(If you want to see what this looks like, scroll down and click the excel link or just click here, it should open in a new window, readable).
This
is a spreadsheet (in ods and xls formats) of all the basic (ie pages
2 and 3 of Volume 2 of the
little brown books) monsters for OD&D. No variants, etc. It does
not
contain the stats crucial to deploying the monster in plat (AC,
Movement, Treasure, precise descriptions of special abilities), but
is similar to what I use when I'm trying to figure out how to seed a
location or encounter table.
The
tables include the name of the monster, the no. appearing in the
wilderness, the HD, the % in lair, as well as Allegiances, Types,
Lairs, Behavior & Organization, and Abilities & Keywords.
The
way I use this is to have a single sheet for the entire campaign and
then break off separate sheets for areas and dungeons (Campaign →
Region → Dungeon). This helps me curate things by locality but also
make sure I'm not overusing something or ignoring something else.
Special
abilities are represented here, but in an abstract manner,
which, along with the lists of Behaviors, Types, Lairs you can scrape
or sort the sheet for useful things, like, “Acid” or
“Underground,” or “Swamps,” or “Militant” or “Very
Aggressive” to suit your needs while planning out an adventure,
dungeon, location, region, etc.
As
with a lot of OD&D, anywhere I've not re-produced
precisely what it says
in the book, I've probably made some kind of interpretive call.
MOST
IMPORTANTLY,
all you need to do to seed and customize an area is copy and paste whatever you want from this sheet into a separate sheet and
then do a series of search and replaces to revise to suit your needs (like, replacing "Unaligned" with "Neutral Good" or with "Servants of Baz" or "Acid" with "Gastric Juices" or "Melting Sand" or whatever you want).
Lairs
are where the creature is likely to be found. I've extrapolated a bit
here from the book, but nothing should be controversial.
Allegiances
are analogous to Alignments but I usually add an extra column or two
here to list any regional or important organizations with which the
monster might be associated. (EX. If, in your campaign, “The
Venerable Greens keep Basilisks,” is a thing, then you'd put “the
Venerable Green” in the Basilisk Allegiance category). Note that
for basic animals no alignment/allegiance is given. They're mundane
animals and I always felt the inclusion of them in the “Neutral”
category diluted the sense that there was a kind of war between Law
and Chaos going on with a third group abstaining.
Types
are the general type of creature. For example, I've grouped the
jellies, oozes and the like under, “D&D Fungi.” These should
all be self-explanatory.
Behavior
& Organization
describes the way these monsters are likely to behave when
encountered and how they tend to be organized. “Familial” means
they tend to function/domicile as a single family unit, “packs”
hunt as a pack, tribes function as tribes (ie, with a single chief or
king), civilized creatures tend to have rich and stratified social
structures while “hierarchical” creatures are organized as
something between “civilized” and “tribal” creatures.
Intelligence is also described but treated as relative to the human range (“as human” means their
intelligence varies as a human's while "Less Intelligent" indicates a mean intelligence less than that of humans and would likely cap out at around INT 8 with an average around 5).
Abilities
& Keywords
are things interesting about the creature or things the creature can do. Special
Abilities are described here, but in a highly abstract manner (ie,
you'll need to consult the book to get the precise rules, and I've
included the reference to the appropriate page #).
Here it is in ods/open office and here it is in xls/excel.
(updates provided on a semi-regular basis as I find or am provided with corrections)
(updates provided on a semi-regular basis as I find or am provided with corrections)
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