Money problems with the Pimp Guild

[Jed Clayton]

Hello,

In my RuneQuest group yesterday (GM'ed by me), the player-characters were contacted by the local pimp guild due to that guild looking for a means to get rid of a certain criminal that the player-characters were involved with earlier (long story ...).

Now, a standard procedure would have led to the PCs being hired as bodyguards and extra muscle or surveillance experts in the ensuing mission. That was basically what I had prepared for that chapter in a longer story. Instead of agreeing to a standard "hired muscle" contract, one of the PCs very cleverly came up with the idea of getting a chairman of the pimps' guild to make them partners in his business venture long-term. The way how this was actually pulled off was very surprising and very cleverly done ... probably enough material for a separate "actual play" thread ... suffice it to say that due to some dumb luck and a pretty gullible negotiator played by me, the PCs currently have a realistic chance to be made partners in the guild's operations. They want a share in the profits of the brothel business in a major harbour town in my campaign world. Of course, this is very different from the standard hand-to-mouth traveling adventurers' lifestyle (come to a new place, kill the monster, get money, spend the money at the pub, etc.). For the first time in any of my fantasy RPGs, characters stand a chance of being part of a "business" and may have income from something other than a monthly salary, a stipend, or the occasional treasure or looting.

Making a long story short, I know close to nothing about "business," both in RPG settings and in real life. I'm especially clueless about how I should portray a regular business operation in a fictional medieval-fantasy setting.

Here's the situation: I have already established the Pimp Guild of Silver City as a big and powerful local guild, guys who have a lot of clout in their city and can afford many fancy things. They are a mafia controlling all the official prostitution (yet not human trafficking) in a large harbour and trader town on the coast. Yesterday, I improvised that this guild operates six brothels in their city. They also regularly bribe officials and senators and have enough money to regularly pay their own bodyguards, bouncers, watchmen and assassins.

If you have a guild like that and they run 6 brothels, how many women would be likely to work in those brothels (as I said, it is a "Large City" on the RuneQuest Companion chart)? What would be the monthly and yearly income, and the net gain, of the people running those brothels? Ideally, I should have a sum to work from in RuneQuest SP = silver pieces.

The head negotiator in my group may bully the guild into giving him a 10% share or so, but I'd like to know how much silver we would be talking about: 10% of what exactly?

The RuneQuest Companion has many handy numbers for how much money a trader, a worker, and so on could be making per day, and what prices may look like in a medieval society, but nothing about what a business, a shop, etc. makes in a typical year. That is what I'd like to know.

 

[zozotroll]

I suspect that your players have no more idea of what a pimp guild would make than you do. Or me either.

If the guild is as large and powerful as you say, then 10% is hugely unreasonable. If there are only 10-15 members, then maybe. perhaps 1% or less. Otherwise it really isnt all that large or powerful.

As far as how much that is, it totaly depends on what you want. You would need to figure out how many workers, how often they are employed, how much is charged each time, what cutr the guild gets. And what operating costs there are. That will give you a number. But if you dont want to go through all that, just dump a number on them.

But if it is a shadow type organization, then there are initiation rites, dutys obligations and so forth. Explain to the PCs that they are buying into a long ongoing series of jobs that they wont get paid for, as they are now part of the system.

 

[soltakss]

Drawing on my vast experience of brothels ......

Nice brothels give a 50% cut to the workers, nasty ones reduce the cut.

Workers have to give 10% to their cult, more if they are runelevels, and have living costs.

There are overheads in wages paid to women, madams, pimps and bodyguards. Rent has to be paid. bribes made to local law enforcement, freebies given out to all and sundry.

Highups in such organisations would probably be runelevels in their respective cults and so would tithe 90% to their cult. In effect, the cult takes over the running of the brothels and the brothels are probably going to end up as temples of one sort or another.

So, treat any business as a self-sustaining organisation. Money comes in, money goes out. I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that.

The best way of doing this is to look at the typical annual earnings of an equivalent person and say the business generates that kind of income.

I don't have the tables with me, but if you say that a brothel keeper is the equivalent of a poor merchant then use that income level as a base. If he owns high class establishments dealing in courtesans to nobility, then he might be the equivalent of a minor or major noble.

But, don't get bogged down in the business side - it invariably doesn't work in a RPG sense and real life accountants will chip in and say "You need to defer your taxable income to ...." and then you'll have to kill them. Which spoils the game somewhat in my opinion.

 

[soltakss]

So, back to your example.

1 brothel in a large city would probably keep one person in relative comfort.

6 brothels would keep a number of people in comfort or make one person rich. I'd make the owner the equivalent of a moderately wealthy merchant.

