Every Thursday night, a groups of friends and I play a tabletop role-playing game called Pathfinder over the internet. We’re using Roll20 and Discord to visualize and communicate what we’re doing. The tricky part, it turns out, is keeping track of who owns what and who owes what to whom. We want to make sure everyone’s getting their fair share of the party’s loot, right? But what if that item is going to be used by just one player? How do you cash out when everyone goes into town to sell their hard-earned treasure? Well, this spreadsheet takes care of all that.
It turns out not to be quite as easy as it sounds. Very often, one wants a spreadsheet formula to copy itself down as far as needed, rather than having to copy the formula down yourself each time new data appears. The solution is to use Array Formulas, but this changes which functions you can use and how they work. This particular spreadsheet required a complex implementation of matrix multiplication. Throw in some FILTER functions here and there to display each member’s inventory and you’ve got an effective solution for tracking your party’s earnings.
The following link is a demo copy of the spreadsheet. Feel free to make your own copy if you’ve need of such a thing.
Pathfinder
Pathfinder is a fork of Dungeons & Dragons with an emphasis on simplicity and its own universe.
Loot List
Each line calculates an acquired item’s value to the party and each member separately.
Inventories
The sheet tracks each player’s inventory on a separate tab.