glad to cheer you up.

I fear mine are a bit po-faced and 'useful' whereas Cian (and Kaladorn) have mastered the quite-believable-but-frankly-utterly-useless items down to a tee.

I have to admit I'm itching to try out the lists on actual players...

It does hark back to the very first adventure I wrote (Ashfall - the Darrian scientists on Spume) where there was a gear list that the scientists were taking on expedition.  All very serious; except for some reason there was a pair of fur-lined handcuffs.  I can't for the life of me remember why I added them.  I suppose they ought to be on the lists.

I also suppose that there ought to be some kind of mechanism for using such lists.  I mean I wouldn't expect *everything* to be in a locker.  Though I suppose it might be fun to work out exactly what capacity a ship's locker that *did* hold this lot might be.  (The colleague who gave me her cupboard list pointed out that what Jeff is asking for is a Room of Requirement in another universe...)

How about something along these lines:

The PCs as a crew can access the ship's locker up to 10 times in a week, or once each at the start of an adventure/play session and once each in the middle.  Roll d666 and live with the results.  [Or maybe the referee can fudge things if the players need help]  [although ideally such 'help' would be something that could be useful with a bit lateral thinking rather than obviously directly useful]   [1]

hmmm, not quite sure I want to be so prescriptive - but for the What's Wrong With the Ship? tables it *is* really helpful to have a framework for how often the engineer (or captain or whoever) has to roll on it.  Perhaps this is different

You want to strike a balance between it being a bit of fun with some potential application to the need at hand by players and just being abused by them.  Hence I *think* that the bigger the lists the better so they don't get predictable.

Right, really *must* go to bed.

tc

[1] This last reminds me of Andy Lilly's d66 tables for the Chirper games he runs each year to such acclaim.  (Filling three slots across the weekend with players looking for some chaotic silliness as they play very low INT chirpers who are trash collectors.)  The d66 tables are usually rolled on somewhere near the start of each session as the chirpers go about their business (and before they run into whatever the trouble du jour is).  Invariably the items really are *rubbish* (trash) but invariably a bit ingenuity during the game comes up with a way of using them to aid the chirpers in getting out of whatever trouble they're in.  Well, I say 'getting out of'.  Usually making things much worse before by some fateful twist they accidentally stumble on victory over the bad guys).  I really really hope he's writing these up to publish as a collection/series.  They're not everyone's cup of tea (two of my players, as it happens, avoid them like the plague), but as a change of pace from the more serious games over the weekend, they're an absolute delight.