Howdy all, and forgive the typo in the title. Noooot a morning person.

My campaign is operating on Far Horizon's startup business variant of game-play, forgoing a group ship for a in-town business. The chosen business is a nightclub, and the group has already volunteered to take on a bunch of obligation to upgrade the place (three core focus, two security measures, one special orders and a partridge in a pear tree).

Here's the question: is there a suggested guideline in the Far Horizon book as to how much income player-owned businesses should make a month? I've seen the Core Focus upgrades, but if there's a guideline for base business income, I must have missed it. While I could easily make the call how much they'd make a month, I want to try to adhere to the rules before throwing out a number.

If I recall correctly, the idea was that a basic business was enough to cover basic living costs for the party. Essentially, you can eat, pay your mortgage, have the occasional ale, etc. I think it's purposely not specified because they didn't want to turn it into a simulation game, like SimCity or something, where you are spending the game counting credits.

Given that the Entrepreneur spec has talents that specifically raise the session amount by 100cr each, this suggests that a basic business would make a lot less than that, probably have no additional credit available to spend on things other than running the business and basic needs.

I'd say tailor it to what works for your campaign. Do you want it to be a source of money for them, or simply a RP hook?

With the way the increase core focus is worded, I'd say that the 'default' profit from the business would be 200cr/month or less. It would also include whatever profits are necessary to pay staff, permits, fees and other operating expenses.

I'd say tailor it to what works for your campaign. Do you want it to be a source of money for them, or simply a RP hook?

Since the game is formed around most of the group wanting to build their own criminal organization on a frontier world, I may end up using it as a money source...

As for the other points, I can see the logic behind the business not making a significant income (besides upgrades) for the group. My original plan was to use a 1500 per month 'salary' per player, before the upgrades. Its the upper-end of the Clerk's monthly salary. Adding the profits from whatever by-the-job payment they receive from criminal enterprises, they should make a tidy sum if they keep busy.

A way to avoid it being too crunchy you can just throw a satisfactory amount of cash at them at times and just say "....after six months of increasingly larger crowds 'The Rocket Pub' has earned you all X,XXX amount of credits in net profits..." Saves on the bookkeeping.

I don't have my book on hand, but by default the business does not generate any income until you get the proper upgrades.

The idea is that when you first start you business, you're essentially just trying to stay afloat. IT could take a long while before you start seeing any net profit.