Updated Dungeon Fantasy Naturalism

This is an update to an update, with a new list that updates an old one. Getting all this so far? I've added monsters GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 14: Psi (because I just plum forgot the first time) and Hall of Judgment (because it wasn't yet out). See the earlier posts for stuff this post won't cover.

More little guys

I took another look at the small Mundane humanoids to try to get them to 4d×10 since that’s the same average as 2d×20, then found that I was cutting their numbers short. Heh. Either I was going with 4d×15, which had my preferred die spread, or 2d×30, which is easier to multiply in your head. I went with the latter.

Leaders

I just took bunch of monsters from the Monster Manual and checked to see how frequent their leaders show up. It turns out that about 1-in-17, on average are somehow tougher than the average humanoid. For the humans I used (Cavemen, Tribesmen, Nomads), it was much more often, about 1-in-13; for demi-humans (Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings), it was about 1-in-30.

Truthfully, I'd just call the whole matter as 1-in-20 being the lowest level of leaders. In GURPS terms, this means giving +1 to ST/DX/HT, +2 to skills based on those attributes (which includes the attribute increase), and +1 to skills based on other attributes. The next level up of leader-types happen about 1-in-40 (1-in-42, to be precise), so give half the number of the first leader types +2 ST/DX/HT, +4 to all skills based on them, +1 to IQ, and +2 to skills based on it (including its sub-attributes of Will and Per). Then half again, and again until you get to one.

So, a tribe of 240 orcs (or orc combatants) would have 12 leaders of the first level, 6 of the second, 3 of the third, and 1 of the fourth. The last one is the big chief. He (or she) +8 to all his physical skills and +4 to physical attributes, and +4 to mental skills and +2 to IQ.

Spellcasters come up at about 1-in-36 among the few that had them listed; I'd just say there's as many spellcasters as second-level of leaders, or 1-in-40. I didn't differentiate between clerics and magic-abusers; call it 50/50. Have them as often as lower-level leaders for races with racial Magery, like elves. Their IQ and Magery or Power Investiture go up at the same rate as the physical stats of the leaders, while their physical stats go up at the rate of the mental stats of the leaders. Likewise, their rates of mental skill increase and physical increase are swapped. Have Energy Reserve go up like a mental skill, so 2 every level.

(I check the AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual to see how it meted out spellcasters for humanoids, and orcs are 1 in 100, goblins are “rare,” “may be one or more” with a tribe for kobolds, none listed for gnolls and hobgoblins. Bo-ring.)

Thus, the tribe of 240 orcs will have 6 of the lowest level of spellcasters (who still get +1 to IQ and Magery, and Energy Reserve 2), 3 of the next level, and 1 of the third. She (or he) of the third level has +3 to IQ, Magery or Power Investiture 3, Energy Reserve 6, +6 to mental skills, +1 to ST/DX/HT, and +3 to physical skills.

Non-combatants

Now, for the other part of Gygaxian naturalism that shows up in number appearing, non-combatants.

Have a number of “females” equal to the number of “males.” Let's try this again. Have another of non-combatant adults equal to the number of combatant adults. Some women will fight, and there will be some crippled and elderly men among the non-fighters. Anyways, there's some variation in the Monster Manual, but I'd leave that aside. A human-like species will have human-like distributions of the sexes, which means 50/50. If they’re not human-like, then all the adults fight or get an ad hoc treatment for sexual dimorphism. Seems easiest.

For children, however, I can see some variation. For settled humans, yeah, about a third of them will be children, so set them equal to the number of combatants. Hunter/gatherer societies have fewer children since they need to move often, so they will have half of that. (Gygax, incidentally, gets this right. Tribesmen, who are somewhat settled, have children at 100% of males, while Cavemen, who are not, have children at 50% of males.) If they're bigger than humans, halve this again. Longer-lived races will have even fewer children. The exact ratio would be up to the GM. I'd halve the numbers for those who live a bit longer, like Halflings (they're 60% in AD&D; also, their lower rate of children implies wealth), and quarter it for much longer, like Dwarves and Gnomes (which matches AD&D). Elves, who are nearly undying, are at 5% in AD&D, which works as well as anything.

Treasure strategies

Something with this release that I'm blatantly ripping off from Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) is how monster gets its treasure. Basically, it gives three strategies for how monsters get treasure.

The first is Incidentals. These monsters don't use money or see the worth of it, but do like shiny things. They might have a little money or trade goods that fell from their victims, but most of their hoard's worth is in things that caught their eye (or however they see), like gems and jewelry. The magic items they have may or may not be handy to the monster; they do not try to find items, so whatever they have is random.

The second is Hoarders. Hoarders also like shiny things, but will also try to get money and trade goods. They're the monsters most likely to have gold. Still, most of their hoards' worth will be in high-impact shiny things, and they often ignore low-worth, high-weight items like copper farthings. The magic items they have are also often high-worth and low-weight, like scrolls and potions.

The third is Raiders. Of the three types, Raiders are the ones who have economies, though some Hoarders do as well. As such, they have lots of low-worth/high-weight items like copper and trade goods, but not much in the way of shiny things. Raiders, unlike most other monsters, also have pocket change. Much like Hoarders, Raiders like magic items that are useful to them, especially potions and armaments.

For a few monsters, like Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings, I made a mixed type that is mostly Hoarder, but has the magic item distribution and pocket change of Raiders. They like their shiny, but do seek to get magic items they can use to whack others in the head. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that dwarves would go for scrolls over weapons, hence the need.

How I assigned them:

Construct, Elemental: No treasure for you!
Animal, Dire Animal, Giant Animal, Hybrid, Plant, Slime: Incidental.
Demon, Divine Servitor, Elder Thing, Faerie: Hoarder.
Mundane: Raider unless bigger than SM 0, in which case Hoarder. If the race is smaller than SM +1 and has racial Curious, Greed, or Kleptomania, it's a Hoarder, but has pocket change and magic items like a Raider.

Pocket change

I did a quick analysis of pocket change for monsters in AD&D, and truthfully, it doesn’t vary all that much, other than centaurs, who bear gems with them. Again, I quote Leo Bloom: “Where do you keep your wallet?”

Leaving aside that, I just said that Raiders (and Hoarders who have Raider magic items) have 1d of copper in their pocket for every 4d of lair treasure before the multiplication sign. I called (2d-1)×1,000 to be 1d-3 and 3d×1,000 to be 1d-1. A few lone humans from Hall of Judgment got 3d×10 as pocket change instead of normal treasure. Since one is the bandit chief, I have no regrets. So that's the “Change” column.

Trade goods and ornaments

Oh, I do love to steal freely from ACKS. The treasure is a big part of why. I’ll show you the elf lair treasure from Lairs & Encounters:

The fastness’s treasure is spread throughout its grounds. The great hall (H) is furnished with 12 wall-mounted horns and antlers (250gp, 25st total), and six table sets of terracotta dishware (100gp, 5st each) for guests. The pantry (P) holds 8 barrels of preserved fish (5gp, 5st each), 3 barrels of dwarven beer (10gp, 8st each), 20 bricks of salt (7sp, 3⁄6st each), 5 gallons of olive oil (2gp, 3⁄6st each), 80 bottles of fine Argollëan wine (5gp, 1 st per 5), and 7 bags of mountain tea (75gp, 5st each). The workshops (W) contain four-tenths of a cord of hardwood logs (5gp, 8st each), 36 rolls of soft wool (10gp, 4st each), 5 jars of weld and woad dye (50gp, 5st each), 32 iron ingots (1gp, 3/6st each), 17 bundles of fur pelts (15gp, 3st each), and 9 jars of lamp oil (20gp, 5st each).