 

[TRose]

First thing you need to answer is prostitution legal? In most ancient society there was no laws against it but it would often be restricted to certain areas. If legal it does not mean the players get to keep all the money cause they might end up paying more in taxes then they would in bribes where it was illegal.
Second what class is the brothel is it there for serving the sailors that come into port or we talking about High class Geisha/Venetian courtesans types. High class girls often can get a larger percentage of money then lower class girls I might add
Third what is the status of the working girls( or boys for that matter) Often in many society they where where slaves or little better then slaves. And how does society view them? If society looks down on them then that need to be taken into effect. The ladies will then either be slaves as listed above or Widows with no other income, alcoholic, drug addicts, people of low caste ect. Might add if you have it set up so the working girls get a good chunk of the income it wont be long befor one of the players starts to check out the price of slave girls since then he wont have to split his profits with a slave.

 

[Jed Clayton]

So, back to your example.

1 brothel in a large city would probably keep one person in relative comfort.

6 brothels would keep a number of people in comfort or make one person rich. I'd make the owner the equivalent of a moderately wealthy merchant.

Thank you very much.

I'm holding on to the input by Simon and the others.

In fact, Simon's example here happens to come rather close to what I dreamed up in the session on Saturday: There are 6 brothels, and they each have a madame or an equivalent person in charge, but one of the six bosses is the head of the guild and the chief businessman pulling the strings. Only the six bosses (pimps) are actually wealthy, in the sense that they are enjoying a "visible" level of wealth (probably the equivalent of wearing Rolexes, driving Ferraris, and wearing garish tailormade suits).

I'm going to rethink what the percentage given to PCs could be. I have not mentioned the 10% yet. My group has only 2 players, with maybe a third one soon to come who is not involved in this particular plot. Maybe those 2 guys could each get a 1% cut. (This won't last for a long time, though ...)

 

[Shadow Queen]

I wander what a whors' stat line would be .......... :wink:

 

[Jed Clayton]

I don't have the tables with me, but if you say that a brothel keeper is the equivalent of a poor merchant then use that income level as a base. If he owns high class establishments dealing in courtesans to nobility, then he might be the equivalent of a minor or major noble.

But, don't get bogged down in the business side - it invariably doesn't work ...

Hi there.

Is there an actual "income table" somewhere in RQ that I have missed?
For the character profession of "Merchant," there would be a starting money amount (4D6x50 silver). This is cash carried in your pocket when the first adventure starts, or so I thought.
Is there something about regular, non-adventuring income?

I do have a sum I could work with in the meantime, which will still have to be discussed with those PCs in-game.

 

[AKAramis]

If you want real data, track down the Domesday Book at your local library. It does list the brothels, at least for London.

A lot about brothels depends on the social acceptability of sex, and the local economic climate.

Almost every roman town would have had a brothel with at least a dozen women. Straight vanilla sex was usually affordable; roman rates were fixed by the government, which sold tokens showing the sex act to be purchased.

A denarius would get a quicky with a nobody... while a high class prostitute could leave a commoner destitute, and cause even a wealthy roman pause.

Also, when business is good in general, prostitutes can charge more (if the government lets them).

Another example: During the gold boom, Juneau (then population 3000) had a dozen brothels with 4-6 girls each. Most girls worked 3-6 hours a night, and made middle class income for the inflated incomes of gold rush Juneau. Whitehorse had another dozen... usually $2 got you 5 minutes for a quickie. (Further south, $2 would generally have gotten half an hour.) The gals who insisted on hard coin generally made out like bandits. THose who took gold, well, not so well, unless they stashed it.

The madams usually took 20-25%, and really made the money.

 

[soltakss]

These are all arbitrary figures, based on the Temple Income suggestions.

Is there an actual "income table" somewhere in RQ that I have missed?

Apparently not, I thought there was in the Companion but I'm wrong again.

For the character profession of "Merchant," there would be a starting money amount (4D6x50 silver). This is cash carried in your pocket when the first adventure starts, or so I thought.
Is there something about regular, non-adventuring income?

RQ3 had a list of sample living costs, building costs etc. but that doesn't really help.

RQM does have incomes for temples of a certain size.
Site: 3D6 SP/month
Shrine: 1D6x100 SP/month
Minor Temple: 2D6 x 1000 SP/month
Major Temple: 3D6 x 10,000 SP/month

Upkeep /month:
Site: 1D6SP
Shrine: 20SP, 20SP per permanent member of clergy, 10SP per guard.
Minor temple: 500SP, 30SP per permanent member of clergy, 20SP per guard, 10SP per staff member, 2SP per slave.
Major temple: 4000SP, 40SP per permanent member of clergy, 20SP per guard, 12SP per staff member, 3SP per slave.

