Monday, November 17, 2008

Two Quick & Dirty Tables

Adventurers share a common trait with rats, mice, and ants: they get into everything. This tendency often forces the referee to quickly determine what the party discovers when rooting through the set dressings of the dungeon in search of loot. Most times, this is not a problem for a referee on his or her toes. They can quickly rattle off a few items with the caveat that they are “worthless/ruined/of no practical use”. But sometimes inspiration fails the referee, and the answer the players receive is “you find nothing.”

Having run into this situation myself over the years, I sometimes like to prepare a few quick & dirty tables to randomly roll on for the next time the adventurers are poking around off the beaten treasure trail. Below are two of those tables, one for when the party starts searching through kitchen cupboards or pantries, the other for crates in a warehouse or storeroom associated with smugglers and thieves. The purpose of posting these is two-fold. On one hand, I’m hoping that these might be of use to another harried referee in need of quick answers. On the other hand, I’m still locked in vicious hand-to-hand combat with using tables in Blogger. I’ve gotten a bit better at it, thanks to some helpful suggestions from you folks, but I’m not 100% satisfied. Considering I’d like to use tables with a few projects I have planned for the future, I figured I better get in some more practice with them. Please excuse the mess in the event that I’m still encountering difficulty with them.

Random Pantry/Kitchen Table

D20 Roll

Item Found

1

Horseradish

2

Flour

3

Orange Cookies

4

Turkey Jerky

5

Jars of Tea

6

Olive Oil

7

Lemon Peel

8

Pickled Herring

9

Cinnamon

10

Hummus and Pita Bread

11

Mint Leaves

12

Hardtack

13

Mouse Droppings

14

Hard Candies

15

Dried Peas

16

Pistachio Nuts

17

Coffee Beans

18

Jar of Jelly

19

Salt

20

Sugar


The following table was originally created for an adventure involving a smuggling cartel, but it would work for any warehouse with connections to the thieves guild or gangs.

Random Crate Table (Crime Syndicate)

D20 Roll

Item Found

1

Carved Wooden Stools (2d4) packed in straw – worth 2 sp each

2

Saddle and harness, tooled leather – worth 100 gp

3

Statuette of medusa, carved from marble – 145 lbs. weight, worth 140 gp

4

Copperware (2d6 pieces: bowls, trays, pots, tea service, etc.) – worth 5 gp each

5

Furs and skins (1d12) wrapped and bundled – d20 x 10 gp each

6

2d10 5 lbs. bags of seeds – edible, planting, etc.

7

Five turbans, each in a different color and set with non-precious stones

8

Bronze sundial – 25 gp

9

10 gnomish firefly lanterns – missing fireflies, worth 9 sp each

10

15 lounging robes, assorted sizes – worth 5-8 gp each

11

Glass jugs (1d10) packed in straw

12

Human corpse, wrapped in linen for burial

13

Ceramic tiles, glazed and painted with colorful designs (1d4 x 100) – worth 2 cp each

14

Four small bales of narcotic resin sealed in wax – worth 100 gp each

15

Stuffed moose head, mounted on walnut plaque

16

Velvet-lined box holding a crystal sphere that glows a bright lavender

17

A longsword with obsidian blade and a plain brass scabbard

18

Thief-warded lace window curtains (protects window with alarm spell) – 1d10 sets

19

Rocking horse in the shape of a sea horse – 5 gp

20

5’ tall wall mirror, oval – 25 gp

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You realize we have to take that moose head.

Michael Curtis said...

I think there's been a stuffed moose head in just about every campaign I've ever run, no matter what the game system.

Kind of like scarecrows with Tim Burton...

Scott Clark said...

One of the few times I got to be a DM, I had a fighter and a thief scouring a small port city that I had drawn up. Somehow they ended up searching the trading hall one night. If they had found one more package of dried fish, I think they might have thrown me out the fifth-floor window. :-)