The throne room (1) is bedecked with 5 wool tapestries depicting pastoral scenes (5gp, 7st each), 6 blown-glass orbs (120gp each) hung from the ceiling, and a pair of polished silver sword stands (500gp each) for Mornya’s blades. The armory (6) holds 2 crates of elven arms and armor (225gp, 5st each), and a set of 12 locked ironbound chests (2000 coin per chest) holding 14,500cp, 11,500sp, 3,000ep, and 1,000gp. (Mornya and Caoimhin have keys.) Each elf also has 70cp and 38sp on his person or in his quarters (yielding a total of 27,000cp, 19,000sp, 3,000ep, and 1,000gp in the fastness). The library (7) contains a collection of 54 elven manuscripts (150gp, 3⁄6st each), mostly in Old Argollëan, including a rare commentary on Aedon Lann’s Book of Nine Arrows. Also kept in the library is a birch bark treasure map to a colossal statue in the Waste (see the Wraith lair, below). A poem, in Elven, on the map reads “Two great emeralds on the statue lie / Guarded by those who refuse to die.” The map’s destination is 11-20 hexes distant from the Elf lair. Though not Lawful, Mornya is a sworn foe of undead, and on a Friendly reaction roll she may offer adventurers the map if they pledge to destroy the undead that guard its treasure.

Now that, my friend(s), is a treasure hoard worth looting. It has money, true, but that’s not the interesting stuff. Killing Legolas and friends and getting the wine, the silver sword stands, the terracotta dishes … you talk about that for years.

(The magic items of the elves are spread among the elves. Buy the book if you want to see.)

So, I made sure there was a space in the treasure hoards for trade goods and shiny doodads that aren’t straight jewelry, which I call “ornaments.” The ornaments' worth always came out equal to the jewelry, which was not my plan; you can spread out the wealth between the two as you see fit, as they're akin. I have some draft notes on how to handle the trade goods, based on ACKS, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables, GURPS Low-Tech, and especially the article “Eidetic Memory: Medieval Sea Trade” from Pyramid 3/87: Low-Tech III. I don’t think what I have is ready for prime-time, but I’m willing to share on an ad hoc basis or maybe a work in progress.

One thing to keep in mind with all non-monetary treasure is that in Dungeon Fantasy, it fetches a rate based on the Wealth level of the seller. So for those delvers with Average Wealth, they get 40% of the list cost. Thus, wealthy delvers will get more out of going for high worth, low weight items like gems, jewelry, and ornaments. Even the trade goods, which are heavy, will be a bigger reward for wealthy delvers, since they're more likely to have the resources to bear them away. Poorer delvers won't get as much from going for doodads, so are wise to stick to money.

Dynamic dungeons

I’ve read a few times on the OSR blogs and other websites that dungeons should be dynamic places, with a thriving ecosystem. Earlier this year, I figured out a way I could handle that. I felt the need to have a blog post breaking that out, rather than leaving it as a throwaway comment in a game log.

The first part of my epiphany was that most wandering monsters should have source rooms. Alright, I had read this before and you have too, but while keying a dungeon, I went about enforcing this for once. It gets rid of the idea that there will always be monstrous centipedes even though your players have already rooted out their nests.

Something kept bugging me, however. When you encounter some giant rats in their room, there’s the whole lot of them, but elsewhere, there might be two or there might be seven or whatever. And especially I had an issue with one lone monster that was on the wandering monster table. I wanted it to move, and having it always show up in that room bothered me.

Or, in short, I wanted something like the One-Page Wilderness System that worked in a dungeon.

The lone monster was the easier problem to solve. For it, I just gave it a frequency of appearance roll in its own room. So, when the players go in that room, I roll 3d6 (GURPS habit to always use the d6; you could easily use another die, especially percentile) and if it goes under that number (typically 9 or 12), it’s there. If not, it’s wandering. This also is the way to handle monsters that stay together but still wander.

For gaggles of monsters that don’t stay together, this was trickier. I’ll copy a room key to show my solution:

There are 2d-4 doomchildren here. On a roll of less than 1, all are wandering; this room is the lair of 8.

That's 2d6-4, for those whose dice vary.

So now, most encounters in this room will not be with the full lot of eight doomchildren. There will be just three on average, and one-sixth of the time, there won’t be any. This makes it less certain that the players have cleared the room. On the flip side, you might need a higher maximum per room than before to keep up the challenge.

EDIT (27 June 2019): And reinforcements are coming.

Dungeon Fantasy Naturalism

This post is an update to another post from a few weeks ago, going into more depth. Some of my reasoning and background is in that post and I shan't repeat it.

I’m going to cut to the chase: I went through the original AD&D Monster Manual and analyzed each monster in a spreadsheet. My first pass was to try to get guidelines for treasure, but then I looked at other things not in Dungeon Fantasy: number appearing and percent in lair.

The point of doing all this was to get guidelines for placing monsters in the game world and giving them appropriate resources. And I made some guidelines.

But first, some notes about these findings.

Treasure: Do you know the biggest determiner as to whether or not a monster has treasure? Intelligence. The monsters that lack treasure have an average Int of 2.1, while those that have monetary and semi-monetary (gems and jewelry) treasure have an average Int of 9.4. The rich monsters only have 4 more hit points (34.4 to 30.4). (Incidentally, hit points account for about 81% of the variance in experience points. If you square monster HP, it's near monster XP. Obviously, there will be exceptions.) They come in bigger groups too (21.1 to 6.3), but we’ll get to that in a bit. Hence, if you’re using Combat Effectiveness Rating to place treasure, you’re going to have issues like goblins, who are sapient and tool-using, having less treasure than a Tyrannosaurus rex unless you override this or make a formula (like IQ squared divided by 100 giving a relative weight).

For those monsters with not much treasure, you'll want to pick whether the loot is a few high-worth items like gems or jewelry or many copper and silver coins. For humanoids, I'd go with the latter. The first is for dumb monsters like shiny gems and kill to get them. Big hoards will have both. In D&D, this is a big deal, since GP found means XP earned, and being unable to take some loot means forsaking its XP. In Dungeon Fantasy, you only need enough for a week’s Cost of Living, paying off your backers, healing up, and topping off your power items.

I didn’t try to get an any estimate of how often the rolls for each treasure type yields nothing, though I did allow for that happening when you roll for low-treasure monsters. Nothing happens more often with magic items. However, it’s anticlimactic to have “You get nothing! Good day, sir!” when you’ve beaten Demogorgon, so I’m shunning that.

Something I didn't cover but is worth noting is that in OD&D and AD&D, each magic item had a chance (25% and 10%, respectively) to be a map instead. Make it lead to $8d×1,000 and 1d-2 magic items or something; these treasure hoards were often big. Yes, I know damn well that the roll of map (I'd have it on a 2-3 on 2d) is a pain in the ass, but they often led to big hoards. Have a suitably tough monster that otherwise doesn't have much treasure near it, like a mutant dire animal.

Number appearing: GURPS has mentality traits that reflect how often the species likes to be around others; this is the whole sliding scale of Loner and Chummy. For those species that like others, I’d do something like adding half again to the numbers if Congenial, twofold if Chummy, and fourfold if Gregarious. For those who don’t like others, I’d have them be one-fourth less if Uncongenial, half if Loner (15), one-fourth if Loner (12), and one only for Loner (9) and Loner (6). This is pretty much pulled right out of my ass; take what you will of it.

Likewise, AD&D has three sizes. You might want to have a more gradual scale of number appearing, going down more slowly as they get bigger or going up more slowly as they get smaller.

The numbers below are for number of fighters in lair. The humanoids will have a like number each of spouses and children. I’ll leave out the nitty gritty of orc breeding and Gygax's sexism. Extrapolating from the D&D Expert Set (p. X27) and Dave Arneson’s and Richard Snider’s First Fantasy Campaign, the average number of monsters encountered out of lair is one fifth the number in lair. So, if your goblin lair has 145 goblins in it, the average number in a non-lair encounter will be 29, which comes out to 8d+1. And when the murder hoboes reach the goblin lair, two squads, or 16d+2, will be out prowling. Per Arneson, each squad will be 1d miles away, and will likely hasten back home once the smoke signals go up that their home is under attack.

In lair: This doesn't vary as predictably as I had hoped, leaving aside Alexander Macris's recommendations in ACKS Lairs & Encounters (which is a great resource I keep meaning to review). For some monsters, like liches, dragons, and demon lords, it's clear that being smarter keeps them in their lair to guard their treasure.

