Giffyglyph's Book of Business (Draft)
B
usiness makes the world go round.
During your adventures, you may come to
own a business—whether by starting one,
inheriting one, or buying one outright.
This supplement will introduce rules for
creating a business, growing it over time,
and (hopefully) making some profit from it.
Project Intent
To create a fun gameplay system for running a business
in D&D 5e. This should be an abstracted system less
focused on raw accounting that allows for a lot of
emergent narrative—a Theme Hospital-esque vibe.
GG: Why business? It's fun to have a downtime activity
that players can get invested in that's community
based. They can also be great adventure hooks, or the
focal point of an entire campaign in itself.
Gameplay Loop
There are three major phases to the lifespan of a
business: creation, activity, and closure.
1. Create a Business
Before you can run a business, you have to start one (or
buy/inherit an existing one). Get a license, find a
property, and fill it with employees.
• Licence: You might need legal permission to run a
business. Licences cost money, or may be dependant
on completing a particular adventuring quest.
• Employees: Employees do work for a wage. You must
pay hiring costs for all new employees, and if you stop
paying them they'll quit.
• Property: You need a place to run your business from.
You must pay an operational fee for each property.
2. Run a Business
This is the core gameplay loop. For simplicity, this is
divided up into week-long chunks of activity.
Start of Week
At the start of the week, you pick work for your business
to do and one business administration you want to do.
• Pick Work: Draw 3 randomised work jobs and pick
the one you want your business to work on. Work
varies in difficulty, duration, and reward.
• Administration: Do one administration task—hire
employees, fire someone, rent a new office, etc.
Project Draft [v0.1]
This is a draft for a project currently being developed by
Giffyglyph. This is very early work and may evolve and change
with future iterations. If you have any questions or feedback,
contact me at @giffyglyph or /u/giffyglyph.
~ Giffyglyph 2018
End of Week
At the end of the week, roll to see if your business
completed any bits of work and generated some profit.
You also roll to see if there were any complications or
opportunities to deal with.
• Do some work: Roll to see if you did any successful
work on a job (ala a skill challenge). Once you've got
enough successes, the work is complete and you get
the reward. But get too many failures? The work ends
and you lose something instead—money, renown, etc.
• Complications: Roll to see if a bad thing happened to
your business that you must defend against—theft,
legal trouble, employee death, etc.
• Opportunity: Roll to see if there's an opportunity for
big profit, if your business is good enough for the
work. This could be a time-sensitive job—big reward
but a big risk if you mess up.
3. Close a Business
Sometimes your business doesn't work out, or you want
to move on to something else. Close down your business,
sell any assets, and wrap things up.
Business Licence
You must have permission to run an open business, be it
from a guild or local ruler. This licence limits the size of
your business and what you can trade—break your
licence and you risk fines or the loss of your business.
Business Licences
Size Max Employees Cost
Small 1-10 1 gp / week
Medium 11-30 2 gp / week
Large 31-70 4 gp / week
Huge 71-150 8 gp / week
GG: Why licences? Guilds are very controlling of their
trade and monopolies. Licences create opportunities
for NPC hooks—the party must keep on the good side
of guilds if they want to keep their licence.
giffyglyph's book of business (draft)
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 Your Business Upkeep
It costs money to run a business—rent, wages, fees,
Your business has a full profile that tracks what it does expenses, etc. Upkeep is measured in gp per week. If you
and how well it does it. The main features to note are: don't pay your upkeep, your business will fall into debt
ability scores, upkeep, assets, and events. and start to run much worse.
Detective Flourish Upkeep GG: Finances should probably help here, with a higher
Business, Small, Detective Agency 10 gp / pw FIN reducing the weekly upkeep.
A detective agency in the city of Dabrune, located in a
small office above a cheap backstreet whisky bar. The Assets
business has four employees—two investigators, an A business owns property, hires employees, and owns
accountant, and a receptionist. facilities and stock. These assets generally improve the
business' abilities at the cost of upkeep.
LAB
+3
IMG
+1
SEC
+2
LEG
+0
FIN
+1
MOR
+0
• Property: The place your business is located—your
offices or major place of business.
• Employee: A person hired by your business.
Assets & Events Upkeep Effect • Facilities: A facility or resource-generator that helps
License: Small Business 1 gp — out your business in some fashion—warehouses,
Property: Cheap Office (4) 4 gp +2 SEC, mines, forge, etc.
Dark, dingy, and stinks of whisky -1 IMG
↳ Employee: Grender (Investigator) 1 gp +1 LAB
GG: Assets are the primary way to improve a business'
↳ Employee: Strafe (Investigator) 2 gp +2 LAB
abilities. At a minimum, a business must have one
↳ Employee: Suris (Accountant) 1 gp +1 FIN
property and one employee to make any work checks.
↳ Employee: Amber (Receptionist) 1 gp +1 IMG
Event: Case of the Silent Sisters — +1 IMG
Events
Ability Scores Some events can impact a business—rewards/penalties
from jobs, effects from player-completed quests, world-
A business, like characters and monsters, has six ability changing effects, etc.
scores that determine how well it performs in particular
areas of business activity: labour, image, security, legal,
finance, morale. GG: This can be used to connect the business to the
These abilities are used during work checks and to adventures the party might take. Did they complete
defend against complications. the "Case of the Silent Sisters" in town and gain some
renown? Maybe helping the community improves the
Business Abilities image of their business with +1 IMG.
Ability Modifier Description
Labour LAB Work, skill, and performance. Traits
Image IMG Branding, sales, and marketing. Some businesses gain special, unique traits that improve
Security SEC Defence, theft, and espionage. their capability in some fashion—granting advantage on
Legal LEG Contracts, law, and legal defence. labour checks for work, allowing you use finance instead
Finance FIN Accounting, investments, and
of legal, reducing upkeep costs, etc.
economy.
Morale MOR Happiness, enthusiasm, and loyalty. GG: Traits should be tied to employees and ability
scores in some fashion to encourage diverse builds.

