The Shards of Orn is a fantasy game where you get to play a daring adventurer. It's a game of high adventure where you get to slay monsters, find treasure, and otherwise live an extraordinary life. In that vein, being forced to manage the menial details of your character's day-to-day life would be, well, pretty tedious, and ultimately defeat the purpose of the game. Things like gathering food, keeping a roof over your head, paying taxes, and the like are all assumed to occur and have an overall neutral impact on your character's life. This is an intentional game design decision that is meant to allow you to focus on the fun stuff. Here's the breakdown:
Your character makes enough of a living to get by. In addition to your normal downtime, your character does enough work on the side to have food on your plate and a roof over your head. Exactly how you accomplish this is up to you. Maybe you moonlight as a guard or forage in the wilderness. However you do it, there is nothing left over from these assumed activities, and you cannot choose to forego food and shelter to earn extra gold.
Your character has a roof over his or her head. Be it ever so humble, your character has a home, albeit a very basic one. Your character's home is little more than four walls, a roof, and a bed. In fact, it looks remarkably like the cabins on site. You can't sell it, and it does you little good except sheltering you from the elements and giving you a place to sleep. If it is ever damaged (or starts out that way), it is assumed that you manage to get it repaired during downtime.
Your character owns basic odds and ends. In addition to your adventuring gear, you have the little things you need in your day-to-day life: Plates, utensils, clothing, blankets, brushes, tools of your trade, etc. These cannot be sold. If you want to use them in play, they must be phys repped.
Your character pays taxes. These are drawn from the assumed income above and go into assumed things like rebuilding homes or repairing the tavern (which is destroyed or damaged with some regularity). The logic here is simple: We don't want to force anyone to use their valuable in-play resources to pay for things that have no discernible game benefit. And let's be honest; there's nothing more tedious in real life than having to pay taxes, so why would we force it on you in a fantasy game? As with everything above, your character can refuse to pay taxes, but you earn no extra income by doing so. It just becomes an in-play issue between you and the Sheriff.
Please note that we plan to introduce systems later on that may expand upon some of these basic assumptions. For example, every character has a basic home, but you will eventually be able to spend money on a home with, say, fortified stone walls or a heavy iron door to bar entry. Likewise, the trade skill system already expands the basic assumption that your character makes just enough to get by, allowing you to earn an income you can use in play.