Number appearing, loot, and in-lair for all Dungeon Fantasy monsters

I'm hoping this comes off alright, as I whipped this up in Excel and am pasting the code into Blogger. Blogger doesn't always handle typed HTML code well.

Anyways, I went through all the Dungeon Fantasy supplements I have, as well as Pyramid articles, and put all the monsters into a spreadsheet and applied my logic for treasure and number appearing derived from the AD&D Monster Manual. Some of this got refined as I typed it; some monsters that were tough but weren't big or smart enough to have treasure otherwise, like the Basilisk, got a some treasure, albeit a lowered amount. Dragons got more treasure as they got bigger, working their way up to Type H. None of this includes leader-types, which will add to the numbers and to the treasure (since they have gear you can loot).

Most of this should be self-explanatory. For the page, I reference the supplement-page, so DF5-32 means page 32 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 5: Allies. A P means Pyramid series 3 issue, so P98-19 means page 19 of Pyramid #3/98: Welcome to Dungeon Fantasy. Straight DF48 means page 48 of Monsters from the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I skipped monsters that were unique creatures in an adventure. Some monsters show up from multiple authors; I designated each variant with the author's name. I also added a few animals from the GURPS Basic Set.

Monster	Page	App	Lair	$	Items
Abominable Snowman	P50-38	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Academy Wyrm	DF10-17	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Acid Spider	DF16, DF2-21	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Angelic Emissary	DF9-35	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Angry Sands	DFA1-45	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Animated Snowman	P50-38	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
as-Sharak	DF16, DF2-21	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Astral Ghost	P80-32	1	1d-2	2d×1,000	1d-3
Astral Spider	P80-32	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Bandit-Snatcher	P98-11	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Basilisk	DFM3-5	1d	1d-3	(1d-2)×1,000	1d-5
Bear	DF16, DF5-6, B456	1d-2	1d-3	N/A	N/A
Bouda	P98-12	4d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Bounding Turtle, Greater	DFA1-45	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Bounding Turtle, Lesser	DFA1-45	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Brainworms	P80-33	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Bronze Spider	DF17, DFM1-5	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Bugbear	DF17, DFM1-6	3d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Burrowing Serpent	DFA1-45	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Cat-Folk	DF3-5	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Cerberus	P108-11	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Chaos Monks	P80-33	5d+1	1d-3	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Chaos Ooze	P80-33	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Ciuaclá	DF18, DFM1-7	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Cockamander	P113-16	2d+1	1d-3	special	N/A
Cockatrice	DFM3-6	2d+1	1d-3	(1d-2)×1,000	1d-5
Colchis Bull	P108-11	1d	1d-3	(1d-2)×1,000	1d-5
Coleopteran	DF3-5	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Corpse Golem	DF18, DFM1-8	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Corpse-Eater	DF3-5	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Corrosion Crawler	P98-13	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Crushroom	DF19, DF2-22	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dark One	DF3-6	1d-1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-1
Deep Chimera	P113-19	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Deep One	P113-24	5d+1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Demon from Between the Stars	DF19, DFM1-9	1d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Demon of Old	DF20, DFM1-10	1d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Devilkin	DF9-33	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Dinoman	DF20, DFM1-11	2d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Dire Frog	P76-31	1d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dire Hart (With a Vengance)	P76-30	1d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dire Kraken	P113-24	1	1d-4	6d×1,000	1d-5
Dire Mammoth	P98-13	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Dire Vulture	DFA1-46	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Dire Wolf	DF21, DF2-22	2d-1	1d-2	N/A	N/A
Dolbok	P108-32	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Doomchild	DF21, DF2-22	3d+1	1d-3	N/A	N/A
Doppelganger	DFM3-7	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Draco-Wasps	P50-23	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Draft Lizards	P95-28	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dragon-Blooded	DF3-14	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Dragon, Large	DF23	1d-2	1d-4	(2d+2)×10,000	1d+2
Dragon, Medium	DF22	1d-1	1d-4	(2d-1)×10,000	1d+1
Dragon, Small	DF22	1d	1d-3	(10d-3)×1,000	1d
Draug	DF23, DFM1-12	1d-1	always	2d×1,000	1d-3
Drowned	P106-31	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Dryad	DFM3-9	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Dwarf	DF3-6	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Electric Jelly	DF24, DFM1-13	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Elemental, Air	DF24	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Elemental, Earth	DF25	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Elemental, Fire	DF25	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Elemental, Water	DF26	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Elf, Half-	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, High	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, Mountain	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, Sea	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, Shadow	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, Winged	DF3-7	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Elf, Wood	DF3-8	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Embodied Animal-Spirit	DF9-21	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Erupting Slime	DF26, DF2-23	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Excremental	P98-14	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Eye of Death	DF26, DFM1-14	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Faerie Folk, Faun	DF3-8	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Faerie Folk, Leprechaun	DF3-9	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Faerie Folk, Nymph	DF3-9	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Faerie Folk, Pixie	DF3-9	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Fear Seeker	P76-9	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Fireball Demon	DFE1-14	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Fish-Folk	P98-22	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Flame Lord	DFM1-15	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Flame Servent Demon	DFA1-46	1d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Flame Wasps	DFA1-46	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Flaming Skull	DF27, DF2-23	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Flesh-Eating Ape	DF27, DF2-23	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Foul Bat (Batchala)	DF28, DF2-23	2d+1	1d-4	N/A	N/A
Frost Snake	DF28, DF2-24	2d+1	1d-2	N/A	N/A
Frozen Dead	P106-32	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Fungus	DF28, DFM2-5	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gargoyle	DF29, DF3-9	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Ghoul	P108-12	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Giant Ant	DFM3-10	4d×10	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Ape	DF30, DFM1-16	1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Beetle, Big Beetle	P108-12	3d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Beetle, Humongous Beetle	P108-13	2d-1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Centipede, Big Centipede	P108-13	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Centipede, Humongous Centipede	P108-13	2d-1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Chicken	P89-30	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Crab	P50-23, P98-22	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Frog, Big Frog	P108-13	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Frog, Huge Frog	P108-14	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Maned Rat	DF10-31	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Piranha	P113-24	7d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Giant Rat	DF30, DF2-24	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Snake, Constrictor	DF31	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Snake, Viper	DF31	3d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Spider, Big Spider	DF32	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Spider, Huge Spider	DF32	3d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Giant Spider, Humongous Spider	DF32	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gilded Zombie	DFE1-14	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Gladiator Ape	DF32, DFM1-17	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Glurch	P108-29	1d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Gnome	DF3-10	2d×20	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Goblin-Kin, Goblin	DF33, DF3-10	4d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Goblin-Kin, Half-Orc	DF3-10	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Goblin-Kin, Hobgoblin	DF34, DF3-11	2d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Goblin-Kin, Orc	DF34, DF3-11	4d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Goldipox	P108-33	3d+1	*	*	*
Golem-Armor Swordsman	DF35, DF2-24	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Great White Shark	B458	2d-1	1d-4	6d×1,000	1d-5
Grü	P98-14	1d	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Grutel	P113-22	5d+1	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Gryphon	DF35, B460	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Half-Ogre	DF3-14	5d+1	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Half-Spirit, Air-Infused	DF3-13	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Celestial	DF3-12	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Earth-Infused	DF3-13	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Elder-Spawn	DF3-12	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Fire-Infused	DF3-13	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Infernal	DF3-12	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Half-Spirit, Water-Infused	DF3-13	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Halfling	DF3-14	2d×20	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Harpy	DFM3-11	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Hellhound	DF35, DF5-26	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Hellwasp	P98-15	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Helmet Thief	P113-21	2d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hengeyokai	P89-20	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Herd Horror	P106-32	1d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hill Giant	P102-14	2d-1	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Hopping Ghost	DFE1-15	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Horde Pygmy	DF36, DFM1-18	2d×20	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Horde Zombie	DF36, DF2-24	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Horrid Skull	DF37, DFM1-19	1d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hungry Room	P76-21	1	always	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Hydra	P108-14	1d	1d-3	(1d-2)×1,000	1d-5
Ice Weasel	DF37, DF5-26	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Ice Wyrm	DF38, DFM1-26	1d-2	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Imp	DF5-26	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Intruder	P76-9	1d	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Jelly	DF38, DFM2-7	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Karkadann	DF39, DFM1-21	special	N/A	N/A	N/A
Khodoque Crab	P98-15	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Large Boar	B458	1d-2	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lava Lizard	DFM3-12	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Leaping Leech	DF40, DFM1-22	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lernaean Hydra	P113-25	1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Lesser Ghost	DF9-22	1	1d-2	2d×1,000	1d-3
Lich	DF40, DFM1-23	1	1d-5	1d×10,000	1d-3
Lion	DF40, B456	2d-1	1d-2	N/A	N/A
Living Pit	DFM3-13	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Lizard Man	DF41, DF3-15	4d×10	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Major Ghost	DF9-22	1	1d-2	2d×1,000	1d-3
Manticore	DFM3-14	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Medusa	DFM3-15	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Merfolk	P113-25	4d×10	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Metal Elemental	DF9-29	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Mimic	P98-16	1d-3	1d-2	(1d-1)×1,000	1d-3
Mindwarper	DF41, DF2-25	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Minotaur	DF42, DF3-14	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Mold	DF42, DFM2-9	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Mummy (Kromm)	P106-33	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Mummy (Rice)	P98-16	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Nāga	P113-26	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Nankilstlani	P98-17	1d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Needleman	P113-20	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Nest Scorpion	DFA1-46	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Nix	P113-26	1d	1d-5	4d×1,000	1d-3
Obsidian Jaguar	DF43, DFM1-24	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Octopus Blossom	DFM3-16	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Octopus-Folk (Pulver)	P98-22	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Octopus-Folk (Saeger)	P113-27	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Ogre	DF44, DF3-14	2d-1	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Ooze	DF44, DFM2-11	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Paragriff	P113-18	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Peshkali	DF45, DF2-25	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Petty Demon	DF9-32	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Phase Serpent	DFM3-17	2d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Phoenix	DFM3-18	1	1d-3	N/A	N/A
Pscorpion	P76-10	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Pudding	DF46, DFM2-13	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Pyro-Tiger	P76-11	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Python	B458	3d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Quarterlings	P106-21	2d×20	1d-3	3d×1,000	1d-5
Rabid Demon Dog	DFE1-16	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Rattlesnake	B458	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Rock Mite	DF47, DFM1-25	2d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Rock Troll	DFM3-19	2d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Rot Worm	DFM3-20	2d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sage Statue	DFE1-16	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Salamander	DF5-27	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sea Hag	P113-27	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Servitor Skeleton	DF9-26	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Servitor Zombie	DF9-26	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Shadow Warrior	DFM3-21	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Shamblethorn	P108-14	2d-1	1d-4	(1d-1)×1,000	1d-3
Shoulder Dragon	DF5-27	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Siege Beast	DF47, DF2-25	2d-1	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Skeleton	DF47	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sky Glider	P98-17	8d+2	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Slime	DF48, DFM2-15	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Slorn	DF49, DFM1-26	1d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Slugbeast	DF50, DFM1-27	1d	N/A	N/A	N/A
Small Boar	B458	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Specter	DF50	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Speeding Blade	DFA1-48	1d-2	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sphere of Madness	DF51	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Spirit Guardian	DF52, DF9-23	1	always	2d×1,000	1d-3
Spirit of Place	DF9-24	1	always	2d×1,000	1d-3
Spore Cloud	DF52, DFM2-17	1d-3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Squirrel-pion	Kickstarter	2d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Standard Demon	DR9-34	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Stone Golem	DF54, DF2-26	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Stone Shark	P98-18	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Strix	B461	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Succubus	P108-36	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Swamp Alligator	P108-20	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Swamp Wisp	P106-34	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Swarm	DF54	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sweeping Void	DFE1-16	1d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sword Spirit	DF55, DFM1-29	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Sylph	DF5-28	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Talus	DF5-28	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Tatterdemalion	P98-19	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Tengu	P89-21	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Tentacles	P80-34	1d-1	always	4d×1,000	1d-1
Terrible Dire Bunny	P76-32	2d-1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Terrible Hedge	P76-32	2d-1	1d-4	(1d-1)×1,000	1d-3
Terrible Terrier	P76-31	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Terrible Whipping Willow	P76-32	1	1d-4	(1d-1)×1,000	1d-3
Terribly Dire Wolverine	P76-33	2d+1	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Throttler	DF55, DFM1-30	2d-1	1d-3	8d×1,000	1d-4
Tiger	DF56, B456	2d-1	1d-2	N/A	N/A
Tiger Shark	B457	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Timber Wolf	B458	3d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Tomb Tree	P106-35	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Toxifer	DF56, DF2-26	2d-1	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-4
Triger	DF57, DF2-26	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Troll	DF57, DFM1-31	1d	1d-3	4d×1,000	1d-3
Troll (Racial Template)	DF3-15	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Undead Slime	DF58, DFM1-32	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Undine	DF5-29	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Vampire	DF58	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Vampire (Frick)	P50-15	1d-1	1d-3	2d×1,000	1d-3
Virtuous Maid	P113-17	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Void Brute	DF59, DFM1-33	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Void Wyrm	P80-34	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Void/Sound/Ether Elemental	DF9-30	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Warband Giant	P89-32	1d	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Watcher at the Edge of Time	DF59, DFM1-34	1d-1	1d-4	4d×1,000	1d-1
Water Beetle	P113-27	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Werewolf	DF60	5d+1	1d-2	4d×1,000	1d-3
Wildman	DF60, DF3-16	2d	1d-2	(2d-1)×1,000	1d-5
Windroot	P98-19	2d-1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Wood Elemental	DF9-31	1	N/A	N/A	N/A
Wyvern	P108-15	1d	1d-3	(2d-4)×1,000	1d-4
Zombie	DF62	3d+1	N/A	N/A	N/A

