(1) Atalantia - Scourge of Magic

Game Master mdt

He had a spreadsheet before, not sure if he's still using it. If so, give me a link to it and I can add it to the campaign.

Connor's spreadsheet is on his character page. But here's the link.

As for the ship's shared monies, I have not been putting those on my character sheet. But the link is here.

4,500 gp for our previous cargo (which wasn't a bad price, btw)
-1,200 gp for fruits & nuts
=3,300 gp for spending money
- 100 gp docking fee (Don't make Connor spend it, please.)
- 10 gp? papers per crewmember (1/2 dozen of them, 4 of us?)
- 20 gp for Bast cleric
=3,170 gp
/10 people (NPCs get a share, just like the PCs; anybody want to discuss the matter? I'd rather have loyal NPCs than underpaid NPCs.)
317.0 gp spending money! But we'd better sell the nuts & fruits quick.

From the Elephant Stats (See campaign tab, all the way at the bottom)

CREW
1 Captain
1 First Mate
3 Engineers
2 Cannoneers
25 Additional Crew

Now,

Connor = Captain (after losing the previous one).
Volita = First Mate (Seemingly)

Everyone Else = Additional Crew

The ship is going light on crew (which makes those profession(Sailor) rolls even harder). Currently, you have 3 Engineers (which keeps your engines running), 0 cannoneers (which means your crew is making do if you get in a fight), and 12 additional NPC Crew members. That puts you running just above 1/2 crew (15 NPCs + 4 PCs = 19/32 crew).

Before you start handing out cash to the crew, you might want to get a new cargo (or at least sell this cargo so you know what you have to buy with).

NOTE : The 'half dozen' she returned with was to replace what she could of the crew you had from before with actual low level operatives (allowing new PCs to be brought in, in other words, Volita and the rest). You lost some people in the war zone. You've always been running a skeleton crew on the ship.

Good thing I put this in the Discussion thread. 3,170 gp + whatever we get for the nuts & fruits would be nice, but I was remembering tales of 1600-1800 ship crews. :) Yes, if you give a sailor money, he will spend it as fast as he can, and there's usually a good portion of crew to bail out of jail before the ship sails.

I was wondering if anyone wanted to spend money in town.

Thanks for the clarification, mdt. Yes, I forgot to look at the Campaign Tab.

Connor and Volita should each be making 9 Medium-sized astral constructs a day, that should surely help our crewmate deficit. The ACs should have Utility at DC 14 tasks. I wouldn't want the ACs to cook meals, but DC 14 should be good enough for swabbing the decks, unfolding or folding the sails, etc.

Yep, if you didn't have those (ACs), you'd be unable to run the ship at all. But being untrained means they're only good for grunt work. That makes the sailors you do have happy (they don't have to do the grunt work, so they're happy about that), but it does mean things aren't exactly 'smooth' all the time.

(Sorry, work is picking up, but we have today off.)

I admire your noble intentions, sir Conner!

...but there is a point when even generosity can be egregious.

I believe that there are rates for NPCs in Pathfinder. HRmmm, here: Hireling, trained 3 sp per day
Hireling, untrained 1 sp per day

Ummmmm, I would propose that we use that to calculate how much we pay them. Hell, we could even throw in a 25% bonus for loyalty and still be vastly under the former calculation.

And, yes, split-up amount is only true if we never ever ever want to buy another cargo. We need money to buy cargo, and more expensive cargos apparently cost more.

(Also, it's actually not fair for the NPCs if we do wait until we just stop buying cargo to pay them since, if we keep buying cargo, in theory they are never paid. I'd much much rather we just agree upon a set wage.
ALSO! Apparently we need some "skilled" sailors. Let's get some and happily pay them 3 sp a day so we don't have to burn (too many) skill points into Sailor.

Also, 300, or 3K gp, isn't that much, in the grand scheme of things. Let's hang on to that and keep buying cargo. Apparently we didn't even max out our cargo space on this run.

And having more money to work with can let us be more speculative with cargo. If we had enough cash we could've bought the noble uniforms, and, while we'd not sell them right away, that might've been a thing where we just hold it and wait for the right buyer...if we could afford having gold tied up in cargo. Which we will, eventually. =)

(Also, that "every crew-member gets a share" thing not only pays unskilled NPCs the same as skilled NPCs, which is kind of Socialist, and therefore unfair, but that was actually a pirate practice, and was not economically sustainable in the long term. The British navy paid a fair wage, and at one point they were the greatest power in the world, despite just being an island. =)

I agree pay a fair wage maybe with a bit of bonus, but the splitting is for us.

Alright, re-calculating, give me a little time.

I believe that there are rates for NPCs in Pathfinder. HRmmm, here: Hireling, trained 3 sp per day

Hireling, untrained 1 sp per day

Ummmmm, I would propose that we use that to calculate how much we pay them. Hell, we could even throw in a 25% bonus for loyalty and still be vastly under the former calculation.