GG: Scores or Modifiers? Undecided as yet. Scores are

in keeping with D&D tradition, and allow smaller
gradients of reward (+1 score vs +1 modifer)—but
pure modifiers look neater.
giffyglyph's book of business (draft)
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Work
A business completes work for profit and other rewards.
That work takes the form of skill challenges with two
major variables: difficulty and scale. The more difficult
and longer the work, the bigger the reward.
 The Cult of the Black Goat GG: Labour should probably help here, with higher
Job (Investigation), Easy (9-11), Long (3), Deadline (7 weeks) LAB increase the number of work checks.
There are rumors of a new cult in town, and the city
guard wants information on their activity and leader. Available Work Checks

Success: You gain +54 gp from the city coffers. Business Size Checks Business Size Checks
Failure: People hear of your failure (-1 IMG). Small 1 Large 3
Medium 2 Huge 4
Checks: LAB 9, LAB 11, SEC 10
Failures: 2
GG: At least 50% of all work checks should use LAB—

Reward Modifiers
Each potential job has a combination of difficulty and
scale that determines the expected reward range for
completing it.
workers are the primary employee type for any
business. This means workers will be very important
with smaller jobs, with other roles gaining more
significance as things get tougher/more complicated.

Work Difficulty Deadlines

Difficulty DC Base Reward Some jobs have a set deadline—if the work is not
Easy 9-11 8-12 gp
completed within this time frame, it automatically fails.
Medium 13-17 16-24 gp
Hard 18-22 32-48 gp GG: Time pressure is a core part of management
Very hard 22-27 64-96 gp games, and this should allow for "get harvest ready
Impossible 27-33 128-192 gp within 8 weeks" jobs and the like.