Game log for 25 March 2018: Wandering shadows

Dramatis personae

Xóran, fox-man scout
Kim, thief
Mayhem, short barbarian
Ash, squire
Áttikos, holy warrior of the sun god
Grymalkus, whiny cleric of the war god
Caleb, wizard
Kôštē, cleric of the farming goddess

Quid occurrit

The gang, weary from its fight with the grey pudding, rested in the room with the dwarf shrine. Luckily, nothing came while they were resting. Afterwards, Ash had the group go back through the maze, planning on taking a hallway later they had bypassed before.

However, back in the room where Kim had turned off the trap, they see a flash in the room. After taking a few seconds to gather themselves, Kim, Xóran, and Mayhem snuck into the room, where Kim and Xóran were able to see a big spider. Their sneakiness helped make short work of the spider.

From there, after a short rest for Caleb’s welfare, they pressed onward and went down one of the turns they didn’t take before. The walked from there into a room with many spider webs and no other ways out. Kim looked around and found 10 copper farthings (which nobody believed was all the loot, but thieving Kim had found loot first), while Mayhem torched the webs.

Afterwards, they wound through another hallway and found themselves at a stairs going up, as well as a hallway back to the big room with the little girl and the coffins. Rather than cut through the big room, they found their way back around and went down a hallway on the other side of the room through which they had yet to go. There, they found another stairs going up, and went up to check out the room, and, while this was the first time they had seen it, they did find some grey gunk that looked like it had come from the pudding.

They went back downstairs, and suddenly, the shadow struck. Áttikos was its target, and when it touched him, he started to feel faint. Still, he kept going, and a few seconds later, Mayhem, Ash, and Kim had beaten it back into the darkness.

From there, they went looking for the workdesk. Before stepping in a room with a big slab and a pickled lung in a jar, Kim saw a slit in the way inside. She prodded it with her torch, then a big axe swung down and smacked her in the chest, knocking her down. Mayhem bound her wounds and Grymálkus and Kôštē healed her, while they watched the axe swing like a pendulum every few seconds. Afterwards, they slipped past the swinging axe, and made their way down a few hallways until they found themselves in a room with

The desk.

It was a teak desk that somehow had not rotted away, and with some milky-white semi-precious  stone inlay to make it look nicer. It had to be a desk from Aikîā Dungeons, an order that somehow hadn’t made it to the jade idol that had made it in a bygone time.

So they took the desk. They made their way back to the stairs, and, after a turn, found one of their marks on the wall. Mayhem had a good idea how to get back, and they soon found themselves in the room with the jade idol. The idol bade them how to put the desk in a corner and to put it on the desk, and it them told them that they had fulfilled their end of the bargain, and their necks were still safe in the dungeon. Whatever that meant.

Still, finding themselves without loot, they thought hard about the cloak, and started looking for it. They made it downstairs again, and ran into a doomchild, which knifed Kim before Mayhem threw it. Afterwards, Caleb realized (or, the GM, amazed that they hadn’t put two and two together, rolled Hidden Lore (Magic Items) for Caleb, and gave him a hint) that little girls don’t belong in dungeons. Maybe it was wearing something?

Thus, they made their way back to the room with the teleportation circle, and stepped into it again, finding themselves again looking at a young girl crying for help under a rock. Caleb, however, was taking no chances, so rather than lift the rock off the girl, he cast Apportation from five yards away. The girl stood up and, once she did so, he dropped the rock on her.

Xóran and Mayhem quickly slew the girl, who, in death again, showed that she was a dwarf zombie in a cloak. As the gang could hear the lids start to come off the coffins, Mayhem grabbed the cloak and they ran to the stairs.

They had just made up the stairs when the shadow caught up with them again. Alone, the shadow tried to keep the gang from taking grave goods, but the grave robbers easily took it down. From there, they easily made their way back to the shining sky and the chilly air.

Res aliae

The first thing that I want to note is the rolls that went right for them.

I went back and counted that I made 39 wandering monster rolls. As well as making the dungeon alive, wandering monster rolls are the time keeper in the dungeon, keeping everyone away from the ten-minute adventuring day. When my players camp in the dungeon, they make sure they are in a room with few doors that monsters can open. Wandering monsters happen on a 6 or less on 3d—9.3% of the time—with clues happening on a 7 (6.9%) if they are moving. For 39 rolls, you’d expect 3.6 wandering monsters.

