts of TP on magic items so that they can meet policy for the weekend. :whistle:
Honestly, I don't know.
The chapters have very different feels. NH's IG location is a town in what used to be Laerthon, now known as the Deadlands. Post-Apocolypse kind of a thing. Catskills has so far been in a human barony on a seacoast. I don't know if the logistics/plot/treasure policy people would find it a beneficial change or not in terms of fitting into the story that's already being told.
One of the tough things, as Steve alluded to, is that the economy is vastly different. There are catalysts and scrolls valued at 250+ gold... putting those gems into circulation in place of other things (production, MIs) might just make things worse. I have a whole rant about the treasure policy as a whole, one of these post-game dinners I'll tell you my actual solution.
Robb: if you're looking to make coin for this character concept, bring and sell food. Yes, it's OOG cost and time, but little else will net you the kind of coin and connections you're looking for. As a tavern-keep type character, there were few people at game I didn't have an IG conversation with, or sell things to.
(sorry for the partial thread jack.)
The chapters have very different feels. NH's IG location is a town in what used to be Laerthon, now known as the Deadlands. Post-Apocolypse kind of a thing. Catskills has so far been in a human barony on a seacoast. I don't know if the logistics/plot/treasure policy people would find it a beneficial change or not in terms of fitting into the story that's already being told.
One of the tough things, as Steve alluded to, is that the economy is vastly different. There are catalysts and scrolls valued at 250+ gold... putting those gems into circulation in place of other things (production, MIs) might just make things worse. I have a whole rant about the treasure policy as a whole, one of these post-game dinners I'll tell you my actual solution.
Robb: if you're looking to make coin for this character concept, bring and sell food. Yes, it's OOG cost and time, but little else will net you the kind of coin and connections you're looking for. As a tavern-keep type character, there were few people at game I didn't have an IG conversation with, or sell things to.
(sorry for the partial thread jack.)
markusdark
Virtuoso
If you wanted to go a bit more creative with the larger values, you could create your own monetary items (such as bars of platinum) and whenever it is time to do logistics, you can simply supply one of those bars and plot could either mark it or simply give you an item card with the value attached to it.
To reduce the risk of characters not coming back to play, you might consider the pawn shop route:
But this sort of character would likely often be called on by new players - the ones you most want to help from an OOG perspective:
But this sort of character would likely often be called on by new players - the ones you most want to help from an OOG perspective: