A d100 Encounter Table Tailored For classic B/X Dungeons & Dragons (and compatible Old School Renaissance systems).

 Here is a d100 encounter table tailored for classic B/X Dungeons & Dragons (and compatible Old School Renaissance systems).

Yes I totally stole this photo from Wayne's Books from here. 

To keep this highly functional for a standard B/X campaign, the table is structured around the classic dungeon tier logic: Levels 1 to 3. It balances standard low-level fantasy staples with faction dynamics, environmental hazards, and weird "OSR-style" situations that force players to interact with the environment rather than just rolling for initiative.

d100 Low-Level (Dungeon Levels 1–3) Encounter Table

d100	Encounter	No. Appearing	Activity / Current State
01-03	Acolytes (Evil)	1d8	Chanting in a low drone, carrying a sacrificial profane idol.
04-06	Amphiunder / Frogfolk	2d4	Smearing paralyzing slime onto stone tipped javelins.
07-09	Bandits	1d6+2	Setting a tripwire trap to ambush a rival dungeon faction.
10-12	Beetle, Fire	1d8	Gnawing on old torches; their glands glow with ambient light.
13-15	Beetle, Oil	1d4	Squirting blistering oil at a swarm of harmless centipedes.
16-18	Berserkers	1d4+1	Frothing at the mouth, desperately trying to break down a stuck door.
19-21	Carcass Crawler	1	Feasting on a fresh ghoul carcass; completely distracted unless approached.
22-24	Centipede, Giant	2d4	Dropping silently from the ceiling cracks onto the rearmost party member.
25-27	Crab, Giant River	1d2	Wandering up from a flooded basement level, smelling of sulfur.
28-30	Gargoyle	1	Perched perfectly still above an archway, waiting for a lone target.
31-33	Gelatinous Cube	1	Sweeping the hallway. Trapped inside it is a glowing, un-melted iron key.
34-36	Ghouls	1d4	Whispering to each other in a dead language, burying a stolen chest.
37-39	Gnolls	1d6	Argue loudly over how to split up a dead mule's hindquarters.
40-42	Goblins	2d6	Driving a small flock of blind subterranean goats toward a pen.
43-45	Gray Ooze	1	Mimicking a harmless wet puddle right in front of a treasure chest.
46-48	Hobgoblins	1d6	Marching in strict military lockstep, scouting for an invading Orc warband.
49-51	Kobolds	3d6	Retreating in absolute panic from something deeper in the dungeon.
52-54	Lizard Men	1d6	Carrying a heavy clay jar full of swamp-water and strange, squirming eels.
55-57	Lizard, Tuatara	1	Dozing near a hot steam vent; its pebble-like skin looks like a wall section.
58-60	Morlocks	1d8	Tracking the party by scent from the shadows just outside torch radius.
61-63	Orcs	2d4	Whipping a captured goblin who is forced to test a suspect floor lever.
64-66	Rat, Giant	3d6	Scurrying in a massive wave away from a sudden, localized gas leak.
67-69	Rock Baboons	1d6	Sarcastic and loud; pelting passersby with ancient, petrified dung.
70-72	Shadow	1	Following the PC's actual shadows, slowly draining the room's temperature.
73-75	Skeleton	2d4	Mechanically sweeping dust back and forth across a shattered mosaic floor.
76-78	Snake, Pit Viper	1d3	Coiled inside an empty wall alcove, agitated by the party's light source.
79-81	Spider, Crab	1d4	Camouflaged on a tapestry, waiting to drop down with a +2 bonus to surprise.
82-84	Spider, Black Widow	1	Guarding an enormous egg sac woven into a rotting wooden portcullis.
85-87	Stirges	1d10	Hanging like leathery fruit from old iron pipes, waking up as torches pass.
88-90	Thoul	1d2	Posing as a wounded, weeping human prisoner to lure someone close.
91-93	Troglodytes	1d4	Squatting in a circle, oiling their scales. The stench is noticeable 60' away.
94-96	Zombies	1d6	Shuffling aimlessly, wearing the tattered silk tunics of a long-dead cult.
97-98	Wandering Merchant	1d3	A heavily armed subterranean trader with two mutant retainers. Neutral.
99	Rival Adventurers	1d4+2	A low-level party (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief) looking to rob the PCs.
100	The "Boss" Roll	1	Roll on the Level 4-5 table, or introduce a major local faction leader.