There were only two: the spider and the shadow warrior. The only clue was left out of the log since the players and the characters missed it in their haste to leave (it was the skittering of little claws after they had reached the first level again). This was amazing luck of the dice; doomchildren roam the second level. These have been painful in sufficient numbers.

As such, they had an easier time; the shadow warrior, while mostly indestructible, doesn't do much damage on its own, while the spider is much weaker while looking for loot than it is in its web.

By the way, +Peter V. Dell'Orto, Roman, who plays Xóran the fox-man, thinks shadow warriors are great monsters, telling me twice how cool it was. I told him he wouldn’t have felt that way had he fought it while the zombies were coming at him. That was smart of them, though who knows what loot they missed?

John thought the cloak was on Caleb’s doppelgänger, and I had to remind him that I had given out the inside poop about that doppelgänger when we went to see Chris for the last time. Nothing to do with a cloak, everything to do with Weirdness Magnet.

Grand total for the last few sessions is 12 points. Had they figured out the cloak without my hint, I might have given out a point or two more; had they not, it would surely have been a couple of points less since they didn't get much loot.

All Wet Designer's Notes

At long last, I got published. I have about a half-dozen articles sitting in Steven Marsh’s piles, mostly the Dungeon Fantasy one, and have the basics of three more monster articles in Microsoft Word format.

And now, some notes, as well as tying them to my latest obsession, Dungeon Fantasy Naturalism. Which mostly works when you’re not in a dungeon, but, since I run a hex crawl, that’s some of the point of my articles.

Deep One: As b-dog noted on the Forum, these are straight out of Lovecraft. Their physical stats are slightly higher than my first pass (which really was straight out of Shadow over Innsmouth, and I made sure to have my copy nearby at this point) to make them a good fight for 250-point characters, which is an important design consideration.

As for their naturalism stats, my formulas say they should come in groups of 1d-1, an in-lair roll of 1d-4, and have $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-1 magic items. I think this is an excellent place to give the finger to the formulas, as they’re somewhere between Elder Thing and Mundane. They live in a pineapple city under the sea; that’s not 1d-1. I’ll treat them as magical humanoids for some purposes, which means they come in groups of 5d+1 instead. I’ll leave their in-lair roll at 1d-4 since they spend much of their time in the water, and leave their treasure at $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-1 magic items; the loot would be the same anyways.

Unlike most Elder Things, they will have some leader types. To wing sergeants, give those +1 to all stats and +2 to all skills (which factors in the stat boost); to wing chiefs, they have +2 to all stats and +4 to all skills. Deep one clerics will be normal deep ones with IQ 12, Power Investiture 2 (Elder), and some spells; I’d add Minor Healing to their lists at PI 2 since they have a society and their clerics might come with raiding parties. It makes the raiding parties tougher.

Dire Kraken: “Dire” was added in the editing process to distinguish them from the kraken in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 5: Allies. This is the kraken out of Norse tales. Steven Marsh told me to add the bite attack which makes sense since it needs to eat, but the survivors in the tales don’t get near enough to the kraken to get a look at its mouth. The whirlpool is something of a kluge, as making a big whirlpool is tricky in GURPS. Don’t follow it too slavishly, allow Shiphandling rolls for anyone whose boat is on the outskirts, but it’s goal is to mess up anything getting near the kraken.

Keep in mind that this is the kraken. There can be only one. I’d have it normally near its lair, so an in-lair roll of 1d-4; I use “lair” loosely here to mean, “Wherever the wrecks of old ships with treasure are.” This is big enough and tough enough that it demands having treasure; I’ll take the guidelines for underwater Animals to give $6d×1,000 in loot and 1d-5 magic items.

Giant Piranha: There isn’t too much to say about these guys, as they’re self-explanatory. My earliest draft had swarms of normal piranhas as well, but since there’s a listing for them in the Swarm entry in the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, I took them out. Adjusting for their weight and saying that a standard 7.7 lb. piranha comes in an average school of 1,000, these guys come in schools of 7d. This is twice as many as normal animals under SM 0, which seems fair for a school of big fish. They don’t have lairs so they’ll always be together, though I’d give them the standard in-lair roll of 1d-3 to be near some treasure, which I’ll leave at the standard $(2d-4)×1,000 in loot and 1d-4 magic items. If the in-lair roll doesn’t come up negative, there’s no treasure.

Lernaean Hydra: Like the kraken, this is the hydra of Greek myth. It’s adapted slightly to be a more underwater monster (a classical hydra’s Doesn’t Breathe would have the limitation of Oxygen Storage, ×100, and it would not have Enhanced Move 1 (Water)), which differentiates it from the hydra of +Peter V. Dell'Orto in Pyramid #3/108: Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game III. I stuck to the original hydra being Vermiform, not Quadruped.

Incidentally, the hydra helped inspire this article as much as any monster and the thought that if I wanted to get published in Pyramid, monsters would be a better topic than diseases (which I still expect to see, as it’s one of my favorite articles that I’ve written). My players ran into a hydra, for which I used the stats in GURPS Banestorm. While they didn’t take it out, they did much better than I would have thought, which didn’t bode well for the Yrthian hydra in a Dungeon Fantasy setting. So, I looked up Greek legends online and went off those, keeping in mind the power level of 250-point Dungeon Fantasy delvers.

This does bring up one of the few true cuts: its lair, a la the tale of Heracles. I’ll just copy and paste the graf from my original submission:

A hydra’s lair will be full of poisonous gas, which will do 1 point of toxic damage each second to anyone breathing it. Sometimes there are giant crabs (Pyramid #3/98: Welcome to Dungeon Fantasy, p. 21) that live near the hydra. The hydra will not harm these, and the crabs are immune to the poison gas of the hydra’s lair (though not the poison of the hydra, lest a crab get any ideas).

Again, there will be only one. I’d have 2d-4 giant crabs there too, whose game purpose in a combat is to draw some attacks away from the hydra to keep delvers from ganging up on it right away. They’ll have standard in-lair and treasure rolls for dire animals: 1d-3 in-lair, $(2d-4)×1,000 in loot, and 1d-4 magic items.

Merfolk: My one playable race. My goal for any of my monster articles is to make at least one playable race or ally in each one. Like giant piranhas, merfolk are self-explanatory. They’re standard humanoids, so there will be 4d×10 of them in a lair, an in-lair roll of 1d-3, $8d×1,000 in loot, and 1d-4 magic items.

