Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lord_Butler 12-06-05, 03:38 PM	Just wondering if anyone ever made alternate sources of income ingame by opening stores, selling services, or starting companies with other members of your party? If so, did these things work out well with your group and how did the DM run this?
Rickiel 12-06-05, 03:42 PM	You mean BESIDES mercenary services? Actually yes! As part of the Steel Fang Mercenary Company, it is my duty to provide alchemical and mechanical items for use and profit! That's right! Real alchemical items direct from the Rogue-Mage! We make'm all and sell them all! Occasionally I get some underlings to handle the business and our Company Leader is an excellent merchant who has established various deals and cargo trading throughout the world! If you have a sea-faring vessel remember, people will pay for you to ship cargo.
Twisted Puppy 12-06-05, 04:07 PM	One of theplayers IMC, a fighter-rogue, ended up getting married. He and his wife (daughter of an innkeeper) opened their own inn. She did the cooking, kept the books, and ran the inn. When he returned from adventuring, she told him what the profit was. I used a base of 25 gold/month profit and adjusted for good/bad business.
Lord_Butler 12-06-05, 04:21 PM	Me (ranger) and the party rogue who has some merchant guild connections are thinking about opening a trade route between two nations. We're going to start the initial investment with 3-4 wagons, 6-8 horses, and 12-16 mercenaries to protect the shipments. We're going to have the caravans pretty evenly spaced out for now so as to have a rather constant stream of supplies. The cargo will start in the capital city of one country and stop in four towns with cargo. Basically we're selling the transportation service from a densly populated area, to a rather sparsely populated area. We think we have everything planned out for this. Anyone have any more ideas that could help us?
shadowrisae 12-06-05, 11:38 PM	Yes and no. I had a gnomish wizard that was a traveling merchant who sells potions and minor magical trinkets. That was his job before he joined the adventuring party. Once he joined the party, he earned gold, protection, the rights to a pack horse (aka the fighter in the group), and so on from his fellow adventurers for his services. This particular wizard didn't have too many offensive spells; he focued on buffing, illusion, and that sort of thing. He was incredibly smart and resourceful, but he couldn't fight for beans (high Int and Cha, medium Wis, low Dex, Str, Con). He highly took advantage of having strong mercenaries to swing swords and take hits for him. He was the smartest and most cunning of the group so he got to do a lot of talking-type situations as well. The DM pretty much gave me free reign with this character. I had to spend the respective gold, XP, time, etc to make items and whenever someone bought something from him, I'd negotiate with the PC (in character) or the NPC (DM, in character) directly for price.
Darth-Penguin 12-07-05, 12:24 AM	One of my players opened a comedy club and had 2 skelitons on stage telling jokes Once I opened a bar called "The Bruised Liver" and made it my character goal to force the other establishments out of business. (i mistakenly thought it would be safer than adventuring. Unknown to me was that the owner of the "Down the Hatch Tavern" was also the leader of the thieves guild.) One of my players started a shipping company and transported goods by sea. (plenty of adventure ideas there) Once my wizard opened a tailors shop and used spell to create and fix clothing and shoes. Check out DMG2. it has rules for starting a business. It talks about how much gold you need to get started, what your income would be, ect.
jasper 12-07-05, 11:53 AM	some of this first edition. Member took over bar. I created a couple of charts. One was daily business, weekly business, and monthly. One was normal happenings and results Ex.01-20 bar fight chair table broke lose 1 gp for replacment. 95+ see special chart. Special chart have various things to include fireball going off in main room. And a monthly chart if he did not want do the normal chart. That contain business loss lose 1-20 gp. 1-10gp or 1-4 gp. breakeven Good month gain again various dice rolls.. Also had players take over a general store. My players did not make much money but they did have a place to stay and I had adventure seeds. Review some of the books mentioned here but remember to adjust for your players.
CzarGarrett 12-07-05, 01:30 PM	Yes. It was a partial underground rare items market. My adventuring party would go out and liberate various rare items- sometimes from ruins, sometimes from bandits, sometimes from unpopular lords. Usually made to order recoveries. They would then be sold for large mark-ups. In conjuction with this, every ruin and bandit hideout we hit up, we'd strip is bare. Furniture, tapestries, ornate boxes, etc, everything was taken. And then we cleaned the up and sold them to the general public for a fair price. Eventually we then invested most of the money we made into an inn/library. It was rather expensive, but with all the books and tomes we had gathered, the wealthier sages, wizards, and bards could look up stuff there.
Capt. Pixel 12-07-05, 02:53 PM	We had four PCs start FHABTO LLC (Four Heads Are Better Than One - Limited Liability Company) FHABTO is into just a little bit of everything from booze, boobs, demolition, import/export, transportation, protection. Now, some 200 years after its inception, only a gnome rogue and an elven rogue have direct holdings. The remainder of the company is held by descendants and public investors. The current players don't have anything to do with FHABTO directly, but it has become the crux of many an adventure hook. The downside of this is that it's slowly turned Dungeons and Dragons into Pencils and Paperpushers. I spend more time fighting lawyers in-game than kobolds. :rolleyes: (of course, it's a close contest as to which of those are my favorite target :D )
Shike 12-07-05, 09:11 PM	My current spell caster has a magic shop.
obrysii 12-07-05, 09:49 PM	The players in my Star Wars campaign have opened up a private investigation office, although the various NPCs (DMPCs?) they have teaches a group, another teaches nonviolent martial arts group, and the other is an accountant.
Professor Gas 12-12-05, 09:53 PM	One player had a tailor/spy (like the Cardassian in Deep Space 9) in Waterdeep. Very hard to include on a plot that can involve three-to-five other adventurers. One of my players right now has a lawyer/adventurer. That has worked out well, since one of the characters (recently deceased) was a serial killer. We had another party of bards who opened a theater in Waterdeep, and we had a lot of fun with that. On the other hand, figuring out cost and expenditures vs. income is much too close to work for this lazy DM.