Hello everyone! I'm part of a campaign right now being run in a custom setting using the Kingmaker rules. As such, we get the luxury of having a single town that we can return to. It makes me want to be a part of the community. One of the other players and I are keen on setting up some business ventures. We've already acquired a slew of dogs and hired on a kennel master, hoping to make some money off of the dogs and put them to some use on our adventures. I'm further interested in setting up some private holdings in the city, such as becoming the patron for some craftsmen, and establishing a lumber company to meet the needs of our new nation.
I've run this past my GM and he's happy to let me do it, but he's struggling for how to adjudicate it. I'm struggling for advice to give him on it too. I'm hoping someone here can help. Ultimately, we can take a look at breaking down the costs of something like, say, the lumber camp. Take a look at how much each worker would be paid. Costs for axes, horses to haul lumber, building some structures to house the workers, all of that stuff. The thing that we can't work out is a fair way of deciding how much money this would bring in.
Please note, we're not looking for this to be a kingdom resource. This is something that my character would be personally owning and looking for compensation in gold pieces, not in build points.
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Hello everyone! I'm part of a campaign right now being run in a custom setting using the Kingmaker rules. As such, we get the luxury of having a single town that we can return to. It makes me want to be a part of the community. One of the other players and I are keen on setting up some business ventures. We've already acquired a slew of dogs and hired on a kennel master, hoping to make some money off of the dogs and put them to some use on our adventures. I'm further interested in setting up some private holdings in the city, such as becoming the patron for some craftsmen, and establishing a lumber company to meet the needs of our new nation.
I've run this past my GM and he's happy to let me do it, but he's struggling for how to adjudicate it. I'm struggling for advice to give him on it too. I'm hoping someone here can help. Ultimately, we can take a look at breaking down the costs of something like, say, the lumber camp. Take a look at how much each worker would be paid. Costs for axes, horses to haul lumber, building some structures to house the workers, all of that stuff. The thing that we can't work out is a fair way of deciding how much money this would bring in.
Please note, we're not looking for this to be a kingdom resource. This is something that my character would be personally owning and looking for compensation in gold pieces, not in build points.
Suppose I'll take a stab at this.
First and foremost, recognize that the game isn't built to be run this way. It will break down if you try, so you're going to be trying to reflect a situation 'more or less' within the ruleset.
As you probably know, the Profession skill is the first place to look. One worker, working for a week, makes X amount of gold based on the result of the check. But how does that work out with multiple workers? If you add a flat adjustment, then you run into the problem of too many workers/not enough chiefs or vice versa. "I'll hire 200 workers" just isn't feasible in most environments, and as the owner you also would have other things to look out for -- overhead, seasonal adjustments, loss prevention, workers pay, possible extortion (although I'm reminded of Batman for that one. "So...you think your boss, one of the wealthiest men in the world, is also secretly going out and beating up some of the largest criminals in the city...and your first idea is to blackmail him?") and so forth. Worker morale and so forth (based on Charisma and pay, most likely) would also factor in heavily in the form of productivity.
With all this in mind, after the initial outlay of funds for the horses and whatnot, as a GM I would rule that you would want to make a Profession(Merchant) roll, calculate the gp result, and multiply the figure by a number equal to half the number of workers, to a maximum of 50 or so workers. So if you rolled 5 gp, and had 50 workers, then you would profit 125gp that week. The better of a merchant you are, naturally, the better your sales and profit potential become. However, I would also cap a maximum amount based on the city size (probably 250 for a small city, 500 for the next size, and so forth -- there is only SO MUCH of any commodity needed in a single environment).
Just my thoughts, I'm sure others will have some better ones.
I've run this past my GM and he's happy to let me do it, but he's struggling for how to adjudicate it.
The way we run it is that 'successful' investments return on their shares 100% each year. So if you spent 500gp setting up the business, you get 500gp at the end of the year, and 500gp each year thereafter. The business can grow (or shrink) according to campaign conditions or further investment.
Not exactly realistic (most businesses take several years to enter profit territory), but it's simple and won't provide game-breaking amounts of extra coin (unless you have a very long-term campaign and invest heavily).
Ask any absentee business owner how his business does without him around to watch everything . . . .
My rule of thumb is a 5% annual return, pure profit, to the PC. This accounts for paying a decent wage so your employees don't rob you blind, taxes, tariffs, etc. Invest 1000gp, get 50gp a year. Also, that business doesn't lose value, so you still have your money if you choose to sell the business later.
