Sometimes the thief finds the trap, picks the lock or fits the hidden treasure. Sometimes they fail, and when they do it is fun to describe the failure; “You find nothing” is a pretty boring result.

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Failing to Find Anything

You see nothing out of the ordinary and hear nothing but the laboured breathing of your companions and the creak of their equipment.
A slight breeze plays across your face, but you can’t make out where it comes from.
Some of the nearby shadows seem slightly deeper than they should be.
You thought you heard a whispered conversation for just a moment, but all is now quiet.
As you search the area, a shiver runs down your spine. Is someone watching you?
You suddenly feel warm, as if you had exerted yourself for some time. Perhaps it’s just the stress of the adventure?

Failing to Find a Trap

The area seems safe, but you thought you heard a faint clicking for a moment. It’s stopped now.
The ceiling looks a little odd. Perhaps it’s not built properly, but you swear it’s sloping down toward one side of the room.
Scratches on the floor show something large and heavy was dragged through here. Oddly, the marks stop roughly halfway across the floor.
In three spots, water drips from the ceiling onto the floor. None of the resultant puddles seems very large, suggesting the water is draining away somehow.
Faint growths of mould on the (floor, wall or ceiling) hint at an organised pattern of sorts unlikely to occur in nature. (The pattern could suggest a hidden portal, trapdoor, pit or a magic sigil.)
The proportions of the whole chamber look wrong. Some pieces of architecture—protrusions and niches—seem to serve no purpose whatsoever, and the ceiling looks suspiciously low.

Failing to Pick a Pocket

You slip your hand into the mark’s pocket and search for some small treasure. You cut your hand on something jagged within and suffer 1 point of damage.
You miss the mark’s pouch and instead slip your hand into his trousers (or her skirt). This—unsurprisingly—immediately alerts them to your attempt!
As you slip your hand into your mark’s pouch, they move unexpectedly. Your hand gets snagged in the pouch, and you are dragged along with them.
You successfully cut the pouch from your mark’s belt, but fail to actually catch the pouch as it falls. It clatters to the ground, immediately alerting them to your attempt.
Just as you slip your hand into the mark’s pouch they also reach into it. Embarrassingly (and potentially disastrously), you end up holding hands.
Picking pockets is hard. As you reach your hand forth you start to daydream about what you’ll lift. Sadly, this distracts you, and you miss the target instead slipping your hand into his shirt (or her dress). When you feel warm flesh beneath your hands, you realise your mistake, but it is too late…

Failing to Pick a Lock

As you carefully explore the lock’s inner mechanism, your pick snaps in half and jams the lock. You’ve now got two problems—how you’ll extract the broken pick, and (afterwards) how you’ll pick the lock!
Your hands are sweaty. As you jiggle the lock, your pick slips from your fingers and slides through the lock into the room beyond!
You slip and badly bend your pick, making it useless for future lock picking attempts.
You sneeze violently and stab yourself in the forehead with the lock pick. You take 1 point of damage.
Your lock picking makes an inordinate amount of noise as you grind your pick in the lock. Anything in the room beyond probably knows you are coming.
There is an ominous clunk from within the lock, and your pick is stuck! It seems you’ve managed to break the lock’s internal mechanism…

Credit

This is a short system-neutral extract from 20 Things #73: Failed Thievish Doings by Creighton Broadhurst.

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