Figuring whether or not you encounter a monster in its lair will go like this. You roll 1d and subtract a number. If the resulting number is negative, then it’s in its lair when you find it. Otherwise, the number represents the number of hexes away (5- or 6-mile hexes) its lair is. On a roll of 0, that means its lair is in this hex, but not where you ran into the monster. (For bigger hexes, its lair is always in the hex, though you can take fivefold this number to be how many miles away its lair is.) On average, the roll is 1d-3, or a 33% in lair chance.

For those who don't know—and don't feel bad if you don't, as it took me years to get this—the badly-explained % In Lair (or % In Liar, if you will) works with random encounters like this. First, you roll to see if the players have an encounter. Then, you roll to see which monster it is on whatever table, then roll how many there will be in the lair. Then, roll % In Lair. If you roll under this number, then the players have stumbled on the monster's lair, and there will be bigger numbers and treasure. If you roll higher than that number, the players have only met a squad of them outside the lair, and if they want to get the treasure beyond pocket change, they'll have to find the lair, so will need to make Tracking rolls. (Courtney Campbell has a summary of what is in the First Fantasy Campaign here.)

One last note: I left out leaders from my analysis to keep things simple. At the easiest, each band of intelligent humanoids will have some kind of leader, who will be tougher than his mooks. Put them with the others at your will; my numbers for those appearing do not include them.

For all these reasons, I highly recommend making lairs of monsters before you roll for your random outdoor encounters for a session. This is what Macris calls a dynamic lair. I have about 40 for when my players run into a truly random encounter.

(One-upping this, Arneson rolled his random encounters before the session started.)

Oh, one last thing before I publish this: smart monsters who have lots of treasure but don't have big numbers (dragons, demon lords, liches) will often be in their lairs. This is one of the few big takeaways I get for this stat.

Making encounter tables: These are looser guidelines than everything else here. They might be better off as observations. Some of them don't come from the Monster Manual.

• Monsters with big hoards are rarer than poor monsters. Wealth is only valuable if it’s scarce.
• Tougher monsters (high CER) are rarer than weaker monsters. In the wild, the predator is less numerous than its prey, as wolves outnumbering deer would lead to starving wolves.
• Monsters with a high lair chance (like 1d-5) will be rarer than ones who are seldom in a lair (like 1d-2). In this case, think of what it means to encounter a monster—you run into it. If a monster stays in its lair all the time, how will you run into it? There’s a reason liches and great wyrm dragons stay inside, and it’s to keep others from finding them. Besides, having a mindwarper and a minotaur have the same frequency on a table means you’ll be stumbling onto more mindwarper lairs. Shades of the quantum ogre come into play if you don’t adjust for this.
• Monsters should fit their environment. Without some tweaking, the desert monsters in Mirror of the Fire Demon would be odd in the Frozen North.
• If a monster is a bait-and-switch monster, you need to have examples of the actual version of the monster to pull off the bait-and-switch. There's a reason the four lycanthropes in Monsters & Treasure are all apex predators and not bunnies, since running into a tiger or wolf is almost always filled with danger, while a rabbit wouldn't draw anything more than, "Look at the cute widdwe bunny wabbit! I will name him 'George' and love him and squeeze him and pet him and pat him!"

Think about writing lairs before the game, and having them on hand for when you roll that encounter. All this rolling takes time, and it will take a bit to figure out the composition of treasure hoards.

Animal: If an animal is under SM 0, there will be 3d+1 of them. For animals of SM 0, there will be 3d-1 of them, and for bigger animals, there will be 2d-1 of them. These are going to vary wildly. I’m not going to try to mimic the social organization of real-world animals.

Animals will have no loot unless they are underwater animals. For those, if they have loot, they will have $6d×1,000 and 1d-5 magic items. I’d only have animals who are actually dangerous in some way have treasure, like sharks and whales and giant piranha swarms, and the loot is leftover from their prey.

For animals, the in-lair roll is 1d-3. If an animal doesn’t have loot, you can skip this, or make the roll 1d-2 for those animals to represent stumbling upon its nest.

Construct: There can be only one. And it will have no loot. Whatever owns it may have loot; the construct itself may count as that. And it’s always in its lair.

Demon: If the demon is under both SM +1 and IQ 10, there will be 3d+1 of them; they will tend to be the minions of evil. For those under SM +1 and over IQ 9, there will be 2d-1 of them. For those bigger than SM 0 but having less than IQ 13, there will be 1d-1 of them. Lastly, for those bigger than SM 0 and smarter than IQ 12, there will be one when encountered; these are your demon lords.

The dumb demons will have no loot. For those bigger than SM -1 and smarter than IQ 8, they will have $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-4 magic items. For those bigger than SM 0 and smarter than IQ 12, they will have $14d×1,000 loot and 2d magic items. Demon lords are loaded.

The in-lair roll is 1d-3, or 1d-4 for demon lords. Demons with treasure tend to stay by it for some reason. (Well, we all know the reason, which is that they don’t want delvers to steal their treasure. I mean, duh.)

Dire Animal: Those dire animals under SM +1 will come in groups of 2d+1, and those bigger than SM 0 will come in groups of 1d. Only those dire animals smarter than IQ 3 or bigger than SM +3 will have treasure: $(2d-4)×1,000 loot and 1d-4 magic items. Their in-lair roll is 1d-3.

Divine Servitor: See demons. However, those in the service of their god will have no treasure. Evil has more fun.

Elder Thing: Elder things will come in gangs of 1d-1. Those smarter than IQ 9 and not summoned will have $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-1 magic items. Their in-lair roll is 1d-4.

Elemental: Much like constructs, they come in packs of one and have no loot. Since they’re summoned, they’re obviously not in their lairs.

Faerie: For those smaller than SM 0, they come in groups of 8d, while those of SM 0 or bigger come in groups of 1d. You truly might want some gradually-increasing grades between these, like 2d at SM -1, 4d at SM -2, 8d at SM -3 and so on. Nixies are driving up this number, regardless. They all have treasure of $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items. The in-lair roll is 1d-3.

Giant Animal: Mostly, they are like normal animals. A single change is that land giant animals can have treasure. I’d give those bigger than SM +3 and smarter than IQ 3 $(2d-4)×1,000 in loot and 1d-4 magic items. Their in-lair roll stays 1d-3.

Hybrid: Like I said last time, treat them as dire animals. AD&D has no class like this, but for these purposes, they’re more or less the same thing as dire animals, being man-eating mutants who aren’t smart enough to be tool-users.

Mundane: This is pretty much three classes of monster. The first is what D&D 3.5e calls Humanoids, and are your humans, dwarves, and orcs, among others. For them, have 2d×20 of those smaller than SM 0, 2d×10 of those of SM 0 and dumber than IQ 9, 4d×10 for those of SM 0 and smarter than IQ 8, 2d-1 of those bigger than SM 0 and dumber than IQ 10, and 1d for those bigger SM 0 and smarter than IQ 9. For treasure, those under IQ 10 will have $3d×1,000 loot and 1d-5 magic items. Those smarter than IQ 9 will have $8d×1,000 loot and 1d-4 magic items. Their in-lair roll is 1d-3.

The next is a group of which I think as “magical humanoids.” These are Humanoids and Monstrous Humanoids who have odd powers (e.g., medusas, lycanthropes) or have morphologies that deviate quite a bit from the standard humanoid shape (e.g., minotaurs, centaurs). I’d lump proper giants in this group, lumping ogres in with the normal humanoids, though it doesn't matter much. The first group has more treasure, but this group wanders more. Anyways, they come in groups of 5d+1 if smaller than SM +1 and smarter than IQ 9, 2d if smaller than SM +1 and dumber than IQ 10, 2d-1 of those bigger than SM 0 and dumber than IQ 10, and 1d for those bigger SM 0 and smarter than IQ 9. Those dumber than IQ 10 have $(2d-1)×1,000 loot and 1d-5 magic items, while those smarter than IQ 9 have $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items. Their in-lair roll is 1d-2; for some reason, they like to wander. I assume their big size (aside from medusas and wererats, they tend to be big) means they have higher dietary requirements and need to hunt more or something. I'd raise the in-lair roll for medusas myself, but that's just me.