Also, 300, or 3K gp, isn't that much, in the grand scheme of things. Let's hang on to that and keep buying cargo. Apparently we didn't even max out our cargo space on this run.

I was just calculating in case anybody wanted shore leave. If everyone is good with their current funds, we're good.

How many days have we been on the Elephant with the current crew?

Since you took them on? About 60 days.

RE: More GM troubles.

Sorry everyone, seems like I can't catch a break. This weeks fun is infected wisdom tooth and pain.. lots of pain... Have appointment in AM with surgeon about having all 3 pulled. Trying to get stuff posted as I can...

Ouch. Very sorry to hear that, mdt. I'll be praying for you.

Ouch. Takes pills for that.

Take many, many pills.

So, some things I've learned :

1) I am allergic to Oxycodon.
2) The nerves in my gums are not connected to the same nerve ganglia as the nerves in the roots of my front teeth.
3) It is very very difficult to eat when you can't feel your bottom lip, your chin, or the skin between.
4) Being allergic to Oxycodon is not a fun thing.
5) Projectile vomiting when you have fresh stitches in your mouth is painful... very painful... excruciating.
6) When my teeth can feel but my gums can't, my body screams 'something is wrong' and sends pain transmissions non-stop from my tooth roots to let me know my gums are messed up (because they aren't getting feedback from my brain).
7) Rinsing with salt water gets old really fast.
8) Mushy food gets old really fast.
9) Spahgetti is just mushy enough to eat, and just rough enough to hurt my surgery area.
10) Being allergic to Oxycodon sucks giant rocks.
11) Lack of sleep, lack of food, and non-stop tooth pain makes it all but impossible to concentrate and make posts in your games you're playing in.
12) Lack of sleep, lack of food, and non-stop tooth pain makes it all but impossible to concentrate and make posts in your games you're running.

Things are improving, but it's slow. Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll have the energy to do posts in all my games. My apologies.

Have you asked for a different type of pain killer?

There are a bunch of different Schedule 3 drugs they could give you.

Also, have you tried rinsing with Hydrogen Peroxide? Just to mix things up? =)

Ouch, mdt. I'm sticking around, don't worry!

Rinsing with Hydroxin Glutenate (or something like that). To kill infections.

I've built up a major resistance to most painkillers over the years (got a fused vertebrae in my neck from a car accident when I was a teenager). So it's always hard to find something that works on me.

Dude, sorry. I feel for you get better soon. I will be here.

Ok, feeling better finally, missed two days of work last week due to what I think is a dry socket on one of my jaws, it's still painful, but I"m not throbbing and aching all night like I was last week. I'm going to try to pick back up now. I actually have slept all night two nights in a row, and the jaw cramps didn't hit today, so that's good. Still have problems feeling my chin though.

Glad your doing a bit better :)

Good to see you back, mdt!

Great to see you're feeling better MDT! =D

With that having been said....

I'm not really "complaining"...but it may be time to discuss a certain inconsistency in the numbers.

Volita finds a cargo of fruits and nuts for 1,200 gp.

So, we've got a shipment of exotic, to these people, fruits and nuts, in a land that specifically has them "in demand" which we spent money on for magic so they're not rotten.

1200 for cargo.
100 for docking
20 for magic
+1gp per crew (6gp)
= 1326 cost.

1403 selling price gives us an ROI of a lousy 5.8%, at less than 100 gp. That this is the "fast" price notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that "U R t3h SUX!!1!", but I am saying that if this is an average indicator of how you plan on establishing buying and selling prices, it is in no way worth the risk of hauling cargo, and investing hard currency to unknown markets for unknown reward.

(The East India Trading Company averaged 155% in it's first decade.)

I got slammed earlier in the game for being too much into the cargo. Now I'm getting politely hammered for not putting enough into it. :)

Couple of things I thought about with it :

1) While they are exotic, the destination market is a jungle, and thus has access to a lot of fruits and nuts.
2) GM Brain hurt from drugs, how much did they pay? 1200, ok, random amount equal to X + Yd100 to cover market fluctuation. (Note I did roll low on those die rolls).

So, to everyone, for future, how much effort should I put into the trade stuff?

Of note, with new blood comes new characters...and new priorities. =) Conner and El seem to have the story already sewn up. Technically Volita doesn't have a dog in this fight, so I'm adopting "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good" as a motivation for her to be here.

Of note, it doesn't even really affect the others. And if it does affect the destination, we just throw it to Captain Conner for a decision. (He's seemed disinclined to follow money leads, but if I had some better numbers and Return on Investments to throw at him, his cockles might yet be warmed. =))

Yea, I'm not really into playing Traders & Cargo Haulers. D&D is my more speed.

That said, as long as it doesn't clog up too much of the actual game(which is what I was worried it was doing before), and it gets Volita some action, but also moves forward other story, I'm cool with *some* trading.

