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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 276168" data-attributes="member: 93">Here's my two cents:Don't worry about big details unless it's to become a big part of your campaign.  I've heard that the restaurant business has very slim margins, so I've arbitrarily decided that a 3%  profit margin  is average for the food portion of the tavern.  How many seats do you have?  Most restaurants have two seatings per evening.  Let's assume ten tables, four chairs each.  You don't sit someone in every chair every day.  So thats a MAXIMUM of 80 dinner customers per evening, let's assume 2/3 capacity to begin (or about 53 customers, that can go up with good profession: Innkeeper rolls, or the notoriety of the party).  A good meal in the PHB costs 5 sp.  That's 264 sp per evening, if you assume a 3% profit, that's a mere 8 sp profit per night, or about 250 gp per year (assuming you're open 6 nights a week).  Not gonna get filthy rich that way, my friend.Drinks are where you get rich.  The margins on drinks are pretty damn good.  Lets call it 25%, figuring your including wages, etc in on that.  I'd say an average customer drinks 3 drinks a night.  A mug of ale is 4 cp.  Those 53 customers drink 6.4 gp worth of ale a night!  Over a year, that's almost 2,000 gp worth of ale, assuming a profit margin of 25%, thats 500 gp.  That's not shabby for a middle-class innkeeper.That's a profit of around 750gp for our hypothetical innkeeper.  It won't keep an adventurer away from any dragon hoards, and it won't fund his magic item purchases.  Add a few die rolls to allow some fluctuations in profits and losses, and you have a very quick and dirty system.You could get more involved, or figure out the wages versus costs, but I think it is just as valid to simply throw a few numbers at the wall and see if they stick in a manner remotely resembling reality.  It's important to remember how rich adventurers are in comparison to "normal folk" in a D&D game.  I'd compare them to professional athletes, making far more money that any normal person.I've used essentially this system (with a little more detail) for a PC's gambling hall/tavern for a few years now, and it seems to work well.  I set up an Excel spreadsheet to handle things like taxes, and wages, and seasonal variations in business.  I have him roll a Merchant check every month, with successes resulting in him packing the place closer to capacity, hence making more money.</blockquote>

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