Dungeon Stocking - Expanded

When Stocking Dungeons, we sometimes turn to using Dice to Randomly Generate the Room Contents. In B/X and its successors, we’re presented with this lovely little table to help us with this process:

With a few quick throws of some six-sided dice, we’re able to get a rough idea of those Room Contents!

I’ve committed this table to memory at this point (I use it in my Wilderness Stocking Procedures as well, just slightly re-skinned) but one thing always irked me slighty: The “wasted opportunity” hiding in that “Chance of Treasure” Roll. It would be much more preferable if instead of a binary yes/no, that roll could give us a little something more.

After thinking about this for a bit, I came up with the following Table. This utilizes both of the dice rolled (in that lovely d36 method) to get a little more granular while preserving the same results as the table above. With the additional combinations it exposes, my hope is for it to serve as a bit of a “Helper” or “Oracle” and provide some additional inspiration/ideas for the results. I often find myself looking toward certain additional Random Tables I’ve created for this in various ways, so I’ve linked some of them here to make them accessible with a quick click. During the Process, I even spotted a few new opportunities for some additional d100 Tables and added those to my growing Dev List. 🤣

Random Stocking can provide a wonderful “Starting Point” sometimes and it remains the backbone behind my “20 Minute Dungeons” and the Dolmenwood Dozen Project I put together recently. It’s always interesting to me how that initial idea produced can sometimes spawn interesting connections or situations once the results are assembled together and presented in context.

So, without further ado, here’s the Expanded Dungeon Stocking Table. I’d love to hear if you find it useful when digging those Dungeons and would be excited to see what it shakes out for you! There may even be a similar tool/resource for Wilderness Stocking in the pipeline as well!

B/X Procedural Flow Charts

For a little while now, I have been working on a series of Flow Charts that illustrate some of the basic Procedures present in the B/X ruleset. While the list-based Presentation might be adequate for some Referees, I have found that being able to visualize how these operate and the “loops-within-loops” they can create in Play is extremely helpful. It also makes it quite easy to see which steps might be commonly elided due to Fiat, when one compares them to how they typically oversee situations in Play.

In the following document I have outlined:

• Dungeon Turn Sequence of Play
• Evasion & Pursuit: In The Dungeon
• Wilderness Daily Sequence of Play
• Evasion & Pursuit: In the Wilderness
• Waterborne Daily Sequence of Play
• Evasion & Pursuit: Waterborne
• Encounter Sequence
• Combat Sequence Per Round

Without further ado, here are the Flow Charts in their current Draft State. I hope you find them as helpful as I have for illustrating the order of operations for those common game-play loops and situations!

Let me know if you have any interpretations of these Procedures that might differ! I am always interested to hear those. These attempt to adhere to the Rules-as-Written, but they still serve as excellent bones and scaffolds to build Play around. I tend to cleave pretty close to these in terms of the Procedures I use, but naturally, a few adaptations and minor elaborations are bound to creep in and become incorporated over time.

Hazardous Hacking

I'm really enjoying Brendan's Hazard System for procedural timekeeping.  My brain is already brimming with potential hacks. I hope that this kind of tinkering/spitballing is okay.

The first: To address the “Reasonable Resolution” clause for Dungeon Turns and Resource Depletion and Fatigue, I'm thinking about reading the initial Dungeon Hazard Die as a d3 (so that it will result in only Encounter/Percept/Locality results) and overloading this roll to generate the number of subsequent Dungeon Turns that need to elapse before the die is read as a d6.

I think this kind of roll dependent escalation could add a neat wrinkle to the system, without too much overhead. Naturally, the mutable duration of the “turns” might still need to be taken into account fictionally, but I rather like the idea of more challenging/dangerous results becoming more likely over time. Looking at the Wilderness Turn, the same principle could be easily applied (closer to a Haven, it's harder to get lost, for example).

I don't know if the principle of “something needs to happen each turn” is sacrosanct in this system, but I think I'd almost prefer it. The only place where this can potentially occur seems to be the Haven Hazard Die results (“Ignore results of 4-6”) and this seems fine (an “uneventful” visit to Town after Adventuring is probably welcome), but I'd be just as likely to pad the table with “good things” and shift the existing Haven Hazard Results down (to allow for the above-mentioned escalation). I'm a sucker for system symmetry :) and this might help model how PC's that frequent the same Haven become a little more embroiled in the local events.

Something akin to this:

1. Generate/Disseminate New Rumor
2. Haven Event*
3. Clue about next Haven Event*
4. Complication
5. Clue about next complication
6. Abatement of haven condition

*Haven Event is a placeholder name for something akin to a Complication, but my line of thinking involves results that are potentially more beneficial/less ominous. Need a better name/antonym for this and probably some of the results, but here's the start of a d20 table:

Haven Event

1. Holiday/Festival
2. Localized Celebration (Dedication/Wedding/etc)
3. Election/Visit from important Personage
4. Fellow Traveler (Elaborate Existing Rumor?)
5. Discounts/Sale on standard equipment (Ye Olde Bloodbath & Beyond)
6. Resource Windfall (Harvest/Abundance of Export Item/etc)
7. New Fad, Fashion, Local Custom*
8. New Construction (Temple, Tavern, Fortifications, etc)*
9. Arrival of a Trade Caravan (Exotic Goods?)
10. Establish a potential new NPC Contact*

Starred results could potentially persist, as conditions.

Now I'm thinking of some kind of Hazard System Worksheet/Aid for keeping track of Haven Escalation, Conditions and "Events" individually.