How To Determine What Your Sword Speaks (And Other Useful Tables)

February 8, 2023 2:23 PM

Modern D&D leaves much of the world building to the DM these days. But back in the era of First Edition AD&D, the DM had a chart for everything, as this collection of charts from the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide illustrates. (SLGizmodo)
posted by NoxAeternum (46 comments total)

The crazy charts and everything that could go right or wrong in them was my favorite part.

I'm weird.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:26 PM on February 8, 2023 [14 favorites]

I used to pore over those manuals in the absence of a real game, but table #20 in that article really shows what was gross about AD&D back then.
posted by wenestvedt at 2:30 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

when you're 10 years old and all you have is the DM's Guide and no friends to play D&D with, those charts are endlessly fascinating. ask me how i know.
posted by logicpunk at 2:33 PM on February 8, 2023 [41 favorites]

These are "crazy"? Let me introduce you to Rolemaster critical hit tables... .
posted by Slothrup at 2:34 PM on February 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

Or "Claw Law" and "Spell Law," which were entire books devoted to a single aspect of the game.
posted by wenestvedt at 2:37 PM on February 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

Explosive Decompression Table. That is all.
posted by phooky at 2:42 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Look, we still have plenty of charts and tables in the 5e DMG. And there are plenty more to find out in the wilds of the internet.
posted by nubs at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

My group still plays 1e. I love all the weird and quirky things about it, and all the artwork that for the most part looks like stuff drawn by high school kids. The new editions are just too slick corporate product.

Those tables don’t get used though.
posted by fimbulvetr at 3:08 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh, so that's where Rob Bricken is now.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:13 PM on February 8, 2023

The DMG also included a complete Random Dungeon Generator as one of the appendices. I was doing solo dungeons with that as a kid well before I had access to any sort of computer dungeon crawler.
posted by ursus_comiter at 3:17 PM on February 8, 2023 [13 favorites]

I don't see anything wrong here. Sometimes you really need to roll for body odor
posted by TheFerridge at 3:18 PM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

These are "crazy"? Let me introduce you to Rolemaster critical hit tables... .

I remain a devotee of the Ram Butt Bash Knockdown Slug attack table.
posted by SunSnork at 3:20 PM on February 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

I never raised or resurrected a henchman or hireling. #lifegoal? But neither was I reputed to have tortured or faithful henchmen or hirelings.....
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:29 PM on February 8, 2023

As an adult, the disease, infection, and generally the chances-of-this-and-that tables remind me Gygax held a job as an insurance underwriter.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:39 PM on February 8, 2023 [34 favorites]

I certainly studied all these closely in my misspent youth, but I had forgotten some fine points (it was back in a different millennium). I like that on the table showing the various demi-human and humanoid preferences for other species that while hobgoblins and orcs reserve their deepest antipathy for rival tribes, all other types prefer others of their own ilk... save trolls, who are studiously neutral toward one another.

“Mornin’, Sam.”
“Mornin’, Ralph.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:49 PM on February 8, 2023 [13 favorites]

pg. 74-75.
posted by clavdivs at 3:57 PM on February 8, 2023

As an adult, the disease, infection, and generally the chances-of-this-and-that tables remind me Gygax held a job as an insurance underwriter.

The table wenestvedt calls out (The Random Harlot Table) always made me wonder what else Gygax was up to. It's part of the gross side of that era of of the game for sure, but honestly, what the hell?
posted by nubs at 4:28 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

Well, as I recall his secondary career was working in shoe repair. Let us be glad he channeled all his random table energy for that field into polearm nomenclature.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:49 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Explosive Decompression Table. That is all.

I blew a party out of an airlock playing Gamma World once.
posted by mikelieman at 4:50 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

I am sad every day knowing The Dungeon Dozen doesn’t get updated any more.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 5:26 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

...or "Claw Law" and "Spell Law"...

Weren't those from "Rollmaster"?... (Uh, actually... "Rolemaster", but our running joke was how many rolls had to be performed to do anything...
posted by rozcakj at 5:51 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I loved the charts and random encounter/dungeon generator tables sooooo much, that was the first thing I learned to turn into a program - using LOGO (no - it was not graphical - but still lots of fun)
posted by rozcakj at 5:53 PM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Re: Random Harlot Table, I wouldn't blame this entirely and specifically on Gygax. It was a common feature of fantasy literature of the time. Not so much the Tolkein high fantasy, but very much the pulp low fantasy. There was an obsession with sex workers (in a denigrating way) and "wenches" and previous editions were often really creepy to women. D&D was largely just giving players what they wanted at the time.

For all the bad moves Wizards of the Coast has been making recently, they've recently managed to improve this aspect of the game. It was only in 5th edition that they renamed "Slut Street" in Waterdeep, the most fleshed out city published in the game. D&D earned its reputation as the avocation of gross basement-dwelling guys, even though there were always women who played the game and created content for the game.
posted by rikschell at 6:00 PM on February 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Harlot table reminds me of dudes I don't miss from my college D&D days. But yeah, apart from that particular piece of grossness, the tables are a blast from the past.

