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| A High Wennish woodcut depicting an Ald among Old Wenfolk |
A looted item is a question.
"What is this for? Why did this person have this? How did they acquire it?"
Players will naturally think these questions upon discovering an item. So, items are an effective tool in getting your players to naturally engage with a world and formulate their own opinions and theories about it. This is always preferred to walls of text, exposition or nondiegetic DM authorial asides. Because of this I have created some lists for what can be found in the pockets of four different cultures of people that can be found in a region of the otherwise unnamed; Beneath Foreign Planets setting called The Querns. The theory is this; by creating thought-out, culturally specific what's in my pocket? or 'I loot the body' tables, players will become more familiar with the material culture of each group of people and, to some extent, employ anthropological thinking about that culture. To enforce that feeling I won't be telling you anything about the cultures presented in the lists.
Books, pamphlets, letters and the like can provide local, regional or world rumours. Maps provide hooks. Cult paraphernalia can lead to dungeons and conspiracies.
The tables can be used as with a d6 and a d20 or with a d120 (which is done using a d12 and a d10) or by asking players to all separately roll a d20 and assigning each player to one of the sub-tables. This last method is the most useful when the party is doing mass looting. Roll as many d20s as corpses being looted and cycle through the tables, one after another, one die at a time. The tables are useful for staring items and pickpocketing also.