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PLUNDER!<ref>Followed by [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1195 ''Loot'', ''Treasure'', ''Money'', ''Riches'', ''Gold'', ''Lucre'', ''Boodle'', ''Booty'', ''Dough'', ''Graft'', ''Goods'', ''Items'', ''Moolah'', ''Pillage'', ''Prizes'', ''Spoils'', ''Swag'', ''Bling'']</ref>
Yes, indeed even our heroes need something to satisfy their sense of mischief and avarice. They need to take joy in depriving their foes. For our heroes make money the old fashioned way: they [[Moral Dissonance|steal]]- wait- ''plunder'' it. When done by soldiers in a war, this is sometimes called "Spoils of War"<ref>
Within games, it is like [[Experience Points]] (and commonly both used, as well) - a reward from defeating your enemies. The difference may be generally more less certainty in what you may get from your enemies where with [[Experience Points]], it is generally clearly aligned by certain parameters.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Merry Brandybuck: "One thing you have not come by in your travels is brighter wits" (explaining why he and Pippin are feasting amid the ruins of Isengard in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'').
** In [[The Hobbit]] Bilbo is promised this. As it belonged to the Dwarves in the first place, it was kind of ''Re''-
* ''[[Horatio Hornblower]]'', although Hornblower never gets as much of this as he likes because he is too busy fighting the war to turn aside to trifles like prize-money. Almost every time he does get any, something keeps him from profiting.
* Jack Aubrey of the ''[[Aubrey-Maturin]]'' series is more fortunate in the matter of prize money; when he has money problems, they tend to come from unfortunate investments on land.
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** Sharpe actually gets into trouble in one book because some of the items he and his men took technically did not qualify as legitimate military plunder under the conventions of the time. For political reasons the army cannot just tell the lawyers to go to hell so he is sent to an out of the way output till the matter blows over.
* One of Rudyard Kipling's "soldier" poems, ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Loot]]'' deals with this:
{{quote|Now remember when you're 'ackin' round a gilded [[Did Not Do the Research|Burma god]]
That 'is eyes is very often precious stones... }}
* Flashman's attempts to have a chapter on [[Unusual Euphemism|foraging and decorating]] included in the British Army Manual get nowhere.
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* In the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' book ''The Crippled God'' a character alarmingly notices that the common soldiers in the Bonehunters army stopped caring about plunder. This signifies that the [[Badass Army]] is turning fanatical in their purpose.
* ''Citadel'' (AKA ''Run Between the Raindrops'') by [[Dale Dye]]. During the battle of Hue the protagonist (a combat reporter) goes to a camera store to find a Marine smashing up a box camera and complaining that the others stole all the good expensive Japanese cameras. The aghast protagonist points out he just smashed up a Hasselblad worth over a thousand dollars. In another scene some high-ranking US and Vietnamese officers complain that the Marines stole money from a bank vault and demand a court martial of those responsible. The Marine CO, who's got more sympathy for his men than these people, retrieves the money and claims they 'found' it. The Vietnamese officers promptly divide up the cash among themselves.
*While in [[Belisarius Series]] the title character always keeps enough discipline to make sure his men leave civilians alone, he tends to end every campaign with enough legitimate loot(from the enemy army camp that is)for every soldier to retire with a good stake-and tell everyone what a great deal signing on with Belisarius is.
**Toward the end of the series evesdroping Malwa fall into despair on overhearing two Roman woman discussing which room in a Malwa prince's captured palace they wish to billet in.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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* In Chaosium's early ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' adventures the investigators could almost always find some kind of valuable treasure among the Cthulhu Mythos menace's belongings. It's not clear whether this was unconsciously based on ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' type games or a practical decision due to the investigators' need for money to carry on their work.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' adventures usually have this trope as well. Even if Mr. Johnson stiffs them on their pay and dead enemies have no money, PCs can at least loot and fence the enemies' equipment.
* Most [[RPG
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* British Diplomat Harold Nicholson once grumbled that American soldiers marching through a town was an unusual nuisance-because according to him they had enough well educated people with them to know what was worth stealing.
* The so-called [[wikipedia:Monuments Men|Monuments Men]] in [[World War Two]] were former academics and curators authorised to protect cultural works of art in the path of the Allied armies; they ended up tracking down and preserving many works of art stolen on an organised basis by the Nazi regime.
**Interestingly the reverse decision was made about French collections acquired in a similar manner during the Napoleonic Wars. It was decided to leave them in France both because of the political reason of making a comparatively cheap facesaver and the aesthetic reason of fear of damage during travel.
* The US [[The Big Red One|first infantry division]] actually converted itself into a motorized division this way in France. During the German retreat they captured and hot-wired enough German vehicles-and probably stole some from the civilians too but we won't talk about that-that they could carry the entire force.
* When the Swedish army retreated from Norway after King Charles XII was shot thousands of them froze to death. The local Saami who found the bodies were not late to "re-distribute" the stuff they could find. However, this being the early 1700s and the Saami having little use for the fancy sleds (that some officers rode (and died) in) or cannon one of the most popular items to "aquire" was the soldiers' wigs. Appearantly they were really warm and the Saami used them as insulation under their fur hats.
* When the French Army began the [[Nightmare Fuel|infamous]] [[Napoleon Bonaparte|retreat from Moscow]] they came back with goods from palaces and rich homes around Moscow. They were so confident that they budgeted this into their cargo load [[Tempting Fate|at the expense of combat and survival equipment]]. This decision(or decisions by a large number of individual soldiers) had [[Understatement|somewhat disadvantageous effects.]]
* In sort of a combination of this and [[Creepy Souvenir]] after the [[Napoleonic Wars]] dentures were called,"Waterloo Teeth", because when there was nothing else to strip from a corpse they would take its teeth (hopefully it was dead first). Disgusting as the idea was it was practical as they were real teeth and the teeth of young men, so possibly healthier (especially if the scavenger got to an officer's corpse before it was rescued).
{{reflist}}
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