D&D 5E Running a Business Revisited (D&D 5e)

[Joseph Madigan]

We just finished Dragon Heist and the player characters have thousands of gold to spend. Not only do they have Trollskull Manor open for business as a tavern, but they're looking to buy a ship and invest in other businesses. There are rules for this in Dragon Heist and in the Dungeon Master's Guide, but I wanted to add a little risk and flavor. I want each business to feel a little different, but I don't want to slow down the game or shift the focus away from adventuring. So here's a few homebrew rules I've been working on to handle the month-to-month game of running a business in D&D. The thing I'm especially trying to go for is an elegant system that makes the monthly maintenance cost both a liability and an asset (as a limit to how much one can benefit from investing in the business).

Running a Business - Revisted v1.0

docs.google.com

 

[toucanbuzz]

You may find the Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign Guide on running businesses to be useful. Since it was a mini-game, there's little conversion needed from its 3rd edition style. Its free online rules don't have all the details (e.g. the random event charts for your alchemy shop or thieves' guild), but it's plenty already.

Otherwise, looks like your off to a good start.

 

[Zardnaar]

You may find the Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign Guide on running businesses to be useful. Since it was a mini-game, there's little conversion needed from its 3rd edition style. Its free online rules don't have all the details (e.g. the random event charts for your alchemy shop or thieves' guild), but it's plenty already.

Otherwise, looks like your off to a good start.

I have that, the DMG2 from 3E and a 3pp Ultimate Campaign guide.

They want to run a beer exporting business from not Egypt.

 

[MNblockhead]

Matt Coleville's Strongholds and Followers provides fun and easy to run rules for maintaining taverns, temples, and such.

 

[Eltab]

3e Power of Faerun may inspire creativity. There is a chapter on Merchant Princes building up a business conglomerate.

Acquisitions Inc has some rules for running a business. I had a hard time getting through the 'atmosphere' of the campaign to see if the mechanics are good bad or indifferent.

 

[NotAYakk]

I want to write Enterprise rules.

In a sense, enterprises have some amount of Capital, and this grows/shrinks relatively randomly. Investing increases the Capital; divesting inefficiently turns it into cash.

Events should be adventure hooks. These can be problems or opportunities. Following these hooks is a reliable way to grow it/prevent it from shrinking.

Enterprises can be a castle, thieves guide, inn, bar, trading ship, bribery scheme, conspiracy to overthrow a king, school of magic, church, forest, farm, tinker's lab, or anything.

Enterprises can have or gain properties. Like provide an adventuring companion or companions, consumable magic items, boosts to certain skill checks, influence the world narrative, etc.

Basically, a bit more abstract.

 

[The Green Hermit]

Running a Business - Revisted v1.0

docs.google.com

This looks good. And it is timely, since we are starting our very first downtime session possibly tomorrow. (It depends on how long my players take to make it back to town/finish up all the odds and ends from their quest.

 

[Stalker0]

The issue I found with the system presented is that profit is exactly the same regardless of the business, but the potential loses are based on your maintenance.

As such, the farm is flat out the best business, cheap to get, easy to maintain, and yet will generate the same profit as other more expensive businesses the vast majority of the time.

the investment option doesn’t really counteract this, it just gives the ability to spend even more money on your business, but the extra profit isn’t really worth it

 

[77IM]

This is excellent. You might address Stalker0's comment by expanding the table beyond 100, with rewards that scale with costs. This way investing (especially in expensive businesses) can have a really good payout. For example,

100-110: 4d12 x 5 gp, + 5% of startup costs
111+: 5d20 x 5 gp, + 10% of startup costs



...
Another simple system I thunk up one time: As a baseline, assume most businesses make back their initial investment in 2-3 years, and thereafter become profitable. So the monthly profits (after expenses) should average 1/24-1/36 of the initial investment. Let's say 3% of investment per month (that's about 1/33). Then you have some table rolls to determine what the actual profits are, which may be negative in a really bad month. Violà, break-even on the investment after about 2-3 years!

 

[NotAYakk]

The numbers also don't add up.

A skilled hireling costs 60 gp/month (2 gp/day), an unskilled 6 gp/month. So the maintenance doesn't include the cost of the workers? That is awkward.

Having "number of unskilled" and "number of skilled" workers is useful information.

A measure of the current "capital" or "assets" stuff the business has is also useful. It can take damage instead of causing direct costs.

The maintenance or supply costs is only somewhat useful. It does place somewhat of a "floor" on how bad a non-burnt-down building can be.

Your crew of unskilled workers should have two numbers; quality and count. Each unskilled worker is 6 gp/month or 20 gp/quarter.

Your stewards of skilled workers can have the same two numbers as well. Each skilled worker is 60 gp/month or 200 gp/quarter.

Maintenance should include the cost of the workers.

A "damage" stat that represents wear and tear on the capital might be good.

A "treasury" of liquid assets or easy to sell goods might be a good stat to have. It acts differently than capital.

...

The business should suffer wear and tear on the capital and generate an operating profit.

Some ventures should be riskier, with more ups and downs. Call that risk.

Crew: #, quality (proficiency?)
Stewards: #, quality (proficiency?)
quality is a secret fact the PCs do not have direct access to.
Assets: value in 1000s of gp, damage (damage is semi-secret)
Supply: 10s of gp per month
Treasury: measured in gp

A ROI in the range of 2%/year with positive cash flow in the 12% range is reasonable.

12% cash flow is 1% of assets/month. So each 1000 gp in assets you should earn +10 gp/month in cash flow and suffer 100 gp/year in "damage" to assets on average.

A d20 roll seems ideal. This is D&D.

The DC could vary by business. Hmm.