Much like deep ones, they will have leader types. Aside from any clerics being standard clerics, they'll be akin to the leader types for deep ones.

Nāga: Here’s a linguistic note: that line over the “A” is a macron, which means to make sure it’s a long vowel: NAH-ga. The plural is NAH-gah—both long. I generally like ethnic plurals to make things interesting, though sometimes it gets in the way too much (like “kobolde” instead of “kobolds,” which is the genitive singular).

Anyways, the nāga sets up a possible non-standard encounter, which is to go to it to seek a boon. I’d allow any request that’s more-or-less in line of might with a Neutralize Poison spell. Otherwise, they’re punishers of nature. They're highly variable and fickle in Indian tales. I originally had them as Demons until I realized this would make them subject to Banish, so they became Faerie.

Nāgā are standard Faerie: they come in groups of 1d, have an in-lair roll of 1d-3, keep treasure of $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Nix: When thinking I would write a Designer’s Note to let me tie in with the Dungeon Fantasy Naturalism blog post I had been writing, I realized that the Germanic nixen would have almost the same stats as the as the Slavic vodyanoi. They’re going to be Ugly and male, but it’s pretty much the same thing: they represent the advice of a mother of “Don’t go near the water!"

Like nāgā, the naturalism stats are mostly standard Faerie: they come in groups of 1d, and keep treasure of $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items. I’d have their in-lair roll be 1d-5, however, and if they’re outside their lair, they’re in the shape of a person and will try to bring wayfarers to their lair to drown.

Octopus-Folk: I got these from looking at Cardboard Heroes, thinking, “If Evil Stevie gets the idea to print Cardboard Heroes in a box, what would make a good Dungeon Fantasy monster?” Like merfolk, they’re mostly self-explanatory, but I bumped up their ST in the editing process to make sure they could easily wield two broadswords and be a threat.

Octopus-folk will fall into the category of magical humanoids and have stats accordingly: live in lairs of 2d, have an in-lair roll of 1d-2, and have $(2d-1)×1,000 in loot and 1d-5 magic items. I could see bumping up the in-lair roll to 1d-3, as they’re not big so don’t need a big range.

Sea Hag: Americans and Canadians over 30 might get a little joke in the Notes about sea hags. For those who need a hint, think of raw spinach in a can. Their Terror is selective, as is her Evil Eye. (Yes, that’s a Mötley Crüe reference—I may be a progger, but I am a Gen Xer who grew up in the decade of hair metal.) Those with Magery will cast spells that can lure prey, like illusions or big explosions. Sea hags can be in a dungeon with little work, though they’re going to be near a big pond.

For the naturalism stats, they’re standard Faerie: covens of 1d, an in-lair roll of 1d-3, treasure of $4d×1,000 loot and 1d-3 magic items.

Water Beetle: These guys aren’t too interesting, but there’s always need of masses of dumb monsters. I had originally written up monstrous beetles, but since they showed up in Pyramid #3/108, I tweaked them to keep my work and make them a little more interesting by moving them to the water monsters article. They come in gangs of 3d+1, and won’t have treasure. You stumble on their nest on an in-lair roll of 1d-2; if it isn’t negative, they haven’t lain any eggs.

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.

Game log for 25 February 2018: Pudding is for eating

Dramatis personae

Xóran, fox-man scout
Kim, thief
Mayhem, short barbarian
Ash, squire
Áttikos, holy warrior of the sun god
Grymalkus, whiny cleric of the war god
Caleb, wizard
Kôštē, cleric of the farming goddess

Quid occurrit

After the pudding went poof and the steam blew away, Kim peeked into the room. A quick look showed her that there was a hole in the middle of the ground, and that the ceiling was rusting bronze and not flush with the walls. She nodded her head and understood that going into the room was a bad idea.

The gang marked the door with an "X" and walked back to the bigger room. From there, they took a hallway off from a corner, and found themselves in a latrine where their bodies glowed with a cold fire. Someone wizard must have liked reading in the bathroom enough to make sure the room always had light.

When they walked back to the bigger room, their bodies didn't glow, but the two striges now in the room were hungry, and flew at them from behind. One of them hit Kôštē the cleric and its long beak stuck in her and sucked her blood until she passed out, but aside from that, the gang made short work of them. Caleb bound Kôštē's wounds and she woke up, then drank a potion of Minor Healing she had.

They walked back to the room where they had spent the night, even though they hadn't been awake only a few hours (they guessed it was midday). There, they found three doomchildren also had the idea of holing up in that room, and didn't see them right away, letting them make a shield wall and Xóran get off a shot before they drew near. Ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom, all gone.

Truly tired from their few hours of pain, they rested up again. While resting, nothing bothered them, though there was a strong thud at the door. They rested up until they thought it was midnight or so, and Kôštē had healed as much as she could.

After that, they started walking through the maze. After many twists and turns, they found themselves in a big room with a pentagram in the middle. Over the pentagram was a green glow.

In the end, Caleb couldn't resist. And once he disappeared, everyone else stepped into the green glowing light to find him. Well, Ash did try to throw Grymalkus into the circle, but in the end, everyone stepped in of his or her own free will.

The whole gang found itself in a big room in the shape of an octagon, with two hallways leading out. In one corner was some rubble, and trapped in that rubble was a little girl. Caleb asked her her name, she croaked out, “Ongên.” Ash and Kim stepped towards her, but Xóran held out his arm to stop them. "It smells like rotting death here. Let's go."

They hastily made their way out of one of the two hallways. They wandered around some hallways and into a few rooms, one with an old dwarf shrine, and another with a clumsily-lain tile trap which Kim easily disabled. They chose to start back to see if they could find something else.

When they were almost back at the room with the shrine, a grey pseudopod came from behind Caleb and went right past his ear.

Since the pudding had clumsily announced its presence, everyone turned and pounded on it. While it took a few seconds, the gang didn't have too much trouble with the pudding, though it did land a few blows before the heroes ended it.

Res aliae

Weirdness Magnet for the session was that the pudding was back to full health after its trip back to the astral plane, if they were to run into it. They almost didn't, but one last wandering monster check brought it back.

