[D&D] Assorted Monsters and Treasures

Back in the 70s, before D&D became Advanced, TSR hadn't caught on to the idea of pre-written adventure modules yet. Instead, they released several "toolbox" accessories - a few sets of "geomorphic" maps (little map-sections that could be combined in a large variety of ways) for both dungeons and towns, and three sets of pre-rolled monsters and treasures, covering dungeon levels 1-9. The former are interesting in their own right, both because the style of the maps shows an earlier conception of dungeons as intricate maze-like spaces that had already fallen out of fashion before the turn of the next decade, and because each of the sets included a few colorful sample encounters that seemed to provide a taste of what play was like in Greyhawk Castle. Maybe someday I'll talk more about those here (even though they fall outside of my primary focus on 80s-era D&D), but for the time being I'm focused on the latter product - the three Monster and Treasure Assortments released by TSR in 1977 (sets 1-2) and 78 (set 3), right on the cusp between Original and Advanced D&D.

To be honest, there's really not much to these products. Each of them was a set of 8 cardstock sheets, three-hole punched, unbound, that included 100 pre-rolled monster encounters and 100 pre-rolled treasures for each of three dungeon levels (set one had levels 1-3, set two levels 4-6, and set three levels 7-9). There's a bit of historical curiosity because they (the first two sets, anyway)  were released before the AD&D Monster Manual so they give full stats for various animal types that were mentioned but not detailed in the original rules, some of which are different than the AD&D versions, and also because they include a bunch of creatures that were probably mysterious to the audience at the time - not only monsters from the various D&D supplements, but also various creatures that appeared in The Strategic Review (TSR's house-organ newsletter that later evolved into Dragon magazine) and even the super-limited distribution Lost Caverns of Tsojconth tournament dungeon written by Gary Gygax but published by the Metro Detroit Gamers.

However, they're fun to me, like all of the Original D&D stuff - the geomorphic sets, the early magazines, and third party products from the likes of Wee Warriors and Judges Guild - because they're a glimpse into an era that had already long since disappeared by the time I started playing D&D in 1984. This was the era of the "funhouse dungeon" where randomness was not just accepted but expected, and the game seems to have been treated much close to something like a traditional wargame than what it eventually became, with more of a focus on worldbuilding and storytelling and things that tried to make sense. These products offer some of the few published glimpses we get (outside of the rulebooks themselves) of the era when D&D was just about the referee (the term "dungeon master" hadn't been coined yet) drawing a map of a maze, filling it with monsters, traps, and treasures, and a group of adventurers going in to explore it and get rich or die trying. It didn't matter how the monsters got there or why they didn't eat each other or where the treasure came from, it was all just accepted as the premise of the game. And in that context, lists of 100 random monsters and 100 random treasures make sense. Combined with the geomorphic maps, it's almost everything you need (the individual referee had only to supply his or her own tricks and traps).

So I've always kind of liked looking over ands studying these things, and trying to figure out how they were made and if there are any interesting hidden patterns, any lessons that other DMs could learn about what TSR c. 1977 saw as being appropriate challenge-levels and treasure rewards for characters of various levels (remembering that in the early conception of the game dungeon level was supposed to be equivalent to character level - so 4th level characters were balanced against the challenges and rewards on dungeon level 4, and so on).

Gary Gygax's son Ernie says that he rolled up everything in these products from tables as an after-school project, which is believable - the results certainly seem random - but also intriguing (at least to me) because they're definitely not the product of any published tables. A dozen or so years back I did an exhaustive listing of all the monsters for all nine levels, noting on which levels and in what quantities by level each of them appeared. The results seem fairly close to what you'd see from the Random Encounter Tables in the back of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (though not exactly, since those tables include "new" monsters introduced in the AD&D Monster Manual that weren't present here) which makes it likely that Gary had given his son an early draft version of those tables to work from. The most interesting takeaway is how the number of monsters of each type changes depending on which level they're encountered on - a single "overpowered" monster may appear on one level, a small group (say 1-4 or 1-6) on a lower level, and a large group (say 2-20) on a much lower level. Even deep in the dungeon monsters like orcs and giant rats still show up on the lists, but in groups of 5-50 or 6-60. All of that data is preserved at the Knights and Knaves Alehouse message-board if anyone's interested in taking a look.

