party to distinguish each encounter for what it is. (In fact, the encounter could be with a dancer only
prostituting herself as it pleases her, an elderly madam, or even a pimp.) In addition to the offering of
the usual fare, the harlot is 30% likely to know valuable information, 15% likely to make something up
in order to gain a reward, and 20% likely to be, or work with, a thief. You may find it useful to use the
sub-table below to see which sort of harlot encounter takes place:
01-10 Slovenly trull
An expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman, a haughty courtesan a noblewoman, the other harlots
might be mistaken for goodwives, and so forth.
Unfortunately, Gygax did not explain why youd never meet a haughty strumpet or a brazen
courtesan. However, he did offer valuable advice on other urban street characters: Drunk encounters
are typically with 1-4 tipsy revelers or wine-sodden bums, and 40 percent of the time when you meet a
gentleman hell be a foppish dandy with 1-4 sycophants.
Table III: Minor Malevolent Effects
Artifacts and relics are the most powerful type of magic items in D&D, offering god-like
abilities. In 3.5E, you pretty much just get the god-like abilities. But Gygax was obsessed with checks
and balances, and like a Madison of magic items, created a complex, six-part system for artifact/relic
powers, including minor and major benign powers; minor and major malevolent effects; prime powers;
and side effects. Best of all, you selected or randomly generated such powers yourself. The following is
the selection of minor malevolent effects:
A. Acne on possessors face
B. Blindness for 1-4 rounds when first used against an enemy
C. Body odor noticeable at 10 distance
D. Deafness for 1-4 turns when first used against an enemy
E. Gems or jewelry found never increase in value
F. Holy water within 10 of item becomes polluted
G. Lose 1-4 points of charisma for 1-4 days when major power used
Result
EXPLOSION! Internal damage is 6-60 h.p., those within a 5
radius take 1-10 h.p. if mixed externally, all in a 10 radius take
04-08
half efficiency.)
09-15
16-25
26-35
36-90
91-99
00
Morals table
Gygax provided a way to easily create detailed Non-Player Characters for players to interact
with. By easily, he meant you would roll on 19 different characteristic tables. Of the Traits Tables,
the one for Morals may be the most interesting, with its weird recalibration against immorality. 1E was
heavily biased toward good deeds, which is probably narratively sound and appealed to me as an
innocent teenager; but now this just makes me scratch my head:
Morals (d12)
1. aesthetic
2. virtuous
3. normal
4. normal
5. lusty
6. lusty
7. lustful
8. immoral
9. amoral
10. perverted*
11. sadistic*
12. depraved*
*Roll again; if perverted, sadistic, or depraved is again indicated, the character is that; otherwise, the
second roll tells the true morals, and the first roll is ignored in favor of the second.
Apparently, no NPC was ever perverted and sadistic, or aesthetic and amoral.
Types of Insanity table
The insanity table is another well-remembered classic, but worth including here for its
deliberately bizarro use of retro-Freudian terminology:
Types of Insanity
1. dipsomania*
11. mania
2. kleptomania*
12. lunacy
3. schizoid*
13. paranoia
4. pathological liar*
14. manic-depressive
5. monomania
6. dementia praecox
16. sado-masochism
7. melancholia
8. megalomania
18. hebephrenia
9. delusional insanity
10. schizophrenia
20. catatonia
[Asterisks denoted insanities susceptible to the games psionic mental attacksan interesting artifact of
the 1970s interest in all things ESP and telekinetic.]
Dr. Gygax didnt just provide this list, but detailed diagnoses, making this a kind of
DMG/DSM. Lunacy, for example, was a werewolfism-type disease that caused mania during the
full Moon, and during the new Moon only a mindset perhaps a bit suspicious and irascible. The idea
of a character becoming an alcoholic or S&M lifestyler was my first indication that D&D could be as
deeply weird as I hoped and needed it to be.
Saving Throw Matrix for Magical and Non-Magical Items
The saving throwa last-ditch miracle roll of the dice to save a character from near-certain
doomis a core D&D concept, one of the things that makes it inherently magical and that appealed
deeply to my love of randomness. Saving throws for player characters are well-known and still a
standard part of the game. Lesser known are the saving throws for inanimate objects. Gygaxs matrix
juxtaposed exotic substances with exciting events in a way that turned a box of numbers into a sort of
reverse-engineered adventure. Just looking at the table still gives me strange ideas. Ill leave out the
strings of numbers and simply provide the categories:
Attack Forms:
Acid
Crushing blow
Normal blow
Disintegrate
Fall
Fireball
Magical fire
Normal fire
Frost
Lightning
Electricity
Item Descriptions:
Bone or Ivory
Ceramic
Cloth
Crystal or Vial
Glass
Leather or Book
Liquid*
Metal, hard
Metal, soft or Jewelry**
Mirror***
Parchment or Paper
Stone, small or Gem
Wood or Rope, thin
Wood or Rope, thick
*Potions, magical oils, poisons, acids while container remains intact.
**Includes pearls of any sort.
***Silvered glass. Treat silver mirror as Metal, soft, steel as Metal, hard.
Just trying to rationalize the difference between Fireball and Magical fire, or Lightning
and Electricity, forced a mythological innovation. And such ideas as ivory facing a lightning bolt or a
basin of evanescent potion being touched with a disintegration spell drew darkly dramatic pictures in
my mind.
Grappling Table
The Grappling Table did not have as funny a name as the Pummeling Table, but it had better
ultra-detailed outcomes of messy hand-to-hand combat. (Especially with the slash-mark separation that
made it look like some Hemingway-esque form of poetic scansion.) To wit (minus the H.P. or Special
Damage Scored stats):
Adjusted Dice Score
Result
under 21
21-40
41-55
56-70
bear hug/trip
71-85
86-95
Over 95
kick/knee/gouge
If youre wondering, or are not a pro wrestler, a higher percentage hold always beats a lower form
a hand/finger lock breaks an arm lock, and so forth.
Monks Open Hand Melee table
The monk character class is probably the most overpowered in the overpowered 3E game,
essentially becoming invulnerable while able to kill everything else with a single blow. Arguably, the
worlds of Jet Li and Arnold Schwarzenegger were never meant to collide. But it must be admitted that
in 1E, the monk was even more overpowered, with even a novice character capable of killing with any
blow. The one restraint on this power was that it worked only on opponents of man-sizeor smaller.
Realizing that had to be defined in a game world with a high prevalence of various stages of gigantism,
Gygax pegged it as a maximum height of 6 feet 6 inches and a maximum weight of 300 pounds. (Thus
rendering many of todays pro athletes immune to death blows.) But another tenet of D&D is that
abilities increase with experience; thus, the monk should be able to instantly off larger opponents as his
or her skills increase. Ever the systematizer, Gygax proposed the following: For each level above the
1st, the monk will gain additional stunning/killing ability at the rate of 2 inches of height and 50 pounds
of opponent weight per level of experience gained. He then illustrated this with the Monks Open
Hand Melee table, a monument of Lombroso-esque pseudo-scientific insanity:
Monks Level Opponent Maximum Height
2nd
68
350#
3rd
610
400#
4th
450#
5th
72
500#
6th
74
550#
7th
76
600#
8th
78
650#
9th
710
700#
10th
750#
11th
82
800#
12th
84
850#
13th
86
900#
14th
88
950#
15th
810
1,000#
16th
1,050#
17th
92
1,100#
Did Gygax really expect you to know the height of every bugbear you stick into the game to a
precision of 2 inches? Do you count the loincloth during the weigh-in? Does anything about this ability
or system make a lick of sense? Does it belong in this column as it doesnt involve dice rolls? Well, this
shows D&D at its most laughable. Superficially, it shows how over-mechanized it can become. On a
deeper level, its sheer absurdity shouldve indicated to Gygax that the system itself was stupid and a
different solution should have been sought, such as breaking down the ability, rather than the opponent,
into rationally phased steps. For me, its one of those amusing bits of D&D-iana that I would pass over
with a laugh and never use. Another brilliance of the game is that I was allowedindeed, encouraged
to do just that. Gygaxs foremost rule was that there are no rules; it was your game, not his, and you
could keep or discard whatever you liked. In this case, he provided an excellent incentive for the latter.
Effective Location of Henchman table
Lets say you need a henchman. (Usually associated with Batman villain cannon fodder, this
term meant anybodys cannon fodder in D&D.) Perhaps you wish to try a media blitz to find one.
Unfortunately, Craigslist is right out. You thus turn to the Effective Location of Henchman table.
Method
Cost
Effectiveness
50 g.p.
10%-40%
HIRING A CRIER
10 g.p.
