Setting up a business

[KittenMagician]

One of my players wants to establish a business with multiple locations with the intent of selling magical and high end items. I was thinking about costs and im not sure what to tell him the costs are. thus far i have several ideas but not actual values:

Start up costs
-Business license
-Dangerous item license
-property procurement
-hiring workers
-guild exemption fees


Continuing monthly costs
-sales/business tax
-land tax
-worker wages


with all this he earns a monthly income which may not be higher than the costs. he has a ton of money already (30k platinum acquired magically) but is looking for continuing monetary support for the party. he wants to set up in a small town near their HQ and in a much busier port town to start with more expansion later.

i was thinking the costs would be way steeper in the port town but quality of workers is better and more profit is available.

i was also thinking there could be complications with rival businesses and greedy workers (embezzlement) and thieves

i really need help with setting some hard numbers.

[Pildion]

One of my players wants to establish a business with multiple locations with the intent of selling magical and high end items. I was thinking about costs and im not sure what to tell him the costs are. thus far i have several ideas but not actual values:

Start up costs
-Business license
-Dangerous item license
-property procurement
-hiring workers
-guild exemption fees


Continuing monthly costs
-sales/business tax
-land tax
-worker wages


with all this he earns a monthly income which may not be higher than the costs. he has a ton of money already (30k platinum acquired magically) but is looking for continuing monetary support for the party. he wants to set up in a small town near their HQ and in a much busier port town to start with more expansion later.

i was thinking the costs would be way steeper in the port town but quality of workers is better and more profit is available.

i was also thinking there could be complications with rival businesses and greedy workers (embezzlement) and thieves

i really need help with setting some hard numbers.

Honestly the first question to answer is how much time both you and your players want to invest in this. What you have there alone could take up alot of table time, is it something everyone is cool with? Sometimes less is more, I might just have the player make a name for the business, what it does, sells, and then have them roll for ether a weekly or monthly success / failure. If everyone wants to get into it then maybe do something more, but to start I would roll with the KISS strategy.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Honestly the first question to answer is how much time both you and your players want to invest in this. What you have there alone could take up alot of table time, is it something everyone is cool with? Sometimes less is more, I might just have the player make a name for the business, what it does, sells, and then have them roll for ether a weekly or monthly success / failure. If everyone wants to get into it then maybe do something more, but to start I would roll with the KISS strategy.

I'd make a condition of doing this the retirement of the PC from the game. I mean, is this the D&D you want to run? All of your players want to come to play? If player is unwilling to retire, you can narrate the results: the business fails, taking all invested capital and leaving you with debt. Which might lead to an adventure to repay it.

GLHF!

[KittenMagician]

i forgot to mention that im giving the players some down time and this is what he wants to do therefore it wont take up any table time as it will be done essentially directly between him and me, only involving other players if he wants them involved

[LibraryOgre]

I have some rules about this, written for Hackmaster (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2018/03/hacktrade.html) and Castles and Crusades (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2020/09/capital-and-caravans.html). They'd need some adaptation, naturally, but they might serve as a starting point.

[Sigreid]

I think your starting point is to figure out how the economy in your campaign works, including the tax system.

Failing that, get hold of the 3.x Strongholds book and use the rules to build a business that runs on autopilot, generating a percentage of it's start up cost as income every year.

[MrStabby]

Oh, they will need some insurance. Otherwise when the first party of adventurers shows up, thinks the shopkeeper is low CR, murders them and takes their whole stock then they are out of pocket.

[Damon_Tor]

I would handle this with the downtime system as expressed in the core books and expanded in Xanathar's. Find a downtime activity with the sort of risk/reward you'd like to see and model the business running activity on that. Set up a complications table and have them roll 1/week to determine income using a relevant skill check.

[ecarden]

I'd be more concerned by the 30k platinum acquired magically. That sounds an awful lot like some sort of forgery/counterfeiting which can get you in a lot of trouble.

ETA: But a lot depends here on how magic items work in your world. Is he hiring mages to make these, or trading them around, or personally acquiring them somehow? Personally, unless he's got some sort of serious advantage, I'd say there is a developed market for these goods which he is going to have a hard time breaking into without at least some sort of loss leader.