I was determined to handle its tactics better this time around. I picked its random target with a d8 and got Caleb, which meant I was almost assured of taking down a PC. Since they now knew how the pudding was supposed to fight, it's not like they weren't forewarned. It has an attack skill of 14, easy-peasy.

And I rolled a 16.

I tried to justify it taking a Telegraphic Attack in my mind, but I couldn't. It just wasn't that smart, and that led to its obituary, since this time the gang didn't play around. If it were to All-Out Attack, it would have been Strong, not Determined, since how often do you miss with a 14 and no defense roll?

I think they're starting to tire of this dungeon, but right now, they're stuck in it until they find the Workdesk of Destiny. (Or whatever it is.) I gather they'll try to loot the place a bit to break even on the trip; I'm not sure they care about the magic cloak.

Oh, and I have some monsters in Pyramid this month. Not the most exciting topic of an article, but you have to start somewhere, there is a niche, and I write these things to use them. Hopefully someone will do just that.

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.

Game log 10 February 2018: Don't poke the pudding!

Dramatis personae

Xóran, fox-man scout
Kim, thief
Mayhem, short barbarian
Ash, squire
Áttikos, holy warrior of the sun god
Grymalkus, whiny cleric of the war god
Caleb, wizard
Kôštē, cleric of the farming goddess

Quid occurrit

As they walked through the halls, they chatted among themselves as to how to handle the "demon dolls." They thought a shield wall would be best.

They walked back to the room where they had fled from the pudding, and sure enough, they had a chance to put this to work as there was a doomchild there. After the first volley of arrows and fireballs, the little doomchild bum-rushed them.

Mayhem stepped out from behind the shield wall, grabbed the doomchild, and tossed him back to whence it came. Its ass burst open as it landed, making it go boom well away from the heroes. Doomchild handled.

After Kôštē patched up Mayhem's booboo from the doomchild's knife, they pushed onward. After winding through a few rooms and Kim not finding any secret doors in any dead ends, they found themselves looking at five doomchildren.

The opening volley all missed, and sure enough, the doomchildren bum-rushed them again. This time, they all missed, and were now before the shield wall. Ash took a poke (Defensive Attack) from behind the wall, and … kaboom! It hurt, but the shields did take some of the damage.

After some more patching up—Mayhem especially took some bone fragments—they rested for a bit, letting Kôštē get back some oomph. They pushed farther inside, looking for the stairs to lead them down to the Workdesk of Doom or whatever it was, with Kim always looking for hidden doors. After a turn to the north, they ran into six big rats. The rats, however, did little but get a lone tooth on Áttikos, while Mayhem and Caleb (with Acid Jet) each took out a rat and Ash took out two before the not-so-little buggers fled.

So, back to wandering. In one room, which had a rotten drapery in its doorway, six striges flew inside. They must not have been hungry, since they flew back out, squawking.

Mayhem squawked back.

Kim's hunt for hidden doors did pay off not long after this. A big wooden chest was in the corner, but Kim's hand went through the chest as if it were air. Caleb looked at it, and found that the chest was truly three feet to the left of where it seemed to be. Kim figured out how to open the chest, and found 90 copper and 50 silver inside. Grymalkus told her not to take the loot. "It's a tomb! It's burial treasure! We're not grave robbers!"

Mayhem, however, said, "Yeah, we are."

After taking the loot, they wound through even more twists and turns, then stopped at a door. Kim listened at the door, and heard a gurgle behind it. After some chatter, she kicked open the door, and behind it was a grey pudding, much like the one they had seen before.

Mayhem and Xóran wanted no part of this. "Stay away from dookie!" yelled Mayhem. Xóran thought the "whelp" (Grymalkus) should handle this if he wanted to fight it, and ate some snake jerky. As always, Kôštē hung back with them, both because she didn't think fighting the pudding was worth it, and because she wanted to be ready if the pudding hurt someone.

The pudding could withstand their blows, but had a hard time landing blows itself. Caleb's Create Steam on the pudding did slowly sap it of some health, but he ducked back after a few spells. Ash did the most harm, leading Mayhem, while digging in his pack to make a Molotov cocktail, to yell, "Mom, he's poking the pudding!"

At last, however, the pudding landed a blow on Attikos, who fell right away. Caleb scorched it with Acid Jet, but the pudding moved onto Attikos and at that time, Xóran and Mayhem knew they had to help out. They helped Ash wail on it, while Caleb, again trying to hit it with Acid Jet, lost his footing, and stumbled past it trying to keep standing and wound up scorched in his own Create Steam. The pudding smacked Kim, who somehow stayed standing, but had to stagger back a few yards. Xóran tried to grab Attikos from under the pudding but couldn't win a test of strength with the pudding. It was looking bad, and then …

The pudding blinked out.

Stunned from their sudden luck, they healed up, and luckily the striges, which flew past again, weren't hungry.

Res aliae

Did I give them three points or four points? Well, to tell the truth, in all this time since the session I kinda lost track myself. But, considering that I'm the game master and can kill characters for no good reason, you gotta ask yourself one question: "Did he give three points or four?" Well, how many, punk?

The striges kept getting good reactions to the party, being as that they weren't in their lair room. I interpreted that as having eaten. No, I'm not trying to be kind; they could have taken them out easily.

The fight with the pudding was one that only happened the way it happened because folks were playing more than one character. (Well, other than Steph playing Mayhem only.) I'm pretty sure Roman would have had Xóran jump into the fight earlier had he only been playing Xóran, as doing nothing is boring.

Anyways, as Kim had made her Hearing roll and, as the pudding wasn't trying to be quiet, she heard something. As the murderhoboes weren't trying to be quiet, it heard them, and tried to time its coming to the material world with them showing up, but, having only IQ 4 (which is brilliant among slimes, remember), timed it wrong as the gang talked about goodness knows what before opening the door. So it wasn't quite as deadly as it could have been, seeing as that everyone always got defense rolls and, with skill 14 to strike, it wasn't making any Deceptive Attacks. It kept taking damage, but Damage Reduction and high

I do now see Kromm’s comment about how the grey pudding could have taken Attikos with it to the astral plane (I was thinking it had to kill him first), but Joe wasn’t there and so Roman was running Attikos, so I wouldn’t have pulled that on someone not there. But now it’s out there for next time, so don't put missing players' characters in the way of grey puddings. Or your own, for that matter.