Work Scale Finding Work

Scale Checks Failures Reward You find work automatically at the start of each week.
Draw three randomised jobs and pick whichever ones
Short 1 0-1 x1
you like best to work on. You can only work on a limited
Medium 2 1-2 x2 number of jobs at once according to your business size.
Long 3-4 1-2 x4
V-long 5-6 2-3 x8 Work Limitations
X-long 7+ 2-3 x16
Business Size Work Limit
Small 2 jobs at once
GG: This rewards players picking longer jobs with Medium 3 jobs at once
much bigger rewards. Taking a short job should cover Large 4 jobs at once
one week of upkeep for an average business. Huge 5 jobs at once

Checks & Failures
To complete the job, a business must succeed on all the
relevant checks—with longer jobs requiring more checks.
Once all checks have been passed, the work is complete.
If you fail too many times, however, the job ends and your
business suffers the consequences.
Work Checks
A business can make a number of work checks per week
according to its size. You can work on multiple jobs
simultaneously and split your available work checks
across these as you like.
GG: Image should probably help here, with higher IMG
increasing the number of work options you can
choose from.
Randomised Work
All jobs should be randomly generated with random tables
(and a possible webapp to streamline). Business owners may
be able to skew some of the randomness by locking in one
variable if they want—specifying only "short" jobs this time,
or only "easy" work, etc.

giffyglyph's book of business (draft)

3
 Property
A business needs an office or some other property to
operate from. You'll need some property to accommodate
your employees and attract clients.
Cheap Office
Property, Cheap, 4 people, 4 gp per week
Employees
Employees are the lifeblood of your business, doing the
work that—hopefully—earns you a profit. Hire them to
grow your business and keep everthing afloat.
Grender Strom
Employee (Worker), Investigator (Trained), 1 gp per week

A dark, cheap office above a backstreet whisky bar. A dour dragonborn with a taste for cigars.
Doesn't look very impressive, but has sturdy locks.
LAB IMG SEC LEG FIN MOR
LAB IMG SEC LEG FIN MOR +1 +0 +0 +0 +0 +0
+0 -1 +2 +0 +0 +0

Ability Scores
Ability Scores Employees have randomised abilities that impact your
Properties have randomised abilities that impact your business—the better their training, the better the
business—the better the property, the better the bonuses. bonuses.
Property Bonuses Employee Bonuses

Quality Bon. Cost Quality Bon. Cost Training Bon. Cost Quality Bon. Cost
Cheap +1 3-5 gp Expensive +4 14 -18 gp Untrained +0 0.5 gp Skilled +2 2 gp
Reasonable +2 7-9 gp Luxurious +8 28 -36 gp Trained +1 1 gp Expert +4 4 gp

Size Type
A property can only accommodate a limited number of Employees fall into common types that focus on a
people at once. Once your business starts growing, you'll particular business-related activity.
need to find a larger building—or start expanding into
multiple properties—to accommodate all your staff. Employee Types

Property Sizes Type Modifier Description

Worker +LAB Does the core work of the
Size People Cost Size People Cost business.

Small 4 x1 Large 16 x4 Agent +IMG Promotes the business to clients.

Medium 8 x2 Huge 32 x8 Guard +SEC Protects the property and employees.

Lawyer +LEG Protects the business from the law.
Accountant +FIN Keeps track of the money.
Traits Manager +MOR Tries to keep employees happy.
Some properties have special perks that can make them
especially attractive to certain businesses. These may Finding Employees
come at the cost of some ability bonuses.
Whenever you take the "Find Employees" business
GG: Property traits should be rare and random. Will
action, you get 3 randomly generated employees to
choose from. You can narrow the scope by choosing
need a large table of these to be interesting. either the training or type of the employee.

Finding Property GG: Morale should probably help here, with higher
Whenever you take the "Find Property" business action, MOR increasing the number of employee options you
you get 3 randomly generated properties to choose from. can choose from. A happier business attracts more
You can narrow the scope by choosing either the size or willing applicants.
quality of the property.
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