[sithlordnergal]

I'd make a condition of doing this the retirement of the PC from the game. I mean, is this the D&D you want to run? All of your players want to come to play? If player is unwilling to retire, you can narrate the results: the business fails, taking all invested capital and leaving you with debt. Which might lead to an adventure to repay it.

GLHF!

That seems both far too harsh and very unfun. Why can't a PC start a business, and hire people to run it in their place while they're out adventuring? Why do they have to retire? No need to have the business automatically fail if they refuse to retire the character. You don't see CEOs directly running every shop they own. Elon Musk isn't working in the machine shop with the rest of the engineers.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That seems both far too harsh and very unfun. Why can't a PC start a business, and hire people to run it in their place while they're out adventuring? Why do they have to retire? No need to have the business automatically fail if they refuse to retire the character. You don't see CEOs directly running every shop they own. Elon Musk isn't working in the machine shop with the rest of the engineers.

But he is actively overseeing operations. In a way that makes active, out of contact adventuring quite a bit more difficult to sustain while not losing control. To the point of automatic failure? Dunno. But harder, significantly, especially in a mileu without trivial instant communication? Yeah.

[MrStabby]

But he is actively overseeing operations. In a way that makes active, out of contact adventuring quite a bit more difficult to sustain while not losing control. To the point of automatic failure? Dunno. But harder, significantly, especially in a mileu without trivial instant communication? Yeah.

I think my reason why not would be more OOC.

Table time. The DM has a certain amount of time/attention to divide up between players. The ideal should be to have each person's activities be as fun as possible for them but also fun for everyone else at the table. Unless everyone is down with playing Trinket Tycoon then it seems a high risk time sink from the perspective of player engagement.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think my reason why not would be more OOC.

Table time. The DM has a certain amount of time/attention to divide up between players. The ideal should be to have each person's activities be as fun as possible for them but also fun for everyone else at the table. Unless everyone is down with playing Trinket Tycoon then it seems a high risk time sink from the perspective of player engagement.

Oh, agreed on that part. I've had a player own a fleet. But they were very much absentee, communicating via sending occasionally and downtime visits. Anything more and I'd get more concerned.

[Kurt Kurageous]

That seems both far too harsh and very unfun. Why can't a PC start a business, and hire people to run it in their place while they're out adventuring? Why do they have to retire? No need to have the business automatically fail if they refuse to retire the character. You don't see CEOs directly running every shop they own. Elon Musk isn't working in the machine shop with the rest of the engineers.

To me, the name of this game is dungeons and dragons. That means going to interesting places and having fantastic adventures in a fantasy setting.

If the fun a player is seeking is different from the fun I'm offering running D&D, I'd want a significant commitment from the player. That would be why they have to retire from the party. Because I would have to end the game we were playing and find another set of rules to run with.

I have relevant experience supporting my position. I've created my own business. I worked as much as I humanly could to bring success to the business, thinking and doing little else the whole time. And the business still failed, taking all I had invested with it. If I had not made those efforts, it would have failed sooner. So I don't know and can't imagine any business that would exist in a medieval fantasy world where someone could just set it up, step away, and let it run. Better to buy an election in a city and collect taxes.

A CEO runs a corporation. The player is looking to start a business. There's a big difference there. The engineers at Tesla/SpaceX are employees, not owners. There's another big difference there.

Thank you for the thought-provoking question.

[sithlordnergal]

To me, the name of this game is dungeons and dragons. That means going to interesting places and having fantastic adventures in a fantasy setting.

If the fun a player is seeking is different from the fun I'm offering running D&D, I'd want a significant commitment from the player. That would be why they have to retire from the party. Because I would have to end the game we were playing and find another set of rules to run with.

I have relevant experience supporting my position. I've created my own business. I worked as much as I humanly could to bring success to the business, thinking and doing little else the whole time. And the business still failed, taking all I had invested with it. If I had not made those efforts, it would have failed sooner. So I don't know and can't imagine any business that would exist in a medieval fantasy world where someone could just set it up, step away, and let it run. Better to buy an election in a city and collect taxes.

A CEO runs a corporation. The player is looking to start a business. There's a big difference there. The engineers at Tesla/SpaceX are employees, not owners. There's another big difference there.

Thank you for the thought-provoking question.

