Developing the Sandbox: Outdoor Encounter Tables

This post is part of my series on developing the sandbox. You can read other posts in the series here. The series will, when necessary, go into detail on the development of my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown, but will also discuss sandbox development more generally. You can read play reports from my B1 campaign here.

First, a preamble. The types of encounters I'm referring to in this post are those procedurally generated encounters which occur when the party is traveling overland. These are often colloquially referred to broadly as "random encounters" - which is not specific enough for my purposes - or as "wilderness encounters" - which suggests the party is navigating an untamed, dangerous outdoor environment, and which is too specific for my purposes. Here I will use the term "outdoor encounters" because they are neither city/town encounters - which I describe in my previous post on developing the town - nor are they necessarily wilderness encounters. These encounters can occur anywhere outdoors, and may take place in either wilderness or inhabited areas.

You can create outdoor encounter tables for your sandbox at various points throughout the development process. In many traditional "old school" campaigns, the dungeon which is the initial locus of play is situated very near to the "home base", so it is unlikely that the characters will have many outdoor encounters when traveling to and from that destination.

Indeed, it is even suggested in the AD&D DMG that the local municipality actually maintains a road leading to the dungeon. In that case, your initial outdoor encounter table probably needs little more than bands of fellow/rival adventurers, patrols from the nearby settlement, or groups of bandits and brigands which might prey upon such travelers.

However, Dungeon Module B1 relies upon the premise that the dungeon, Quasqueton, is remote, its location lost to history and local knowledge. Few if any know of its whereabouts, which serves as justification as to why it hasn't yet been plundered. It wouldn't make sense for it to be right next to town, and certainly not for a road to lead right to it. The player characters have the fortune of coming into possession of a map pinpointing the dungeon's location, but that doesn't mean the trek should be easy.

This meshes well with my own preference for remote dungeons and low level wilderness exploration. In older editions of D&D, the wilderness is a wildly variable and dangerous place, unsuited for prolonged expeditions by low level characters or those traveling without formidable armies. That doesn't mean low level characters can't adventure there. In fact, I think they should! They just have to be careful. They might encounter an orc warband, see a giant prowling on a far away mountainside, or spot a dragon flying overhead.

These encounters not only inject some variety and unpredictability into your game, but present the players with dangerous situations they will have to carefully navigate, reminding them that the world is not carefully curated to accommodate their characters - that they are small fish in a big pond and will need to act accordingly until they acquire some power and have more agency.

In the first session of my last AD&D campaign, the party had seven random encounters before finally arriving at the first dungeon. Many of them were potentially deadly, but a combination of mitigating factors like distance and reaction rolls plus the players' own savvy and my wise and benevolent restraint allowed them to reach their destination unscathed. Spotting a lone hill giant wandering in the distance filled them with fear. A dozen or so sessions later, they encountered another such wandering giant and laid a trap for it, slaying it with ease. The characters' growth in power over that span of time was self evident.

In my sandbox for B1, Quasqueton is located about a day and half's travel from town over settled farmland, across a river, through the forest, and atop a high, wooded black crag. It's not a super deadly trek, but it provides a decent chance that a 1st level party on their initial expedition may get wrecked by a band of hobgoblins or worse. That may not be to your or your players' taste, but I find the possibility tantalizing.

Since reaching the obvious first adventure site for the campaign would require some overland travel (both through inhabited lands and the wilderness), creating my outdoor encounter tables would need to be a priority. How would I go about it?

There are more ways to write outdoor encounter tables than I could possibly summarize here. Here are some of my favorite blog posts on the subject. If you want more, Google "D&D encounter tables blog" and go on a voyage of your own making. It's not my job to educate you.

The primary conflict when deciding how to structure my outdoor encounter tables was whether to draw my encounters from a preexisting, generic, all-encompassing table (such as those found in the AD&D DMG) or to populate my tables only with those creatures that would reasonably be found outdoors in my sandbox, based on the settlements, strongholds, and monster lairs which dotted the landscape.

For example, the cultivated farmlands and wild grasslands surrounding Timbershore would be populated mostly by farmers, patrols, merchants, and the like. Brigands would prowl the lands surrounding Fayette's Hold. The forest would be home to ogres, owlbears, giant eagles flying overhead, and the occasional chance encounter with the leprechaun, Jinglepuff.

While this makes plenty of sense, it's also rather dull. It's not super exciting if the only people found in brigand territory are brigands. It forces me to think about what sorts of mundane animals are found in which environments, and to think of which factions have overlapping territory or which might venture into one another's spheres of influence. Most importantly, it eliminates any possibility of being surprised myself.

Using a more generic outdoor encounter table is certainly good for producing results which surprise even the DM: "Huh, I didn't expect there to be a green dragon living in the woods. That's exciting. What does it portend for my campaign?" But it also produces incongruous results: "Uh, so why is there a sphinx hanging out a couple of miles away from the brigands' castle?"

The solution I eventually came up with was to use two encounter tables - a generic one which I used almost like a spark table (in this case, the outdoor encounter tables from the AD&D DMG) to then populate my own curated encounter tables for the region. Basically, I would roll first on the AD&D encounter tables, try to come up with some rationale for the result, add it to my curated encounter table if it made sense, and discard it if it did not.

This was easy enough with many of the most common encounters - merchants in the grasslands were probably traveling to town, pilgrim encounters were with devotees of the Evil cleric Blanchefleur, brigands were from Fayette's Hold, orcs were from Quasqueton, and the like. 

But I also ended up with some unexpected results, like the sphinx just outside of Fayette's Hold (which I discarded, but now think I could have actually used - it would be cool if the brigands had made an alliance with a Chaotic Evil hieracosphinx), or some truly strange things hanging out around Quasqueton (one of which turned my preconceived notions about one of the region's important NPCs on its head, which I won't spoil here).

My sandbox wound up needing seven encounter tables: inhabited/patrolled forest (the hexes bordering Timbershore, Ebongrove, and Fayette's Hold), uninhabited forest, inhabited/patrolled forested hills (Zerelda's Camp), uninhabited forested hills (Quasqueton), inhabited/patrolled barren hills (Fayette's Hold), inhabited/patrolled grasslands (which was all of the grassland on the map), and rivers and lakes.

For each table, I generated four results. If the result was a creature which could be encountered only during the day or night, I generated another "mirror" result for the opposite time of day. To keep things interesting, I rerolled duplicates, so "brigands" was only ever one of the entries on the table. At most, the table for any given terrain type would have eight entries, so I would have to generate a maximum of 56 encounters. I ended up with 39.

Since this is a lot of encounters, I tried to keep them light, but I also wanted to have most of the work done for me ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to roll much at the table. If the encounter is with people or creatures who can speak, what is their leader's name? How do they react to the party, why, and what do they do or say? If their reaction is indifferent, how can I make that into an encounter which is still engaging? What treasure are they carrying? Where are they from? Where are they going? What are they doing? If the encounter includes spellcasters, what spells do they have prepared?

Some encounters are easier than others. Animals and unintelligent monsters are easy. Mounted patrols with mixed arms and multiple character-type NPCs among their number are more challenging. But it's worth it to put in the time to prepare them properly.

Throughout the process, I tried to keep in mind a few things: logic, but also fun, and variety. There's no proper orc lair in the region, so it didn't make much sense to have a band of 100 orcs wandering the forest. However, a group of a dozen or so orcs venturing into the region from just off the map would suit my purposes. There would be no bands of roaming giants, but a single wanderer passing through the region seemed within the realm of possibility.

While I do enjoy the idea of the wilderness being an unpredictable and dangerous place with huge groups of monsters prowling about, I also had a mind for balance - again, because it makes more sense to me. It seems appropriate that the party would be more likely to encounter a handful of brigands rather than a giant army of them. 

Thus, I loosely "balanced" these encounters based on a d100 roll: a result of 01 to 65 would be an encounter for 1st to 3rd level characters (1d3), a result of 66 to 85 would be for 4th to 7th level characters (1d4+3), 86 to 95 would be for 7th to 12th level characters (1d6+6), and 96 to 100 would be for characters 9th to 20th level (1d12+8). Most encounters will be with small groups, but there is the chance of running into a large force which must be evaded or negotiated with. 

This roll was made only after I had determined the general type of creature encountered, so if I rolled up a dragon and could make sense of it (easy to do, since dragons fly all over the place, whether they live there or not), then there would be a dragon, balance be damned. The roll only determined whether it was a singular dragon or a gang of teenagers.

As we play out this campaign, I replace those encounters I've already rolled as makes sense. For example, the hobgoblins encountered in the forest during our first session were merely frightened away, not defeated, so they are still out there. The giant tick which was slain is gone from the encounter table until I roll up another giant tick to replace it. There are certainly more giant ticks in the woods, so I could simply reuse this encounter, but again, two of my priorities when creating these tables are fun and variety, and encountering a giant tick 25% of the time in the forest is neither.

Hopefully, as the campaign continues, the party will have more outdoor encounters, and I'll be able to showcase some of the work I've put into them in my forthcoming play reports.

AD&D's Domain Game: What to Learn, What to Leave, and What to Love

I'm currently in the process of trying to puzzle out how exactly "territory development" (what we would now probably call the "domain game") works in AD&D, as described on page 93 of the DMG, TERRITORY DEVELOPMENT BY PLAYER CHARACTERS:

The process begins when the player decides to establish their character's stronghold. They pick a spot, the DM provides a map of the hex and the six surrounding hexes, and the player character and their henchmen and retainers go to the place to explore it and begin construction:

In the example, the player character wishes to construct a stronghold 100 miles from a border town, although there's no indication at this time that there's any required distance (I'll get back to that). 

The DM must prepare a small scale map of the terrain in the area, 200 yards per hex. An area which is nine such hexes in width then makes up a larger one-mile hex. It and the surrounding six hexes are the area to be explored and mapped. Once they are all mapped, workers can be brought in to begin construction. A garrison has to be present to protect the workers, as each day there's a 1-in-20 chance of a monster wandering in from the area beyond these seven hexes, unless the area beyond is being patrolled:

I tried to visualize what this area would look like in Hexographer and came up with the following:

The smaller hexes are 200 yards across. The larger hexes are one-mile across. They are nine hexes across at their widest (from easternmost to westernmost vertex), so I think this is indeed what's being described in the excerpt above. Each one-mile hex contains 44 (!) 200-yard hexes.

The DM "checks but once for random monsters in each hex". Does this refer to the 200-yard hexes or the one-mile hexes? I don't know. One monster per one-mile hex sounds like plenty to me, and two monster lairs potentially within 200 yards of one another strains credulity, but wandering through 44 200-yard hexes with a chance for a monster to be encountered in just one of them seems rather droll. Indeed, this next section suggests that the DM only check for monsters once per one-mile hex after this "core area" is mapped out:

This sounds to me like, when exploring the "core area" of seven one-mile hexes, the player character explores each 200-yard hex one by one, with the DM checking for monsters (and possibly randomly determining terrain) in each one. It is only after the core area is mapped that the player character begins more quickly exploring the surrounding one-mile hexes (instead of the 200-yard hexes within), at which point monster checks are made "as is normal for outdoor adventuring" (emphasis mine).

Furthermore, once per day, the DM checks to see if a monster wanders into any one hex which borders an unexplored hex. Once per week, the DM checks to see if a monster wanders into "the central part of the cleared territory" (this I take to mean any explored hex which doesn't border an unexplored hex, not necessarily the central hex where the stronghold is being built, but I could be wrong).

Here's my attempt to visualize what this "core area" might look like (using the provided example of wooded hills, though I'm using a variation of the Welsh Piper method instead of AD&D's method for randomly determining terrain), with the hex where I think the player character might locate their stronghold indicated with a star:

According to the AD&D DMG, we're to check for encounters based on population density (this isn't what I usually do, but will for the sake of this example):

Since this area is 100 miles from the nearest border town, it's probably uninhabited/wilderness area. That means 1-in-10 of these 200-yard hexes will have a monster in them. Here's what that looks like:

That's 28 monsters. Am I doing this right? I honestly have no idea. I'm doing as described, checking each hex for a monster, not spacing them out according to any sort of logic or reason. It seems strange that the southernmost hex would have three monsters each within 200 yards of the other two, but this is what I got by following the procedure.

Again, once this is all mapped, construction can begin (the DMG does not explicitly state that the monsters have to be driven off or killed before construction can begin, unless I'm missing something), and the player character will then begin exploring the one-mile hexes surrounding these hexes, with checks for monsters proceeding according to the normal rules for wilderness exploration. 

Meanwhile, there is a chance per day that a new monster will wander into a border hex and a chance per week that a monster will wander into a central (non-border) hex. This can be prevented by signaling to intelligent monsters that the area is dangerous to them, patrolling frequently and aggressively, and by organized settlement of the cleared lands:

Once the stronghold is finished, if proper patrols are organized, only weekly checks for monstrous intruders are needed (one each on the Uninhabited/Wilderness table and on the Inhabited table). If a road is built through the area, checks are instead made on the Inhabited table three times per week:

The Inhabited table is made up of many (presumably) good (i.e., profitable) things, like dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, leprechauns, merchants, nomads, pilgrims, and mundane animals. It also has some bad things, like ankhegs, bandits, brigands, bulettes, giants, humanoids, lycanthropes, manticores, ogres, and all manner of undead. Thus, a domain with a road through it will more frequently be settled by men and demihumans and fey creatures, but will also more frequently be preyed upon by certain monsters and haunted by ghosts. The distinction between the Uninhabited/Wilderness table and the Inhabited table has always struck me as a neat way of modeling which monsters are attracted to human inhabitation and which ones stay far away.

The DM no longer checks for monsters from Uninhabited/Wilderness areas once a territory of more than 30 miles from the center (here I'm guessing the center hex, not necessarily the exact location of the stronghold itself) is patrolled or inhabited. That's 30 one-mile hexes that must be explored and then patrolled in all directions (961 hexes total).The monsters from the Inhabited table continue to show up and settle in the area, and the area returns to wilderness if not patrolled or inhabited:

Inhabited by whom? Well, I guess the merchants, demihumans, and fey creatures. Presumably the nomads and pilgrims are not settling, as wandering is part of their nature. I suppose homesteads will begin to crop up. These will grow into thorps, then into hamlets, then villages, then towns, and finally cities, but how exactly this transpires is left to the imagination.

The next paragraph answers the question - how far must a player character's stronghold be from civilization? Well, it needn't be far at all. In fact, it is suggested that the stronghold might be "located in the heart of some powerful state":

As is often the case in AD&D, the emphasis is on maintaining the campaign as challenging and interesting. In this scenario, the stronghold ruler is not clearing monsters from their land and then holding it against wilderness incursions, but instead dealing with "intrigue and petty wars...jealous neighbors, assassins, and the like" which threaten the fief.

Next we come right back to the matter of inhabitation of wilderness domains:

Again, once the stronghold is finished and patrols have cleared the area, inhabitants will come to settle. I think this is at the same time as when the DM begins checking weekly on both the Uninhabited/Wilderness and Inhabited tables (i.e., before the 30 surrounding one-mile hexes have been cleared and patrolled, but again it isn't entirely clear).

The inhabitants "will match the area and the alignment of the character", which is interesting. Lawful Good creatures will settle in a paladin's domain, for example. Random monsters will settle in the area, "making proper subservience calls upon the master of the territory". I imagine this means that the Lawful Good dwarves who move into the paladin's realm will become loyal inhabitants. Would the Chaotic Evil ogres who move into the Chaotic Evil cleric's realm likewise become the cleric's vassals?

