Could you create a campaign about taxes?

>>55241180
Yes.

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>>55241180
As long as we're well informed about the rulers' tax policies.

Memes aside, both leading rebellious peasants or being greedy tax-collectors seem like fun story paths to take.

>>55241180
>>40k inquisitiorial retinue/rogue trader crew tasked with going around to various star systems and collecting taxes from planets that for whatever reason haven't paid
>>"sure you can take our taxes but first we need to deal with these dark elder raiders blockading the planet"
>>"A crazed weirdboy accidentally teleported himself and his band into the vaults, they're demanding an even exchange of teef from the fiercest predators on the planet in exchange for the gold"
>>"genestealer cult/regular chaos/hereteks have infiltrated the planetary governor's office and need to be dealt with before funds can be retrieved

>>55241180
Early camaign mission: evil king Nogood has instituted a high import tax on food and crops, his people can't afford to eat, luckily the independent city state of Charityl has a minimum price on all its food production, with the state buying up the surplus. They're tasking the PC's with smuggling the food over the border for Nogood's starving peasants.

Later in the campaign: the farms and food production institutions in the kingdom of Nogood are all failing, the people all rely on Charityl to provide them with food, bankers from Charityl are buying up all of the neighbouring kingdom's farms. Once they control all food production they can price hike.

>>55241180
Yes, I could. Some ideas:
> Collect taxes from a village where your king's popularity is rather low and they all voted for the antagonist queen on royal elections
> Collect taxes from a village recently attacked by a gang of villains - now you'll have to callect the villagers' taxes from villains, by killing them.
> Bring the taxes to the capital. There are still many bandits left, and they know you're carrying some gold, crops, geese, and some other stuff.
> Collect taxes from a distant village that is situated behind the fae forest.
> Collect taxes from a village that has recently suffered from magic plague. Some villagers are zombies now.
> Investigate the case of magic plague and bring the taxes to the capital - all at once.
> Bring some crops and geese to a distant province that has suffered a flood. Help the people rebuild some structures. Including a bridge that is essentian for collecting taxes later.

>>55241180
Considering America was founded on the phrase "no taxation without representation", it's entirely possible to write a riveting campaign about taxes.

>>55241252
Wouldn't that be more a Adeptus Arbites job coworking with the Adeptus Fidicius? I know RTs can go to collect tithes in the frontier, but Inquisitors would only get their nose to keep an eye if they are trying to rebel.

You could play it from either side a few ways, it's just not often done because there's no swifter way to start PKing between the pothead half of your group who got into fantasy because agrarian collectivism and pipeweed/the turboautist half of your group who got into fantasy because of destined rulers, genociding the filthy Orcricans, and a wizard's home being quite literally his castle.

I'm definitely on the pothead side of that divide, so hooks I'd add to >>55241373 's as speaking to me include:
- The players are sent to collect taxes from a duke who's lowkey forming a rebellion and does not appreciate royal oversight. After narrowly escaping capture, is their campaign to make their way back across now-hostile territory and warn the King, throw in their lot with the Defias-style grey highwaymen in hopes of influencing the rebellion to stop at ducal defenestration, do lowborn or reformer party members see this as their opportunity to throw off the yoke and purge the nobility altogether, or does an RP-heavy game of palace intrigue ensue as they attempt to manipulate the duke's son into accelerating his inheritance with tacit royal blessing?
- The nobility's privileges are strictly linked with their feudal obligations, and still denominated in kind. A retired adventurer, now on the royal council, has recently begun to lay out for the King a system where these levies are converted to a buy-in of their cash value in order to fund royal debts accrued in war. Behind the scenes, the oldest and most prestigious noble families attempt to discredit or assassinate him, while less fortunate ex-adventurers and junior branches debate whether to support his plan as allowing nobility for all or take advantage of the chaos which will occur when the treasury runs fully dry to demand more thorough reforms.

>>55242727
>The players are sent to collect taxes from a duke who's lowkey forming a rebellion and does not appreciate royal oversight.

This is important. Nowadays the transactional nature of our economy leaves a convenient paper trail, so taxes are incredibly easy -- feed numbers you already have into a formula you already know up front. Enforcement is largely sifting records to call bullshit on the most egregious liars. Back in the day, the tax collector had to assay your holdings to valuate your tax burden, then figure out an amount in portable goods and extract them in a manner that didn't ruin you. If you think people resent a modern tax collector, picture the guy that has to poke his head into your books, your business, your holdings, tromp all over your land, rifle through barns and storage bins, all for the privilege of telling you how much of your shit he's leaving with. There's a reason he had a crown commission and a small band of armed men - he needed every bit of that leverage.

>>55242852
>(forgot the punch line)

Now apply this to someone who has something to hide -- fomenting rebellion, stockpiling arms, smuggling, or just doesn't want to report all of a record harvest. You then had to hide it, Benny Hill it round-robin over the countryside, or misdirect and obfuscate to a guy who does nothing but pick apart your assets all day erry day. Sometimes it's simply easier to have "bandits" remove the problem before it ever starts being one.

>>55242963
It's also why the high nobles in my second hook don't like just paying money even though realistically they have almost all the money. 100 cattle a year (or whatever) no other questions asked keeps the king's men off their land, and in a faux-English setting where the land is all already handed out it also keeps uppity adventurers from ever finding their way into the upper crust just by pulling a stack of gold coins out of a dungeon. It also doesn't really go up even as the simple logic of agricultural development means that their grandfather's herd of 400 producing 200 calves a year when he swore fealty is now a herd of several thousand where the king's cut is a rounding error.