This keeps everyone's wealth dependent upon actually adventuring. If the adventures are based around the business, the GM can use the CR system to gauge how much more money the business makes.
But if you want to run a business in an RPG, remember that people who do run businesses play RPGs to get away from the stress of running a business.
There's also the Master of the Ledger Feat, though it tends to be a bit impersonal.
If anyone in your group happens to have access to one, the old DMG II for 3.5 had some pretty good rules for running a business. I used them when running Shackled City.
Seconding this. Cityscape might also have some useful stuff but the 3.5 DMG II has some explicit guidelines.
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When we used the system, we also allowed PCs to use the business as a masterwork tool for craft or profession checks to produce money for themselves representing work above and beyond the regular upkeep of the business as personal wages. This may have been double dipping, but since...
That sounds about right. It also took some interesting factors into account like competition and stuff. My party was sick of getting the standard half gold for their magic loot, so they hoarded it for a while and opended up their own magic shop to compete with Skye in Cauldron. I let them take 100% of the value of the items as the investment to fill up their "stock" and ran an item shop selling, buying, and trading magic items.
My rule of thumb is a 5% annual return, pure profit, to the PC.
This keeps everyone's wealth dependent upon actually adventuring.
This is fine if you want nothing but 'pure' adventurers, but it's a lousy reward for slower campaigns where lots of time can pass between adventures. For example, let's say you invested 5000gp in your business. 250gp pure profit for the year? That's less than making Profession checks on a weekly basis (even assuming that you'd spend half of that on living expenses) - which is basically running a small business of your own much of the time.
You could integrate the employees into the normal rules for craft/profession in the following manner; each employee makes their normal income (for their Craft/Profession roll), but they ALSO act as using 'Aid Another' on the owner's profession roll.
So an innkeeper with 10 staff on the payroll would likely get +20 to his Profession: Innkeeper rolls to determine his weekly income, adding a handy 10gp per week to his earnings. There should probably be an up-front investment on a per-employee basis to allow your business to support those people; each employee is basically 1gp per week of value added, so 100gp per person feels about right (nearly 2 years to recoup initial investment).
And if you're absent? No profession roll, no income for the owner. The employees keep the business running on an even keel, more or less.
First, I just wanted to say thank you for the great responses here. They've presented a number of options that are pretty darned good. I appreciate them being made.
Apothesis and Helic, you're absolutely right that the money made can't be too large, adventuring is the name of the game here. Nobody wants to stay at home and play KnitQuest because adventuring just isn't lucrative enough. Plus, Pathfinder was never built to include this kind of thing. Adventuring is rightly it's focus. Helic, I like your solution, it's elegant in it's simplicity. I can't see it ballooning too far out of control. I also liked your 'teamwork' idea on the Aid Another checks.
Lurk3r, thanks for pointing out that feat. I may just see about taking it, I'm a fighter and so have feats to burn. I like the feel of it, even if it is a bit impersonal as you say.
Rory, I like your basic approach and the math behind it seems to be somewhat reasonable. I just didn't quite follow why the money on the second month was a greater income than the first one. The first month and the second month didn't list any skill rank changes or different time involved. Were you folding the profits for the first month back into the total value or something? I like that the business evidently benefits from it's benefactor being on hand, but doesn't just fold up and blow away when he's gone.
DeathQuaker, pobbes, and sputang, my DM has looked at the DMG II and has agreed with your suggestion, he'll be using the investment rules from there. Thanks for the great reference. My copy of Cityscape is currently on loan to a friend, so I never got to reference it, but I presume my DM did already. He has added a few things to it as well, to work with Kingmaker. He has ruled that hexes we have not claimed are wilderness, hexes that have no town in them but are claimed are rural, and hexes with a town, city, or metropolis in them will work as such. Profit checks are made during the Kingdom Turn, at the same time as we do our management. As well, every 2 000 gp I invest into my business as capitol will also act as a 1 BP reduction if we build an equivilent upgrade in our kingdom, down to a minimum of 0 BP of course. I might urge him to make it 1 BP minimum. Also, I've clarified with him, if the kingdom does use that discount, I am still the 'private owner' of that business and earn the profit, while the kingdom gets the full normal bonuses from having that upgrade.