Hamlets, thorps, and other settlements will begin to crop up, starting near the stronghold and working towards the fringes, but no indication is given as to how quick this settling process is, how long it takes one settlement type to grow into another, or anything like that. (OD&D, for its part, suggests 2-8 villages of 100-400 inhabitants each per territory, but it also leaves to the imagination how exactly these come to be.)

Once the settlements are established, "they can be used as centers for activity - good or evil or whatever." They "attract more of the ilk which inhabit them, draw opponents sworn to exterminate them, trigger raids or reprisals, etc." The domain game becomes less about fending off wilderness incursions and more about managing the region's inhabitants and dealing with complications that arise as a result of - presumably - the ideology of the player character and their people. The paladin will need to thwart attacks from the forces of Evil Chaos, while the Chaotic Evil cleric will be dealing with assaults from the realms of Good and Law.

What's interesting is the onus placed on actions taken by the player character - that is, "forming active groups from the population base and doing something." The DM is intended to "initiate by setting up a series of circumstances which will bear upon the territory" only as a last resort. Is that to suggest that the paladin's realm is only besieged by Evil Chaos after the paladin has instigated the conflict in some way? Do the forces of Law and Good simply not mind their Chaotic Evil cleric neighbor until his ogre vassals start plundering their land? I like the emphasis on player agency, but this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

One thing that strikes me is that the domain and its inhabitants read like an extension of the player character. The regular inhabitants are all of the same alignment, pay taxes (as indicated in the class descriptions in the PHB), and exist for the player character to form "active groups" and do "something". Are we talking about raising armies? How many peasant levies can be raised from the thorp, hamlet, village, or town? It isn't clear, but clearly these inhabitants are intended as additional resources and game pieces for the player to employ in whatever their ends may be. They need to be protected, not necessarily because the character is a Good hero but because they share the character's ideology and are useful in some way.

Next, we are told that the "real benefit" of player character territories is what they contribute to the DM's milieu:

When the player character constructs their stronghold, the player should provide the DM with floor plans (including dungeons) and a map of the immediate area surrounding the stronghold. This is so the DM can plan sieges and other attacks upon the fortification:

Finally, if a player leaves the campaign or switches to a new character, the DM can take control of the former character's domain and run it as they wish:

I would be remiss not to mention the possibility of uprisings if the player characters forces peasantry, serfdom, or slavery upon their subjects:

Peasantry/serfdom is not the accepted norm for common people in the AD&D world. D&D is not medieval.

This also gives us a window into what it looks like for a player character to raise levies from the normal inhabitants of their domain. 1-in-5 of the inhabitants will be fighters (which I take to mean adults capable of fighting, not individuals with a level in the fighter class). These troops will be 0 level peasants, treated "as up to 1-1 HD" monsters according to the EXPERIENCE POINTS VALUE OF MONSTERS section of the DMG:

This means the average single dwelling (population 6.5) will yield one troop, the average thorp (population 50) will yield ten, the average hamlet (population 250) will yield 50, the average village (population 750) will yield 150, the average town (population 4,000) will yield 800, and the average city (population 35,000) will yield 7,000.

If we standardize the values provided by the DMG's INHABITATION table, that area of 961 one-mile hexes (960, not counting the hex in which the stronghold itself is located) could eventually support 28 to 29 single dwellings, 19 to 20 thorps, 19 to 20 hamlets, 19 to 20 villages, 9 to 10 towns, and 9 to 10 cities. On average, that could yield from 74,000 to 82,000 peasant levies in a new campaign or uprising. 

That seems a bit hard to believe, so I am probably over-interpreting the available information. The whole point of this section is that these people do not tolerate being subject to peasantry, serfdom, or slavery, so it seems unlikely that the ruler could call on their subjects (if they can be called "subjects" at all) in such great numbers. The numbers given also pertain to an enthusiastic uprising in which everyone who can pick up a weapon for the cause does so. Perhaps in an organized war effort the numbers should instead be cut in half. 

Perhaps the intention is for the player character to lead campaigns with only the strength of their follower armies and mercenaries, but it seems a bit hard to believe that these tax-paying settlements contain no loyal warrior subjects who can be called upon in a conflict.

In any case, if the uprising (or perhaps campaign) lasts more than a month, you add 10% to the total force for each month, and upgrade 10% of the total force to regular men-at-arms (1-1 to 1 HD monsters) and give them improved tactics. This suggests that perhaps a more warlike ruler cultivates a more warlike populace over time. (OD&D, of course, famously suggests the insertion of a Conan-type "to bring matters into line" in the event of an uprising.)

There would also eventually be two additional strongholds in the area which, since the player character's stronghold controls the area, are likely vassals or henchmen of the character, and so would contribute their own forces as well (men-at-arms as well as whatever followers are attracted by, say, a fighter or cleric). Normally some of these strongholds would be inhabited instead by bandits, berserkers, brigands, or the like, or become deserted and potentially inhabited by monsters, but since this is a newly developed territory such a takeover or ruination would have to happen as part of an in-game event.

Now, is this system good game design? I don't know, I probably wouldn't use it as is. I think it's pretty unlikely that the player will say "I want to go 100 miles away from this town and build my stronghold on some random hill, where I don't even know what the terrain is like or where monsters may be." I don't really like the idea of switching to a much finer-grained scale of wilderness mid-game and forcing the players to laboriously explore some 300 hexes and slog their way through 30 monster lairs to establish their domain, then explore and inhabit or patrol an additional 950 hexes just to stop monsters from wandering in all the time. 

