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DMtool: Even more useless items

Source: '100 even less useful items' - Dragon Magazine January-2007 (By Richard Pett)


Well met Gamemaster

I bring another table from my tool kit. It is an extension to my previous DMtool post and is again from the hand of Richard Pett. I do love me some useless items especially because my players tend to run with it and such an item suddenly ends up having a story.



Players often assume monsters have no feelings (*voice from the dark "I do have feelings) and care little for items of emotional significance. Nothing is further from the truth and monsters, animals, merchants, traveller ... you name it, may have reasons why many of these

seemingly worthless items haven't been discarded - reasons that could return to haunt their new owners.


I hope this list will inspire you to create your own and share with the community.

Have fun!!


d100 Trinket

  1. Bagpipe made from a dead roper

  2. Knitted nightmare with red wool flames

  3. Bucket of horseshoes that have been cut in half

  4. Giant's coat hanger made of dire boar tusks

  5. Large model of a hill giant's stockade constructed from spent torches

  6. Pair of shields decorated with chicken motifs

  7. Unusable ten-bladed scimitar labelled "Deathreaper" on each blade in mystic runes

  8. Painting of an yrthak ridden by gnomes

  9. Eleven left boots

  10. Outrageously colourful outfit of hat, cloak, and breeches sewn with peacock feathers and labelled "Property of Ceswick the Dowdy"

  11. Sixty-eight wooden spoons painted green and numbered 12 through 80

  12. Impossibly wide-brimmed hat fitted for a small humanoid head and covered In pictures of steaming pies

  13. Quartet of cartoons depicting gnomes with their noses held aloft on stilts.

  14. Huge left boot made to resemble a house

  15. Life Sized topiary badger

  16. Two stuffed bugbears that, by the look of them, might have been used as toys by a giant child

  17. Skull set with cheap fake gemstones, labelled "swearskull" in Orc

  18. Pair of 12-foot-High knitting needles

  19. Set of shocker lizard toys

  20. Large pot of purple ink

  21. Stone helm fashioned like a hydra with the Goblin Inscription, 'To Chief Thumper XXXII, on the occasion of his fifth birthday - Roar! Roar! Roar!"

  22. Bucket of gorgon scales

  23. Collection of lewd kobold statuettes

  24. Daisy chain made of dead centipedes

  25. Glay helm

  26. Bag of bent and rusted iron spikes

  27. Huge bucket filled with dried and flattened frog

  28. Double-ended trumpet

  29. Ninety-eight clay naga miniatures

  30. Twelve broken broomsticks stuffed in a tall, pointy black hat

  31. Lute decorated with leopard fur and missing its strings

  32. Large dead constrictor snake with a gnome-shaped bulge in the middle (actually a dressmaker's dummy)

  33. Huge copper plug for a colossal sink

  34. Fur hat large enough for two small creatures to camp under

  35. Milk churn full of stuffed voles

  36. Trio of candlesticks made from mummified rats

  37. Length of bunting with the words "Welcome home, Hubert" on it

  38. Ornate, bat-themed mirror that only reflects vampires

  39. Selection of miniature toy alchemist's tools and nonmagical potions

  40. Kite made to resemble a gnome riding a badger

  41. Wicker fireguard

  42. Beaten-copper tojanida-shaped lamp stand and matching wash-basin

  43. Quartet of silhouette puppets made to look like otyughs

  44. Four jars labelled "Kobold repellent'' and filled with soap

  45. Legless tabletop painted in yellow and blue stripes.

  46. Huge book filled with pressed and dried assassin vines

  47. Pile of mummy wrappings

  48. Fake wooden pie of considerable size that smells like ale

  49. Locathah sock puppet

  50. Two-foot-long wooden baton carved at one end to resemble a tongue

  51. Chess set carved to resemble gelatinous cubes and black puddings

  52. Trio of embroidered pictures of a blue manticore in flight

  53. Giant eagle feather

  54. Dead mephit squished flat and inflated like a balloon

  55. Sack full of two-inch lengths of string

  56. Poem written on parchment which claims to reveal "the location of the Machine of Lum the Mad"

  57. Tin torch sconce in the shape of an illithid head

  58. Twenty-foot-long hunting horn

  59. Large wooden skunk

  60. Twelve black sheepskins

  61. Iron goblet carved to resemble a crow

  62. Staff with the seemingly meaningless words "Mnnmff Phatarn" carved on its sides over and over

  63. Shepherd's crook with the words "Beware Zed, Prince of Rams" carved on its crook

  64. Battle helm for a dire bear

  65. Pair of giant's socks with many sewn holes and a family of cats living inside them

  66. Jar of perfume labelled "Elixir of the Planes" - a purely fanciful name

  67. Red scarf with tassels made to look like roper tentacles

  68. Mangle with a battleaxe stuck halfway through it

  69. Twenty gravestones with spelling errors riddling the epitaphs

  70. Fake skybleeder larva made from an inflated pigskin embroidered with strips of seaweed

  71. Book of obscure heraldic symbols that incorporate unlikely devices, such as Girallon Rampant, Polar bear Passant, Gelatinous Cube Courant. ..

  72. Pit fiend scarecrow

  73. Collection of bent forks in a scroll case labelled, "Don't forget to eat"

  74. Large collection of ferret masks, ferret costumes, and ferret puppets in a ferret-shaped trunk

  75. Set of manacles for a spellweaver or similar six-armed creature

  76. Bag of dried acorns

  77. Tome titled "The Tale .. of Zord, Mightiest of the Yak Folk"

  78. Weathered chapbook of what appears to be modron poetry

  79. Huge, elaborate xorn puppet held aloft on great poles

  80. Tankard filled with lard

  81. Set of maps of duck ponds of various sizes in dangerous regions

  82. Dwarf hat stand

  83. Small set of modular steps for a halfling complete with wheels

  84. Eighty pebbles arranged by size and kept in separate bags

  85. Welcome mat with "leave or die" written in Goblin

  86. Book telling the story of Prince Rosewater, Lord of the mighty order of Celestial Kobold Paladins

  87. Pillow stuffed with hippogriff feathers

  88. Pile of stone cubes, each emblazoned with a different letter

  89. Trio of broken dungeon doors

  90. Milking stool labelled, "Property of Tom Huddle"

  91. Belaying cleat, broken section of a pier, and severed rope, all still tied together

  92. Large pile of ornate and colourful tiles bearing designs of writhing green worms

  93. What appears to be a giant mouse wheel made of cart wheels, timbers, and rope

  94. Chest full of broken swords

  95. Selection of nasty-looking clown costumes sized for gnomes

  96. Quartet of mind flayer masks

  97. Stained-glass window depicting huge, bat-mounted goblins chasing gnomes riding enormous hedgehogs

  98. Large glass jar containing a live slithering tracker (DUNGEON #143)

  99. Moveable coat hanger for a person with three heads

  100. Pantomime hellhound costume.

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