At the time I never got around to doing a similar analysis of the treasures lists, which is what brings me here now. One thing that's immediately clear is that the lists are not based on the guidelines for random treasure hoards in D&D Volume III. In searching to see if I could find anything else they might have been drawn from, I came across the Solo Dungeon Adventuring rules published in issue #1 of The Strategic Review (and later reprinted as Appendix A of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide). The way that table produced treasures of a single type (i.e. one type of coins, or gems, or jewels, or a magic item, but not mixed together) and the proportions between them - the low value coins the most common, higher value stuff less common - looked similar. And, lo and behold, at least for the first three levels when I tallied up and compared them the results were really similar (not exact, but that's because Ernie was presumably actually rolling the dice each time rather than just using the statistical values). So this was almost certainly the table Ernie used. However, on the later levels some anomalies appeared - magic items became way more common than the table would allow (3%), and mixed hoards of coins start appearing on the lower levels. Plus, while that table gives a fixed number of coins per level - 1000 CP or SP, 750 EP, etc. - these tables showed more variation (but, notably, only within the last thousand - i.e. instead of 4,000 SP on dungeon level 4, you see anywhere from 3,100-4,200). These latter values may have just been chosen to provide an illusion of variety, but since they generally seem to align to dice-ranges, I suspect they may also have been rolled.

So, taking all of that together, I've reverse engineered what seems to be a fairly close recreation of the tables that were used to generate these treasure lists. There are some anomalies on the lists - some that appear to have been the result of transcription errors (5,200 where it should probably be 2,500, etc.) others that may have just been inserted arbitrarily (perhaps as some kind of obscure inside joke reference?). But 90% or more of the results fall within these ranges. Whether viewed as nothing more than an historical semi-curiosity, or used as a tool by DMs who want to generate random treasures of their own in line with what TSR c. 1977 felt were "best practices," here it is:

Step One - Magic:

5% chance per level the treasure is a magic item, up to a maximum 25% at levels 5 and higher.

Step Two - Non-magic treasures type:

If the roll in step one does not indicate the treasures is a magic item, roll d% on the following table to determine treasure type:

01-25 Copper Pieces (Combined Hoard on levels 6 and higher)
26-50 Silver Pieces
51-65 Electrum Pieces
66-80 Gold Pieces
81-90 Platinum Pieces
91-96 Gems
97-00 Jewelry

Step Three - Treasure quantity:

Level One
Copper - 1d12x100
Silver - 1d12x100
Electrum - 3d6x50
Gold - 1d10x50
Platinum - 2d6x10
Gems - 1d4
Jewelry - 1
Magic - 1

Level Two
Copper - 1d24x100 (i.e. 1d12+"control die" for +0 or +12)
Silver - 1d24x100
Electrum - 300 + 3d6x50
Gold - 200 + 1d10x50
Platinum - 1d6x50
Gems - 2d4
Jewelry - 1d3
Magic - 1

Level Three
Copper - 2,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 2,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 500 + 3d6x50
Gold - 500 + 1d8x50
Platinum - 200 + 1d4x50
Gems - 3d4
Jewelry - 1d3
Magic - 1 (25% of potions are two potions of same type)

Level Four
Copper - 3,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 3,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 1,000 + 3d6x50
Gold - 500 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 200 + 1d6x50
Gems - 4d4
Jewelry - 1d4
Magic - 1d2*

Level Five
Copper - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 2,000 + 1d6x100
Gold - 1,000 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 300 + 1d4x50
Gems - 5d4
Jewelry - 1d6
Magic - 1d2*

Level Six
Copper - 6,000 + 1d12x100
Silver - 6,000 + 1d12x100
Electrum - 3,000 + 1d6x100
Gold - 1,500 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 350 + 1d4x50
Gems - 6d4
Jewelry - 1d6
Magic - 1d3*
Combined Hoard - Copper and Silver

Level Seven
Copper - 7,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 6,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 4,000 + 1d8x100
Gold - 2,000 + 1d6x100
Platinum - 400 + 1d4x50
Gems - 7d4
Jewelry - 1d8
Magic - 1d4*
Combined Hoard - Copper, Silver, and Electrum

Level Eight
Copper - 8,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 7,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 5,000 + 1d12x100
Gold - 3,000 + 1d8x100
Platinum - 500 + 1d4x50
Gems - 8d4
Jewelry - 1d8
Magic - 1d4 (50% of potions are two potions of same type)
Combined Hoard - Copper, Silver, Electrum, and Gold

Level Nine
Copper - 9,000 + 1d10x100
Silver - 8,000 + 1d10x100
Electrum - 6,000 + 1d10x100
Gold - 4,000 + 1d8x100
Platinum - 600 + 1d4x50
Gems - 9d4
Jewelry - 1d10
Magic - 1d6*
Combined Hoard - All coin types

*If a treasure includes two potions, 50% likely the second potion is of the same type as the first; if three or more potions are included, the third and subsequent are rolled normally for type