Also a reminder of how different things were in terms of expectation for survival. There are so many things in the DMG that will just outright destroy a PC or render the PC unplayable. I've played that way and sometimes enjoy it, but it's not my native style of play. If you attach to characters from the first moment or have a story you want to tell, old school AD&D or Traveller (where ofc your character can die during character generation) are not great.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:15 PM on February 8, 2023 [7 favorites]

table #20 in that article really shows what was gross about AD&D back then.

I accidentally went to slide #20 of the slideshow instead of table #20 (which is on slide #21), and was wondering for a minute what was so bad about the Random Monster Encounters: Frog Subtable.
posted by mbrubeck at 6:36 PM on February 8, 2023 [9 favorites]

My intro to all of this was the original AD&D Monster Manual. The one with the red dragon just sort of hovering in the sky above a centaur and a unicorn that I found for 25 cents at our synagogue's rummage sale.* That was the beginning of the end of my brain's ability to store useful knowledge. Sure, maybe I'd be able to remember the Japanese kanji that might make my daily life useful, but why do that when I could, today, probably twenty-five years removed from my last actual role-playing session, tell you that the long sword is a better specialization than a broad sword, as they both do 1-8 against small and medium sized opponents, but the long sword does 1-12 against larger opponents, while the broad sword does (oh, wow, maybe I have forgotten it) 2-7? That, and if you're going to play as a half-elf ranger (why yes, I read Dragonlance, how'd you know), you want to put that, ahem, racial enmity +4 damage bonus towards ogres because the rest of the options have fewer hit dice, and ogres are a much tougher kill.

I mean, I pretty much memorized the Monster Manual. After that, Deities and Demigods (though it might have been Legends and Lore at that point), and the section on Arthurian Legend put the Arthur myth bug in me. All of that before ever seeing a Players Guide or Dungeon Masters Manual. I remembered most of these tables, having, yes, read them again and again as a kid. It didn't stop there, as I can probably still play a game of (first edition) World of Darkness with little to no refresher, though I would need to get new dice.

*Weird moment/derail: that rummage sale in the synagogue is the only rummage sale I have ever been to. I've never seen one anywhere else, and in my childhood mind, and current memories of it, I associate rummage sales as something that only happens in synagogues, but that can't be right, can it?
posted by Ghidorah at 6:44 PM on February 8, 2023 [14 favorites]

taquito fiancé is a 2E kinda DM & even though we're playing 5E now he still uses a lot of older tables (not the gross ones); they're a regular source of joy

the random horse personality table nearly fucked us pretty badly one time when we'd come up with an escape plan that involved exploding the stable we were in with fire & riding out very fast through the rest of the bandit keep

turns out that when he answered our question "hey which is the most chill horse, you know, to tie the unconscious fighter to" he did NOT mention that this was also a horse for which he'd rolled "this horse will not, under any circumstances, run"

we now get REALLY excited any time he gets to roll on the random horse personality table, because the resultant clusterfuck was HILARIOUS (nobody died)
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:45 PM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]

Tables are one of the best parts of tabletop RPGs. I'm so glad that there is a subset of the hobby that has really embraced them for their power to quickly establish fun situations and settings. So much can be communicated about a setting with just one or two tables. Plenty of boring tables in the early years, but they're very easy to just not use.

One of my favourite set of tables is the one used for Last Gasp's Cörpathium. These are extra fun because these tables are used with dice on a drop map to create a weird and creepy city. A good set of tables like this is instant fun. Just reading them fills you with fun ideas for your game and they are so much easier to parse in the middle of the game when you need a quick idea or something when the players take a sharp left turn from what you were expecting.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 6:45 PM on February 8, 2023 [6 favorites]

Another set of tables that brings me back to the olden days is the Arduin Grimoire, which apparently costs an arm and a leg for physical copies and isn't exactly cheap on DriveThruRPG for a PDF either.

It was a running joke in my college gaming group that I got both Bump of Direction and Tastes Good to Monsters (mosquitos) from the Grimoire tables when my player rolled me up.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:14 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Traveller (where ofc your character can die during character generation)

Character generation in Traveller was a great solo game.

It also had a lot of tables, but most were used before playing the game proper. If you wish to create a character from scratch, first you must create the universe their home solar system.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:15 PM on February 8, 2023 [14 favorites]

No RPG has ever had tables quite like F.A.T.A.L. had, and no RPG ever should. (Warning: Link contains a review of the foulest RPG imaginable.)

ROLL FOR ANAL CIRCUMFERENCE!
posted by delfin at 7:33 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I haven't played D&D in about 40 years but whenever I see a tall, disheveled drunk/deranged man (nearly every day) I say to myself "Shambling Mound", picturing the 1e version.
posted by neuron at 9:45 PM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I run a D&D game and definitely rolling on tables to prepare for a game is one of my favorite parts of being a DM.
posted by bradbane at 9:46 PM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I say to myself "Shambling Mound"

Better seeing someone like that than something that makes you say "Gelatinous Cube"...
posted by Ghidorah at 10:20 PM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Those were the days!

