Calculating business profit

[Ydnar]

Ok so my players have constructed a high-end brothel. The population of the town is approx 3000 with heavy trading so there are a large number of people coming and going at any given time. Their brothel is fairly high end. There are 20 ladies of the night working as well as a fancy tavern built into the brothel that can serve a max of 40 people. Any suggestions on how I would go about assigning a profit per week or month for my PCs? Thanks guys :)

[Slipperychicken]

DMG has rules for running a business. They're not great, but you could use that as a baseline to determine what the PCs get.

[ClintACK]

Depends how much work you -- and your players -- want to put into it.

I could see using the PC's social skills to make contacts with suppliers and local community leaders. And you could have little crises that need to be managed week to week. You say it's a trading town -- but what kind? If it's a gateway to agricultural areas, the caravans may be quite seasonal with a spring and fall rush, but little business in the summer and almost none in the winter. Weather might have similar effects. But then, if they can draw locals into the tavern in the winter, they might even out the business plan. But what to do with the ladies -- 20 of them is probably too many for just the local population. So how will they keep busy -- or will they stir up trouble the PCs will have to deal with.

Or are they just buying the place and then going off on their adventures and expecting their small business to thrive without them there? How competent is the manager they've hired -- and how honest?

[Laserlight]

For any successful business, of whatever type, I would assume that net profit is 10% of revenue.
Of course, a lot of businesses aren't successful. I worked for one place that had $7M expenses on $1.5M revenue. As you might imagine, it was a short-lived experience.

[Saeviomage]

The most interesting way to run any D&D business in any edition is to assume it breaks even, then create challenges for the players to keep it running, and award the treasure from those encounters in the form of profit (or, if they fail the encounter, loss).

[Gtdead]

Well, you could use a more elaborate model if your campaign can support it.

Lets say that each girl gets on average 5 customers per day.

Add layers of managment, advertisement, business opportunities and security that affect this number.

Set an average price that makes sense in your campaign and add a quality of goods layer that affects thia number.

This way you can calculate revenue and hand a 20% to the party.


Add possible hazards that the players have to deal with. For example low security resulted in a girl getting beaten hard. Depending on how they deal with it they may get added security but less prestige, thus less business opportunities.

For example, lets say that the price is 1 gold. 100 customers per day.

20g per day.

Assuming a 4 member party, that's 5g per day each.

If they care about their business, it can go up to double the customers per day, or keep the same ammount but have high class clientelle. Or both.

You can also add the dice factor to this if you want to.

[SLIMEPRIEST]

Our party owns a tavern in a town. It's run by a trusted PC who is our partner. We get a lot of intangible Benefits from it. A secret base, our cook makes potions and poison, access to info. We can always get our money out. We get 10 + d10 percent of our investment annually. We earn way more adventuring.

[Segev]

DMG has rules for running a business. They're not great, but you could use that as a baseline to determine what the PCs get.

They're actually pretty terrible. The best businesses to own are those with the lowest maintenance cost, because profits are independent of the business's maintenance cost, but higher maintenance costs mean that failing to roll profits costs you more money.

A bigger, more impressive business thus will make less profit overall than a cheap, tiny business.

The mechanics aren't terrible from a conceptual standpoint, mind. The structure (roll for the month's profits/losses, with bonuses based on how many days you worked on making it successful in downtime) is simple but sensible. The trouble is in the way they calculate losses and profits. And that they've made what should be less successful/profitable businesses cost more when you roll poorly, but not made them reward with more when you roll well.

So, essentially, if you buy a cheap farm for a few hundred gp, it loses at most 2 sp per day. If you spend a ton of money and effort and role-playing time in establishing a Guild, it loses many gp per day at worst. At any point where they're not losing money, the farm and the Guild will earn the PC the exact same amount of money.

[Ydnar]

Thanks for the input guys :)

[Farecry]

They're actually pretty terrible. The best businesses to own are those with the lowest maintenance cost, because profits are independent of the business's maintenance cost, but higher maintenance costs mean that failing to roll profits costs you more money.

A bigger, more impressive business thus will make less profit overall than a cheap, tiny business.

The mechanics aren't terrible from a conceptual standpoint, mind. The structure (roll for the month's profits/losses, with bonuses based on how many days you worked on making it successful in downtime) is simple but sensible. The trouble is in the way they calculate losses and profits. And that they've made what should be less successful/profitable businesses cost more when you roll poorly, but not made them reward with more when you roll well.

So, essentially, if you buy a cheap farm for a few hundred gp, it loses at most 2 sp per day. If you spend a ton of money and effort and role-playing time in establishing a Guild, it loses many gp per day at worst. At any point where they're not losing money, the farm and the Guild will earn the PC the exact same amount of money.

If that's the case, run each girl as a low cost item and add them all together. And then adding in the troubles and encounters and what-not keep it relevant to the campaign up to a certain point.

[Cespenar]

Calculate it so that they'd win back their investment in 5 years.

And that's being generous. :smalltongue:

[Coffee_Dragon]

Calculate it so that they'd win back their investment in 5 years.

And that's being generous. :smalltongue:

Be sure to throw in complications in the form of good-aligned party interference and make it 10 years.

[Segev]

I know this is sketchy ground, bringing modern real-world metrics in on a fantasy medieval-ish setting, but I believe the standards for pricing whether buying an established business is a good investment (assuming you're not buying it just to get X patented product or something, but really mean to keep running it mostly as it's been run) or not tends to be an examination of how much profit it is expected to make in the next 3-5 years. So recouping their investment in 5 years wouldn't be "generous" so much as "the longest they should consider viable," if that holds for a D&D setting.

[Alejandro]

A good first question is, what is the culture of that nation/area towards sex? Brothels, prostitutes, etc make the most money when they are present in a setting that greatly forbids or shames sex outside of marriage, sex for pleasure rather than procreation, etc. As well as how wealthy the potential patrons are.

As a good example, look at the Everleigh Club of Chicago, 1900-1911.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everleigh_Club

The women that ran it made an absolute fortune. Freakonomics had a great writeup of it, along with an explanation of why sex for money then crashed as the 20th century passed and the 21st century began. In short: less religious belief against sex and more women willing to have sex for pleasure/casually.

[TexasHays]

Are they going to be actively managing it or just supplying the capital investment?

If the latter, the easiest would be to just assume an average rate of return on the invested capital. Which in a strong growing economy is around 10% and in more normal, stable economy can be as low as 5%.

[Mr.Moron]

I'd say unless they're interested in getting into the nitty-gritty of playing Brothel Tycoon 2016: Manager's Edition just pick a number that sounds about right and run with it. Something simple and easy to digest at a glance that makes for an accessible mini-game.

Profit per worker, per day: 1d8 (5) sp. Alternatively: 1d8 (5)gp every 10 days.
Cost to Hire New worker: 50g

Assume all costs, taxes, bouncers and what not are included in that price. I think for most players, the playability of the rules matter than the rigor of the simulation. That said if they do want to play Brothel Tycoon 2016: Manager's Edition you could get pretty in depth.

Do you know what level detail they're looking to get out of this.On one extreme do they want to be picking outfits for the girls, micro-manging internal politics of the place, and selling out to potential customers, stocking the bar and keeping inventory and RPing out conflicts with rowdy patrons? On the other extreme do they just want you to throw some gold at them so they can buy shinies?

I'm assuming it's somewhere in between, but where exactly?