Ways to Spend Gold
There are lots of reasons to become an adventurer, but like all jobs, at the end of the day, many adventurers are in it for the money. But why do they want money so bad that they’re willing to risk life and limb just to get a big payday? Where does all that money go? Of course, we know that realistically, it’s all going into magic items that keep you competitive as you advance in level, but that’s generally not how real people with similar professions operate. Today’s Top Ten has some suggestions on what adventurers might be doing with (at least part of) their paycheck.
1. Sending it home to the family. Whether your character’s family is a loving wife (or husband) and children, elderly parents who don’t quite have the strength to work their own fields anymore, or an ungrateful sibling who fritters it all away on liquor and company, but who your character just can’t seem to find it in his or her heart to cut off, a portion of every big score goes back home to keep the character’s family in comfort.
2. Saving up to start a business. It seems that every adventurer wants to retire someday and open up an inn, where they can occasionally be “reluctantly” coaxed into telling tales of their glory days to the tavern regulars, who soak up the tales much as they do the beer. Of course, not every ex-adventurer dreams of opening a tavern, and there are many businesses that one might want to open that would require a good deal of seed money, from a smithy to a farm to a bookstore to so many more.
3. Donating to charity. Whether your character gives money directly to those in need, buys them supplies, or gives to a charitable organization, there can be little doubt that his or her heart is in the right place. Your character may have a favorite charity or cause that they champion, such as a widows and orphans fund, or taking care of refugees from a particular nation, or they may spread the love around, donating to a wide variety of charities in order to help as many as possible.
4. Funding worthy endeavors. While similar to charities, in that they often ask for funding that may or may not have any real return on the investment, there are many with grand plans that could easily advance humanoid civilization… if only someone would fund them. Wizards researching new spells that could revolutionize the world, if they had the money to perform their experiments; explorers off in search of new lands sure to be rich with opportunity, but such trips don’t come cheap; archaeologists delving into ancient ruins, if only someone will help them put together an expedition. These are the plights to which your character is drawn.
5. Paying off a debt. Your character ran into some monetary problems at some point in the past, and has amassed a rather large debt. Whether your character needed powerful magic to restore a lost loved one, and is still paying off the bill, is being taken advantage of by predatory loansharks, or truly owes some important life-debt that can never be repaid, a portion of each big score goes to pay off this debt.
6. Buying ridiculous luxury items. Someone has to buy all the ridiculous gem-studded eyepatches and twelve-foot-tall golden statues that adventurers are always selling, and why shouldn’t it be you? You buy magic items, just like the rest of the party, and whose business is it but yours if the magic item you want happens to be a plush naga-skin armchair stuffed with griffon feathers, which floats through the air, can warm your behind, and magically blocks rain from falling on it? At the end of the day, the bottom line is that you want nice things.
7. Saving up to join the nobility. Similar in many ways to saving up to start a business, joining the nobility is still a slightly different goal. Not everywhere will allow you to just buy your way into the aristocracy, which may explain why you chose adventuring to earn your money, instead of another profession, hoping to perform great deeds or otherwise earn enough esteem to let your money do the rest. Even if aristocracy is just a certain amount of money away, buying a castle and surrounding lands and all the necessary bribes to get your title is a whole order of magnitude more expensive than simply opening a tavern.
8. Restoring the family fortune. Your family was once wealthy, and probably already is aristocratic, but your lineage has fallen on hard times, and you struggle just to keep up the estate, let alone actually pass for wealthy or successful. A very specific mix of sending money home to family, saving up for nobility, and just plain hoarding money, your goal is to restore your family’s fortunes and ensure that your ancestral lands will not only not need to be sold, but can be restored to their former glory, and perhaps you can even put away enough gold to ensure that the next few generations won’t have to worry about this sort of thing, either.
9. Hoarding it. For some, money in all its various forms is just a way to keep track of the score. Those with more money are “winning,” and those with less money are “losing.” This attitude is just as popular in many fantasy settings as it is in the real world, and so for some characters, accumulation of wealth is truly its own reward. Whether or not your character likes to pile up the coins and gems into a giant pile and swim around in it, Scrooge McDuck-style, is, of course, up to you.
10. Squandered on liquor and company. Most adventurers—and others with similar professions of big paydays separated by long dry spells—don’t set out deliberately to squander their hard-earned coin in barrooms and brothels, but whether they intend to or not, many wind up losing nearly everything by celebrating big after each score, quickly finding that even the largest treasures don’t last long if your parties keep getting more extravagant to match your earnings.