Dragons are the third class, aside from a miscellaneous class which is pretty much rock mites so far. Dragons come in groups of 1d-1. Those under IQ 10 have $(10d-3)×1,000 loot and 1d magic items, and have an in-lair check of 1d-3. Smarter ones (IQ 10 or more) have $(2d+2)×10,000 loot and 1d+2 magic items; their in-lair check is 1d-4. A smart dragon doesn’t go flying around announcing its presence, much like demon lords.

Plant: There will be 2d-1 such plants. If they have IQ 6 or higher and are not Bestial, they have  $(1d-1)×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items. For those plants that can move, their in-lair check is 1d-4. For those plants that cannot move, they are always in their lair.

Slime: Slimes come in groups of 1d-3. If they have IQ 6 or higher and are not Bestial, they have  $(1d-1)×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items if IQ 6 or higher, much like plants. The few slimes that have treasure have an in-lair roll of 1d-2. Most slimes won’t have a lair; that they’re moving dungeon cleanup is the point.

Spirit: Spirits tend to be lonely and come in packs of one. They have $2d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items if they lack either Slave Mentality or Bestial. Their in-lair roll is 1d-2.

Undead: Those undead that have Slave Mentality or Bestial come in gangs of 3d+1. Liches stay alone; others come in groups of 1d-1 otherwise. The undead who lack Slave Mentality of Bestial have $2d×1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items. Liches have $1d×10,000 and 1d-3 magic items. Undead other than liches have an in-lair roll of 1d-3; liches roll 1d-5. Like smart dragons and demon lords, liches do not like to alert others to their presence.

Treasure for Dungeon Fantasy from AD&D

I took a bit of a break from schoolwork the other day and tallied up the lair treasure for every monster in the AD&D Monster Manual, using the worth of each treasure type in this post.

Why that Monster Manual? Well, I own a copy, which isn’t unusual in of itself (I own the core Monster Manual for every edition other than 3.0 and 4, and I’m including the Rules Cyclopedia and Monsters & Treasure). This version is the work of one man, Gary Gygax, and presumably this means we have the nearest to a consistent old school vision in it. It doesn’t key treasure to the Encounter Level or Challenge Rating, which were always prone to error, and instead uses those ugly user unfriendly letter codes.

Anyways, once I typed it up, I analyzed it. I added the Creature Type from the D&D Monster Manual 3.5, wanting to see if there were trends in the data. And there were, and I’m going to apply what I learned to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, to give guidelines for treasure for it, by monster class. This is to help me assign treasure to monster lairs that are not in D&D.

Keep in mind that this is lair treasure, not personal treasure, and you have to keep in mind how many of that monster makes a lair. Men are rich, but there’s 100-200 in an average lair, and that’s just the combatants. Many of these monsters also have entries for noncombatant women (the sexism in gaming shines through 40 years later) and young. If you have a gang of 10 bandits, there’s no way they should have the full treasure listed.

You also should keep in mind how tough the monster is. These tallies come from the mean treasure worth of those monsters with treasure. If you’re granting loot to demon lords, you should give them twofold these numbers.

I'm leaving out individual treasure. Just use the guideline on p. 49 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon, which is (2d-2) × $5 in coins. You can lower it to (1d-1) × $1 for the kobolds.

Also, I'm using the conversion of an AD&D gold piece being worth $1 in GURPS. I'm pretty sure +Peter V. Dell'Orto came up with that. My numbers for each treasure type comes from a forum post on Dragonsfoot; another gives the average value of things like gems, jewelry, and magic items, letting me convert magic item XP to actual items.

Animal. These guys usually don’t have treasure. The exception is if they’re bigger than SM 0 and live in the water, like sharks and whales. If so, they might have treasure—sharks may be near loot that fell off of delvers they ate, and whales may have swallowed loot along with delvers. There isn’t much rhyme or reason as to which underwater monsters have loot, but if one should have some, give it (8d-7) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Construct. No treasure. No exceptions. Whoever made them or owns them might have some, but constructs always have Wealth (Dead Broke).

Dire Animal. In D&D terms, these guys are the dumber Magical Beasts, with the smarter ones, like blink dogs, being either Faerie or Mundane. These guys often do have treasure, and they tend to be smarter and have slightly more numbers than the ones who don’t have any. Give them (2d-2) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Demon. Oh boy, are these guys loaded. Well, some of them. The big mass of Demons have little to no loot, so don’t be awarding hordes to doomchildren. (AKA “demon dolls” to my players. Incidentally, something related to my game of a couple of weeks ago that I forgot to put in the log is that Roman, one of the players, tried mapping, and threw in the towel after about two rooms when he tried to follow all the twists and turns my wife put in there. She was proud when I told her.)

Anyways, back to loot. A Demon with loot should not be Bestial or have Slave Mentality and have at least IQ 7. They’re going to be at least as big as a man (excepting imps and quasits, who honestly shouldn’t have any loot, much like constructs, since they’re typically serving someone); leave out the foot soldiers of evil. Give them (10d-7) × $1,000 in loot and 1d magic items.

Oh, and counting imps as Demons—I find this whole Blood War to be meaningless background for 99.9% of all D&D games. Demons and Devils are evil, come from another plane, and we can kill them. That they don’t like each other is interesting but hardly important to the key thing, which is killing them, saving the innocents, and taking their stuff. (The demons’ stuff, that is. Maybe the stuff of the innocents too; we’ll get to humans in a bit.) Seriously, you all spend too much ink on this crap.

Divine Servitor: They usually will have bosses, but if they are showing up on their off-time, treat them the same as Demons: (10d-7) × $1,000 in loot and 1d magic items.

Elder Thing. Befitting what they are, these guys defy classification. For the most part, the dumb ones shouldn’t have loot; give it to their bosses. (Many low-level Aberrations in AD&D, like rust monsters and carrion crawlers, do have treasure, likely to reward low-level delvers, but these aren’t Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy.) Give them (12d-9) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-1 magic items.

Elemental. The standard elementals, being typically summoned, do not have treasure. Their mightier counterparts will have some unless they’re air elementals (Roger De Bris: "I don't know about tonight. I'm supposed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, but I think I look more like Tugboat Annie. What do you think, Mr. Bloom?” Leo Bloom: "Where do you keep your wallet?”) For those who can hold loot (Princess Leia: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”), they will have (6d-6) × $1,000 and 1d-4 magic items.

Faerie. Faerie always have loot. D&D might be a little tighter with the definition of Fey than Dungeon Fantasy is with Faerie; there aren’t many published examples. For example, I’d call unicorns Faerie, but D&D calls them Magical Beasts, much as it deems harpies Monstrous Humanoids whereas Dungeon Fantasy calls them Faerie. Medusae in D&D are also Monstrous Humanoids, but are Mundane in Dungeon Fantasy. I get it, it’s a judgment call. Regardless, give them (6d-7) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Giant Animal. These guys sometimes have treasure, if they’re especially big (like a roc) or nasty. The anomaly for this are giant rats, which have treasure type C, even though they’re just giant rats. I think this was a way to get loot to low-level parties who were likely to have some trouble with giant rats, and they do have an average number in lair of 27.5, which is a lot for Giant Animals, so that’s not too far from fair. But anyways, if you give Giant Animals loot, give them (1d-1) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-5 magic items.

Hybrid. Treat them the same as Dire Animals: (2d-2) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items. D&D doesn’t differentiate, and for these purposes, I don’t see why we should either.

Mundane. For published Dungeon Fantasy monsters, these are really four classes:

• Sapient humanoids who use tools, like men, elves, orcs, hill giants, and reptile men.
• Lycanthropes or other shapeshifters who are sapient humanoids who can magically change into the shape of something else, like werewolves. EDIT: I guess we could extend this to magical Monstrous Humanoids like medusae too.
• Dragons and
• Stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere, of which the Rock Mite is the one published example I could find. I’m gonna skip them.

