OOC IV

[Zhym]

Loot distribution

Assumptions:
1. Everyone who either fought the dragon or traveled to the dragon lair gets a share of dragon treasure. Except Earnest, who I don't feel bad about stiffing because he's no longer active. Assume we can't find him and don't want to hold on to a share for him (like we would with Tempus). That's 11 people (Angus, Arnulf, Chet, Dandelion, Galan, Goranth, Hyde, Sagthistle, Tempus, Watt, Yenny) splitting 3684 gp worth of gems.
2. Everyone who fought the dragon splits Ilfrien's money. That's 7 people (Angus, Arnulf, Chet, Dandelion, Goranth, Tempus, Yenny) splitting 160 gp, 17 ep, 8 sp, 12 cp, or 169.42 gp.
3. Gems are more useful to higher-level PCs saving up for fancy magic. Lower level PCs are more likely to spend gold soon.

Rounding things a bit, that's 360 gp for anyone who battled the dragon and 333 gp for anyone who joined after, leaving 1.42 gp to buy drinks to toast Ilfrien's memory.

The following PCs reported their assets:
Angus: 14 gold (and immeasurable good will)
Arnulf: 1000 gold
Chet: 440 gold
Dandelion: 250 gold
Hyde: 725 gold

We can assume the new PCs have Angus-like wealth.

Here's how I propose we split the gems:
Arnulf takes the 1400 gp red fire opal and puts 1040 into the pot (if he can), for a net 360 gp gain. If Arnulf can't afford it (or doesn't want the gem), we sell the gem and Arnulf takes 360 gold and the other 1040 goes into the pot.
Hyde takes the 1000-gp amber and puts 667 into the pot for a net 333 gp gain
Chet takes a 500-gp amber and pays 140 into the pot (net 360)
Dandelion takes a 500-gp amber and pays 140 into the pot (net 360) (unless other gems suit her complexion better)
Angus takes the 120-gp amber and 240 gold (net 360)
Yenny takes a 50-gp chunk of blue quartz, all the rhodochrosites (10 14, 20, 20), and 246 gold (net 360)
Galan takes a 50-gp chunk of blue quartz and 283 gp (net 333).
Goranth takes 360 gp.
Sagthistle and Watt each get 333 gp.
Tempus gets 360 gold, which I hope we can give to someone in town to give to Tempus when and if he arrives.

If I didn't mess up the calculations, that all the gems distributed, 1040+667+140+140+168=2155 into the pot, and 240+246+283+360+333+333+360=2155 paid out of the pot.

Unless someone strongly objects to the distribution above, I'd suggest making any fine adjustments on who gets what gem or who gets gems vs. gold by trading among ourselves rather than trying to hash out a different initial distribution.

What do you all think?

[AleBelly]

Thanks for the legwork. Unless anyone objects within 24 hours, we'll go with this. Please mark your character sheets with the potions and newfound wealth.

[onlyme]

DAndelion would be fine with amber. It helps neutralize her greenish tint under candlelight.

That said, it really comes down to the big gems.

[enn.in.me]

Thanks for doing this. I'm happy.

[Storm11]

Yeah thanks Angus that's groovy

[Zorroroaster]

Well done, sir. All good by me.

[ybn1197]

Much thanks!!

[tkrexx]

Late to the party again, but it looks good to me. Thanks for crunching the numbers.

Will Galan be taking the potion of Levitation?

[Nuke66]

I suppose, it can't hurt.

[Zorroroaster]

It could, if the effects wore off at an inconvenient moment...

[tkrexx]

Will do, I'll delete it from Hyde's list.

[onlyme]

I'll be scarce the rest of the week. Hopefully you wont need fashion advice from Dandelion for a few days. NPC if necessary. I may be able to do quick posts here or there if I get a chance.

[tkrexx]

Any you boys been in any kinda fight, hah?

Hyde's question was originally intended for the 4 hirelings in chain mail... Did we decide not to hire them?

[Zhym]

Yeah. We left the mounts in Sambord.

[AleBelly]

Happy American Thanksgiving, everyone!

[Zhym]

Angus: Dexterity of 11.
Probability of x ≤ 11 on 5d6: 5.9%

Damn.