3 Pillars of B/X Encounter Procedures

When rolling an encounter from this table, remember to apply the classic B/X procedural checks to see how the situation actually plays out. It's rarely a straight-up fight to the death.

1. Distance & Surprise

Roll 1d6 for surprise for both the party and the encounter.

• Both surprised / Neither surprised: Encounter begins at 2d6 x 10 feet away.

• One party surprised: The unsurprised group can choose to flee, hide, or attack with a free round. The encounter begins at 1d4 x 10 feet away.

2. The Reaction Roll (2d6)

Unless the monsters are mindless undead or completely driven by hunger, roll 2d6 modified by the active PC’s Charisma to determine their initial disposition:

• 2: Immediate Attack

• 3–5: Hostile / Unfriendly (May attack, demand tribute, or mock)

• 6–8: Uncertain / Wary (Waiting to see what the PCs do; open to parley)

• 9–11: Indifferent / Friendly (Will talk, trade information, or let the party pass)

• 12: Enthusiastic / Helpful (Offers an alliance or valuable dungeon intel)

3. Morale Checks (2d6)

Monsters don't want to die. Roll 2d6 against the monster's Morale rating under two specific triggers:

1. When the first monster in their group is killed or incapacitated.

2. When the monster group is reduced to half its original numbers.

• If the roll is greater than the monster's morale score, they break and run, surrender, or beg for mercy.

OSR Commentary - Is The OSR Going Fringe Again?!

 

The number of bloggers who are now using Paetron to put content behind a pay wall is now staggering. The fact is that a number of major OSR publishers have been for a long while been offering fifth edition as an option is now main stream. There's a large number of former OSR writers who are doing solid content for fifth edition as a viable option. So has fifth edition D&D become the new main stream & the OSR become fringe again? The question is a viable one. What I'm I saying?! The hobby loop seems to be whipping around again. And with the rise of Fifth edition D&D. Original Dungeons & Dragons & B/X Dungeons & Dragons along with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons has been moved back to the back of the hobby's bus once again. This is fine with the majority of us DM's & players.

And yet even in Fifth edition D&D circles the majority of the players in my area fall back on the OSR titles?! Isn't that funny. Its almost as if the hold of fifth edition reminds one of the 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons era. Hmmm.. Now some have speculated that my own toe dipping has meant that I'd given up on the OSR. How foolish. But with speculation comes a thought. Has the OSR been banished back to the fringes of the hobby?! Are we as the OSR seeing a return to the outer edges of gaming?! Because I'd welcome it these days. The unlidded eye of fanatics isn't something that I for one have the patience for at all.

With so many cool OSR products, retroclones, etc. is it any wonder that the mainstream as fifth would look to us as fringe. Or is this simply the case of the balance resetting itself. Only time will tell fellow games as we live in a post Covid world these days.

Lovecraftian Thoughts on Thouls,the Throghrin,& Old School Monster Ecology For Your Campaigns

 I've been thumbing through the B/X Dungeons & Dragons rule book today on my lunch break; we've been incredibly busy at work today. Hence the late posting on my blog but whist zipping around the monster section I noticed the Thoul. They've been a favorite of mine since I was a kid.

I love using Thouls because their Sword & Sorcery weird feel I began to want to use them for my next up coming Adventurer,Conqueror, King, & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition hybrid adventure. They weren't listed under their usual monster label in either rule book so I went back to Goblinoid games Labyrinth Lord retro clone rule book which is the basis for ACK & on the web. In Goblinoid Games forums I came across the following;
"LL has something eerily similar in the form of the Throghrin, which you'll find on page 98 of the core rules" I looked in the ACK's core book & sure enough there's the Throghrin in all its glory.



