How to run a business in Dnd?

[Dog Moon]

In a campaign which is about to be run in my group, the players together own a small kingdom [Basically a small kingdom consisting of one medium-sized town with a port and little else]. My character is a Spymaster who put points into three Professions: Innkeeper, Business [Owns a brothel], and Merchant. So, we came upon a price for the inn and the brothel and the expenses per month were based off that and then I included prices for the hirelings [All based from Stronghold Builder's Guidebook]. However, I was wondering if anyone had done anything like this because neither me nor the DM were sure on a good way to figure out income from the two businesses and the merchant part [The merchant aspect is more the traveling type as opposed to a store owner].

Any help is definitely appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Best way to run a business in the crazy D&D economics is actually very simple:

Kill stuff. Take Loot. Repeat.

 

[Ranger Rick]

I ran a church, so it was like a small fiefdom. Just assume you make enough to pay expenses and have enough cash/colleteral to expand fortifications.

Think of other ways to make money and have it all tied together. Create a reason that vistors (sailing merchants) will go to your town. As the town grows, so do you. Create a ship building industry and pirates and basic trade goods (one raw & one finished) and just do it all basic seat of the pants generalities. Like Ankh-Morpork said you earn money by adventuring, the town helps you launder money and to make useful items cheap.

Build a fortified keep, and soon adventures will be trying to unseat you. That helps relieve the boring high level save the world campaigns, because you have a stake in the place.

 

[trancejeremy]

The Taverner's Trusty Tome from Dark Quest games has some basic rules for running a tavern, IIRC

 

[jmucchiello]

Unless you want to role-play intense negotiations over the price of bread and meat (at an inn say) or provide multi-dimensional statistics on the customers visiting the brothel just have the player make his profession roll once a month. Figure an adjustment factor from the result as DC/5 - 10. Add to this number 2d6. Multiply the result by 20. The business loses or gains that number of gp that month.

Example: Player gets a 15 on his profession check. 15/5 - 10 = -7. Player rolls a 7 on 2d6. 7 - 7 = 0. Thus, he has no profit or loss for that month. Ergo, on average a DC of 15 will yield no profit. A DC of 20 will on average yield +16% chance of profit (2d6-6 versus 2d6-7).

Small time businesses could use even smaller multipliers than 20. Large multi-national trading companies would use larger multipliers.

If there's interest, I'll write this better as a freebie on my website.

 

[dekrass]

I have a player who is always trying to take over this or that business.
I still haven't done it well, and he's tried a good 10 times.

 

[Dog Moon]

Originally posted by Ankh-Morpork Guard
Best way to run a business in the crazy D&D economics is actually very simple:

Kill stuff. Take Loot. Repeat.

But if I kill people, I'll never have repeat business. Um, and my town will grow smaller, and they are my followers.

Originally posted by jmucchiello
...just have the player make his profession roll once a month....

The way you described this is simple and if nothing else comes up, I'll prolly use a slight variation of this, but I was thinking of something perhaps a little more detailed, [As Ranger Rick suggested with what he wrote, business adventures are not simple], though I could be asking for too much.

Any more help?

 

[jmucchiello]

The way you described this is simple and if nothing else comes up, I'll prolly use a slight variation of this, but I was thinking of something perhaps a little more detailed, [As Ranger Rick suggested with what he wrote, business adventures are not simple], though I could be asking for too much.

Any more help?

Well, the reason it is simple is because most of us do not play D&D because we want to run a small business. Running a business involves a lot of tedium. While you are running the negotiations with the local cattle rancher for periodic meat deliveries, what will the other players be doing at the table?

You could add lots of detail to the formula I created. Perhaps base some of the numbers on the size of the town and the number of similar businesses in the town. Then, have a couple of rival businesses suddenly pop up reducing the player's income, perhaps causing his first losses. If he's in a shipping/merchant business, create tables of trade goods and base the numbers on which goods he's into.

Just how much of this do you want to put into a spreadsheet?

Better is to let the business numbers be simple and create human-related stories around the business:

• The thieves' guild wants protection money.
• The local constabulary wants protection money.
• The mayor wants taxes.
• Have an important local die in his brothel.
• Have a number of people die mysteriously in his place of business.

These kinds of adventures are inclusive of the other players and don't require double entry accounting.

 

[F5]

I know this is probably not helpful, but I've found the best way to handle running a business in D&D is to take Leadership, and let a trusted follower run it for you. The day-to-day accounting is done behind the scenes, and the success or failure of the business is based on in-game factors. I've never found that more detail than that makes for a fun game, and even if your character is not actually sitting behind the counter, as it were, they're still invested in the business and it can still make for interesting plot tie-ins.

Maybe set up a set of wealth rules like in D20 modern...the business makes enough profit to meet its' own needs, and if you want to call on the resources for something above-and-beyond the everyday, you need to make some kind of a Profession check, the DC determining weather or not you get what you want.

If you don't mind keeping it abstract, this can work for you. But I get the impression you're interested in a more realistic business simulation.

 

[TerraDave]

I really liked the profesion check idea...but if you want more: A Magical Medieval Society Western Europe has a lot of info that might be usefull (on building, bargaining, different profesions, demographics...) but I don't think it has generating income from small bussinesses. I think it does have generating income from manors that may be close, or convertable.

But Jmucchellio is right, the point of the game is to get away from stuff like this. And his other suggestions are also good