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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Running a Business - Stream of Consciousness



Bjarkmundur
2019-09-12, 04:58 AM
Alright, let's try this again!

These are my assumptions
- Salary for a trained hireling is 60gp
- Salary for an untrained hireling is 6gp
- Since salary is usually 50% of the running cost of your average company, we assume that your running cost is twice total salary expense of your business
- Average profit for a company is 10% (+-5%)
- It usually takes up to three years for a company to turn a profit.
- Expanding a business is calculated as if it were a new business.

How to Calculate Start-up Cost
Instead of having to track 36 months of no profit we can simply implement a startup cost of equal value.
Startup Cost = Profit * 36

How to Run a Business
1. Decide how many people you want to have on your payroll
2. Calculate salary
3. Double that number to find your running cost
4. 10% of your running cost is your profit.
.
Example 1: The player Dave is playing DnD to have a good time and fulfill some of his fantasies. One of the things he has always wanted to do is own a bakery. His sessions so far have been extremely cathartic in terms of getting a break from reality and playing out some of his fantasies, so he asks his DM to help his character to open a bakary.
Dave decides he wants 2 skilled bakers and 3 untrained employees. He calculates his salary expenses per month to be 138gp (2x60gp and 3x6gp), and his total running cost to be 276gp (2x Salary). His startup cost is then 993gp (running cost x 3,6) and average profit of his bakery is 27gp (10% of running cost) per month.
Expanding his business with 1 skilled hireling costs 432gp once and then yields an additional 12gp per month.
Expanding his business with 1 untrained hireline costs 43gp and yields an addtional 1gp per month.

Problems
- No obligation for the business owner to spend his downtime running the business.
- No variance in profit between months based on a roll.
- No way to include ability checks to affect the running of your company
- Not a very interactive experience for the player.
- Doesn't really pay off until after 36 sessions...

Presentation:
Now this is all very realistic and nice, but we only need these as a reference for verisimilitude. Presenting a player with formulas and calculations isn't very 5e. Instead we provide pre-calculated options with averaged-out numbers to make things pretty. Now we can start fudging numbers to get the FEELING we want, and simplify. A lot. This is best done with some example businesses

Old Harry MTX
2022-09-23, 12:50 AM
Maybe it's not worth it to meet the wishes of a single player, but if hypothetically all the characters were in the situation of having to run a business, or maybe manage a camp, I would probably steal the mechanics from some board game. I'm not very experienced, but maybe from Puerto Rico, or some German game ...

Halrax
2022-10-04, 10:38 AM
For running or being in an organization, I really like the affiliation mechanics from the 3.5 PHB 2. They're not system-specific, though you might have to adjust the gp values. It includes cost of startup, the scale of an organization, increasing the scale, gaining profit, different types, special powers of an organization of a particular size, overthrowing leadership, benefits and costs of membership, etc. Easily one of the best chapters of a D&D book released in the past 20 years.