And here I was going to do a calculation of "old cargo sold minus new cargo bought = profit!".

Yes, we're a bit more business-run than action & fighting-run right now. I know it's for the plot, I don't mind.

At least this is not like my first 5th Edition game, where I didn't know better, so I took "Perfectionist" and "Haggler" for my Goal and Flaw, and ended up without a single Advantage due to personality the entire multi-month game! Meanwhile, the Barbarian who took "Fight!" and "Doesn't listen" had Advantage every time we got into battle... (5th edition special rule)

MDT?

I hate to be pushy here, but if you're finding new numbers for buying an' selling, I need to know now.

If we're gonna buy the hardwood low for 2 grand, and sell it high for 2150, but with 100 gp docking fee and a few other provisos, addendums, and a couple of quid-pro-quos, Imma give up on the mechanic.

It'll be a shame, but at this point I'm actually concerned about -losing- money.

Buying/Selling food in this country was always going to be marginal, even exotic stuff, because they have too much. If you'd taken it to the desert, you'd have gotten probably twice what you got.

Hardwood on the other hand, will sell decent to good in the Gand Ranges, or very well in the desert (if you decide to go there).

Insider info! :)

I know medieval markets needed 10%+ profit margins, but Connor's glad to come out "even" or "zero" on the cargoes.

If we had gone to the desert, could we have looked for lizardmen or ships?

So I think we'll get better at merchants as we go along.

I'm also thinking a reeeeallly quick trip to buy some cold weather gear for those high southern mountains before hauling anchor.

Per information you have, there is a desert kingdom of lizardfolk. Also lizardfolk in the mountains.

Sorry, can't respond - taking my mother to breast cancer clinic in Chapel Hill, NC, tomorrow. Will try to post later tomorrow.

NP, take your time. Best wishes.

Test results negative! And I'm back.

Congrats Connor and Mrs. Connor!

total equals 268.4 gp. Div by 4 PCs = 67.1 gp. Don't spend it all in one place, folks!

I think we agreed to hold off on the division of those particular spoils until such time as it is both meaningful and non-impactful on the mission at large.

I mean, if we sell this cargo for a massive profit and make 4900, but hen find out about a -really- good score available for 5K, do we really wanna miss out on the motherlode for a few gp more? =)

(Also if we can't or don't sell the cargo for awhile we'll stil need money for docking fees, crew payment, provisos, addendums, a couple of quid pro quos.... =P)

Yes, I was including a PC's "cut" in case they were broke and wanted something from the city. But if everyone's self-sufficient, then we can just keep "the kitty" as-is and move on.

Volita blinks twice as Connor starts asking about her "kitty."

...

"Oh, right, you're talking about the money."

;)

Few things:

1) Ya know I don't think we've gotten into one fight since I've come back? Makes me sad :(

2) I really need to gear myself up as a 6th level character. I completely forgot to that, heh.

3) MDT, is it possible to add me back to the active roster? Or do I need to contact Paizo?

1) You keep avoiding them. (for now)

2) Yep

3) Should be all cleaned up now.

Yay! Thanks MDT!

I've poked at Adraniel, if he doesn't post again by tomorrow I'll bot him and continue on.

Art hasn't posted in over a month, so I've marked him as inactive.

Nuts. Just as we're ready to leave the city and get into some possible fights as we travel to new countries.

Yeah, honestly it's getting harder and harder to push this game forward. I think we've got different people wanting different things from it at this point. My health issues earlier this year and work issues last year didn't help.

What? You want me to shut up about the trading thing? Fine. You wrote so much data about it that I thought that was a thing you wanted, but if not, then nevermind.

That is not what I said. *sigh*

What I said was : I think we've got different people wanting different things from the game.

Connor : An espionage secret agent game (What he originally signed up for)

Elrohir : A revenge epic (What he signed up for on the last go around)

Volita/Adraniel : A more traditional four party adventure

There's no condemnation of anyone in that original statement. That I get yelled at for commenting that different people want different things is frankly draining and, I think, undeserved.

Not yelling, just offering assistance.

Apologies if it came off that way.

What do you want?

No problem, text is hard sometimes.

That was actually more my question, I had originally intended that the game be espionage/intelligence gathering, which would require the group to gather intelligence, spend time in ports talking to people, etc.

However, last two ports it's been mostly 'I will wait on the ship'. Hard to have encounters/fights/etc if it's stay on the ship. Also hard to give you reasons to venture off the ship for other things.

So... what does everyone want out of the game?

I'm up for any game, I stopped driving the game as the new people seemed to have stuff they wanted to do. Adran is a do his job sort of guy. Not the boss not a face. Does what needs doing and wants to get paid for it :)

Side note: Vacation time again. Leaving Thursday, going camping for 10 days. Will not post again till the 20th once I'm gone. Please bot me as needed.