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
Bagpipe made from a dead roper
Knitted nightmare with red wool flames
Bucket of horseshoes that have been cut in half
Giant's coat hanger made of dire boar tusks
Large model of a hill giant's stockade constructed from spent torches
Pair of shields decorated with chicken motifs
Unusable ten-bladed scimitar labelled "Deathreaper" on each blade in mystic runes
Painting of an yrthak ridden by gnomes
Eleven left boots
Outrageously colourful outfit of hat, cloak, and breeches sewn with peacock feathers and labelled "Property of Ceswick the Dowdy"
Sixty-eight wooden spoons painted green and numbered 12 through 80
Impossibly wide-brimmed hat fitted for a small humanoid head and covered In pictures of steaming pies
Quartet of cartoons depicting gnomes with their noses held aloft on stilts.
Huge left boot made to resemble a house
Life Sized topiary badger
Two stuffed bugbears that, by the look of them, might have been used as toys by a giant child
Skull set with cheap fake gemstones, labelled "swearskull" in Orc
Pair of 12-foot-High knitting needles
Set of shocker lizard toys
Large pot of purple ink
Stone helm fashioned like a hydra with the Goblin Inscription, 'To Chief Thumper XXXII, on the occasion of his fifth birthday - Roar! Roar! Roar!"
Bucket of gorgon scales
Collection of lewd kobold statuettes
Daisy chain made of dead centipedes
Glay helm
Bag of bent and rusted iron spikes
Huge bucket filled with dried and flattened frog
Double-ended trumpet
Ninety-eight clay naga miniatures
Twelve broken broomsticks stuffed in a tall, pointy black hat
Lute decorated with leopard fur and missing its strings
Large dead constrictor snake with a gnome-shaped bulge in the middle (actually a dressmaker's dummy)
Huge copper plug for a colossal sink
Fur hat large enough for two small creatures to camp under
Milk churn full of stuffed voles
Trio of candlesticks made from mummified rats
Length of bunting with the words "Welcome home, Hubert" on it
Ornate, bat-themed mirror that only reflects vampires
Selection of miniature toy alchemist's tools and nonmagical potions
Kite made to resemble a gnome riding a badger
Wicker fireguard
Beaten-copper tojanida-shaped lamp stand and matching wash-basin
Quartet of silhouette puppets made to look like otyughs
Four jars labelled "Kobold repellent'' and filled with soap
Legless tabletop painted in yellow and blue stripes.
Huge book filled with pressed and dried assassin vines
Pile of mummy wrappings
Fake wooden pie of considerable size that smells like ale
Locathah sock puppet
Two-foot-long wooden baton carved at one end to resemble a tongue
Chess set carved to resemble gelatinous cubes and black puddings
Trio of embroidered pictures of a blue manticore in flight
Giant eagle feather
Dead mephit squished flat and inflated like a balloon
Sack full of two-inch lengths of string
Poem written on parchment which claims to reveal "the location of the Machine of Lum the Mad"
Tin torch sconce in the shape of an illithid head
Twenty-foot-long hunting horn
Large wooden skunk
Twelve black sheepskins
Iron goblet carved to resemble a crow
Staff with the seemingly meaningless words "Mnnmff Phatarn" carved on its sides over and over
Shepherd's crook with the words "Beware Zed, Prince of Rams" carved on its crook
Battle helm for a dire bear
Pair of giant's socks with many sewn holes and a family of cats living inside them
Jar of perfume labelled "Elixir of the Planes" - a purely fanciful name
Red scarf with tassels made to look like roper tentacles
Mangle with a battleaxe stuck halfway through it
Twenty gravestones with spelling errors riddling the epitaphs
Fake skybleeder larva made from an inflated pigskin embroidered with strips of seaweed
Book of obscure heraldic symbols that incorporate unlikely devices, such as Girallon Rampant, Polar bear Passant, Gelatinous Cube Courant. ..
Pit fiend scarecrow
Collection of bent forks in a scroll case labelled, "Don't forget to eat"
Large collection of ferret masks, ferret costumes, and ferret puppets in a ferret-shaped trunk
Set of manacles for a spellweaver or similar six-armed creature
Bag of dried acorns
Tome titled "The Tale .. of Zord, Mightiest of the Yak Folk"
Weathered chapbook of what appears to be modron poetry
Huge, elaborate xorn puppet held aloft on great poles
Tankard filled with lard
Set of maps of duck ponds of various sizes in dangerous regions
Dwarf hat stand
Small set of modular steps for a halfling complete with wheels
Eighty pebbles arranged by size and kept in separate bags
Welcome mat with "leave or die" written in Goblin
Book telling the story of Prince Rosewater, Lord of the mighty order of Celestial Kobold Paladins
Pillow stuffed with hippogriff feathers
Pile of stone cubes, each emblazoned with a different letter
Trio of broken dungeon doors
Milking stool labelled, "Property of Tom Huddle"
Belaying cleat, broken section of a pier, and severed rope, all still tied together
Large pile of ornate and colourful tiles bearing designs of writhing green worms
What appears to be a giant mouse wheel made of cart wheels, timbers, and rope
Chest full of broken swords
Selection of nasty-looking clown costumes sized for gnomes
Quartet of mind flayer masks
Stained-glass window depicting huge, bat-mounted goblins chasing gnomes riding enormous hedgehogs
Large glass jar containing a live slithering tracker (DUNGEON #143)
Moveable coat hanger for a person with three heads
Pantomime hellhound costume.
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