I might write an easy overview of GURPS combat for my players, especially Steph, who is having trouble with the whole second-by-second nature. She wasn't happy about taking range penalties at 10 yards, as Mayhem hadn't aimed.

Game log 14 January 2018: Idols need to redecorate

Dramatis personae

Kim, thief (John)
Ash, squire (John)
Xóran, fox-man scout (Roman)
Grymálkus, war cleric (Roman)
Caleb, wizard (Roman)
Mayhem, barbarian (NPC under John)
Áttikos, holy warrior (NPC under Roman)
Kôštē, cleric (NPC)

Quid occurrit

As they moved past the giant toads, they heard a skittering of claws down the hallway they had just left. Regardless, they kept going down the hallway, and, after some twists and turns, came to another room. This one had a stone chair with no back (though it still had slits for wooden slats for one), with a jade idol on it.

Upon seeing this, Grymálkus said, “We are here to clear the tomb, not raid it. Touch no valuables until all the monsters are destroyed, lest the wrath of Punšástor be upon you."

Everyone else rolled his or her eyes.

A loud, Wizard-of-Oz-behind-the-curtain-like voice came from the idol: "Bring me the workdesk from the scriptorium, and I shall ward your necks."

Grymálkus, without any bidding from or chatter among the others, said the group would bring it the idol. Everyone else groaned.

The idol spoke again: "The penalty for breaking your word is body-wracking pain of the gods."

This seemed like fun to no one, but now that they had chosen to bring the workdesk to the idol, they set out to find it, taking the only other way out of the room.

After walking down the hallway for some time, Kim saw that the wall on the right side was odd. After a few pushes, the wall opened. They walked down the hallway beyond the door, which ran alongside the hallway in which they had been, until it slowly sloped downwards.

The hallway opened into a room, and, rather than keep walking through the other side of the room, they chose to turn and walk a bit outside. After some wandering through the tightly-packed rooms (the rooms before had long hallways between them), they found themselves in a room whose only way inside was the door through which they had came.

In the room were some small holes, and scratch marks about knee-high on the walls. Xóran took a sniff, and found that he did not know the smells in the room or in the holes. So there they chose to make camp. In the middle of the night (or whenever it was), Xóran heard some odd bumping and buzzing on the door. He woke the others and watched the door, but it did not open.

The next day they opened the door and twisted through a few rooms, then went into a room with two small children, albeit with wide eyes and squashed mugs. Upon seeing the murderhoboes, the doomchildren rushed them with knives.

The blows missed Kim and Xóran, but when Xóran slashed one with his sword, it blew up, with its sharp bone shards flying at everyone, including the other doomchild, which also blew up and had its bone shards cut the group; Kim and Xóran also got singed a bit.

The gang took a short time to heal each other, though Grymálkus's Minor Healing spell on Kôštē fizzled, leaving their good healer in pain from bone shards. Kim took the cheap knives of the doomchildren.

After healing up, they set forth again, and found themselves at a door. Kim heard nothing, though Xóran smelled carbon. As two doomchildren had blown up not long ago, they thought nothing of it, and opened the door.

Behind the door was a room with no other doors or ways out, and two doomchildren.

Kim shut the door again. The gang set itself up near the door, and sure enough, they could hear the doomchildren walk up to the door and pull the handle.

What happened was much the same as the last time they saw doomchildren: the demons blew up, and the bone shards wounded the group. Both Kôštē and Kim fell from their wounds, but this time, Grymálkus's Minor Healing spell went off and healed Kôštē. She was able to heal everyone else, but for all of them, she said that later healing wouldn't work as well. Caleb spent the time binding Kôštē's wounds as well, to not much help.

They left the room, and walked over to another nearby room. After hearing and smelling nothing beyond the door, they opened it, and saw an empty room. Kim and Caleb went into the room to look for traps, and found none, though in the far corner each could hear a loud whisper: "I was once a dwarf like you but I wandered too deep in these halls!” They could find no spring from which this whisper came, but, as it called them each a "dwarf," they knew it lacked eyes.

Rather than keep going onward, they chose to backtrack. Stumbling back towards the room where they spent the night, they came upon two big centipedes. The gang made quick work of them, but the din of fighting brought a grey goo, flickering in and out of the world.

Xóran and Kim peppered the pudding with arrows and Caleb smacked it with a Fireball, but all passed through it. So the gang fled. The pudding kept up for a bit, but stopped to become solid and eat the doomchild knives, which Kim dropped.

Res aliae

Three points. Maybe a little high, though at this point, I'd rather have characters that can handle things. I'm starting to appreciate a higher starting total, though 250 is still too rich for my blood; 150 might be best. In spite of the array of characters, I'm one for one character a person, though folks seem to be able to pull this off. Roman argues with himself; Xóran doesn't like Grymálkus.

The players are starting to hoard points for bigger-ticket powers. Mayhem and Caleb are nearing 250 points, so it’s time to bring their supporting attributes in line with the big boys.

I really should have had the pudding drop on them, but I didn’t think of it until I had already said they could see it. Of course, that’s a TPK, so maybe I shouldn’t have done that, or stuck with a black pudding. Kudos to John for thinking out of the original Dungeon Masters Guide and dropping the knives to throw off the pudding. It failed its IQ check to not stop and eat.

I've been fiddling with a new way of handling dynamics in the dungeon. Instead of saying there are 8 doomchildren in a room when you get there, I say this is the lair of 8 doomchildren and when they get there, there will be something like 2d-4. If it's less than 1, they're all out wandering (and my wandering monster tables have rooms of origin). If it's a lone monster, it's there on a 4 or less on 1d.

I've also taken to rolling for wandering monsters each turn, which I define about 10 minutes, moving through rooms at turn at a time. They show up on a 6 or less on 3d, with a 7 a clue if moving.

I’m off on the 28th for a 12-year-old’s birthday party. My daughter picked Snapology, which is nerdy enough and lets her play with Legos and robotics (a love of hers). Roman will run Rifts while I’m out.

