The Death Cookie

In most stories and movies, the heroes rarely go through the pockets of their fallen foes unless they've got good reason to do so--for example, if they need a weapon or ammo or they need the enemy's key card to make their escape. Thanks to D&D, however, characters in RPGs regularly heroically search through the pockets of their enemies for no other reason than "they might have something cool." On the bright side, at least the practice of rooting around in a defeated enemy's intestines for gemstones hasn't crossed over to other genres. When characters decide to desecrate the corpses of bad guys in a modern game, you can use this table. 

1. A Possible Clue
   
2. Pepper Spray
   
3. Safety Deposit Box Key
4. Prescription Drugs
   
5. Lighter
6. Cell Phone
   
7. Company ID Badge
   
8. Chap Stick
   
9. Chewing Gum
10. House or Office Key
    
11. 2d20 Dollars & 5d20 Cents
    
12. Car Keys
13. Gas or Food Receipt
14. Breath Mints
15. Pocket Knife
16. Illicit Drugs
    
17. MP3 Player
18. USB Drive
19. Gun
20. Something Incriminating
    

As anyone who remembers the old "Medical Bag" feature in Fortean Times knows, people suffer from a lot of strange and bizarre medical conditions. These can be used to crank up the quirkiness of an adventure GMC, or (for particularly brave players) even a PC. Except for conditions with obvious effects, I've provided very brief summaries here. You'll probably want to do some research on the details before using any of these in your game. Also, while many of these conditions are really weird, they are real problems that real humans suffer from, so if you need to be reminded not to be a dick, consider yourself reminded.

1. Foreign Accent Syndrome
2. Congenital Insensitivity to Pain
   
3. Hypertrichosis (aka "werewolf syndrome"--excessive body hair, including on the entire face)
4. Pica (compulsion to eat non-edible objects such as rocks, dirt, and glass)
5. Capgras Delusion (the belief that a friend or family member has been replaced by an identical imposter)
6. Alien Hand Syndrome (the belief that the actions of one of the sufferer's hands is out of his control)
7. Cotard Delusion (aka "walking corpse syndrome"--the sufferer believes himself to be dead and that his body is decaying)
8. Prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces)
9. Reduplicative Paramnesia (the belief that a place has been exactly duplicated in another location)
   
10. Jumping Frenchmen of Maine (an extremely exaggerated startle reflex)
11. Fregoli delusion (the belief that multiple people are actually all a single person who shapeshifts or wears disguises)
12. Alice In Wonderland Syndrome (a neurological disorder that causes things to appear smaller or larger than they really are)
13. Akinetopsia (motion blindness--sufferer can see stationary objects, but doesn't perceive motion)
14. Photic Sneeze Reflex (sufferer sneezes when exposed to bright light)
15. Exploding Head Syndrome (sufferer hears loud, imaginary noises that seem to come from inside his own head)
16. Congenital Erythropoietic Porphyria (hypersensitivity to light)
17. Fatal Familial Insomnia (sufferer loses the ability to fall asleep)
18. Fish Odor Syndrome (sufferer's sweat, urine, and breath have an extremely strong fishy smell)
19. Moebius Syndrome (complete facial paralysis, including the inability to close or move one's eyes)
20. Stendhal Syndrome (sufferer experiences extreme anxiety, dizziness, confusion, or even hallucination when he sees beautiful works of art) 

A lot of games deal with strange phenomena, but even games that take place in a completely rational world can benefit from the occasional reference to strangeness. Weird happenings (and the inevitable stories about them) can provide local flavor, give an eccentric GMC something to rant about, or can serve as a cover for the bad guys (and they would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those pesky PCs).

1. Time Slip
   
2. Alien Abduction
   
3. Haunting/Poltergeist Activity
4. Mass Delusion/Panic
   
5. Strange Disappearance
   
6. Ostension of an Urban Legend
   
7. Religious Experience (stigmata, miracle, Jesus appears on a taco)
8. Out-of-Place Animal
   
9. Crop Circles
10. Cult Activity
11. Conspiracy Theory
12. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
    
13. Biological/Medical Anomaly
14. Man With No Name (amnesiac, feral child)
    
15. Spontaneous Human Combustion
    
16. Anomalous Archaeological Find
17. Strange Things Fall From The Sky (frogs, fish, blood)
    
18. Cryptid Sighting (bigfoot, lake monster, chupacabra)
19. Fringe Science (cold fusion, time travel, orgone)
    
20. Wild Talents (ESP, telekinesis, clairvoyance)

Editor's Note: Since the recent Hex contribution to the Drivethru newsletter has (inadvertently) sparked a discussion of things like intolerance and whether attitudes and ideas that are unacceptable in the real world are equally unacceptable in fiction, this seems like a good time to re-post the following article from way back in the early days of the Death Cookie (1999-ish), which deals with similar themes.  

The AD&D game (as well as a few others--especially those of the fantasy genre) has some very frightening subtext. The basic pretext of the game (at least early on) is to go out and kill "evil" monsters. This is all well and good. Killing evil unnatural beasties is a long-standing tradition in mythology and fairy tales. This works fine when there are plenty of demons, golems, and other nasties to fight. However, when the critters start talking and exhibiting intelligence, things get a little scary.