Town Starting

[Aroka]

I wouldn't call them "terrible", I'd call them "untested". If you fiddle with the numbers, it can work out okay.

Okay, granted, but they're so ridiculously untested. No one ever even bothered doing simple division (investment / profit) to see that it takes more than a lifetime to recoup an original investment.

And if you factor in that the investment will probably be a loan for most business owners, even with crazy low interest rates it will take human generations to pay back the loan. With barely higher, still low, interest rates, you can't even make interest payments (or buy food), never mind paying off the loan.

Just roleplay out the encounters...let them demonstrate to business owners why they should move there. The default answer should be "hell no", unless they have rather convincing evidence of some way in which the owners life would be improved. More money, safety and security, etc. Keep in mind that most established businesses already have some money and a decent degree of safety, or they wouldn't BE established businesses.

Going after apprentices, etc who are eager to start businesses will actually be easier, though you get a tradeoff in experience and resources. They may need loans and the like.

Easiest is simply hiring people and having them run your stuff. More effort for the player, but this actually has rules...a few under henchmen in the DMG, with more elaborate and detailed info in SBG.

Definitely. It probably wouldn't ever be business owners (unless they're going under) - it'd be people who could own a business, like journeymen and plain regular folks. It doesn't take a lot of expertise beyond what a farmer already has to run a basic store - just someone who can do basic math and keep a ledger for you. What people need is a convincing argument that life in the new place will be so much better that it pays to go to the bother to move there.

This can be really easy when you're "selling" farmland, for instance; take a bunch of farmhands and tell them they can have this land to farm if they pay you a tax and one person per household shows up for militia practice now and again.

If you've got precious ores, you won't have to give much of a pitch - just demonstrate to someone that there's money to be made mining, and you've set off a snowball that'll become an avalanche.

Hiring people to work everything isn't really sustainable. Hiring people to work a specific resource - a mine, a logging camp, whatever - is, obviously, since you profit off the work. And once you've got that set up and enough people around, you'll get others moving into the area, seeking opportunity.