While preparing to stock Dyson Logos’s Deep Halls¹ of Amon-Gorloth a couple years ago, we needed a simple way to determine general room contents: monsters, treasures, tricks, and traps. My adoration for Moldvay’s CONTENTS and TREASURE tables (B52) ends at the point I’m wanting to use earlier sources. This is the case for Amon-Gorloth, who speaks to me in Holmes.

So, using guidelines given in Holmes Basic D&D (TSR Hobbies, 1977) and the two supplements that came in early boxed sets: Treasure Assortment and Monster & Treasure Assortment, both Set One (1976, 1977), I devised a single d% table that serves the same function as the Moldvay tables.

During development, we discovered a distinction between natural and built underworld areas. Dungeon Geomorphs Sets One and Three give a 25% chance to encounter monsters in dungeons, while Set Two: Caves & Caverns gives a 50% chance.² Prompted by this revelation about OD&D’s implied setting, I made two more tables, adjusted from the first, to reflect this difference between caves and dungeons.

For details on how the tables are derived, see “Flying Dungeon Stocking Table by the Bluebook” and “Flying Table by Dungeon Geomorphs Sets.”

In the solo campaign Dreaming Amon-Gorloth, I use the tables, accompanied by the Monster and Treasure Assortments, to stock the Deep Halls as the adventuring party explores it. We used to call that “winging it” and “DMing on the fly,” hence the title “Flying Dungeon Stocking Tables.”

Since the beginning of this year, the tables serve now and again to fill in where I lack an idea for what’s in the daily room of my #Dungeon23. I’m running Deep Dungeon Doom for a group, though, and rolling for room contents while a pair of 12-year-olds waits to fight something and take its treasure is ill advised.

As they serve so well and might enjoy a wider audience, I am preparing the tables for distribution. “Flying” is a less apt description. I have therefore renamed the document.

Old-School ’77 Dungeon Stocking Tables are soon available in PDF for print and phone on DriveThruRPG.

¹ The map god is spreading a rumor on social media that he is working on the Deep Halls II. I don’t find it yet on the Dodecahedron.

² This difference is lost in the composite product Dungeon Geomorphs Sets One to Three (1980), which uses yet another distribution—a variation on 50% monsters.