Player-Owned Businesses

[Balasar]

DOTN has those really great couple pages about running a business, but there’s nothing about how to determine the cost or baseline profit for a new business, and I have no idea how to approach it.

Little background info, for plot reasons, I had a fire kill the primary blacksmith of Evingard and 2 of his 3 nanus drakes. One of the dwellers is a blacksmith named Smith Black who wants to take advantage of the city lacking a premium smithy and found “Smith Black’s Black Smith.” I have no idea how much to charge in terms of set up, hiring employees, creating infrastructure, etc. Please help haha!

Also, at least to start, should baseline profit be whatever the iron goods manufacturer social standing has?

[Panjumanju]

Good question. I think it all starts with cost of living. How much could any business make? In our society builds an economic model based on staples. The viking equivalent to this is:

Bread (20 skatt)
Mead (6 skatt)
Basic Rations (10 skatt)

Let's say that's all you eat in a day. That sucks, but, you're not starving. Food costs shouldn't exceed 1/3 of income. So, for a business in Fimbulwinter, not we have a per capita economic model for food:

Starving Income: You make less than 30 skatt a day per person
Only Just Not Starving Income: You make 80 skatt a day
Doing Well Income: You make 150 skatt a day or more

So, that income should hold true to any business, any workers in the business, etc. Of that, assume that 1/3 food expenses, 1/3 housing and material costs, and of what is remaining, almost all of that wold be put into saving for the winter. (Even before Fimbulwinter business was not a long-term expansion-driven thing. Your concern was just getting through the winter.) "Profit" would only account for about 1/3 of what remains. So, profit is probably, at most:

Starving Profit: 10 skatt a day (as in, another mead)
Only Just Not Starving Profit: 20 skatt a day (as in, another loaf of bread that day)
Doing Well Profit: 50 skatt a day (as in, you could support another person in your family)

I'd then use the Business Profits table in Denizens of the North page 354 to determine profits based on what you're starting with as an economic circumstance - a starving income, only just not starving, or doing pretty well.

That's how I would do it, anyway.

//Panjumanju