More likely is that the player characters will set up their domain in some place that they're familiar with - the existing campaign area. I obviously make a lot of sandboxes, and I arrive at the first session of the campaign with a complete map of settlements, strongholds, ruins, and monster lairs. Once the player characters familiarize themselves with the area and grow in power, I think they're more likely to build their stronghold in a region that's already settled, to take a readymade stronghold from someone else, or to rehabilitate a ruined stronghold into something they can use. If there are monsters nearby, they'll have to deal with that, but I wouldn't require them to meticulously explore a huge area before they could even begin building the thing.

I do like the idea of checking regularly to see if monsters wander into the area from the wilderness, but feel that this could be applied more broadly to the campaign map as a whole. Maybe you check each unoccupied border hex of the campaign map on a regular basis to see what new monsters move into the area, and maybe likewise track their movements from one hex to another as time passes and they search for a lair to settle in. Maybe they stumble into the player character's domain and stir up trouble in their search for a home or for prey. You could have some sort of minigame for when the monster wanders into a patrolled area to see if the patrol can handle it or if the monster overwhelms them and continues on its march.

I really like the image of a player character's (or NPC adventurer's) territory being surrounded by monster carcasses and totems to ward off intelligent monsters. When the player characters see that, they know they're entering into some powerful NPC's domain.

I also like that different types of monsters are drawn to strongholds more frequently if they're joined to the rest of civilization by a road. Building a road between the stronghold and the nearest settlement is a matter of great convenience, allowing expedited travel back and forth. It will attracts merchants and elves and dwarves to the domain, but it will also attract all the men and monsters that prey upon civilization. 

I like the distinction between wilderness domains and those within settled regions. Do you want to deal with monstrous incursions, or politics and intrigue? Would you rather defend against the occasional orc warband wandering into your domain, or with the neighboring warlord's organized campaign, a king somewhere demanding your fealty, and assassins poisoning your food?

Lastly, I like that the alignment of the player character seems to influence who is drawn to the domain and for what purpose. The Good character's realm will be inhabited by Good people and threatened by Evil-doers, and vice versa. One realm is populated by dwarves and elves and fey, while the other is inhabited by manticores and orcs and ogres. I imagine that both types of domain are not entirely harmonious internally - I'm sure the dwarves and elves have beef and the fey play tricks on people, and the orcs and ogres contend with one another unless united by bribes and coercion from the local ruler.

This concept could be broadened beyond the realm of alignment only instead to the nature of the character in general. A dwarf's domain will attract more dwarves and an elf's domain will attract more elves. A paladin and a ranger will both rule Good domains, but their inhabitants will look very different, as will a cleric's and a druid's.

While I like the emphasis on player agency in the text, I don't much like the attitude that intervention on the DM's part is a last resort option. It doesn't make much sense to me that (if I'm reading this right), the Lawful Good neighbors of the player character's Chaotic Evil domain will only make some effort to overthrow the neighboring ruler if the player character takes the initiative first. If you're building a barony of ogres and mustering an army within your borders, the powers that be will take notice and intervene to the extent they are able.

The takeaway here is less that you should use specifically AD&D's system for any of this, but that you can take away certain broad ideas when including domains (whether player characters' or NPCs') in your campaign:

• Monsters move around the wilderness looking for places to live.
• Domain rulers have to contend with monsters wandering into their territory.
• Domain rulers can prevent monsters from wandering into their territory by placing warning signs, patrolling the surrounding area, and inducing settlers to inhabit it.
• Roads connect the domain to civilization as a whole, but introduce their own complications.
• Domains in the wilderness and those in inhabited areas have their own distinct complications.
• The character of the domain's ruler will influence who lives there and who opposes them, what their goals are, what problems they deal with, and the like.
• The inhabitants of the domain are somewhat an extension of the character to be used to raise funds and armies and achieve whatever it is the player desires. 
• Likewise, these inhabitants are a resource of the character which can be attacked much like anything else on the character sheet (in this case, they're almost like the domain's "equipment"). They are usually attacked by the domain's ideologically opposed enemies and neighbors.

That's my attempt to reckon with AD&D's domain game. While a lot of AD&D's actual mechanics often seem archaic or inscrutable, its broad ideas and procedures are often quite good. This is one of the few times where I find the procedure itself to be difficult to wrap my head around and borderline unusable, but once again the big ideas and overall feel of the system is solid, and there's a lot of good stuff to take away for whatever D&D-like game you may be playing.

Where are AD&D's High-Level NPCs?

This is a question I've pondered quite a bit in my exploration of AD&D. Theoretically, my assumption would be that there's nothing to restrict a character-type NPC from reaching the same level of experience as a player character of the same type. That is, a human character can become a cleric of 29th level, a fighter of 11th level or higher, or a magic-user of 18th level or higher (no upper limit is provided in the latter two cases, whereas 29 seems to be the cleric's limit for whatever reason). 

