Enterprises: Running a Business as an Adventurer

[Yakk]

The goal of this is to create a system for a party of PCs (or an individual PC) to run an enterprise of some kind, be it a ship, a merchant fleet, homestead the wilderness and build a barony, or a crime syndicate.

The enterprise itself will randomly grow and shrink in a nearly zero sum way, and it will throw off adventure hooks while doing so. If the players bite on the adventure hooks, they prevent some of the shrinking or increase the growth of the business.

As a nice side effect, I've eliminated most math, other than counting and halving numbers, and adding or removing 0s at the end of numbers.

Each enterprise has a scale and a size.

The scale of an enterprise is some power of 10 gp -- 1 gp, 10 gp, 100 gp, 1000 gp, 10000 gp, etc.

The size of the enterprise, which varies from 2 to 19, is multiplied by the scale to find the total capital invested in the enterprise.

Converting cash to capital happens by default with 50% loss -- you have to wait for opportunities to invest more money.

Converting capital to cash also happens by default with a 50% loss.

For each month, you roll Xd6, where X is the size of the enterprise.

Count the number of dice that land on 1 through 6, and count odd vs even:
1: Protect
2: Divest
3: Upkeep
4: Dividend
5: Invest
6: Grow
Odd: Enterprise shrinks 1 unit
Even: Enterprise grows 1 unit.

2s through 5s basically reflect random business fluctuations:

For each 2 you roll, you have the option to cash a size unit of business out at 100% efficiency.
For each 5 you rolll, you have the option to spend cash on a size unit of business at 100% efficiency.

For each 3 you roll, you owe the value of a size unit of business in cash to keep it going. Failure to pay this costs you 2 size units of business.

For each 4 you roll, you gain the value of a size unit of business in cash from surplus dividends.

The 1s and 6s are interesting.

The 1s represent "opportunities to protect" -- you are given exposure to some adventure that could prevent the lost business units from coming to pass. The number of 1s rolled and the scale of the business determine how hard/long this adventure is.

The 6s represent "opportunities to grow" -- you are given exposure to some adventure that could double the number of units your business grows this month. The number of 6s rolled and the scale of the business dertermine how hard/long this adventure is.

Generally, you can only exploit one of these two opportunities (if both are offered).

The remaining problem is turning "scale" and "number of dice that land on something" into a description of the adventure length and level. I could say "each die represents roughly a day's adventure (at 3-4 encounters per day), and the scale determines the average level of said encounters (see expected reward per encounter)".

Another thing missing is a way to mix in a profession skill into this problem. Ideally I'd want a profession skill at an appropriately scaled and sized business to be of modest help, without breaking my intended balance.

Thoughts?