Taking these one at a time, we can split the sapient humanoids further into men, demihumans, humanoids, and giants. All of them have loot:

• Men have big lairs (mean is 126) and big loot to match: (10d-3) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-4 magic items.
• Demihumans, which I define as being good or neutral guys you’re not normally supposed to kill (my sample is dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and mermen, all but the last being normal player character races), have (8d-4) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.
• Humanoids are the guys you’re supposed to kill and are man-sized or smaller, and have (5d-5) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-4 magic items. Note that some humanoids, like bugbears and lizard men, don’t have the 100+ populations of other sapient humanoids that are man-sized or smaller; lower loot for them. Keep it up for the more magical ones like medusae, however, even though they have small lairs.
• Lastly, giants, who will have SM +1 and a small number in lair, so this includes ogres and trolls. These guys have (3d-3) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Lycanthropes and the magical Monstrous Humanoids have small lairs, typically under 20, and have (3d-2) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items. The werebear, which is wealthy, might be skewing this upwards. EDIT: Now that I include the Monstrous Humanoids, the werebear stops being an outlier, with the earlier figure still just as good.

Dragons are the leaders in loot other than demon lords. Give them (3d-1) × $10,000 in loot and 2d-2 magic items. This is for the tough guys. For wussies like pseudo-dragons and white dragons, tithe the loot and give them 1d-3 magic items.

Plant. Another monster class with few published examples in Dungeon Fantasy. Most will be mindless and thus have no loot. The ones who have intelligence should have (1d-1) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Slime. Oddly, two AD&D Oozes, the gelatinous cube and the slithering tracker, do have loot. So, for the smart ones, I’d make them about the same as intelligent Plants: (1d-1) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-5 magic items.

Spirit and Undead. We’ll treat them together, since D&D does and there aren’t many Spirits anyways. The guys who are pure minions, like skeletons and zombies, have no loot, so don’t grant loot to anything with Bestial or Slave Mentality. As for the others, grant them (3d-3) × $1,000 in loot and 1d-3 magic items. Liches should have threefold loot. Oddly, their magic item XP is 1,110, which indicates a lone item (1d-3), which seems low; I’d interpret the treasure type A as rolling that 30% chance for a magic item three times.

Random rules and rulings

1. Seeing that Arduin had a table for it ("Arduin has something about everything. It's like Dianetics for men." — Psycho Dave), I was inspired to ask how to quickly mimic rope breaking for GURPS. So thus, after folks told me some things, I come up with this:

If you use a rope for more than its listed weight capacity, you must make an HT roll for the rope (assume HT 10 unless you paid more for higher HT) to see if it breaks. The rope is at -1 to HT for each 10% of listed weight capacity by which the load goes over the weight capacity, so for a normal rope, going at 170% of listed weight capacity will always break a normal rope. Remember that this weight capacity is halved for dynamic loads, which would be lifting or climbing without slowing down first (say, in combat, or lifting an animal without making an Animal Handling roll first). Also, a critical failure on a Climbing check while climbing when the rope is overburdened breaks the rope unless the climber's Climbing skill is 16 or better.

2. Weregeld. Seeing as how I like making lawbreaking penalties fines rather than prison time, I wound up reading up on the weregeld. In short, use the Cost of Living-based fines based on the Cost of Living of the victim rather than stock Status 0. So killing a Status -2 bum would be a mere $1,000 weregeld payment to his family or liege lord, but killing a Status 7 king is $600,000,000. I know this does not scale with the historical weregeld (which was about $4,000 for Status 0, with a halving for Status -1, and about $40,000 for killing the king), but it will deter murderhoboes from murderhoboing after a big haul.

EDIT (3nov2017): Since that scales up way too fast, the fines scale up with victim Status +1. Halve for Status -1; quarter for Status -2. Have fines be twofold the Class B/C felony fine for a Class A penalty, but Mīšarkênē is definitely a death penalty jurisdiction.

3. We didn't play on Sunday, as we had one player out-of-town and another in the hospital (again). So Roman, who plays Xórin the fox-man, his nephew Joseph, who may be joining us shortly, and I all played Blackmoor at the Source Comics and Games, which is kind of a Midwest Mecca for nerdery. Bob Meyer, who played Robert the Bald in the original Blackmoor game, ran the game. According to him, he inherited the game when Dave Arneson died. I never got to play with Dave even though I had met him a few times in the early Nineties, so this was the closest I could come. (My brother, however, not a huge D&D player, not only played with Dave, he got his D&D Rules Cyclopedia signed by Dave and Ross Maker and whoever else was around that night. Lucky little shit.) I'm the guy wearing the Cartman t-shirt, Roman is next to me in the black T-shirt and with one side of his face that looks like it was caught in a time glitch with the panoramic shot, and Joseph is in the Twins tuque. No, it wasn't cold in there, so I don't know what was with the tuque.

How was it? Fun. It was rules-light, with us playing ourselves as one of a man-at-arms (what I played; there were two others), the guard captain (who served as the caller), a couple of scholars (Roman, who could cast spells by smashing a vial of Blackmoor water), three scouts (Joseph), and one woodsman (er, woodswoman, who was one of Dave's "Scandihairians," or hairy Vikings drawing on Dave's Norwegian ancestry). We cleared out two levels of Castle Blackmoor, with Orcs and Trolls, and managed to burn out six rooms, including the floor of one room. We all had one special power of our choosing—mine was to be able to make friends with anyone, which I didn't tell the others, leading to a funny episode wherein the I led out the first Orc we met, with the intent of having him show me where the other Orcs were, and instead the other fighters killed him. (Plus there was the idea of having my own Orc army.) It was a good lesson in keeping things non-linear.

Adapting folktales for gaming

Last year, I chanced upon an article over on Jeff's Gameblog that led me to read another article and gave me plenty of gaming ideas. The idea of even having bardic tales written down for my game world intrigued me, and the non-standard plots and elements made for a good break from the usual D&D stuff.

Go read Rients’s post before going on with this one. The journal article is optional.

Welcome back. As it happens, unlike Rients, I have Hans-Jörg Uther's text in my local college library. (My undergraduate alma mater, in fact, though not my current college's. This gives the irony of a library science grad student visiting his undergraduate college for its library. I feel like Randal in Clerks.) Thus I cribbed the tales that were common to more than one Proto-Indo-European branch. Mostly, it’s the 14 listed in the Wikipedia article for the ATU system, with a few others that showed up in more than one branch.  They're below, with some comments about them for gaming. Some are better than others. Try rewriting a few of them to make them usable in your game world, keeping in mind two things:

1. This a group of players characters involved, not just one (most of the time). Having one character get all the spotlight is going to piss off everyone else.
2. For whatever your pretensions are, your players are as likely as not to try to kill and loot whatever you throw at them. No matter what scenario you pick, no matter how peaceful, be ready for combat.

(EDIT 2026april18: Guess what? Hans-Jörg's Uther's text is free and legal online now. That's FFC 284, 285, and 286, and I was using 284.)

You can use these however you want, but here's what I did:

1. From an earlier project, I had a list of cultural values for many groups in my game world. I kept those handy to sneak little tidbits into the tales to reinforce them.
2. I picked some tales. At first, I picked (and wrote up) the four Rients wrote up on his blog:

• The Boy Steals the Ogre's Treasure 
• The Smith and the Devil
• The Animal Bride 
• The Grateful Animals 

3. Then, I rewrote them to fit my game world. If something didn't work in the structure of the tale, I left it out.
4. After all this, I had a bunch of foes and magic items, like a vampire trapped in his coffin and some magical purple robes fit for a king. As my game world already had many spots for adventure, I put these in existing spots. Much of the magical treasure I already had was a bunch of random magical powers, so I one by one ditched them for the ones from the tales.
5. Once I had done these, I picked some other tales to do all this again:

• Rescue by the Sister
• The Faithless Sister
• Godfather Death
• The Grateful Dead
• The Dance among Thorns
• The Thieving Pot (not in the list; ATU 592)

I figure five to nine is a manageable number of tales. Also, my campaign area is about the size of Slovakia, so I didn't want to cram too much in it.