Non-human NPCs would also presumably abide by the same restrictions imposed on player characters of that type, so an NPC elf could advance as far as 7th level as a fighter and 11th level as a magic-user, and no more, just like a player character. Interestingly, NPC dwarves, elves, and gnomes can be clerics, and NPC halflings can be druids, even though these options are not available to player characters:

The PHB, in the section titled THE ADVENTURE, describes three different adventure types, characterized by the setting in which they take place: Town Adventures (which include not just towns but also cities and large villages, and so are probably more accurately described as settlement adventures), Dungeon Expeditions, and Outdoor Exploration (this is, for my money, a better configuration of modern editions' "Three Pillars of Play" - which are Combat, Exploration, and Social Interaction).

The DMG provides some guidance as to what level character-type NPCs encountered in each of these scenarios will be, so I'll analyze the subject within this framework.

I'll begin with Dungeon Expeditions, because NPCs encountered in these scenarios will tend to be of lower levels. Character-type NPCs are encountered in dungeons as early as the 1st dungeon level:

They can also be encountered all the way in the deepest levels of the dungeon, and on every level in between:

Here is the relevant section describing the level of these NPCs:

Character-type NPCs encountered on the 1st through 4th levels of the dungeon are of the corresponding level in their class. Such NPCs encountered on the 5th through 15th levels are level 6 to 12. NPCs encountered on the 16th level or deeper can be as high as 13th level. 5th level NPCs are oddly never encountered in dungeons, nor are those higher than 13th level.

This suggests that 13th level is the maximum level at which player characters should continue to embark on dungeon expeditions - that's before clerics or magic-users gain access to 7th level spells, for context.

Next, let's look at Outdoor Exploration. For whatever reason, character-type NPCs are encountered in temperate and sub-tropical uninhabited/wilderness areas and nowhere else - not in arctic, sub-arctic, sub-tropical, or tropical areas, and not in waterborne environments. Not even in inhabited areas! The occasional high-level NPC is still encountered in groups of men (bandits, berserkers, brigands, etc.) and demihumans (dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc.), but full parties of fellow/rival adventurers are not.

According to the special footnote to these encounter tables, character-type NPCs in the outdoors are always of 7th through 10th level:

But random encounters are not the only way to encounter character-type NPCs outdoors. We must also account for those NPCs who rule strongholds:

Excepting the bard, which is an outlier by design, there is a good deal of overlap with those character-type NPCs found in the lower levels of dungeons and in random outdoor encounters. Only magic-users, thieves, and assassins exceed 13th level - and, as I mention in my post on Thieves and Assassins Guilds, this table is not totally reliable when used to stock an outdoor area, since the PHB states that thieves can only build small-type castles within or close to towns and cities, and only Grandfather/Grandmother assassins (15th level) rule wilderness strongholds (14th level assassins' strongholds are always in a town or city).

Where are all the higher-level character-type NPCs, then? According to the rules presented by the DMG, characters adventuring in dungeons and outdoors will never encounter a cleric capable of casting 7th level spells or a magic-user capable of casting 8th level spells (16th level in both cases), an illusionist capable of casting 7th level spells (14th level), a Great Druid (14th level), a Grandfather/Grandmother assassin (15th level), or a monk of higher than 13th level.

This has gameplay significance because players may need to be able to find such NPCs. They may need a cleric to cast resurrection, a magic-user to cast wish, or an illusionist to cast vision. Druids, assassins, and monks will need to find higher-ranked NPCs of the same type and defeat them to advance in their own class. Where are they?

As I've already mentioned, the Grandfather/Grandmother assassin should be in a wilderness stronghold. Druids, likewise, according to the PHB, "do not dwell permanently in castles, or even in cities or towns", but "in sacred groves...set in woodlands and similar natural surroundings":

While no such restriction is imposed upon higher-level monks, it seems fitting to me that these too would be (literally) cloistered away in some remote wilderness monastery. It seems to me that the highest-level druids, assassins, and monks are left off the castle sub-table merely because they are unique individuals who should be deliberately placed in the play area with careful consideration by the DM - though this rationale again is not applied to monks in the same way, who appear on the sub-table despite the fact that those of 9th level or higher are, according to the PHB, one-of-a-kind:

That still leaves the higher-level spellcasters, which brings us to Town Adventures.

In my post on henchmen, I mention that 1-in-100 humans and 1-in-50 demihumans are "suitable for level advancement". Of those, generally, 1-in-10 are "interested in offers of employment as a henchman". Since newly recruited henchmen can only be 1st through 3rd level, this means that 10% of the character-type population in a settlement is of 1st through 3rd level, but no guidance is provided for the level distribution of the remaining 90% of character-type NPCs.

The city/town encounters detailed in the DMG shed a bit of light on the level of NPCs found in these environments:

• Assassin encounters are with assassins of an indeterminate level (my guess is that one is to refer to the Thief encounter below to determine the level of the assassins).
• Bandit and Brigand encounters at night will include "1 or more leaders" (based on the Monster Manual there could be a fighter from 8th to 10th level, a magic-user of 7th to 10th level, or a cleric of 5th to 6th level, but it's unclear how to determine which leaders and of what level will be present because the Monster Manual deals with much larger groups of bandits).
• City guard encounters include fighters of 2nd to 5th level and indentured magic-users of 1st to 4th level.
• City official encounters include fighters of 1st to 4th level.
• City watchman encounters include fighters of 1st to 5th level and indentured clerics of 2nd to 5th level.
• Cleric encounters are with a cleric of 6th to 11th level and can include lesser clerics of 1st to 4th level.
• Druid encounters are with a druid of 6th to 11th level and include either lesser druids of 1st to 4th level or fighters of 1st to 6th level.
• Drunk encounters can include individuals from many of the other encounter types, presumably at similar levels.
• Fighter encounters are with a fighter of 6th to 12th level and include henchmen of 1st to 4th level.
• Gentleman encounters can be with fighters of 7th to 10th level.
• Harlot encounters may be with a harlot who is a thief or is working with one (presumably of the same level as those described under Thief, below).
• Illusionist encounters are with an illusionist of 7th to 10th level and include either illusionists of 1st to 4th level or fighters of 1st to 6th level.
• Magic-user encounters are with a magic-user of 7th to 12th level and henchman magic-users or fighters of 1st to 6th level or 4th to 7th level, respectively.
• Mercenary encounters include 1st level fighters and may include fighters of 2nd to 5th level.
• Merchant encounters include a fighter of 1st to 4th level.
• Monk encounters are with a monk of 7th to 10th level.
• Noble encounters include fighters of 1st to 4th level, and the noble may even be a fighter or cleric of 5th to 12th level.
• Paladin encounters are with a paladin of 6th to 9th level.
• Pilgrim encounters may include a cleric (or druid) of 2nd to 8th level, a monk of 5th to 6th level, a fighter (or paladin or ranger) of 1st to 8th level, a thief (or assassin) of 2nd to 7th level, or a magic-user of 6th to 9th level (as with Bandit and Brigand encounters, it's not entirely clear how to determine which of these character-types will be with the group, as the Monster Manual details much larger groups).
• Press gang encounters will be with 1st level fighters with a leader of 2nd to 5th level.
• Rake encounters will be with fighters of 5th to 10th level.
• Ranger encounters will be with rangers of 7th to 10th level.
• Ruffian encounters will be with 2nd level fighters and may include an assassin of 5th to 8th level.
• Thief encounters will be with a thief of 8th to 11th level and may include lesser thieves of 1st to 4th level.

So, that's a lot of information that I probably didn't need to type out. Do you notice anything? The highest-level character-type NPC which can be randomly encountered in a city or town is of 12th level (and that's only individual fighters and magic-users and noble clerics). Again, where are the higher-level NPCs?

Well, they must be somewhere. The DMG contains the following list of prices for hiring NPC clerics to cast certain spells:

(Interestingly, there is no such list for druid, magic-user, or illusionist spells, suggesting that while clerics are probably happy to accept tithes to their faith in exchange for service - if the character requesting such is "of similar alignment and religion as the cleric" - those other classes will probably only provide their services in exchange for magic items or service in kind.)

This list includes 7th level cleric spells like astral spell, control weather, earthquake, gate, regenerate, and restoration. Higher-level NPCs are present in the world (and specifically in large enough settlements), but for some reason are never randomly encountered in dungeons, outdoors, or in settlements.

This suggests that such NPCs are essentially retired from adventuring (they do not go into dungeons or the wilderness) and insular (they do not leave the place in which they reside to wander the streets of towns and cities). They have to be deliberately sought out where they live, and they probably won't be happy to see you.

So where do they live? Clearly not in dungeons, and apparently not in wilderness strongholds. However, while there are certainly domain-less high-level NPCs in D&D, I have a hard time believing that retired, insular, very high-level NPCs would be without them. 

Rather, I suspect that these individuals have ruled their strongholds for a long time - long enough that they are well a part of the established order. Strongholds maintain order in the borderlands, attracting people to settle around them in tax-paying single dwellings, thorps, hamlets, and the like. Eventually, I imagine, those communities grow into villages, towns, and even cities, with those old strongholds at their core. Is this where the highest-level NPCs live?

I think so. I think cities especially probably have lots of strongholds within them - those may be ruled by NPCs like those found on the castle sub-table in the DMG, but I imagine others will be ruled by even higher-level ones. Unfortunately, there's no guidance as to what the distribution should be.

In my post on settlements (which leans towards 5e), I stated that the character-type NPCs in my settlements are broken into groups corresponding to the "Tiers of Play" - 65% will be Tier 1, 20% tier 2, 10% Tier 3, and 5% Tier 4. In a later post, I wrote about how a similar "Tiers of Play" framework might be applied to AD&D (specifically 2e). While in that post I found that the "Tiers of Play" framework did not clearly map onto AD&D, I do still find it helpful to consider here.

In my post on henchmen, I provided an example AD&D city of 35,000 people with the following character-type NPC demographics:

• 280 humans
• 35 dwarves
• 35 elves
• 14 gnomes
• 35 half-elves
• 14 halflings
• 3 or 4 half-orcs

Since the total is 416 or 417, and 10% of these will be henchmen of 1st to 3rd level in accordance with the AD&D DMG's rule of thumb, that leaves 374 to 376 character-type NPCs to be distributed as follows:

• 243 to 245 low level (level 1 to 3 but not interested in work as henchmen)
• 74 to 76 medium level (level 4 to 7)
• 37 to 38 high level (level 7 to 12)
• 18 to 19 very high level (level 12 to 20 - or 20+ in AD&D 1e's case)

We can use AD&D's Character Subtable for dungeon encounters to get some idea as to what classes those very high level characters are:

Since this is for dungeon encounters, it may not apply to cities exactly, but it's what we've got. It's also worth noting that I'm not taking race into account, which would affect the distribution somewhat. Dwarves can't be magic-users, for example, so allowing all of these NPCs to be of any class will result in skewed numbers - but this is just a broad overview.

