I've gotten an itch to play an old character of mine again, and think it'd be interesting for my Ace(Driver) to open a speeder and swoop (and data smuggling) business. I mentioned this elsewhere, and someone pointed me towards Far Horizons for rules about starting with a business instead of a ship. I've also considered starting with a Wayfarer and converting its cargo pod so we could have a mobile garage and workshop, letting us potentially be productive while traveling in hyperspace.

So, I thought I'd ask about other people's experience running a more business-oriented game, since the Far Horizon rules are a bit abstract for me, and what benefits would work best with this idea. It's also kind of abstract how much I'd have in assets to build my own vehicles for the business. It's possible I'm just overthinking the "crunch" more than a GM would expect, but I'd like to hear anyone's experiences running their own businesses in game.

(On the off chance you'd be interested in playing in or running a game with my premise, feel free to message me.)

Afraid I can't help much if you're looking for more crunch, but I was so glad when this was released. In addition to the new specs (which I thought had great flavour), it allowed me an easy way to give my players a base of operations that legitimized hand-waving day-to-day costs. Ostensibly the players had an "import/export" business, so their more "interesting" jobs had some cover of legitimacy. I really only dealt with costs for the interesting jobs because it was assumed the business would take care of itself, but only break even, so if they wanted new equipment or had to deal with other costs, the interesting jobs needed to be lucrative. Though you could easily mix this up with a periodic Negotiation check to see how they are doing...this would certainly let an Entrepreneur shine.

I think the question about Assets is kind of tough. Is this business a Repair Shop? If so, a shack and a set of tools and you're in business! Is it a Custom Build Shop? Probably need better building, more tools, and capital for parts and such. Possibly employees. Are you a New or Used Speeder and Swoop Dealer? Cash for inventory would be a must, etc. So a lot more fleshing out might be needed.

I think it is a great premise! One thing I would be a bit worried about as a GM of such a game would be how any other PCs fit in. Sure, you always have to be concerned about that, but when one PC owns a business it can create its own conflict of interests. I was a player in a game a long time ago where the other PCs were my employees (GMs decision, not mine!). Which occasionally led to some interesting dynamics when the "boss" wanted to do "X" and the rest of the PCs "Y". While there were some great moments, on the whole I'd try to avoid that situation.

1 hour ago, RickInVA said:

One thing I would be a bit worried about as a GM of such a game would be how any other PCs fit in.

I think the idea in Far Horizons is that the party owns the business together (for whatever reason developed during session 0). At least that's how I ran it.

1 hour ago, RickInVA said:

I think the question about Assets is kind of tough. Is this business a Repair Shop? If so, a shack and a set of tools and you're in business! Is it a Custom Build Shop? Probably need better building, more tools, and capital for parts and such. Possibly employees. Are you a New or Used Speeder and Swoop Dealer? Cash for inventory would be a must, etc. So a lot more fleshing out might be needed.

I think it is a great premise! One thing I would be a bit worried about as a GM of such a game would be how any other PCs fit in. Sure, you always have to be concerned about that, but when one PC owns a business it can create its own conflict of interests. I was a player in a game a long time ago where the other PCs were my employees (GMs decision, not mine!). Which occasionally led to some interesting dynamics when the "boss" wanted to do "X" and the rest of the PCs "Y". While there were some great moments, on the whole I'd try to avoid that situation.

Depending on the group and how much the GM I just found lets us start with, I might be going through multiple phases, starting with repair and building up to the idea of custom requests and building/entering/sponsoring races as advertisement. I hope to run the company as a worker co-op, and think there's room for a variety of skills. Social skills for negotiations, advertising, (and confusing any ISB who might show up), Combat skills for... security. (Spy skills for making contact with rebel cells and making sure they get the side product). Space travel skills for delivery and probably side business of buying parts, selling commodities, (and stuff). Naturally, we'd need other mechanics, though that could be fleshed out with the NPC ones the Far Horizons rules give.

To some extent, I'm largely thinking of the business as the legitimate face for the group as a Rebel cell. It's what Tresk would come up with as an idea, since it merges both his motivations: Freedom of the open road and freedom as the right of all sentient beings. The swoop he used in a previous game was notable for having a beefy avionics computer and sensors, which is why I initially thought about data smuggling: It's not a place most people would think to look, and even if they suspect the swoops, they're more likely to focus on finding hidden compartments than searching the computer.