So, you could work out the number of workers, managers and guards, assign them a wage based on different temple types, I'd use Minor Temple as the base unless you want an enormous brothel, then pay a similar amount for perfumes, nice clothes, clean sheets, weapons for the guards etc. Take off the cost of maintaining the building and there's your profit. Where prostitution is illegal, you also have fines, bribes and so on to take into account, so double the outgoings.

So, the Happy Garden has one madam, 12 girls, 6 guards and 20 slaves and is a reasonable sized building. Monthly outgoings = (40 + 120 + 120 + 40) x 2 + 500 = 1140SP. Since a brothel is not like a normal temple, although some may well actually be temples, and the Happy Garden is in a fairly poor area of town, it only brings in 1D4 x 1000SP per month.

So, on a bad month, it loses money and on a good month it makes a fair bit.

The local mayor makes prostitution illegal, which of course doesn't stop it, so operating costs are higher and it loses money half the time (Example 2). Time to bring in more exotic ladies or perhaps to only use slavegirls. Using slavegirls saves 102SP on wages, another 102SP on perfumes etc and another 404SP on bribes, bringing operating costs down to 1876, which still makes a loss some months but makes a profit 3/4 of the time(Example 3), but perhaps a discerning clientele might want to pay less for slavegirls, so income comes down to 1D3x1000SP, (Example 4). Of course, other clients might prefer slavegirls and push the income up.

So, for a year, example 1 takes in 12D4 x 1000SP, 30,000SP on average, and has outgoings of nearly 14,000SP, so on average makes 16,000SP profit per year. Example 2 brings in 30,000SP but has outgoings of nearly 28,000SP, so makes on average 2,000SP profit. Example 3 has outgoings of 22512 and a profit of 7,500SP. Example 4 brings in 12D3, 24,000SP on average, and has outgoings of 22,512SP, a profit of 1,500SP on average.

Don't forget about personal taxes as well. You may even have a Guild Levy or a business tax of some kind that eats into profits even further.

Put it in a wealthy part of town where there are a lot of single men and you increase the earnings to the top part of the scale, perhaps 2D4+2, 2D6 or even 3D4. Bring in exotic maidens and you might earn more. Give them magic and earnings increase again. Hire a permanent healer and put the word out about the cleanliness and disease-free status of the girls and profits soar.

So, there's a lot to consider and a lot of work to do. Some people love this kind of thing - I've done it in the past when I played a merchant and it can be great to get a profit every month.

A Spreadsheet might come in useful when doing this - I know that RPG characters wouldn't have a spreadsheet but they would be better at doing this than me. Unless, of course, they were rubbish merchants.

I do have a sum I could work with in the meantime, which will still have to be discussed with those PCs in-game.

If you used the above examples and took 10% of the cut, they could get between 150SP and 1,600SP per year. Nowhere near as much as by killing monsters and raiding for treasure, but not bad for sitting around doing nothing.

 

[Jed Clayton]

These are all arbitrary figures, based on the Temple Income suggestions.

So, the Happy Garden has one madam, 12 girls, 6 guards and 20 slaves and is a reasonable sized building. Monthly outgoings = (40 + 120 + 120 + 40) x 2 + 500 = 1140SP.

These are all great examples. I really appreciate your help, Simon.

But why is your (40 + 120 + 120 + 40) doubled here?

I thought it would have to be one madam (like "permanent clergy" = 30 SP), 12 girls (12 x 10 SP), 6 guards (6 x 20 SP) and 20 slaves (20 x 2 SP), all of this in one month, plus the 500 SP for upkeep of the house.

This gives me (30 + 120 + 120 + 40) + 500 SP = 810 SP.

Coincidentally, one of my fellow players suggested on a whim that a temple or brothel of that size would have to make at least 800 SP.

 

[soltakss]

Doubled because I took into account the purchasing of equipment as an extra expense. Guards need good armour and swords, working girls need a new set of clothes every month, perfume, clean linen and so on. Once again, it's arbitrary, but if the only expense is building maintenance and wages, things are too profitable and not very realistic.

There are tables of professions and their daily costs in Arms and Equipment, which is very useful here.

It says a prostitute earns 25Sp per day, which is a hell of a lot - one client per hour, 8 hours per day means they are spending 3SP per go, or roughly 3 days wages.

So, assuming 20 working days per month, that's 500Sp/month, 6000SP/year.

So, 12 prostitutes earn 72,000SP/year, increasing the profit margins considerably. But that might be too high. Decrease it by lowering the daily income for a single worker.

Your best bet is to put the figures into a spreadsheet and tweak them a bit to get the best, or most reasonable, mix. That way, you can recalculate the profits and PCs' cut taking into account any changes that have been made. The Royal Fleet sails into town? Yippee! People come down with the Black Pustules? Boo!