It is Dungeons and Dragons, but the entire point is to effectively do anything. No reason why you can't start up a business during downtime, and hire employees to run it while you're off adventuring. Heck, I'd say that having a business owned by an adventurer could even bring in more customers, especially if they're well known. I could easily see it being something the player works on whenever the party has downtime. Instead of buying/copying spell scrolls, buying equipment, or whatever, they go work at their shop with their hired hands. Then head out to do some adventuring.

If they're a spell caster, it becomes even easier because you can get Sending, and later on Teleport. Maybe even pay for a permanent Teleportation Circle to be scribed in their shop over the course of a year if they have the gold for it, that way they always have a quick way back.

As for using IRL experience, that's sort of just another Guy at the Gym fallacy, is it not? You're attempting to apply irl things and experience to DnD, that never works out. Heck, the DMG has some basic rules for running a player owned business on pages 127 and 129. It assumes that an adventurer owned business can cover the costs of its own upkeep while you're away, then when you come back you can spend a number of downtime days and roll a d100 to see how well its doing. Xanathar's expanded this a little bit with the Work option for Downtime, you could easily combine the two for a few simple checks. And I'm willing to bet that there are supplements for this exact thing that work with 5e.

[sithlordnergal]

But he is actively overseeing operations. In a way that makes active, out of contact adventuring quite a bit more difficult to sustain while not losing control. To the point of automatic failure? Dunno. But harder, significantly, especially in a mileu without trivial instant communication? Yeah.

Not really, not in a meaningful manner that would require him to be there. I also don't know if instant communication is out of the question, especially if there's a spell caster in the party. Sending certainly exists, just cast a Sending spell every so often to get updates. Or, if at all possible, find a Sending Stone. Yeah, its harder to find a Sending Stone since that's up to the DM, but you can still do so.

[Damon_Tor]

To me, the name of this game is dungeons and dragons. That means going to interesting places and having fantastic adventures in a fantasy setting.

If the fun a player is seeking is different from the fun I'm offering running D&D, I'd want a significant commitment from the player. That would be why they have to retire from the party. Because I would have to end the game we were playing and find another set of rules to run with.

I have relevant experience supporting my position. I've created my own business. I worked as much as I humanly could to bring success to the business, thinking and doing little else the whole time. And the business still failed, taking all I had invested with it. If I had not made those efforts, it would have failed sooner. So I don't know and can't imagine any business that would exist in a medieval fantasy world where someone could just set it up, step away, and let it run. Better to buy an election in a city and collect taxes.

A CEO runs a corporation. The player is looking to start a business. There's a big difference there. The engineers at Tesla/SpaceX are employees, not owners. There's another big difference there.

Thank you for the thought-provoking question.

Characters in D&D can survive falling from orbit, get hit with a battle-axe the size of a small car repeatedly, and reshape reality with a whim and a whisper... but run a small business without micromanaging the staff? No, that is simply beyond my suspension of disbelief.

[Sigreid]

Seems to me that a business could be a good source of regular adventures. But for that I think he'd need to invite the other players to have a stake in it. So they all have an interest in defeating those bandits serving a dragon along the trade route or whatever.

[MrStabby]

Seems to me that a business could be a good source of regular adventures. But for that I think he'd need to invite the other players to have a stake in it. So they all have an interest in defeating those bandits serving a dragon along the trade route or whatever.

Yeah, but make sure its something everyone wants. I mean beyond "this business thing will happen and will take up table time. Do you want to take part?" and more along the lines of "would you like to devote some of your table time to running a business or to keep it for other activities?"

[Sigreid]

Yeah, but make sure its something everyone wants. I mean beyond "this business thing will happen and will take up table time. Do you want to take part?" and more along the lines of "would you like to devote some of your table time to running a business or to keep it for other activities?"

agree with the cavate that as DM I would state that from a practical standpoint this would be just a new source of adventures and rewards and not "lets play economics 101".

[KittenMagician]

i feel like everyone has lost sight of my original question so let me restate some things.