Supernatural Adversaries

ATU 311: Rescue by the Sister

    Two sisters, one right after the other, fall into the power of a demonic suitor (cannibal, dragon, magician, devil) and are taken into his (subterranean) castle. There the sisters open a forbidden room full of dead bodies, in the course of which the key (a magic egg, apple) becomes bloody, or they refuse to eat human flesh. The demon kills them for their disobedience.

    Using a trick, the third (youngest) sister escapes from the same fate. She finds her sisters and resuscitates them by putting their bones together. She hides them beneath some gold in baskets (bags) and persuades the demon to carry the baskets home without looking into them.

    The youngest sister pretends to marry the demon and leaves a skull (straw dummy) dressed as a bride to deceive him. Unwittingly the demon carries this sister in the third basket. Or she smears herself with honey and feathers and escapes as a "strange bird." The demon is burned in his own house or is killed in another way. 

Notes: Bluebeard is akin to this one; it's ATU 312. This one is Fitcher's Bird. All the write-ups are as Uther has them, other than lacking the references to the numbered motifs (which are second author Stith Thompson's addition; weirdly, his book on these is in St. Kate's library, so I could look at it in breaks from class, if I cared). Regardless, this is a great source of gaming elements. Have the demonic suitor escape death and set up again. The key/egg, skull/straw dummy, baskets, disguise, and even means of resuscitation are all ideas for magic items. The lair, even forsaken, would be a house of horrors, doubtless haunted. These supernatural adversary ones are great fodder.

ATU 315: The Faithless Sister

    Brother and sister leave home (are driven out).

    The brother kills a number of robbers (devils, giants, dragons) but does not realize that the last one is merely wounded. The sister helps the wounded robber to recover, and he becomes her lover. In order to get rid of the brother, she pretends to be ill and sends him out to get her the milk (liver) of dangerous animals. The brother spares the animals and they follow him (give him a whistle).

    After the first attempt fails, the sister binds her brother with a silk thread, or she sends him to a magic mill where the animals are kept.

    When the couple is about to kill the brother, he whistles for the animals. They (break out of the mill and) tear the robber to pieces. The faithless sister is imprisoned (has to repent and to fill a barrel with her tears).

    The brother takes to the road, rescues a princess from a dragon, and marries her.

    The sister is brought to the court. She tries to take revenge on her brother by putting a (poisoned) bone into his bed. The brother dies. The animals lick the bone out of his body and he revives. The sister is punished by death.

Notes: When you rewrite these tales, try to explain the weird stuff. Why does the sister fall in love with the robber/devil/giant/dragon? (How the hell does a woman shag a dragon, anyways?) Why does the brother not realize that the wounded robber is not dead, only wounded? Anyways, not only do you have a couple of monsters (robber/whatever, and the dragon), you also have animal helpers. How does he communicate with the animals, anyways? You also have their milk or liver, maybe a whistle, some silk thread, maybe a magic mill, and a poisoned bone. Works well with the Grateful Animals.

ATU 328: The Boy Steals the Ogre’s Treasure

Introduction (sometimes missing):

    Three (twelve, thirteen, thirty, etc.) brothers arrive at the house of an ogre (devil). He would kill them in the night, but the smart youngest brother saves them by exchanging their caps with those of the ogre’s daughters. The brothers take service at the king’s court.

Main part:

    The jealous brothers claim that the youngest can steal the ogre’s treasures: magic horse, bedspread, carpet, parrot (lamp, sword, silver or golden poultry, musical instruments, etc.). Using tricks the youth gets these objects.

    At last the brothers claim that the youngest can kidnap the ogre himself. In disguise the youth tells the ogre that the thief died and persuades him to lie down in the coffin to measure it. The youth nails up the coffin, traps the ogre, and is given a princess as his wife.

    In some variants, the youth sets out to steal from the ogre in order to get revenge for some former ill-treatment or to help a friendly king.

    In some variants, mainly from northern and north-western Europe and the Americas, the protagonist is female.

Notes: Obviously, Jeff Rients already covered this tale a bit, and we all know the “Jack and the Beanstalk” version (IIRC, it had its own number, something like ATU 328C). The last sentence in the story summary is handy advice for many of these: swap genders. This ain’t the Fifties, folks; women play these games, and we all like to see a spunky woman. The version of Rescue by the Sister I wrote for my own campaign world has the genders swapped, with the brothers wedding Baba Yaga. Who says women always have to wed someone ugly? Heck, the women could wed Baba Yaga, or the boys could wed Dracula, if that works in your game. Oh, and speaking of Dracula, a vampire is a good choice for the monster in this one. Why else does it have a coffin lying around?

ATU 330: The Smith and the Devil

    A smith, who because of poverty (other reasons) sold his soul to the devil (death), gives shelter to Christ and St. Peter during their visit on earth. In reward, three of his wishes shall be fulfilled. St. Peter warns him to wish for a place in paradise, but the smith wants a tree and a bench (chair) to which people a stick and a knapsack that draws people into it (a pack of cards with which he shall always win, etc.).

    When the devil (death) is about the carry the smith away, he sticks to the bench and the tree and has to give the smith more time to live (terminate the contract), or no one would be able to die. At last the devil is put into a sack and beaten up (on the anvil).

    The smith, tired of life, cannot go either to heaven or to hell. He tricks St. Peter by pushing his knapsack into heaven, where it pulls him in (throws his cards inside the gate of heaven and is permitted inside to pick them up).

    In some variants the trickster-protagonist is an allegorical figure (e.g. Misery, Envy, Poverty) who traps the devil in a tree until the devil promises him immortality. Then he sets the devil free.

Notes: Another one Rients already covered. Apparently, it’s the one the kurgan-dwellers in Sredny Stog most likely told. Wayland the Smith or whatever you call him would be a great source of magic swords. Give ‘em histories.

ATU 332: Godfather Death

    A poor man with many children wants a (just) godfather for his newborn son. He refuses God (saint, devil) and chooses death (angel of death, plague) because he treats everyone alike. As a gift the father (son) receives the magic power of forecasting recovery or death, depending on whether death stands at the head or the foot of the sick person’s bed. Thus the man becomes a famous doctor and grows wealthy.

    The doctor betrays death (several times): When promised wealth (the princess), the doctor turns the bed and thus saves the life of a person who was supposed to die (in the doctor’s dying hour, death grants him time to say a last Paternoster, but the doctor does not finish the prayer. Death tricks the doctor into finishing the prayer.)

    In some variants, death shows the man his life-light in the underworld and suddenly extinguishes it. Or the man attempts to lengthen his life by various means (usually without success).

Notes: This one is a little tricky. Obviously, if you have a god/dess of death, this works well for him or her. The life-lights in this tale are often candles, and one would be an interesting item, even if as a MacGuffin (“Journey to the dead lands to keep the bad guy from snuffing out your life candles!”). The magic power of forecasting death would work as an item, something like death glasses. They don’t have to have skulls on them; I think looking like Charlie Sheen in Major League would work.

ATU 365: The Dead Bridegroom Carries off His Bride

    A young woman mourns for her bridegroom who did not return from war (brings him back to life by magic). One night he appears, invites her to ride with him, and carries her behind on his horse. Two times he asks her whether she is afraid. She says no because her lover is with her. The third time they arrive at a graveyard. When the bridegroom wants to entice her into an open grave, she realizes that he is dead. He grasps at her and tears her clothing. The bride escapes (is pulled into the grave, danced to death by the dancing dead, or torn to pieces).

Notes: Oh, Godfather Death was tricky? This one is trickier. The bride might have to die to let everyone know there’s a grave with a ghost that likes to pull folks into it. It seems like it works best as a smaller threat in a bigger adventure.

Supernatural or Enchanted Wife

ATU 402: The Animal Bride

    A father is not able to decide which of his (three) sons should inherit his property (kingdom) and sends them all on a quest for one year. They are told to bring back a special object (yarn, linen, fine chain, ring, horse, smallest dog, money) or they must learn a profession. Whoever performs the task best will be the heir.

