Death, Taxes, and Indentured Servitude in AD&D Cities

Something amusing I found while poring over the AD&D city/town encounters:

Magic-users in AD&D cities and towns are punished by being indentured into a year of servitude with the city guard. This can be for any unpayable debt owed to the city - monetary (loans, the cost of resurrection, taxes) or otherwise (such as a "debt to society" incurred after committing a crime).

This suggests several things about AD&D towns and cities: their governments offer loans (presumably if it was instead a wealthy individual or non-municipal organization providing the loan, the punishment for failing to pay it back would be different) and resurrection (suggesting some sort of state-sponsored clerical organization rather than/in addition to individual clerics at non-affiliated temples providing such services), have their own sets of laws, and require residents to pay taxes (both of the latter two points are relatively obvious, but I'm including them for thoroughness's sake).

Gygax has surprisingly little to say about loans in the DMG, but based on the general tone of advice offered in the rest of the text, one must imagine the interest rates would be quite high, so adventurers should borrow at their own risk.

Resurrection, of course, is expensive:

A cleric must be at least 9th-level to cast raise dead, so the bare minimum cost is 5,500 gp. Player characters will need to seek out higher-level clerics to restore life to dwarves, gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and humans - not elves! - who have been dead for longer than a day, so circumstances will often necessitate even greater expense.

Gygax also has surprisingly little to say about laws and crime, but one can imagine that these will vary from place to place and that theft, assault, murder, and the like (all common activities for adventurers) are generally frowned upon.

This is all in contrast to taxes (and duties, and excises, and tariffs, and tithes, and tolls...), about which Gygax has MUCH to say. Seriously, this is almost an entire page:

You probably don't want to read all of that, and I don't blame you. Here is a summary:

• The DM should uses taxes to take excess money away from the player characters.
• Towns and cities charge a 1% duty (2% to foreigners) on all normal goods brought in for sale - food, cloth and hides, livestock, raw materials, and manufactured goods. This probably applies to the common merchant more so than to the player characters, but is worth keeping in mind for when the players decide to collect all of the orcs' weapons and armor to sell.
• Towns and cities charge the usual duty plus a 5% tariff on luxury and precious goods brought in for sale - wine, spirits, furs, copper, gold, jewelry, and the like. This will definitely apply to the player characters in the latter cases, as well as in the former cases if you're in the habit of giving out actually interesting treasure . Give your players cases of fine wine as treasure!
• Once duties are paid, documents are provided which make the legal sale of such goods possible. Upstanding merchants presumably will not trade in smuggled goods, but black markets will. Unless players have connections and want to risk dealing with unsavory types, they must pay duties!
• Towns and cities charge an entry fee of 1 copper per head or wheel to citizens and 5 copper per to foreigners unless they have passports (which incentivizes having political connections).
• Towns and cities charge residents an annual tax per head of 1 copper to peasants, 1 silver to freeman (adventurers), and 1 gold to nobles (which I guess would include any character with an officially sanctioned stronghold or similar holding).
• When taxes are paid, characters are provided with proof of payment, which they must keep on hand in case they are stopped. If they are stopped and don't have proof of payment, they must pay again. If they're foreigners, they're more likely to be stopped. Tax collectors are, of course, on the random encounter table:

• Foreigners must pay a 10% sales tax.
• Tolls are charged on roads to and from the settlement (including on the route to "the dungeon" - suggesting that roads to dungeons are maintained by the local government, which is really interesting). Gygax does not elaborate as to what a typical toll might be.
• Citizens must pay a 5% tax on their property, if any, annually.
• Characters can become citizens after residing in the settlement for one month and paying a 10 gold piece fee - "plus many bribes"!
• Merchants don't usually accept foreign coin because they will be subject to a fine if caught with it. Thus foreign coin must be changed into the local currency at a 90% exchange rate. This probably applies to most currency hauled out of dungeons, and perhaps even currency obtained in a different settlement. If a character is caught with 100 silver or more in foreign currency, they are fined 50% of its total value unless they can prove they've just entered the settlement and are on their way to the money changers - good luck with that!
• A surtax of 10% is levied against sales or exchanges of gems and similar goods.

Let's say a party of ten 2nd-level characters just got back from an expedition to the 2nd-level of the dungeon. They explored 20 rooms, including three with both a monster and treasure and one with just treasure. In total, they collected 6,600 copper, 1,050 gold, and 220 platinum. They probably paid some sort of toll on the road back from the dungeon - there's no guidance on this, and it probably wasn't a significant amount, so let's just ignore it. 

The characters don't have any goods for sale so they needn't pay duties. There are ten of them, and they have a cart to haul their stuff. They are too low-level to have connections yet, so they don't have passports. They pay a 60 copper entry fee (10 heads + 2 wheels, x 5 copper because they're non-citizens). They're given some documentation in case they're stopped, then directed to the money changers since all of their coins are of an ancient mint.

The money changer exchanges their currency and collects 10% (at this point, 654 copper, 105 gold, and 22 platinum). They might opt to retain up to 99 silver in the foreign currency, but let's say they don't. They are left with 5,886 copper, 945 gold, and 198 platinum. Since they will have to pay a 10% sales tax on anything they buy, their effective spending money is actually 5,298 copper, 851 gold, and 179 platinum (or, altogether, roughly 940 gold versus the 1,160 they entered with).

The example party paid 220 gold in taxes, duties, and fees. It's not a crazy huge amount, but it is significant, and becomes more significant the larger the party's haul.

So why am I spending so much time doing accounting for adventurers? Well, because taxes are annoying. In America, we need them to pay for stuff like roads and schools of course, but the majority goes towards one trillion dollar experimental airplanes that don't work and other ill-advised military spending, and we don't even get free healthcare. Your players will probably appreciate that their characters can travel quickly overland on well-maintained roads, but they probably won't spare a single thought for how those roads are maintained. Taxes in D&D are "realistic", but they also probably feel pretty meaningless and arbitrary. I guarantee your players will hate paying them.

Which means your players will probably try to find a way around paying them. They may seek to obtain passports or citizenship to avoid paying fees to enter the settlement and sales tax on all their goods, sure...or they might seek to smuggle themselves and their goods inside the settlement, deal on the black market, avoid the money changers, and bribe officials. All of which are great ways to be arrested and indentured into servitude.

It's not just magic-users, either:

Clerics can also be indentured into service with the city watch. What's the different between the watch and the guard? I don't know. Doesn't matter.

And frankly, I don't see why other characters wouldn't be pressed into similar service. I'm not concerned with magic-users and clerics specifically, but more so with the fact that it's general policy in AD&D cities to force criminals and debt/tax-dodgers into service like this.

A year is also a long time in most D&D campaigns. If the whole party ends up indentured in this way, you might simply fast forward a year or even decide to play it out as a very specific type of campaign (I probably wouldn't because it doesn't seem very interesting, but you may be more creative than I). If just one character is indentured, the rest of the party might decide to use the opportunity to pursue some lengthy downtime activities while their companion serves their term, or that character might just be effectively retired from the campaign (temporarily or otherwise). Or maybe they ambush the guards and bust their fellow out, and now they're all on the lamb!

Anyway, I guess the point is that AD&D city and town watches are full of indentured debtors, criminals, and tax-dodging character-types - a warning to players who think they can outwit the municipal government!

Although only tangentially related, I would be remiss not point out that at any moment the characters might also be forced into service in the local navy or militia through no fault of their own:

AD&D cities are kind of a terrible place to be!

Impressment is, of course, a massive anachronism. It's almost as if the implied D&D setting is not medieval!