The author jokes about the mining charts, but I read of a party that tackled the Tomb of Horrors by hiring a bunch of dwarves to mine around all the trap-filled tunnels. The party would emerge into rooms like the Mole Man, grab the loot, and move on.
posted by Gelatin at 4:07 AM on February 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

The all-time best Tomb of Horrors was the group that rolled up 100 Random Orcs and just picked a new one from the pile every time their character died. '80s D&D was a different thing entirely. My group and I trashed 5e last year because it's a bad, janky system that falls apart after 7th or 8th level, and switched to Pathfinder 2e, a much, much better game... and then Wizards of the Coast own-goaled themselves so hard with that OGL thing, we looked like prophets.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:08 AM on February 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Tables are one of the best parts of tabletop RPGs.

A UK company called Raging Swan Press has produced a bunch of PDFs with d20 and d100 tables for TTRPGs in the D&D mold to give a bit of background colour to the game. A character checking into an inn room might find a forgotten item from a previous occupant left under the bed, or a party trekking through the wilderness might come across a circle of standing stones on a hilltop, or signs of someone else having made camp a night or two previously or whatever — just small unexpected finds that leave the impression that the world does not revolve 100% around the player characters.

I am on record about my distaste for games with zero colour or life, and I use these occasionally to inject a bit of unusual sights and to spark my imagination. The downside is that if you have players who are accustomed by other games and other media to think that absolutely everything they find must be significant, it can be distracting to everyone.

In one game, the PCs were traversing a mountain pass; rather than just declaring, “You get to the far side in three days without incident,” I pulled out Wilderness Dressing: Mountains, which might bring up things like the sight of a group of distant, tiny figures scaling a peak, or encountering the aftermath of a small landslide or what-have-you.

In this instance, the random roll produced an abandoned wagon, its riders and draft animals nowhere to be seen. In my game, the players halted and surveilled the thing for an hour, then sent the stealthiest character to sneak up on it, then searched it intensely for half a session. They left, puzzling about the significance of the find. What had been intended to be a minor way to mark part of the trip (“Yeah, remember back on the second day when we found the wagon? That must have been the day the minotaur picked up our trail”) became Module H1: The Mystery of the Empty Wagon.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:03 AM on February 9, 2023 [11 favorites]

The all-time best Tomb of Horrors was the group that rolled up 100 Random Orcs and just picked a new one from the pile every time their character died

The original module in the J. Eric Holmes basic set (B1) had four lists in the back of character names and stats — fighters, magic-users, clerics, thieves — along with separate lists for random equipment. I gather the idea was that when a character perished, a new one could be produced in seconds. “Alas, our mighty fighter Glendor the Fourth has died. But wait — around the corner comes (rattle, rattle) Harg of the City Afar, who has (rattle, rattle) a broadsword and (rattle, rattle) chainmail and shield.” “Hi, guys.”

In retrospect, these incredibly barebones characters (name, six stats, random rolls for armour and weapons) were the first NPCs I ever saw, so to this day they hold a curious fascination for me. I have occasionally dropped one or two of them (more fleshed out, of course) into my games over the years — decades — since as a kind of private joke.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on February 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Dragon: RAAAAAAGH.
GM: Uh-oh. We're going to need another Glendor!
posted by delfin at 11:06 AM on February 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

The Fifth.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:35 AM on February 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

when you're 10 years old and all you have is the DM's Guide and no friends to play D&D with, those charts are endlessly fascinating. ask me how i know.

I think I know exactly how you know.
posted by straight at 9:22 PM on February 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Okay, now that we're at the end of this thread, I feel like I can sob about losing my 1ed AD&D books. What did my parents do with them? I never would have given permission to get rid of them. I'd love to look through those tables right now.
posted by mollweide at 5:00 PM on February 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

This thread is going much better than when I re-posted that d10,000 Wild Magic Surge table. (It was just over a year ago.)
posted by JHarris at 10:18 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

What had been intended to be a minor way to mark part of the trip (“Yeah, remember back on the second day when we found the wagon? That must have been the day the minotaur picked up our trail”) became Module H1: The Mystery of the Empty Wagon.

This is one of the best things about RPGs and DMing. I think, as a DM, you'd better be ready to expect people to clamber outside the borders of any published module, but I can't say that I've always been prepared for that to happen.

A long long time ago I ran a Call of Cthulhu game in a web forum for some MeFites. Maybe I should do something like that again....
posted by JHarris at 10:31 PM on February 11, 2023

I'd love to look through those tables right now

If you don't mind a PDF, there are "ways" that can be found to make this happen... Just sayin'...
posted by rozcakj at 5:49 AM on February 13, 2023

There are even legal ways. Drive-Thru RPG sells officially-sponsored PDFs of D&D books going back to white box, and you can even get physical reprints through that channel!
posted by JHarris at 6:51 PM on February 15, 2023