But there was something else about the Thoul & its ACK's Throghrin counterpart I noticed today. These monsters are artificially created, a mix of troll, hobgoblin, & ghoul plus their not undead. These are an elite & specialized monster to say the least. But whose creating these hobgoblin hybrid horrors? Its gotta be a wizard or some NPC class far more specialized in the creation of hybrid or chimera species of monsters.



This sort of a chimera monster makes me think of the wizards of both Jack Vance & Clark Ashton Smith. CAS's  all powerful sorcerer Maal Dweb is exactly the sort of wizard who could & would have created  the Throghrin species most likely from Atlantean Pict survivors mixed with a generous helping of troll virus & ghoul DNA. There's probably a demonic pact in the mix someplace but these things breed true with hobgoblins. I started thinking again about the post apocalyptic fantasy wastelands of B/X Dungeons & Dragons when we mixed B/X Dungeons & Dragons with a generous helping of Gamma World back in middle school. Over the last couple of years I've thrown in the Fiend Folio into the mix of Gamma World to pad out some of the edges of the adventure map.


So I'm thinking about many of the humanoid species in the Fiend Folio as being possible chimera or slave race prototypes of humanoids on many of the worlds of the solar system. I can see the Elder Things from HP Lovecraft's 'At The Mountains of Madness' creating five pointed artificial  bio-environments or deep space bio ships with a wide variety of these species on board. Possibly these ships might be guarded by shoggoths or worse.


Elder Thing artwork created by Віщун -
http://vixis24m.deviantart.com/art/The-Elder-Thing-395769042

So what does this mean? Perhaps the Elder Things who were masters of biology, magick, and bio technologies far beyond our own created hobgoblins from a mix of an unknown demonic humanoid species plus, Atlantean or Lemurian survivors after the shoggoth rebellion.
This was a disposable race of humanoid servants & perhaps food species with a finite life span & a built in willingness to serve.
These shock troops might have been very susceptible to the Elder Thing telepathic commands. A race with a built in passion for violence & military like tribal structure that might have filled the gap in while the Elder Things fled the surface world. Could they have followed their masters into the inner world of the Earth? With slow wars of creatures such as the Yithians, the spawn of Cthulhu, and others the Elder Things are a race that counts in eons not centuries. Hobgoblins would be a fast breeding, pliable, & yet hardy race in some ways ideally suited for their environment. Thouls would be a subspecies created by latter day wizards or others. 






Could the hobgoblins then be one of the species that exits the inner Earth World when the Hyperboreans returned to the surface world of Old Earth sometime in the future? They might have become servants or shock troops for the Hyperboreans longing for another powerful race to serve. There is some evidence that Clark Ashton Smith implied such a race might exist within his Zothique cycle. Unfortunately evidence for this conclusion is scant at best. Hobgoblins within my 'Old Earth' campaign definitely have an Elder Thing origin point. For Dungeons & Dragons & its various retroclones there is very little explanation on the origin or even event for many of the various humanoid races. This suit an innovative & creative dungeon master just fine; old school monster books didn't do all of the heavy lifting for you. You & your players created the world, shaped it through play, and harvested the result as another product of your imagination.

Review & Commentary On The Free B/X Dungeons & Dragons Adventure XC Catacombs of Death By RC Pinnell For Your OSR & Old School Campaigns

'Catacombs of Death'  is a sort of rare beast of a high level  adventure from Dragon's foot by author RC Pinnell because of the upper level of the PC's needed and the deadliness of the adventure.

The plot is something straight out of the pages of an old Dragon or Dungeon magazine in a good way, its got all of that hard core wilderness/ and dungeon action surrounding a nice plot of sword and sorcery action. But this one is an upper level crawl and lives up to its premise in spades; "An old friend requires your help to rid themselves of a curse, but can you survive the Catacombs of Death. An Expert-Companion adventure for character levels 12-15."

Grab it Free Right Over

HERE

The author lays out the ground work for 'Catacombs of Death' straight out of the gate.

