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Post by delta on Sept 7, 2019 9:05:30 GMT -6
The numbers appearing in the Monster & Treasure Assortment (varying for the same monster from level to level) seem quite nice to me, but they don't seem to match any explicit rule in OD&D, nor the AD&D DMG, or any place I can think of. Anyone know of any explicitly expressed rule that would generate those number ranges in M&TA?
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Post by Zenopus on Sept 7, 2019 9:46:44 GMT -6
I can't think of anything. The guidance in OD&D Vol 3 is vague with regard to numbers; "Orcs and the like will be in groups".
Perhaps you could make a graph of HD (perhaps modified by special abilities) versus number and see if there is a pattern?
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Post by geoffrey on Sept 7, 2019 13:38:38 GMT -6
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Post by talysman on Sept 7, 2019 14:53:29 GMT -6
The 1st level monster numbers seem to match the numbers given in the Holmes level 1 wandering monster table, but the sames isn't true for the 2nd level. They also seem to be linked to hit dice in some way: 2 to 5 dwarves (1 HD each,) but 1 to 4 berserkers (1+1 HD) and 1 to 3 warriors (2 HD). But you don't see the same numbers for different categories: skeletons have half a hit die, but they come in groups of 1 to 6, vs. rats, which are also typical half a hit die, but come in groups of 3 to 12, as do kobolds. I think part of this has to do with special abilities (centipedes come in groups of 2 to 8,) but I haven't figured out the pattern. Zenopus may have a good suggestion. |
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Post by delta on Sept 7, 2019 17:11:16 GMT -6
I can't think of anything. The guidance in OD&D Vol 3 is vague with regard to numbers; "Orcs and the like will be in groups". Perhaps you could make a graph of HD (perhaps modified by special abilities) versus number and see if there is a pattern? It's funny that you'd imagine me to not have a half-dozen spreadsheets and charts already! :-D But I'd trust your and geoffrey's and talysman's knowledge of other documents better than my own, so thanks greatly for letting me check your memory there. |
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Post by asaki on Sept 8, 2019 10:56:47 GMT -6
I have a feeling there might have been a prototype "wandering monster" list for AD&D that was used; it seems like it matches fairly closely with the list from the first printing of Holmes. I was going through the original M&TA at work in my spare time, converting it to RTF (just the first three levels, I can't find PDFs of the other two books, so I've got a big collection of shots from eBay that I'll have to go through)...I was trying to reverse engineer it back into a smaller list, but too many of the numbers just don't add up. There are monsters like Giant Centipedes who have either 6 or 9 AC, depending on where you look...and between things like that, obvious typos all over the place (especially for "number appearing"), missing data (no treasure types or even hit dice)...I feel like it might be easier to just use the Monster Manual. So I had another document where I was lining up the monsters side-by-side, so I can see what kind of changes occurred between OD&D/supplements/Dragon, Holmes, B/X, and AD&D. It was almost done, but I haven't really touched it in a while. The 1st level monster numbers seem to match the numbers given in the Holmes level 1 wandering monster table, but the sames isn't true for the 2nd level. I'm sure they mixed it with the "roll to see what dungeon list to roll on" chart, so you'll see a low % chance of seeing higher level monsters early on. I was sorting everything by monster type per level, and I'm sure if you check and see which monsters show up most often on which levels, that probably indicates which chart they belong to. |
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Post by delta on Sept 8, 2019 21:59:29 GMT -6
...I feel like it might be easier to just use the Monster Manual. Sounds like good work; I agree with that conclusion. Granted these were published the same year as the Monster Manual (1977), and the monster powers and stat edits are so close as to be almost indistinguishable, my guess is that there was a master draft list at that time that fed into both products. Also, I get the impression at that point that EGG wasn't actually seeing much of a distinction between two product lines, so it would also make sense from that perspective. |
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Post by grodog on Sept 9, 2019 8:10:33 GMT -6
Some other random thoughts: - It might be worth checking back on the guidance in SR#1 for the solitaire dungeons on monsters encountered to see if there's anything useful there. - Ask Ernie Gygax on FB---IIRC he's talked about building the M&T Assortments and Geos sets a bit, but perhaps not as much about his process for generating the M&TAs? In general, my impression is that OD&D monster level tables are broadly more challenging/dangrous/deadlier than AD&D tables since they're scaled for 6 levels of monsters vs. 10. You meet more monsters in numbers, and more-nasty monsters in HD, than in the AD&D Appendix C tables. I don't think this is directly relevant to what you're digging into delta, but my blog post about missing monsters from the AD&D tables may be worth considering as you look at the OD&D tables, too: grodog.blogspot.com/2018/09/monsters-not-in-dmg-appendix-c.htmlAllan. |
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Post by delta on Sept 9, 2019 14:04:16 GMT -6
Some other random thoughts: - It might be worth checking back on the guidance in SR#1 for the solitaire dungeons on monsters encountered to see if there's anything useful there. - Ask Ernie Gygax on FB---IIRC he's talked about building the M&T Assortments and Geos sets a bit, but perhaps not as much about his process for generating the M&TAs? In general, my impression is that OD&D monster level tables are broadly more challenging/dangrous/deadlier than AD&D tables since they're scaled for 6 levels of monsters vs. 10. You meet more monsters in numbers, and more-nasty monsters in HD, than in the AD&D Appendix C tables. I don't think this is directly relevant to what you're digging into delta, but my blog post about missing monsters from the AD&D tables may be worth considering as you look at the OD&D tables, too: grodog.blogspot.com/2018/09/monsters-not-in-dmg-appendix-c.htmlAllan. Yeah, good stuff, I pretty much agree with all that. The solo dungeon rules (both SR and DMG) just throw you back to the standard wandering encounter rules in each text. I've followed up with Ernie in the past and he's said that his memory is hazy enough that he doesn't recall any more details (e.g., which volume of the LBBs he was looking at for treasure tables). IMO the really dangerous distinction between OD&D and AD&D is in the monster level determination table: In AD&D it's very front-loaded (biased towards low-level monsters; e.g., always have a chance for 1st level monsters no matter how deep you go), whereas in OD&D it's massively back-loaded (very rapidly progress to higher level monsters; e.g., by 3rd dungeon level it's impossible to generate a 1st-level monster). More here.Just for starters, the M&TA monsters couldn't possibly have been generated by the OD&D matrix because, e.g., at the 3rd dungeon level 39 of 100 are still 1st-level monsters, as noted above, impossible by OD&D. (Even at the 7th and 9th dungeon level there are still dwarf and elf mass groups, albeit somewhat advanced in overall level). At the 4th dungeon level there are 12/100 1st-level monsters and 24/100 2nd-level monsters which should both likewise be impossible by the OD&D chart, etc., etc. On the upper end, e.g., 3rd dungeon level there are no 6th-level monsters but by the OD&D charts around 16/100 (1/6) should be. So the M&TA results look slightly more like the AD&D DMG matrix, but it doesn't perfectly match up with that, either (e.g., very different results at 2nd and 3rd dungeon level, but by DMG they should have identical distributions). Currently I've got the list annotated with OD&D monster level numbers (granted many are missing at that point), and next I want to add the AD&D monster level numbers to firm up the comparison to the AD&D DMG monster level matrix; but as I just said I can already tell that it can't be a perfect match for a few different reasons. |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 10, 2019 13:05:41 GMT -6
True. I bet Dan has run the numbers. He has run the numbers on everything OD&D.
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Post by delta on Sept 10, 2019 18:48:18 GMT -6
LOL, you are too kind! :-D
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