Okay, before I roll, I'm going to call, "Hang on a minute." I just don't see us all wandering into a room that screams "TRAP!" like this one does, especially when most of us haven't actually said we're entering the room. Even having stated an intention to enter the room, there's the question of how we enter: blundering in like idiots vs. entering one at a time, etc.

In my opinion, trap rooms call for hyper-detail, both on the part of the DM in describing them and the players in saying how they will interact with them. And if there's ever a time for "if you didn't say it, you didn't do it," it's when dealing with trap rooms.

[AleBelly]

This is a fair point. And I'm moving the discussion here to OOC. The issue with PbP is that it can take forever to move action forward, especially with large groups. So I considered how things would play out. If the party sent a couple of people in, spread out, they would very likely suspect nothing, calling others in. At which point, unless from some incredible leap of logic, the party suspected shadows to be a trap, this was an eventuality. It's a relatively benign trap anyway by design, so this is a more "you better be on your toes in this place" warning than anything else. So I followed what I thought were reasonably logical steps to get to our current point. But again, it's not hard for me to see how this move feels cheap.

So, really, it's up to what kind of game you all want to play. I'm happy to allow the group days and weeks to plot next moves, but it does really bog the game down. In this game and others on the board, it's much less of an issue with smaller groups (2-4 PCs) than it is with groups of this size. I'm strongly leaning towards implementing an earlier idea...that of a caller. At some point the caller dictates the action to me, being responsible for integrating the suggestions of others. For instance, when I asked for a marching order, I got two specific responses, a vague response or two, and nothing else. So I put one together. Since I know what's coming, it's not really appropriate for me to do so...I think this should come from the players.

So at this point, I think should take a couple of days, pause here and talk about how to operate going forward.

[Zhym]

Not wanting to bog the game down is a legitimate concern.

But this is relatively new—for some of us, anyway. Everything since I signed on has been mostly combat (with a side of pissing people off in diplomatic missions). Now we're in more of a "Tomb of Horrors" type situation: a dungeon of puzzles and traps with an ancient evil magic-user (or something similar) at the end. We know that the brute force approach is likely to get us killed. So some slowdown is inevitable. When every next step could trigger a trap, wise PCs are going to look really carefully at what's in front of them before they take those steps.

It's fair to move a party forward when doing so doesn't put them in danger (although doing it too often can tip off a party to where the danger spots are). Moving them forward into danger is less fair, even if that danger is relatively benign. And the PCs should always have a chance to figure out or avoid a trap—moving PCs ahead with the idea that the players probably wouldn't have figured out what not to do sort of defeats the purpose of puzzle traps. If we don't want to spend time solving puzzles, why are we in a prison full of puzzles?

My "Tomb of Horrors" game had a large cast of characters—at the start, anyway. And I tried to be really picky about not having the PCs do anything their players didn't say they'd do. It didn't usually bog things down, though, because you only need one person to do something to move the action forward. It's actually quicker than combat, IMO, where everyone needs to post their rolls before the round can be resolved.

In this particular case, would we have figured out the shadow thing? Maybe not. But it was obvious that something was going on with the light. Angus already wondered aloud whether it was safer in or out of the light. We have that 10' pole we might have poked into the light to see if it had any effect. There's the "toss a coin in" approach. Which might or might not have revealed anything. Trying each of those might not be "progress," but it is "action."

And puzzles are more delay-tolerant than combat. When I've posted an attack, all I can really do until the next round is wait. But a decent puzzle will keep you thinking until it's solved. We might not be posting anything about the snake room, but that doesn't mean we aren't thinking about it. That's much better for killing time on the subway with no Internet access than waiting on combat is.

Oh, and one more kibitz while I'm at it: 5d6 isn't a hard skill check, IMO. It's more in the category of "almost impossible for all but exceptional PCs." Which is fine if that's what you're going for. Just don't think it's only "hard."

[AleBelly]

Thanks, and I mostly agree with the points. But we need a mechanism to decide when to move forward, so hopefully we'll hash that out.

"Hard" is a subjective term, but I figured most of us knew that a 5d6 produces a mean roll of 17.5, so, yeah.

I'm deleting the update from the room. The shadow traps are gone, perhaps replaced by something else...

[Zorroroaster]

I'm ok with the idea of a caller, if it keeps things moving and helps AB out.