This adventure is designed for characters at the upper range of the "Expert" levels of play--12 to 14. Players running demi-human types should have attained at least Attack Rank C, as provided in the Companion Manual of instructions, that their characters may be able to experience the adventure on a more or less equal footing with the human types.

This is not an open sand box style of adventure instead this is a carefully plotted adventure that follows PC's into the mid range of character development and the pit falls that go along with later life of such characters.

The encounters are a challenge for these characters and the adventure centers around several locations of very dangerous aspect and a rather nasty dungeon.

Action, NPC's, and plot are interwoven throughout the Catacombs of Death, the author making no secret of the lethality and challenge of its plot and story line. This isn't an adventure location but a set of interwoven plots in the style of the older adventures for Basic D&D and retroclone systems.

Think of this module in terms of the Expert module such as the Slave Lord series because there is a very similar vibe running throughout the adventure, a set of circumstances that will haunt the characters for years to come surrounding events already set into motion.

This is an adventure about old vendettas, ancient history, and hair trigger circumstance all putting the PC's at the center of its Egyptian style setting adventure & campaign style  material.

There is a ton of new monsters, set pieces and more right between the pages of this one. It really is a well done but upper level adventure & used well can propel characters into a whole other realm of character back story and development. But those playing this one are going to be changed forever by what happens out in the sands in the Catacombs of Death. Take a look and download this one.

Using Catacombs Of Death

 For Your Old School Campaigns

Using 'Catacombs of Death' for your Old School Retroclones is going to require a bit more of a challenge because of the very nature of the module, this isn't a sandbox or kitchen sink adventure but one that requires some preparation and careful thought by the DM.

Because of the very nature of its story and plot a careful working by the DM is needed. A nice idea is to work the events from the back drop into the PC's career early into a campaign and then use Catacombs as a send off or mid range adventure for upper level characters.

That being said there are other ways of dealing with the circumstances surrounding the adventure.

Another idea is to have another high level  rival party hook up with the adventurers and one of their number set the plot and events of 'Catacombs of Death' into motion. This adventure is interesting, complex, and full of adventure and surprises. There are a myriad of uses for it but for a game such as Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea some real solid adjustments of level and a handful of solid conversion work needs to be done by the DM. The material will fit a such a game but it would require some work on the DM's part.

This is a module well worth the time, energy, and circumstance to take a look at and its very well done. For a free module is blurs the line once again between fan and pro. I personally think that 'Catacombs of Death' is worth your time to down load & a solid addition to any DM's adventure backlog of modules. 

Chaos & Conquest The Spores of The Demon Lord Juiblex In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons As Well As My Old School Campaigns

It is known as Juiblex, also called The Faceless Lord, 
Lord of Sloth, Demon Lord of Poison and Ooze. It  is the demon lord & father  of Slimes and Oozes but its other names are  Szhublox & the faceless rot. Juiblex's lair is on the 222nd layer of the Abyss, which he shares with Zuggtmoy, the Demoness Lady of Fungi.  Together they are fungal rot & chaotic evil incarnate tearing apart the soul of the planes. 

Juiblex appeared in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual in 1977. In first edition, Juiblex rules his own layer of the Abyss, the 528th layer, which is an infinite sea of slimes and oozes feeding off each other's putrid forms.


Juiblex is one of the most dangerous of the Abyss's demon princes not because of its ambitions but because its already among us. Slimes, jellies, & puddings are a part of him & his children. They are everywhere spreading from dungeon to dungeon moving among the planes like a fungal infection. He rules not only his own plane but the Undersump as well. A series of planar tunnels that are networked throughout the Abyss connected by the river Styx. Not only does he know all but is aware of everything going on around his children. Green slimes infect a myriad of dungeons & even though they are not intelligent in the traditional human sense. They relay a trillion  bits of data back to their demonic parent whose vary existence is a mockery to all of creation. 