Game logs for 12/3 and 12/31: Oooh, that smell

Dramatis personae

Kim, thief (John)
Ash, squire (John)
Xóran, fox-man scout (Roman)
Grymálkus, war cleric (Roman, 12/31 only)
Caleb, wizard (Roman)
Mayhem, barbarian (12/3 NPC, 12/31 Steph)
Áttikos, holy warrior (Joe)
Kôštē, cleric (NPC)
Villûdē, guide (NPC, 12/3 only)

Quid occurrit

The next day, they set forth. In the morning, they saw the black cloud of the evil turkeys far in the sky, but nothing bothered their trek. They set up camp for the night, and the night was quiet. Some of them munched on snake meat as the moon came into the clear sky.

The next morning? Not so quiet or clear.

The killer turkeys showed up not long after the gang set forth. They kept to the air, and swooped in and out. In spite of the hurt the turkeys did, they didn’t have too much trouble with them, mostly from Caleb cooking them in midair.

That night, they stayed in the village of Pranrés, in the home of Gummátōr, the daughter of the chief of the Dragon Claw Clan. Xóran looked for a jeweler, but found none. The morning after telling their tales of blondes and turkeys, found the ground under where their horses were sleeping had dropped, and their horses were in a hole. Caleb Levitated them out in about a half-hour, and they set forth for town, as they understood that they could reach Mīstássun by dusk if they didn’t stop. The only choice was which bridge they took—north or south.

They took the north. Near the north bridge, Xóran’s nose smelled something bad. Everyone took a guess as to what he smelled.

Xóran thought, with some buffs, he could take a troll. So he told Caleb to cast Flaming Weapon on his swords and on Mayhem’s greataxe. And so, he went up to the bridge.

And, after a second, Mayhem and Ash pulled his unconscious body away so they could bolt for the south bridge with Xóran on a horse.

They made it back to town, healed up Xóran, and tallied up their riches. They hung around for a week, drinking at the Pantry and other taverns, staying out of the rain. Kim heard tales about riches in the Battlefield of Ālkólanon in the Áos Hills to the northwest, west of the Dragon Claw Clan’s wintering grounds. Ash heard tales about riches in a temple in the Eldalîvā Woods to the southeast. Mayhem heard about riches in a dwarf tomb in the Védē Hills to the southwest. Indeed, through loose chatter and that he had been in the Dumenrôn Swamp, he gathered that the tomb was a few miles to the west of the swamp, and only a few miles into the hills. Caleb checked a few old books, and found that the dwarves buried a king in that tomb with Blôtos’s Cloak, which disguised its wearer with an illusion of another fellow.

So, after seven nights, they chose to set forth the next day for the Védē Hills, without Villûdē, as they were not going into the swamp, but with Grymálkus, a drunken cleric of the war god Punšástōr, and Áttikos, a quiet holy warrior of the sun god Saundīvós. It was a slow but steady three-day trek, as it was mostly through civilized lands, though Áttikos wasn’t big enough to bear all his armor.

Mayhem had no trouble finding the opening to the dungeon, which was a worked circlet of metal that he turned to show the door. While he pushed on it, Áttikos prayed to Saundīvós, who told him to beware his neck. What that meant, he didn’t know.

Anyways, they went down the stairs, and found themselves in a big eight-sided room. There were seven hallways out, and Xóran led the gang down each one until it forked, scratched the wall to mark where they had been, then brought them back to the big room to try the next one. One led to a small room that gave Mayhem and Kim a nasty zap; Caleb undid the trap while Kôštē and Grymálkus healed them.

After checking out each hallway, they went back to that small room to which two hallways had led, and went out its third way out. After hitting a fork and taking it, they stumbled into a small room with two other ways out and 15 goblins.

Xóran stunned some goblins with a roar, and the rest took off to the south after watching Mayhem and Ash taking down one of their stunned fellows. As Xóran, Kim, Mayhem, and Ash killed the stunned goblins, Grymálkus and Áttikos heard a snort behind them. They turned and saw a big boar watching them. After a second, Grymálkus stepped towards the boar, which turned and ran.

After the short fight, the everyone talked about what had happened. Xóran, hearing the deeds of the boar, said, “Someone knows we’re here.” However, as the boar had ran too fast, he couldn’t take a shot at it.

So they started looking around again. First they went to the north and made it to a fork which they had marked earlier. Instead of taking the other hallway from the fork, they instead went back to the room where they had fought the goblins and took the hallway to the south. After a few feet that hall forked, so they went east, where they had heard the goblins scamper.

Xóran easily picked up their smell, and they followed it past a few other hallways, one of which wrankled Xóran’s fox nose. After a few minutes, they reached a room with four other ways out, besides the hallway to the west through which they had come in: two hallways to the north, one to the south, and a hole to the east that was in the top of the wall. They climbed into the hole and crawled a bit, then came to the outside. Xóran popped his head out the hole, and saw the goblins, catching their breath. He greeted them with a roar. It didn't stun any of them, but they fled.

So, where to next? Mayhem had an idea: “Let’s go see where it smells bad!” Only murderhoboes. So they went back down the hallway and took the branch to the south where Xóran had smelled the bad smell, and saw two toads as big as horses in the room. Behind them was a small wooden chest. Mayhem called them “Frogs that smell like butt!,” and someone else said, “Let’s hop to it!”

The toads didn't do much, and Kim easily slipped past them. She didn't see a trap on the chest, but didn't trust it after the magically-trapped room, so she called for Caleb. Mayhem croaked at the toads, and they croaked back at him, so Caleb walked past them, and turned off the trap. In it was a measly 60 copper farthings.

There was one other way out of the room, to the west, and they took it.

Res aliae

We broke there. Two character points for the first session, four for the second. Five for Mayhem for the second, since croaking at the toads was cool as well as a little messed up. Obviously, since Joe didn't make it on 12/3, we didn't have the two new characters link up after all.

This dungeon was a little less polished since I had three such I was making, and I didn't know which one they'd pick. However, this is the one for which my wife and daughters made the maps, so I put it out as the one about which Mayhem heard on his critical success on Carousing.

There was wild speculation about what the boar was doing. Roman thinks it's someone's familiar. As the computer said in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, "I won't tell, that would be cheating."