My players are getting some significant downtime (1+ year in game). one of my players want to use this downtime to set up a business. I as the DM am OK with this. my question was along the lines of how much should i make startup and operating costs. this will take next to no table time so the other players wont be bogged down with this boring stuff.

now i will restate that i need help with actual numbers (does it cost him 3000gold to start up? more? less?):


Start up costs
-Business license
-Dangerous item license
-property procurement
-hiring workers
-guild exemption fees

Continuing monthly costs
-sales/business tax
-land tax
-worker wages


with all this he earns a monthly income which may not be higher than the costs. he has a ton of money already (30k platinum acquired magically) but is looking for continuing monetary support for the party. he wants to set up in a small town near their HQ and in a much busier port town to start with more expansion later.

i was thinking the costs would be way steeper in the port town but quality of workers is better and more profit is available.i feel like everyone has lost sight of my original question so let me restate some things.

[Sigreid]

Nah, I think we put our on point input out there and then went another route.

[LibraryOgre]

If he's selling magical and high end items, he's going to need (a) source(s) and clients... and that's going to be the big thing. It's relatively easy to open a bar and start selling drinks... everyone needs food and drink, and someone who sells them has a relatively easily available clientele, barring a lot of competition. But high end stuff takes time, and it's a lot less likely to be "This is what I have on the shelf". You're looking at hiring specialists to make or acquire things, and other specialists to drum up businesses and make contacts.

Now, with a year to start up, they can get established pretty well... build some clients, get a staff they trust, that sort of thing.

For start-up costs? What kind of favors can they call in? I'd say the base price of start-up costs should be about ten times the base price of how powerful of items they think they will handle... if you're peddling potions (100gp base price, per DMG 130), you're talking 1000gp. If you want to sell rare items, then say 50,000gp. This will cover a lot of what you're talking about... a business license, bribes to the guilds, charter from the local government, etc.

From there, look at the Maintenance Costs on page 127 of the DMG to get an idea of what your TCPD is going to be... but since you deal in high-end goods, I'd multiply EVERYTHING by 10... except for numbers of hirelings.

So, his first shop in that small town will be 20gp/day, or 600gp/month... you have to pay a lot for goods, and pay a lot for good, trustworthy, people (especially since you're going to be running off and doing other things, while they make money for you). Then make 12 rolls on the "Running a Business" table on page 129, for the months of downtime you're looking at; assuming they're full time on the business, that's at +30 each time, though you might knock them down to +20, so they have some long weekends.

So, now the character goes away, and leaves the business in the hands of hirelings. I would keep rolling every month, but the new modifier is PCs Int+Prof bonus (the plans they have left behind for the business) and the remaining lieutenant's (aka the manager's) Int or Cha + Prof bonus (emphasizing either "smart manager" or "good salesperson). From that point on, the business rolls that as a bonus each month., unless the "boss" can put in the time themselves.

Alternatively, the boss might just serve as a partner, while other people actually run the business. Say you get 2 other people to run the business... they each put in 15 days worth of work (getting the business the +30 bonus), and any profits are split 3 ways. You still have your start-up costs, but this makes your profits a bit more steady (since you'll never get below a 31, and often make a profit). This, to me, feels a bit like cheating, though, since the mechanics would say that the economy is constantly growing.

[meandean]

I appreciate the DM's dilemma here. After all, if you have 300,000 gp and a year to work on it, why couldn't you set up a business? It's not at all an unreasonable request, in-universe.

However, the two most obvious ways to accommodate it are flawed:

If it's "you get X gold pieces every Y days", that's boring
If you homebrew some sort of economics simulation, that amounts to lots of work and time spent (hopefully not table time, but even if it isn't!) on something that possibly one participant at the entire table cares about

Here's how you cut this Gordian knot: What your player gets for starting a business is... now they own a business. That's it. You can charge them some sort of startup fee, because, well, they have 300,000 gp, so why not? They shouldn't miss it much. If you think the player will respond by trying to argue with you about the money, then don't even bother with that, because it doesn't matter.

But, the business is now part of the story. As DM, you create plots involving the business... not exclusively, because you have other players too, but it's become part of your setting. The evil duke sends in goons to bust the place up. A customer arrives to sell what they thought to be a mundane magic item, but it's actually a rare and powerful artifact. etc.

This may sound like a way to placate the player without actually giving them anything, but it's really not. I assure you that, if Maric's Magnificent Marketplace becomes an important part of your actual exciting fantasy adventures, your players will remember Maric's Magnificent Marketplace way more than if the most interesting thing about it was "hey, one time Maric rolled well on the income table and made 20% more than usual."