Slimes move into dungeons & ruins across the multiverse giving Juiblex access to an infinite number of planes. The power of the Grey Oozes are not to be discounted. His silent assassins & spies stalk the halls of power & have claimed many a life of a powerful wizard or even some powerful  demi god children. These silent assassins are often used by his worshipers such as powerful Drown families, drug users, & poisoners of divinity along with royalty. 

The powerful bruisers of the dungeons are the Ochre jellies who are spawned by the cult rituals & rites of the cults of Juiblex. They are the strong arm of these cults taking on any who challenge the right of them to worship their parents inside dungeons & ruins. They are the hand of the entropic demon lord ruining the lives of any who challenge their lord's worship. 

The power of ochre jellies should never be underestimated & it is said that their demonic master himself uses these bastard horrors as his tools on the prime material. These 'blessed'  jellies often seem to exhibit a remarkable degree of cunning & evil intentions. They can use tactics & traps to murder any adventurers they come across as sacrifices to their 'father'.  Since the planes are in the "Kali Yuga (Sanskrit: कलियुग, translit. kaliyuga, lit. 'age of Kali') is the last of the four stages (or ages or yugas) the world goes through as part of a 'cycle of yugas' (i.e. Mahayuga) described in the Sanskrit scriptures.^[1] The other ages are called Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Dvapara Yuga.

Kali Yuga is associated with the demon Kali (not to be confused with the goddess Kālī). The "Kali" of Kali Yuga means "strife", "discord", "quarrel" or "contention".

According to Puranic sources,^[2] Krishna's departure marks the end of Dvapara Yuga and the start of Kali Yuga, which is dated to 17/18 February 3102 BCE"

 Juiblex's power & influence has been on the rise as is the cycle of Abyss moves into descendancy;"Undoubtedly, few denizens in the Abyss equal, in the horror they evoke or in the hideousness of their forms, the corrupt majesty of the Faceless Lord. In the gloom that enshrouds his realm, he holds court over the glistening masses, the twitching oozes he sires. Juiblex is deemed a lesser figure in abyssal hierarchy, judged Lord of Nothing by his peers. However, in my research, I have plumbed the foul mire to examine the full darkness that is this disturbing fiend. Juiblex is a power defined by incremental advances, a being whose wickedness flows slowly but inexorably toward an unspeakable end, which troubles even this writer."

I've always loved the Demon: Juiblex artwork  by christopherburdett

Juiblex is the premiere alien demon lord whose long standing form of chaos incarnate has been the subject of being one of the possible sources for the creation by the Elder Things of the naught impossible horrors of the  shoggoths. Because of the mating of Juiblex & Ubbo-Sathla ("The Unbegotten Source", "The Demiurge") according to The Mysteries of Science which gave rise to the most dangerous & demonic of these foul monsters. 

The Pit of Shoggoths  by Azaghal

Juiblex's influence should never be uncounted. He or it is one of the most dangerous of demon lords. Ever present & waiting to corrupt & strike. His reign of terror starts when & where its needed coming into full bloom when adventurers least expect it. Here are ten ways I've modified Juiblex to fit in my home campaigns: 

1. I've used his other areas of worship to great effect for his dungeons & temples besides the usual fungal aspect of the demon lord. These include Chaos, Destruction, Evil, & Water. 
2. Juiblex's human cults are very dangerous & think that destruction of everyone & everything is good for the multiverse. They will murder when & where it suits them.
3. Juiblex has a strong on going rivalry with  Tsathoggua over certain regions of the underworld & upon Hyperborea. 
4. There are write up on Juiblex in the Wraith of the Immortals set for his place on Mystara 
5. Cults of Juiblex often pay for rare & exotic molds, slimes, & jellies 
6. The temple areas & ruins of Juiblex are often infected with some the most dire of chaotic diseases & infections
7. His influence pops up in the post apocalyptic wastelands as a god from time to time among wasteland nihilists
8. Gamma World has three temples dedicated to the demon god. 
9. Juiblex has been summoned to destroy worlds in a post apocalyptic fungus fueled frenzy over millions of years. 
10. Juiblex is actually one of a race of powerful demon lords & he is their father.