We've all been there: You're just trying to move on from the recent encounter, direct the PCs somewhere interesting. Meanwhile, your players are trying to strip the set dressing for all the valuables. Just really trying to dig in like the local meth users after the junkyard's catalytic converters.*
"I LOOT THE BODY"
"What's he carrying?"
"Do I get his stuff?"
"I'm writing down that I got his stuff"
"So I got his stuff, what about the next guy's stuff?"
God, shut UP, Brandon. Give me time to light a cigarette, you degenerate swine. Finish your beer and let me think. I love them, I do. They're just bad.
I digress.
The Lootgrinder
In order to stop my players from attempting to search the walls for copper, I've adapted a standard Meatgrinder table of use with Random Loot. The basic idea looks like this:
On it, you've got a few different categories that largely speak for themselves. Resources are consumables used to continue exploring the dungeon. Curiosities are not exactly treasure, but random artifacts of the life you just snuffed out. And Treasures are valuables the creature had on it; not major magical artifacts, just valuable things it might have on it. Preferably each Lootgrinder is customized to an area, just like a Meatgrinder.
PCs slay the creature, you draw a card before they can over open their greedy gobs, and tell them what they find. Easy as. Honestly, a Loot table tied to the Minor Arcana so the players can do the work themselves would be ideal, but the chance to finish such a task has not presented itself yet.
As way of example, here's a table meant for someone you might find in a human settlement. It's a bit bigger, because I've been Overloading my personal tables lately, but it gets the point across.
*I don't know who needs to hear this, but data centers are swollen with precious metals