1%-10%
300 g.p.
20%-50%
special
special
Whats special about frequenting inns and taverns? Gygax offered a complex answer, but I
would suggest that getting majorly wasted would have special results.
I was always of the mind that any DM who left something as story-affecting as henchman
appearances up to pure chance was a lazy ass. But I always appreciated how just about every facet of
D&D can come down to a dice roll if you wish. God can play whatever games he wants; DMs
definitely play dice with their universes.
Values of Other Rare Commodities table (furs)
Sometimes you just need to know how much a muskrat pelt jacket cuff would be worth. Dont
you?
Type
Pelt
Trimming
Cape or Jacket
Coat
beaver
2 g.p. 20 g.p.
200 g.p.
400 g.p.
ermine
3,600 g.p.
7,200 g.p.
fox
3 g.p. 30 g.p.
300 g.p.
600 g.p.
marten
4 g.p. 40 g.p.
400 g.p.
800 g.p.
mink
3 g.p. 90 g.p.
2,700 g.p.
5,400 g.p.
muskrat
1 g.p. 10 g.p.
100 g.p.
200 g.p.
sable
4,500 g.p.
9,000 g.p.
seal
5 g.p. 25 g.p.
125 g.p.
250 g.p.
D&D inspired me to have such dreams, and skilled me in executing them. One of the privileges,
or dangers, of DM-ing is being able to project, or inflict, ones fantasies on other people; so I created a
random book generator for a 14,000-volume library I installed in a castle in the first epic-length
campaign I wrote. Ive now played that segment of the game through with three different people (it is a
single-player campaign), only one of whom actually plucked books from the library shelves, as I recall,
and then only perhaps a half-dozen tomes. I, on the other hand, have probably spent eight or 10 hours
enjoying the random book generator by myself, just me and my dice bag. Its not the greatest thing I
ever made; indeed, its a rather depersonalized, high/generic-adventure device in a fairly imitative
game designed by someone still learning the ropes (or tentacles). But in substance and style,
employment and enjoyment, I think it says as much about D&D as Gygaxs 1E originalities do, so I
offer it here for edifying comparisonand, in the communal DIY punk-as-fuck spirit of D&D, for
incorporation into your game, if your wrist be strong enough to roll it up:
*90% of volumes bear no title on spine
*20% in language reader doesnt know (-1% modification for every language reader knows)
Subjects:
1-9
History
10-19 Religion
20-29 Art
30-39 Mathematics
40-49 Linguistics
50-59 Science
60-69 Geography
70-79 Literature
80-89 Religion
90-99 Arcana
00
Special
[The library was designed with the possibility of offering clues to the plot of my game, in which
religion was significant; hence, the weighting toward that subject.]
History
1-49
Rapid Calculating
Basic Orcish
Elminsters Bestiary
Harguinn Grue
Troll
Algoid
Giant Crayfish
Succubus
Ochre Jelly
Bookworm
Astral Deva
Ascomoid
Gold Dragon
Catoblepas
Owl
Hollyphant
Hobgoblin
Masher
Rat
Killer Frog
Cave Bear
Pseudo-Undead
[Detailing a creature with 85% accuracy is a vague precision worthy of Gygax himself, if I may say
so.]
Geography
1-49
01
02
03
04
98
99
Tyrols Spellbook
00
[Spells not listed for whatever concision may be left to this column. The Scroll list was 50 randomly
generated magical scrolls; make your own.]
Arcane Books
[All of these were titles that, if read, divulged various subject-related spells within their texts; spells
omitted for a semblance of sanity and encouraging tease to draw up your own lists.]
1. The Good Earth (clerical, good)
2. Falzoons Dark Formations (magical, evil)
3. The Heavens Power (clerical, good)
4. Notes of a Monk of St. Festus (clerical, good)
5. Conjuring and Summoning by Pratt (magical, good)
6. Beast Handling (magical, good)
7. Bible of the Black Lords (magical, evil)
8. Book of Graves (magical, neutral evil)
9. Foundations of Nature (magical, good)
10. Hymns to Xerbo (clerical, neutral)
11. Libram Inquistorium (magical, good)
12. Powers of Creation (clerical, good)
13. Secrets of Mutability (magical, good)
14. The Note-Book of St. Cuthbert (clerical, good)
15. Signposts and Wards (clerical, good)
16. Nums Book of Destruction (magical, evil)