LordMeat
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Joined: Sat 21 Jan 2023, 01:06

Adventurers owning a tavern

Tue 24 Jan 2023, 16:17

Hello! This is my first time ever DM to start with, if i don't seem to understand some things. But to the question in hand.

So my adventurers have gotten the ownership of The Three Skulls Tavern, and my question is how much should i give them ''weekly'' for owning the tavern without it being game breaking.
I looked through the book about strongholds and holding a INN , should i just give them the same effects? feels a tad underwhelming, i would like too give them some coins, but im not sure what would be a game breaking amount for them to get weekly.

Thanks!
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Adventurers owning a tavern

Tue 24 Jan 2023, 17:13

The only rules that regarding that I know are in the stronghold rules. If you want to give them coins, just convert the yield to coins, like (assumes there are farms and a market nearby):
If you convert all the costs to buy ingredients and what you get for an average meal a one innkeeper size inn will have a net gain of around 30 silver a week. To this comes upkeep. The Hollow is a bit bigger than a stronghold, so just multiply 30 with, for example six and you will get how much net gain TST is worth, but to this comes upkeep which also be more and also probably taxes (1/10 to make it simple). This was just me doing some head counting. But this is probably the only way to do it.
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JohanR
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Joined: Tue 02 Mar 2021, 23:34

Re: Adventurers owning a tavern

Fri 27 Jan 2023, 19:29

The problem is that this isn't an Inn, its a tavern. And it even has to complete with the inn, if it wants to sell things like food or lodging. This would at a minimum lower any sales by 50%, but that is if they do have some kind of cartel going, they could make even less profit if it is a trade war.
Do they also own the brewery? The only thing the tavern got going is its ability to sell high quantities of high quality ale from there.

Lets say they do own the brewery, but don't own the Harbor/Pier.
First we must decide how much they can sell.

I'll use the "Average sales from shops" module in Reforged Power 2.0.
While this is homebrew and creates a whole lot of mathematical calculations, the upside is that it can help your players to accept the money it gives, rather than being completely ad-hoc, and give them ideas on how to further expand.

Reputation: I use this to calculate how many visitors you get. The Hollows can be considered to have 5 Reputation. From Dovecote, Inn, Shrine, and if using Reforged Power's Stronghold rules, than one from a Brewery and one from a Bridge. If Mrs. Pollmor wouldn't be so much against trade, then there could have been a Marketplace for another +1.
Using the average rolls per week, we can lower overall prices by 5% to have it count as 6, to get us an average roll of 1 hit per week, that we need. (We could in this case instead have modified sales to x5/6, but the +/-5% is good as it makes you not have to recalculate as much when/if the settlement gains additional reputation)

Sales: Unless you want to start a trade war with the Inn (at least halve sales), then I guess it just sells "Flagons of Ale". The three skull taverns ale should be considered masterwork and sell for double price (4 copper/each). You can treat 5 flagons as a unit, using the same logic as PHP page 177, "As a general rule, five hirelings need to consume one unit of FOOD per day". And you can normally sell 10 units per week (if you use my Reforged Power 2.0 rules).
However as your ale is considered masterwork and more expensive, sales drop to 3 per week. We don't want this, so we can halve the prices to gain a x9 modifier to sales. Now we sell 27 units or 135 flagons per week. This yields 27 silver.

Making 27 units only take 3 Quarter Days (if a Brewery can make 12 units of ale per QD, just like every other function tends to make12 units per QD), selling it takes 7 Quarter Days. We can make 7*12=84 per week, that is 57 or around 5 barrels per week. So sending those of by ship or so for extra profit could be of future interest. Instead, we reduce their pay and give them some time off.

You would normally need to hire a worker that can produce high quality ale. This should be hard to get, but Yawin might have left some stuff to help you out? If not a master ale maker could be very expensive, perhaps cost up to 25 copper per Quarter Day? Lets say we only pay him for 3 QD per week that he/she actually works, so 7.5 silver. We also need a bar wench, lets say 3 copper per day for a Quarter Day of work, the rest in tip (and this can count for the needed extra work hours to actually stay open more hours per day). That is 2.1 silver per week.

Income:
27 silver x0,95 for the missing reputation point = 25.6 silver/week

Costs:
Up to 9.6 silver for salary, less if its the Brewery and not the brewer that makes the ale.
The Ale probably then use 27 units of grain/week = 8.1 silver/week

Profit:
25.6 - 9.6 - 8.1 = 7.9 silver/week
...but this is not a Stronghold you own, and it needs to be guarded. Medieval taxes would be no less than 10%, and I think the dangers in these villagers are even higher than that of medieval days, plus Pollmor would want her "fair share".. so I would probably apply 50% in taxes? Yawin was angry for a reason.

If they do not own the Brewery, then they are in trouble. Really lower the profit as the Brewery can just sell their ale to the Inn or may even look to sell of barrels elsewhere.
I would say that as they can be pretty much run over, lower profits by 75%.

But the good thing here is that it opens up a lot of role-playing opportunities.
Will they expand trade to sell weekly barrels of ale elsewhere? By river? By road? Will they try to negotiate with Pollmor? Will they try to increase town reputation? Any trade wars or cartels being made with the Dead Man's Hand inn? etc..

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