    The youngest son, often a fool, goes into a forest and becomes the servant of an animal (cat, rat, frog, mouse). As a payment he is given the object that his father had asked for. It proves to be the most beautiful one, and thus he should be the heir. Because his brothers (parents) are envious, two further tasks are set, and finally the brothers are required to bring a bride (most beautiful woman).

    The youngest returns to the animal which again promises to help. The animal is disenchanted by burning, mutilation, decapitation, or by crossing a river, and becomes a beautiful princess with a castle. They return happily to his parents as bride and bridegroom. Sometimes they deceive the parents: The youngest son arrives dressed in rags and is ridiculed; then the bride arrives and they reveal their identities. When the son arrives in the first place dressed as a prince, a mole helps to identify him. Often the youngest son renounces his inheritance and goes with his wife back to her castle.

    In some variants from eastern and southeastern Europe and the Near East, the youngest son takes the animal (often a frog or toad) to his home and hides it from the family. The father assigns tasks to his daughters-in-law which the frog performs best. The last (third) task requires the brides to attend a feast, where the frog turns into the most beautiful woman. The bridegroom burns the frog’s skin so that the bride cannot change back. As a consequence she leaves him, and he sets out on a quest and is finally able to retrieve her.

Notes: Again, one Rients already covered. It’s a great one for lycanthropes, especially ones that aren’t apex predators, like wererats. Or werefrogs. Or wereplatypuses. Maybe they could be classical skin-turners instead, with the might of turning into a beast in a magic pelt or something.

Supernatural or Enchanted Husband

ATU 425C: Beauty and the Beast

    A merchant sets out on a journey and intends to bring back presents for his three daughters. The two elder ones demand jewels and clothes, the youngest a rose. The father is not able to find one.

    He loses his way and stays overnight in a deserted castle, where he breaks off a rose. An (invisible) animal (beast) demands that the man return or send a substitute. The youngest daughter meets her father’s obligation but refuses to marry the (ugly) animal, who treats her kindly.

    In a magic mirror she sees her father is ill. She is allowed to visit him but (influenced by her envious sisters) overstays the allowed time. She returns and finds the animal near death, realizes she loves him, and caresses or kisses him. By this means she disenchants the prince from his animal shape. They marry.

Notes: While there are some good elements here (the magic mirror, taking a flower makes you a prisoner of the owner), the French version has been so legendary for years, even before Disney got its paws on it. You need to emphasize elements other than the romance. Were I to use it, I’d have something in the castle that someone needs and the PCs have to grab (say, a flower or the talking teapot or something), and the beast (which is a badass fighter with loads of minions, like fierce candlesticks or something, and so will be a tough fight) then dooms the PCs to stay forever or find a suitable substitute. Something of a last twist to another adventure. It’s up to the PCs to figure out that the beast just needs to get laid. 

Supernatural Tasks

460B: The Journey in Search of Fortune

    Two brothers live together on their farm but only one of them does the work. This brother wants to divide the farm so he can run his part alone. He works harder than his brother but after a while he wonders why the farm of his lazy brother is more successful. He goes to find Fortune to ask her why. On his way he meets things and people that give him questions, and he promises to ask Fortune for answers.

    When he arrives at Fortune he is told that he was born on an unlucky day. He sees that Fortune from day to day has less to eat. When her servants tell her how many people are born on that day she orders that they should have as much as she had on that day. On the homeward journey, the man answers the questions of the things and people he has met.

    Sometimes he marries a lucky woman who brings him good luck. Later he gives someone who had asked him about the owner of the farm an untrue answer, and loses his luck.

Notes: The journey itself strikes me as highly railroad-y. This one might be Lady Luck stuck in a dungeon or something to fight the railroad. I do like the idea that some folks get more than others for no good reason, and use that as a reason to explain bad rolls in character creation. If you’re so pissed off about it, you can go find the Luck Goddess and get her to raise your stats. Of course, this needs to be tough, but if you find her, she lets you raise your stats by a total of (80-Str+Int+Wis+Con+Dex+Cha)/5 or something. Oh, you had really high stats and went looking for Lady Luck? Lowered. You got greedy after your good rolls, and she doesn’t like it when folks don’t appreciate her gifts.

ATU 470: Friends in Life and Death

    Two friends promise each other to be guests at each other’s weddings. One of them dies but takes part invisibly in the wedding of the living friend. He invites him for a return visit.

    The living friend also takes part in the wedding of his friend in the otherworld. They take a long journey through the otherworld and see strange things: a broad and a narrow road to heaven and hell, fat cattle in a poor pasture and lean cattle in a green one (formerly rich and poor people), people and animals who argue, etc.

    When the living man returns he finds that he has been away for many (three) centuries. All is changed and he knows no one. He dies or turns to dust.

Notes: While itself an awful scenario for gaming, it does establish a realm of the dead and a way to get into and out from it, albeit at a price. The fat and lean cattle make a good image.

ATU 471A: The Monk and the Bird

    A monk, thinking about the everlasting life in the monastery gardens, listens to the singing of a bird. He believes it lasts only a short moment but when he returns to the monastery he has grown old and nobody recognizes him because decades (three centuries) have gone by.

Notes: This one isn’t as far out there for gaming as you would think. Go into Monsters & Treasure and look up the nixie. It sets up a Save vs. Go Away for a Few Years situation. Shorten the time to a few months, and come up with a way to save trapped characters, and this is an interesting encounter.

Supernatural Helpers

ATU 500: The Name of the Supernatural Helper

    A father (mother) boasts that his daughter can spin gold or impossible amounts of yarn. Or, a mother beats her daughter because she is lazy. The king asks why and the mother says she will not stop spinning.

    The young woman’s talent is to be tested and she is shut in a room to spin. If she fails she will die, but if she succeeds the king will marry her. She cries. A supernatural being (a little man) agrees to help her if she will promise him her first child (herself) if she cannot guess his name. In some variants she has to remember his name after a long time.

    The young woman passes the test and the king marries her. After a year the little man, certain that she could not guess his name, comes back to take her child away. By chance the name is discovered (by a servant, the husband or the woman herself) when the little man sings it triumphantly in the forest. When the woman says the correct name to the helper he vanishes or sinks into the earth.

Notes: You should easily be able to find the name of this supernatural helper online or from your childhood. I don’t think the scenario itself is good for gaming, but the idea that a Rumpelstiltskin-like (a hint for those folks who couldn't easily guess the first sentence) being who can help you with anything for a big price lets the PCs get out of a pinch, with another adventure to get out of the price later.

ATU 501: The Three Old Spinning Women

    Through a false boast of her mother of a young woman herself, she is compelled to spin an impossible amount of thread. If she is successful a prince will marry her.

    She receives help from three old women who are deformed from too much spinning: the first has an enormous foot, the second has drooping lips, and the third has a thick thumb.

    In payment she must invite them to her wedding. The price sees them and exclaims in disgust. They tell him that their deformities come from spinning. He swears that he will never let his wife spin again.

Notes: Not really gameworthy itself, though this is another spinning wheel scenario. The whole spinning wheel bit does remind us that we are talking about a pre-industrial world, so put one somewhere. Make it magical. The three women could be the three Fates; this is common among the Indo-Europeans. If so, they'd be good oracles.

ATU 505: The Grateful Dead

Introductory episode:

    While traveling, a man sees a corpse which is not allowed to be buried or is ill-treated by its creditors. He uses all his money to pay the debts of the dead man and for his funeral. Later he meets the grateful dead man in the form of a traveling companion (old man, servant) who wants to help him on the condition that they will divide all their winnings.

Main parts:

    (1) The man ransoms a princess, who had been kidnapped, from slavery and marries her. While the man is away in another country, the father of the princess recognizes the sail of the ship which is embroidered with the princess’s coat of arms and learns that his daughter is alive. When the man goes back to fetch his wife, he finds that she has been abducted by one of her father’s courtiers. The man searches for his wife, and the traveling companion helps him to return to his father-in-law’s court. There the man discloses his identity as the husband of the princess and gets his bride back.

