Different approach to hijink income

Hi!

I've been thinking about running criminal guilds on a different model from the one in the ACKS! rulebook. Instead of the crime boss hiring underlings on a payroll and commanding them to perform specific hijinks I'd like to have the boss collect revenue from the underlings. This would more closely follow the income collection of mafia-like organizations. Following the discussion on caps on different hijinks I could roll for the hijinks as the underlings choose them independently or with large numbers just use the averages. The question then is to estimate the size of the "cut" of the crime boss in charge of the organization. On the large scale this could be calculated similar to tax revenue, a fixed number per underling. Getting the exact percentage would need running the numbers for all hijinks.

In this model there would be incentive for the underlings to go for high-value hijinks as they would benefit more from them. This also brings another question, how are the cities affected by excessive crime? Should the extra crime income be counted as extra taxation for morale purposes? This would cause a reaction from the domain leader of that city, some kind of crack-down on crime.

 

I've pre-calculated the "average" revenue for you in the rulebook so it's an easy switch to the system you are describing.

Treating the excess crime as equivalent in morale to a raise in taxes is a great idea!

 

 

I checked James K's "maximum number of hijinks" table and also calculated the average revenue per member and revenue per urban family. As he noted, the revenue levels increase quite a lot at smaller markets (from 5 to 20 gp per urban family). For a market class II city with minimum population and maximum guild the guild's revenue is the same as the domain ruler's. If the domain total was 50% the income, this would mean that the guild is stealing everyhting that was left after rents & taxes. For this reason I used market class I as the baseline (and maximum guild revenue level). The guild revenue is 59% of the domain revenue, so the poor urbanites still have something left.

The total income (45% normal men, 55% 1st level) is around 105 000 gp/month, which is close enough to 100 000 gp to match the starting syndicate. (Taking into account the higher levels will raise it somewhat). The monthly revenue per family is roughly 5.3 gp, which is 3.2 gp lower than the urban revenue (around 60%). As the losses from the hijinks are at the same level as the domain income, anything exceeding a "normal" level should cause a loss of morale similar to overtaxation. How much should be considered a normal level of crime? Current estimate of global organized crime is 1.5% of GWP, and the Bank of Italy estimates the cost of mafia at 15-16% of GDP. The latter should be considered a high amount of crime, affecting the whole area's economics as well as morale. What these levels could be in a pre-modern society, I don't know.

The total crime rate is 716/100 000 per month, most of which are just carousing. With murder rate at 144 per year, the amount of assassinations sounds high (most medieval European cities had less than 100 and modern national rates are also under 100. The Bank of Italy estimates the increase to murder rate due to mafia to have been 2-4 (from 150% to 280% increase). If we consider the medieval murder rate to be around 30, a mafia-like increase would be 45-84, maybe an average of 60.

From the above two a preliminary estimate for a "sustainable" amount of crime could be a tenth of the maximum. That's 300 hijinks per 100 000 urban residents (20 000 families), at a monthly crime rate of 70 crimes, revenue of 5 sp/family (6% of urban revenue) and murder rate increase of 14. Tripling the number of hijinks adds 1 gp/family and increases the murder rate to the mafia level. For just the revenue loss that should be a -1, but since the increase is now a threat the physical safety of the citizens there should be an additional penalty. If we consider that to be another -1, we could say that for every 100% increase of hijinks from the sustainable level (or 10% of the maximum), the crime spree causes a -1 on the settlement morale.

The problem with this model is that characters running a syndicate will not be able to match the income of those running the settlement without causing it to rebel. At the sustainable level their income is similar to those running atemple and just collecting tithes. For higher income it maybe better to take over the settlement yourself, using the syndicate for blackmailing, corruption and assassinations to achieve it. Also for settlements of market class V or VI even a single hijink in a month is more than it can sustain. A single successfull assassination at a market class VI village will cause a scandal and cost someone there almost double the village's monthly revenue!

As for the actual model of leaving the guild members to pursue their own hijinks and just taxing them for "protection" or membership the numbers are simple. With a salary model (with the net income according to the monthly hijink income table), the salaries are around 50% of the total syndicate revenue and other expenses are around 40% with the remaining 10% going to the boss. So if the boss is only collecting for leadership (taxing the guild) s/he could gather 10% of the revenue. If the boss was actually taking care of the syndicate, paying for legal fees and other expenses, they could ask for 50% of the revenue. The 10% level is similar to the traditional "guild fees" for adventuring thieves, so it's suitable for more freewheeling guilds. For a more organized syndicate the 50% is more suitable.

