Services, Franchises, & Property

Rather than hauling treasure hoards from the dungeon hideouts of defeated foes, adventurers may be granted boons or gifts by patrons assigning them to perform dangerous tasks. Example assignments can include rescuing hostages, gathering information, defeating military foes, or clearing a landholding of hostile occupants.

Artisans, merchants, and others of middling means may offer free future services in exchange for adventurous deeds. These can range from free lodgings or repair work to discount magical services. Churches might gift worthy adventurers with credits for free spells, up to and including resurrections. Local authorities or wealthy non-nobles may grant franchises or licenses to perform lucrative business operations, such as textile-weaving, bookmaking, glass-blowing, or leather-tanning.

Coins

Most of the time, a coin should be a coin—a background object the PCs quest for, but that warrants little attention. Occasionally, though, you can add a sense of reality and nuance to your world by describing certain coin hoards as possessing special properties.

Antiquity: Coins may have been struck hundreds or thousands of years ago. They might date to a past era of a still-extant nation, or to an extinct civilization. They may contain images of long-dead rulers, or symbols of vanished religions. Figures on the coins can be inhuman or monstrous.

Distance: The coins might be contemporary but originate from a far distant land. Physical clues found nearby might explain the past presence of foreign adventurers or traders.

Unusual Forms: Old or foreign coins might have unexpected shapes. They could have holes in the center, so they can be stringed as necklaces. Triangular, spherical, square, or rectangular shapes might replace round coins, perhaps to suit the peculiar hands of non-human races.

Bullion: Large quantities of precious metals are sometimes found not in coin form, but as bricks or wafers. For symbolic reasons, other cultures might store them as cylinders, cones, or other less efficiently stacked shapes.

Superficial Magic: Coins of lost or fabulous civilizations might be imbued with decorative magic. They could glow, change color, or contain moving images. Enchanted coins might produce sounds, ranging from soothing hums to dramatically chiming music. They might emit separate aromas for each denomination, suggesting that the people who minted them relied on smell over sight. Unusual coins might carry a value higher than their metal content suggests. Magical coins whose functions prove useful to adventurers should not count as cash, but as magical treasure far above their face value.

Outright ownership of land by commoners may be rare in a pseudo-medieval society, but noble patrons often grant property rights. Adventurers typically gain management rights over a section of arable land, which belongs to a noble either as an ancestral claim or a similar feudal grant from a ruler. When it comes to managing and working such land, adventurers may prefer to take a hands-off approach, hiring a bailiff or sheriff to oversee production and taxation. These details may then be left in the background, except when land ownership generates the occasional story hook or perhaps the occasional small profits (nothing rivaling the rewards of adventuring, of course). The PCs may periodically be called on to deal with marauders, repel invading rivals, or quell peasant rebellions.