Dungeon Dressing: Looting the Bodies
Few things are worse than a character showing interest in a throw-away monster. Perhaps, the heroes have entered a dungeon, butchered its denizens and now loot their enemies’ still-warm corpses. Use these lists to fill their enemies’ pockets with interesting but essentially worthless things.
You can download this material for free as a .pdf and .txt file by hitting the button at the bottom of this post. You do not need to give us your email or set up an account.
If you enjoy this article, sign up to the Sunday Supplement—our weekly newsletter—so you don’t miss any other free GM's Resources!
Shiny Treasures
A large, intricately etched brass button, clearly from a voluminous article of clothing.
A heavily scratched glass prism; in just the right light, it refracts light into tiny, jagged rainbows.
A beautifully tied bow has been ripped from the rest of its lacy ribbon.
A pair of small ceramic figures depicts a bride and groom; the bottom of the figures shows gnaw marks.
A soapstone sculpture of a human hand, with its little finger missing.
A steel palm-sized cog, heavily charred as though by an extraordinary fire or explosion.
A pewter medal awarded to veteran soldiers of a neighbouring kingdom.
Five feet of green satin ribbon, covered in spots of dried blood.
A steel spur in remarkably good shape, despite having been removed from its boot.
A whetstone with a hole drilled through its centre as if to sharpen the edges of a round weapon.
A small pair of finely made scissors, though the edges are dull.
A gold-plated spoon shows its underlying iron through a variety of scratches.
An inkwell with a stopper yet contains a small amount of still-good blue ink.
A small leather bag filled with marbles, including a larger cat’s eye shooter.
A miniature doll, or maybe an effigy, made from bound straw and twine.
A spool of fine crimson thread tangled on a wooden bobbin. The thread is nine-foot long.
An immaculately preserved violet eye, most likely from an elf, in a tiny jar.
A loose thread has a variety of multi-coloured buttons sorted from largest to smallest sowed onto it.
A tiny painting of a beautiful woman, seemingly taken from a locket.
A small, leering face cast in brass, most likely once served as part of a charm bracelet. The face depicts a three-mouthed, three-eyed toad.
Utterly Worthless
A piece of string slightly too short to make an effective bootlace, even for a halfling.
A dried-out dead snake wrapped carefully around a gnarled branch.
A crude effigy comprising a lump of coal with two buttons glued on for eyes and floppy green leaves attached as ears.
A copper coin melted almost beyond recognition.
A crumpled piece of paper with a song written on it; currently, it is wrapped around a fish skeleton.
A well-worn copper key; its teeth have been crudely filed to the point where it will never fit its original lock.
A small potato has had a leering face carved into it.
A disturbingly soiled handkerchief, the colours splattered on it seem too vibrant to have come from a living person.
A shred of bright blue fabric splattered with a dark crimson liquid.
A dull table knife bent in three different places as if it crumpled against thick armour.
The left arm and head of a doll; one of its button eyes is missing.
A potato serves as a pin cushion to collect bent pins and needles.
This rolled-up piece of parchment is a half-scribed scroll of fireball.
A folded-up napkin contains shards of chalk.
A collection of rusted, imbalanced arrowheads, each with a letter of the alphabet scraped into it.
A half-eaten left shoe sized for a human soaked in brine and stuffed in a cloudy jar.
A severed finger bearing a tan line where a ring has been recently removed.
A ripped dog collar bearing a wooden tag with the name Bruiser clearly engraved on it.
A short tuft of red hair, seemingly sheared from a halfling’s foot.
A piece of fabric that may have once been part of a tapestry but now is simply full of pinholes where the thread would once have been stitched.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing. The book is available in 5e, OSR, System Neutral and Pathfinder 1 editions.
Get the Free Download
Download this post by hitting the button below—you’ll get a zip file containing a lightweight one-page PDF and a superlight text file for your digital GM’s folder or virtual tabletop (VTT).
If you’ve found this resource useful, please let me know by leaving a comment. And also leave a comment if you have a suggestion to make this kind of post better.
Related Supplements