I've just posted an update to our Patreon called "Of Coins and Coinage" that provides some detail on how much income an urban family makes. To summarize what is explained there, while an average peasant family produces 16.25gp and pays 12gp to the lord per month, an average urban family is producing somewhere between 25gp and 75gp per month. Median income is about 6 to 12gp per month, but the cities are where the wealthy live and they drive the average way up.

Hopefully that data helps you assess whether or not the percentage of income earned by the syndicate makes sense.

 

With the average urban income per capita of 50 gp the crime syndicate incomes look more reasonable. With a syndicate of 3000 members in an city of 20 000 families, the syndicate earns 10% of the whole city income. With a syndicate of 16 in a village of 75 families it rises to 40%.

I couldn't find estimates on historical criminal syndicate earnings, so I looked more closely at contemporary data. The whole world is estimated to have 15% of all income in the shadow economy. Of that 5-6% is organized crime and of that income 2-3% is from something else than just tax evasion. Some of the highest estimated shadow economies are 40% to 66%. If we take the highest value and halve it to exclude tax evasion, we're left with 33% as the highest criminal portion of an economy. The value of 40% for the small village is higher than this and the 10% for a large city is around the estimate for Italy in 2012. So the values are on the high side, but these are cities with well established syndicates.

A 20% increase in hijinks is roughly an increase of 1 gp/month. With loss of revenue and safety, the morale loss for that could be the same as for an rural domain or even double. This is unless the larger income per family could absorb more losses. To keep things simple, maybe we should have it at -1 morale per 1 gp. Even with this keeping the syndicate income for the small village at the level of 4 times the rate in the large city would cause a morale penalty of -20. For a maximum population market class VI village the increase is just 20% and penalty only -1.

The sizes of the syndicates (maximum members/minimum population for the market class) give pretty high proportion of criminals in the population, from less than 5 families per syndicate member for the small village. For the maximum sizes for each market class (except I), the value gets closer to 30. Compared to some contemporary examples of known large organized crime syndicates these are high. For example there are roughly 600 families per Italian syndicate members, 400 families per Japanese yakuza, 200 families per New York mafiosi and there in Russia in 1996 were 50 families per member of an organized crime syndicate.

The crime rate for the previously mentioned mix of hijinks is 86/1000 urbanites, which is less than that reported in countries with a high percentage of crimes being reported (unfortunately where there actually is more crime, less of it is reported, so the crime rates are not really comparable). Considering this is mostly carousing the rate doesn't seem too high.

For assassinations the rate is still too high. 12 assassinations per month results in 144 in a year per 20 000 families. The highest modern rate of contract killings I could find was in Mexico in 2013, 5 assassinations per 20 000 families. There 28% of all homicides were hired killings, more normal rates would be 1-2%. Going back to the medieval European annual average of 30/100 000 murders, even at that high proportion would only result in less than 10 per year (and less than 1 per month). The contemporary price for a contract varies a lot, but some averages put it to 20-100% of the local GDP/capita. In ACKS that would be 120-600 gp in a city. That would put the average target income between 3 and 18 gp per month.

Hola! Great research. A few thoughts:

1. The syndicate sizes listed are maximum sizes, so comparing maximum size syndicates to minimum size market classes is definitely skewing these results.

2. The hijinks table by James K is an admirable creation, and it's cool to see my work reverse engineered the way I reversed Gygax etc. In any case, the way I actually worked out the math was to work out for each level of experience which activity was most profitable, where profitability took into account risk of being caught, punishment when caught, etc., and then make sure that activity had odds and payout such that the character of that level made about his monthly wages. It's a three-page spreadsheet and a bit of a mess but the upshot is that the vast majority of all activity is carousing and stealing. At no level is assassination ever the most profitable activity, so it would be comparably rare. I never actually worked out how much specific activity was occurring of each type, though, I just worked out what would be most efficient to occur.

 

 

 

1. The syndicate sizes listed are maximum sizes, so comparing maximum size syndicates to minimum size market classes is definitely skewing these results.