 

[Jed Clayton]

Doubled because I took into account the purchasing of equipment as an extra expense. Guards need good armour and swords, working girls need a new set of clothes every month, perfume, clean linen and so on. Once again, it's arbitrary, but if the only expense is building maintenance and wages, things are too profitable and not very realistic.

You're quite right about that one.

In my old RuneQuest game ten years ago, when the PCs suddenly lived in a major seaport town for an extended period, I found myself faced with the question how to introduce taxes. Who would be taxed, when, how much? Which taxes would the seaport town have?

There are tables of professions and their daily costs in Arms and Equipment, which is very useful here.

Good. I have that volume. Will look it up shortly.

It says a prostitute earns 25Sp per day, which is a hell of a lot - one client per hour, 8 hours per day means they are spending 3SP per go, or roughly 3 days wages.

So, assuming 20 working days per month, that's 500Sp/month, 6000SP/year.

So, 12 prostitutes earn 72,000SP/year, increasing the profit margins considerably. But that might be too high. Decrease it by lowering the daily income for a single worker.

Thanks again for the references. I'll keep that in mind for later.

[...] you can recalculate the profits and PCs' cut taking into account any changes that have been made. The Royal Fleet sails into town? Yippee! People come down with the Black Pustules? Boo!

At some point I am going to have to let you know the exact subplot that led to this brothel-keeper business in my campaign. It is funny beyond belief.

In fact, the reason why the PCs were approached by the pimps' guild (and not the other way round) goes back to a smallish incident in the very first game session of this particular RuneQuest group/campaign/line-up, caused in an improvised scene by a player who is no longer playing in my group (for job/scheduling reasons only). That player's impulsive actions in the first session still have repercussions which are bound to resurface a year later in the game. It's a rather long story by now, but it all dates back to that first (now legendary) session, jokingly referred to as The Whorehouse Massacre on the Borderlands featuring Horst the Hammer. Hard to believe, but true.
:wink:

 

[zozotroll]

I for one am interested in the incident. Things like that are what make games seem real as opposed to just a series of unrelated events.

If the whole story is not printable, PM me with it.

 

[Jed Clayton]

I for one am interested in the incident. Things like that are what make games seem real as opposed to just a series of unrelated events.

If the whole story is not printable, PM me with it.

Ah, I should have guessed in advance that this topic was going to cause some attention ...

Well, fear not. I'm sure the story is printable. There was never anything X-rated in it at any point, as far as I can see, except maybe that the characters entered a building that was, you know, ... a whorehouse.

I was going to open a separate thread about this crazy story earlier, and I will do so very soon. Just not right now. It will be several long posts, and I have had a long day here today, work, shopping and all. TTYL.

 

[zozotroll]

No problem at all. I am on my lunch break, just catching up on the boards I visit.

Looking forward to the tale.

 

[Jed Clayton]

No problem at all. I am on my lunch break, just catching up on the boards I visit.

Looking forward to the tale.

Thank you.

It's a very strange and very funny tale to me, especially since I had never actually planned for it to occur in any way, and since it was all player-created, not created by the GM.

As I said, I'll use a separate thread, and take my time in telling the story.

 

[AKAramis]

found a research paper online of interest:
http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/malibu_selina/papers/prostitutes.html

gives 2-18 aeses (silver coins) as the rate for pomeiian prostitutes.

Based upon the range of bowls used to measure time (ranging from 5-30 minutes)...

that gives a range of 4-20 sp/hour for vanilla.

Also: a given prostitite was taxed her best customer for the day under one Roman tax scheme. (different source.)

Typical taxes were 10%, specifically, a tithe, per government level taxing. If the prostitutes are freeborn, one can assume a further 10% tithe to their cult. If the prostitutes are in fact clerics, see the tithe rates for their faith and rank, then pay local taxes on the rest.

Figure also that the doorkeeper and guards split 10% of the take and owner 10%. If hawkers are used, they get to split a share...

And if there is a guild, it takes a tenth, too...

 

[Jed Clayton]

found a research paper online of interest:
http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/malibu_selina/papers/prostitutes.html

gives 2-18 aeses (silver coins) as the rate for pomeiian prostitutes.

Based upon the range of bowls used to measure time (ranging from 5-30 minutes)...

Good and concise source, especially if you want to set your RQ stories in a Roman-styled world (which many GMs do, or so I've heard).

This makes me want to read more on the subject. Thanks.

 

[AKAramis]

Just found a reference in Arms and Equipment, in the jobs section.

25sp a day for a prostitute of Craft (Sexual Arts) 65 and Influence 50... (page 79 and 83)