Also, awesome way to discover treasure! "You retreat, nearly dead, to a back room that was guarded before. Inside, you find a small army's worth of awesome magical hack-n-slash. Go back out there and fight with your new fireworks, kids!"
I just want to give you a pre-emptive thanks from the player of the rogue in my group who's about to find a neon-pink, doily-covered dagger that's much better than his current stuff and resists all attempts at de-sissifying it.
I played an abortive PbP game with him once (before he started OOTS, or just at the inception of the comic - I no longer remember precisely). It was a game of City of Spider Queen, but unfortunately the DM disappeared after a while and the game fell apart as a result. If I remember correctly, Rich was not too pleased that the DM did that (well, none of us were pleased) and the DM's departure seemed to turn him off PbP games.