    (2) The man rescues a young woman from robbers. On their way home by ship the man is thrown overboard by a rival but is rescued by the traveling companion and brought to the princess. He is recognized by means of a ring or otherwise. The rival is unmasked or punished.

    (3) The traveling companion equips the man with a magnificent horse. A tournament takes place in which the winner is to marry a princess. The man wins her.

Ending:

    The traveling companion asks for his part of the winnings and wants to divide the princess (their baby). When the man, trying to save the princess, offers the whole kingdom, the traveling companion reveals himself as the grateful dead man, says his demand was only a test of faith, and vanishes.

    In some variants the grateful dead man is a saint, who helps the hero because he has redeemed a saint’s picture that was mistreated.

Notes: Regardless of the scenario, have at least one encounter somewhere wherein casting Final Rest (or whatever your game calls the spell to keep the dead from rising as undead) or otherwise giving an unknown dead body a funeral gives the player some kind of hidden boon. The test of troth doesn't strike me as needed, especially as not all the heroes will wed the same princess. Or maybe they will. It's your world. I’d keep it if the tale is background, otherwise it goes.

ATU 531: The Clever Horse

    This miscellaneous type comprises various tales dealing with a clever horse. The tale exists in three different forms, “The Godchild of the King and the Unfaithful Companion,” “The Golden-haired Maiden,” and “The Clever Horse.”

    A poor boy goes in search of his godfather, the king (God, Virgin Mary, etc.). On the way he obtains a clever magic horse that offers to help him. Against the horse’s advice he picks up a glimmering feather (golden hair, golden horse-shoe, other bright object), which he later gives to the king.

    En route the boy is accompanied by a companion (devil, beardless man, Gypsy, etc.) who forces him to change places and to swear silence. At the king’s court the boy is employed as a groom. He helps different animals, who in return promise to help him.

    A treacherous employee of the king (the boy’s companion) slanders him to the king, saying that he had boasted that he could find the bird that had lost the feather and/or to bring the golden-haired maiden (princess) as bride for the king. On pain of death he is assigned to accomplish the dangerous tasks. He succeeds with the help of his horse.

    The abducted princess refuses to marry the old king until she receives certain things (her castle, keys that have fallen into the sea, water of life, etc.). The boy brings these with the help of his horse and of the helpers he had met on his way (grateful animals).

    As the last condition for marriage the princess demands the boy be killed (burned, beheaded, dismembered, by taking a bath in boiling milk or oil of a herd of wild mares, by water of death, etc.). The horse saves the boy or he is resuscitated by the princess, rejuvenated, and beautified. The king has the same thing done to him with fatal results (the princess does not resuscitate him, he dies in the milk, etc.).

    The magic horse turns into a young woman (man). The boy marries her (the princess) and becomes king.

Notes: Maybe it’s that time or something, but strangely I’m not getting as many ideas from this one as I should, and it's one that has loads of elements. Still, some thoughts. Why does this companion switch places, and how does he get the boy’s silence? This one dovetails well with the Grateful Animals, as does the Faithless Sister. The glimmering feather is a good example of a cursed item, but in my experience, players will heed an NPC, especially a magical one like a talking horse, who says, "Don't pick that up!"

ATU 554: The Grateful Animals

    This miscellaneous type comprises various tales dealing with helpful deeds of grateful animals. In numerous tales the type occurs only as an episode. Most of the variants present the following basic structure:

    A man while traveling meets three animals (from air, water, and earth) who are in trouble. Because he rescues them, they promise to help him if needed. Later he falls in love with a princess whose father sets three impossible tasks for him to accomplish. With the help of the grateful animals he succeeds on three successive days and wins the princess.

    In some variants a part is added in which the man accompanies his elder brothers. When they try to injure some animals, he prevents them from doing so or compensates for their misdeeds and carelessness. When they trample on an ant-hill, he builds it up again, when they leave wounded animals, he takes care of them, etc.

Notes: The fourth one Rients treated. As you can see, this one keeps cropping up elsewhere, like in the Faithless Sister and the Clever Horse, though sometimes stands on its own. Basically, help three animals, and they'll help you later. Take the chance with this one to use more common animals of your game world. I used a wolf, a snipe, and a beaver. Above all, this and the Grateful Dead teaches the lesson of reciprocity, something big for the Indo-Europeans. (The Grateful Dead also teaches you that if you’re going to go on long jams, you’re best off being a full prog band, not some stoned guys who just meander through a song forever. Though “Dark Star” is pretty cool.)

Magic Objects

ATU 592: The Dance among Thorns

    A poor boy, driven from home by his evil stepmother (dismissed from service with a pittance), gives all his money as alms to a beggar (supernatural being) who in return grants the boy three wishes: a never failing gun (crossbow), a fiddle (flute) that compels people to dance, another magic object or the magic power of having his wishes obeyed.

    He shoots a bird (on a wager) which falls into a thorn bush. When a monk (Jew, the loser of the wager) tries to take the bird out, the boy's magic fiddle makes him dance in the thorn.

    The boy is condemned and led to the gallows. He asks for permission to play his fiddle for the last time. The judge and whole assembly have to dance until the boy is released.

Notes: Oooh, items galore! Some kind of magical missile weapon, a magical musical instrument, and something that makes others heed your wishes. Heck, you can make the thorn bush special, too. And the victim? Write the most hated group in your campaign world into that role; this guy gets a miserable end that he doesn't warrant for some kid's fun. And don’t tell me your game world is so filled with moral villains when your heroes are murder hobos. There will be bigotry, sadly.

Supernatural Power or Knowledge

ATU 650A: Strong John

    A young man, born of an animal (son of a bear) or from a giant (troll-woman, forged from iron by a smith) develops great strength (at the forge, in the forest, in war, by suckling for many years, by his great appetite, by tests of strength, etc.)

    Because of his enormous appetite he is sent away from home. He works for a smith but (often) injures his master, who tries to get rid of him by setting trials of strength. The young man has to uproot trees, to catch wolves and bears (lions, etc.), to tame devils, etc. When he is sent to catch wild animals, he harnesses them to a coach. When he is in a well and a mill stone (bell) is thrown on him, he wears it as a collar or complains that chickens are scratching dirt onto him. When he is sent to the devil's mill (hell), he drives the devil to his master's house. When he goes to the king to be paid, the king shoots him (in vain) with cannons. The young man accomplishes every task and overcomes all difficulties (kills his master and finally marries).

Notes: This is the basis for the Heracles legend. This strikes me as setting up a potential friend or foe, living off in the woods after making life hell for everyone near him. The PCs will first hear of him from the folks whom he has bothered. Have him off in a hut a few hexes away from everyone else and make his role dependent on good role-playing and a reaction roll. Think of the dwarves meeting Beorn in The Hobbit. If Gandalf had brought them all at the same time, would he have let them inside? Don't treat Charisma as a dump stat; it might make a friend out of someone who can kick your ass.

ATU 675: The Lazy Boy

    A lazy stupid boy releases a fish (frog, serpent, supernatural being), which gives him the power of making all his wishes come true.

    The lazy boy then makes an axe cut trees itself, water carry itself, an oven carry him, etc. When the princess laughs at him, he wishes her pregnant (from eating an apple, etc.). She does not know the father of her beautiful child. The king orders a test of paternity, and the child picks the lazy boy out as the father (by handing him an apple, ball, golden ball, etc.).

    The king orders father and mother (and child) to be abandoned in a cask at sea (in the mountains). By the power of wishing they reach land. The young man wishes to be beautified and makes a castle appear next to the king's. When the king comes to visit, the young man wishes that an object (golden apple, golden cup) would appear in his pocket. The king is accused of stealing. Thus he is shown that the appearance of guilt and innocence (unwitting pregnancy, unwitting theft) is often deceptive.

Notes: More cool items. Make the boy's special power also dependent on an item; blah blah blah be careful with wishes blah blah blah  "Who knocked up the virgin princess?" would make a good mystery, to use this medias in res. The plot isn't something I'd do to player characters, however. Way too railroad-y.