OK. Checking the revenue per urban family at the maximum population for each market class gets more reasonable values, 6 gp at it's highest. Still the maximum number of criminals per urban per urban family seems high even if half of them are just carousers. The maximum level is high enough to be noticeable to everyone in the city as it's more than the level in Russia when the organized crime was at it's highest (1/37 urban families).

2. The hijinks table by James K is an admirable creation, and it's cool to see my work reverse engineered the way I reversed Gygax etc. In any case, the way I actually worked out the math was to work out for each level of experience which activity was most profitable, where profitability took into account risk of being caught, punishment when caught, etc., and then make sure that activity had odds and payout such that the character of that level made about his monthly wages. It's a three-page spreadsheet and a bit of a mess but the upshot is that the vast majority of all activity is carousing and stealing. At no level is assassination ever the most profitable activity, so it would be comparably rare. I never actually worked out how much specific activity was occurring of each type, though, I just worked out what would be most efficient to occur.

So the easy way to estimate the income is just to assume that all of the carousers carouse and everyone else is off stealing? With this information the maximum activity can be estimated from the total income, but for limits on individual hijinks we have to split them. For some the limit is based on the supply of targets and on some on the demand for the hijinks.

Supply limited hijinks

The absolute maximum for smuggling is the amount of trade in a month. For a class I market, that's 1 200 000 gp (4000 loads = 280 000 st = 400 levels of thieves = 2000 attempts at level 1), which will net 144 000 gp. This would deprive the city of that much in toll and tax revenue (more than 7 gp per urban family, or almost as high as all of the urban revenue). 10% of this is barely noticeable (7 sp per family).

The absolute maximum for stealing is the total income of the city, around 1 million gp per 20 000 families (3333 loads =  233 000 st = 1667 levels = 8335 attempts at level 1), which will net 600 000 gp. 10% of this nets 3 gp/family which sounds about right for the syndicate income.

Treasure-hunting is pretty impossible to estimate. If it includes tomb-robbing in addition to looting hidden caches and old ruins, the total amount of hidden wealth could be estimated from the age of the culture in the area. This would give a maximum of how much loot has been accumulated and could ever be discovered in the area. Another way to think of this is looking at it as a steady state system; there's a constant flow of treasure being buried and lost and a sustainable treasure hunting industry can recover it at the same rate. All of this would be very variable depending on the culture and current situation (what are the traditions for grave goods, how many people bury their savings etc.). Any archeologists on the forum? My guess would be 1 month's income per 20 years (a generation) per urbanite = 5 sp per urban family per month = 10 000 gp per 20 000 urban families = 3 successful treasure hunts = 19 attempts at level 1. The 10% level would be only 5 cp per family per month, but would mean that the rest will accumulate for future looters.

Demand limited hijinks

The maximum amount of assassinations would depend on the political situation and traditions of violence in the culture. Built on the estimates given above, the maximum rate would be 0.025 to 1 per month per 20 000 urban families. That's only 12.5 to 500 gp a month if most targets are normal men (as is most of the population). For 20 000 urban families the maximum level would be only 2.5 cp/family (= 1 successful assassination of a normal man = 10 attempts at level 1). The 10% level would be only one attempt per month. Probably the level of targets is skewed towards higher levels as the more powerful people would have more need for assassins.

For carousing and the maximum demand would be based on the amount of funds available for this information and demand for it. As for the actual demand for all kinds of secret information, it too would be highly variable and depend on the culture and local situation. The information could be thought as a commodity in itself, used by the buyer for some concrete edge (possibly financial). Back-calculating from the assumption that carousers will be the source for this income, the sustainable (10% level) would be 2 gp per 20 000 urban families (40 000 gp = 410 successful carouses = 2735 attempts or 31 successful spyings = 308 attempts at level 1). The theoretical 100% level for information gathering would be 40% of the urban income, but what is the net effect of that information trade I cannot really guess. Some of it would give a definite economic edge to someone, but also a lot of it would be just blackmail or used for some political or strategic gain. Anyway, unless there's no monetary gain from using that info the maximum could be even higher. If there's no measurable gain the income could be considered a tax like the income from stealing.

Great assessment! Definitely an Axioms article here.

Hi! I could do an article from that stuff. What are the requirements for them?