Chaosmancer
Legend
Fair enough, but when they're planning a battle they really don't need my-as-DM involvement very much (unless I've a party NPC and they ask its opinion), which means I can go get a beer and sit back for a bit. I don't even really need to pay that much attention, and perhaps probably shouldn't.
When they're updating their businesses etc. they need my involvement on an ongoing basis, which means I have to pay attention whether I want to or not. Big difference.
Perhaps it's because such things might act as a threat to the adventure-to-get-rich paradigm most games implicitly (or explicitly) function under.
In pre-4e editions this wasn't a big deal - it'd take years of exceptional trading to make the same haul as one good adventure could provide - but in 4e and 5e adventuring isn't quite the gateway to immense and immediate wealth it used to be (at least until quite high level) if the DM runs the modules as written, meaning other forms of making money become both more appealing and (potentially) more lucrative.
I mean, if you're a Cleric and you can either spend three weeks in the field putting your life on the line for 517 g.p. (your share of the treasury) or you can spend those three weeks safe in town casting healing spells on those who can afford it and make 550 g.p., which would you choose?
And I think that is exactly right. And if you aren't operating under that assumption, that the entire point of adventuring is to get rich, then all of these other things aren't an issue.
This is the point I've been trying to make, that if you are designing and operating under the assumption that Adventuring is the way to get rich, then these other systems that people may want to explore, these roleplaying opportunities, get treated like a threat to the game. Because if you can make more money by being safe, then why would you adventure? And while I can get the realism aspect of it, these is a second part to the realism... wealthy people who are not adventurers do exist. Not all money is made that way.