rustic313 , this is awesome.
I am more of a Word than an XL guy (humanities not math/business type).
Is there anyway one could modify this to fit one's own house rules?
Is there any way you could provide some instructions/coaching on how to do so?
Fight on!
The underlying tables are easily modified. I'm also not a computer science guy so bear with me.
1) Open the spreadsheet.
2) Open the "REVIEW" tab and select unprotect to modify the underlying tables.
3) Note that there are multiple sheets (bottom left corner). Review the "info and instructions" sheet first.
4) To modify underlying data, select the appropriate sheet: Room contents, encounters, monsters, treasure, traps, dressing, or tricks.
5) Change the existing cells to plug in whatever you prefer. Monsters, Traps, Dressing and Tricks are the most straightforward, pretty much just change the text there to whatever you prefer.
ROOM CONTENTS: This sheet simply makes 2d6 rolls to generate 36 possible outcomes for each room. These pretty much replicate the vol 3 outcomes: A roll of 1 (column B) is Monster (sometimes a trap) without treasure, 2-4 Empty (sometimes with dressing), 5 Monster with Loot, 6 Loot with Trap (and very rarely, a trick instead). You can alter the probabilities however you like by filling in the table how you like. Copy paste exactly the same text from one cell to another -- for example, if you want fewer empty rooms and more monsters with treasure, copy the text "Monster w/ Loot" to replace some "Empty" cells. If you put a typo in here ("Monsters with Cool Loot!" instead of "Monster w/ Loot") then the sheet will not work, so copy-paste exact text.
ENCOUNTERS: This determines the "challenge rating" of the monster based on the level of the dungeon. I use the term "CR" although the 3LBB refer to "level" of monster (from Lvl 1 Goblins to Lvl 6 Dragons) simply as the word "level" is used so often as to get confusing. On the table, the rows indicate dungeon floors and columns indicate a 1d6 roll; the cells are filled with the CRs.
Note that Delta and the 3LBB only rank monsters from 1 to 6. I break them up into 1-7; the "CR 7" monsters consist of the biggest, baddest CR6 monsters. If you don't like that then just replace all "7s" with 6s" here, and update the monster tab appropriately (i.e. put all the CR7 monsters into the CR6 list too).
On the far right of the encounters sheet you can alter the odds for numbers appearing, or the "expected" CR for each dungeon floor. For example, right now on the 4th floor of a dungeon, a CR3 monster is "Typical." You can change the "3" in cell K7 to a "4" if you wanted to make the "typical" encounter scarier for some reason.
MONSTERS: This sheet drives the monsters that show up once you determine a, say, CR2 monster is encountered. The chart is pretty self explanatory -- one axis is the CR, the other is a D20 roll. If you don't think "White Apes" should show up as CR2 monsters then just replace them with whatever you prefer. If you find "Fighter, Level 4" to be uninspired then replace the text in cells D20-21 with "HERO!"
My probabilities within each CR vary somewhat from Delta and Greyhawk; I went to the original U&WA tables and noted the chances for a few key monster types (character parties & undead being the biggest two) and made the tables reflect those odds to the best I can. But you can readily plug in whatever monsters you like at whatever CR you care for -- at least, up to 20 of them. You'd have to modify formulas on the first sheet to allow a D100 (or some arbitrarily larger die) to govern more possibilities, but I thought 20 monsters per CR was sufficient "design space." If you only want 10 monsters per CR, then just give each monster two rows in the table.
TREASURE: This is just a table of probabilities by level of the dungeon and type of loot. It addresses probabilities (for gems/jewels/magic) and #s of coins (SP/GP) to be multiplied by 1d6 similar to U&WA. If you want to alter the odds of finding Gems at level 4 of the dungeon to 99%, then change D5 from "0.35" to "0.99." There is always a 50% chance of finding gold (this is baked into the formulas in Column L on the first tab if you care to change it -- just go to Column L, Sheet 1 and replace ".501" with any other probability). The SP and GP multiplies of 1d6 are also baked into the formula on Column L -- just change the "RAND BETWEEN 1, 6" to "1, N," where "N" is the type of die you want to multiply it by.
My tables reflect a "silver standard" economy. You can just relabel the first sheet columns for "SP/GP" to "GP/PP" if you prefer.
TRAPS: This table reflects traps by dungeon floor (1 to 13) and die roll (1 to 6). So you can put up to six fiendishly clever traps that will show up on the designated floor of the dungeon. For example, maybe you want the third floor to consist of nothing but pit traps. In row four (corresponding to "floor 3", just replace the current text with a description of a pit trap in each of the six columns ("Pit with Spikes," "Pit with Hungry Zombies at bottom," "Pit with Strawberry-Lavender Bubble Bath," etc).
If you want the same traps to show up on every level, then just copy-paste the same trap description down an entire column (i.e. Column B is all Pit Traps, column C is all Arrow Traps, etc).
DRESSING: Same concept as the trap table. One axis are dungeon floors, the other is a 1d6 roll. Just put in whatever text you want to populate your custom table with into the cells.
TRICKS: This is a 1d20 roll for a special trick. So you have 20 spaces to put in whatever you want (magic pools, talking statues, whatever).
The biggest area for improvement, IMO, is adding a feature to evaluate the number of hits for gems, jewels, and magic to ensure they are at least "average" and warn the user if they are below average. Currently you have to do that manually. Adequate gems/jewels are vital to character leveling.