We can expect the average AD&D city to have the following very high level character-type NPCs in residence: 3 or 4 clerics, 7 or 8 fighters, 0 or 1 paladins, 0 or 1 rangers, 3 or 4 magic-users, 0 to 1 illusionists, 1 or 2 thieves (each of which might have their own guilds or gangs at war with one another), 0 to 1 assassins (but no higher than 14th level), and 0 to 1 monks. There will be no druids, because druids do not live in cities, and you might opt to rule the same for rangers and monks depending on taste (this is how I'm leaning).

While the demographics I'm using to divide the NPCs into "tiers" are entirely of my own invention and not based on anything in particular, I think they work reasonably well for the setting AD&D is depicting. The assumption seems to be that player characters will be able to find very high level NPCs in large settlements if they go looking for them, and these numbers support that. It also makes sense that player characters will be bumping into NPCs of up to 12th level in the streets, since there are a decent number of them living in the settlement.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone, and hopefully I've demonstrated that this is not just worldbuilding and number crunching for its own sake, but that these numbers actually have gameplay implications and are important to consider when running a game. What are the chances that a high level cleric of the player character's alignment lives in the city? What is the political landscape among the city's fighter lords? If the party has earned the ire of one powerful magic-user, is there another they can call upon for powerful magical aid? How many Thieves Guilds are active in the place, what is the status of their internecine turf war, and which would it be best to align with?

The player characters are not the most important or powerful individuals in the setting, and they may never be. I for one think it's important to know who those individuals are, how many of them there are, where they can be found, what they want, and most importantly, how the player characters might have to deal with them.

Adventurers Are a Threat to the Established Order

An excerpt from the AD&D DMG, under MONSTER POPULATIONS AND PLACEMENT, page 91:

I found this paragraph interesting for a few reasons. 

First, in AD&D the assumption is that the player characters are "the most aggressive" characters (or character-types) in the area of play. This is not to imply that they are the only adventurers active in the area. After all, character-types appear on both the dungeon and wilderness random encounter tables:

Rather, I think the purpose of this assumption is to afford the player characters the maximum amount of agency. They are not "special" in that they are the only adventurers running around doing stuff, but they are the adventurers most uniquely motivated to enact serious change in the region. It's fun to encounter, compete with, and even fight rival adventuring parties, so their activity in the area is still a must, but the proverbial ball is still very much in the player characters' court.

The second point of interest is that there are, of course, character-types in the area of play who are both higher-level and more capable than the player characters. This is evidenced by the fact that there are strongholds in the wilderness ruled by character-types of, at minimum, 9th-level:

However, "the game assumes that these characters have other things to do with their time, that they do not generally care to take the risks connected with adventuring, and they will happily allow the player characters to stand the hazards". This meshes very nicely with a previous post of mine, in which I argued that high-level NPCs will not or cannot solve the problems of their domain because they are either Evil, incompetent, indifferent, or powerless, thus leaving such problems to the player characters to deal with (this I wrote before ever reading this section of the AD&D DMG).

This is consistent with other advice in the DMG, where Gygax states repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that high-level NPCs should be difficult to deal with and that player characters who make a habit of relying on such NPCs for aid will simply provoke the NPCs' ire over time. 

While 1 to 2% of individuals in a settlement will be leveled character-types (and presumably a portion will be high-level), if the player characters wish to recruit help in their adventuring activities, they'll need to instead call on the 10% of those individuals who are henchmen looking for work - and even those are the pitiable wretches of the adventuring profession who are instead looking to benefit from the food, lodging, equipment, shares of treasure, and protection which their employers are expected to offer them.

On the other hand, this isn't very consistent with the aforementioned dungeon and wilderness encounter tables, which insist that high-level characters are not only present in lower levels of the dungeon:

...but are also the only such characters encountered in uninhabited/wilderness areas:

This suggests that high-level character-type NPCs do in fact "care to take the risks connected with adventuring", albeit not "generally". The assumption still stands that the player characters are "the most aggressive types in the area", however. The high-level NPCs must simply be adventuring as a bit of a lark. Perhaps they're on a vacation of sorts, trying to remember what it's like to feel young, alive, and hopeful? Who can relate?

While there is some overlap in level with those NPCs who would typically rule a stronghold, there's no indication that these high-level NPCs belong to such a place (if they did, surely they would be accompanied by a larger force). My inclination is to treat these NPCs as adventurers who do not yet have holdings of their own. Unlike the current iteration of D&D, strongholds in AD&D do not simply materialize out of thin air once the character has attained a certain level. The AD&D world is also filled with high-level NPC bandit leaders and the like who do not necessarily possess holdings, so we can presume that it is not uncommon for high-level NPCs to be without them.

(As an interesting aside, character-type NPC adventurers are not randomly encountered in inhabited areas, only in wilderness areas. Presumably this is because those in inhabited areas are holed up in settlements or in their strongholds, though it is strange that they may not be encountered on the road between places. I will chalk this up to an oversight rather than intent to imply something about the setting.

Also interesting is that in dungeons, only character-type NPCs of 1st- through 4th-level and 6th- through 13th-level - and perhaps higher - may be encountered, while in the wilderness only such NPCs of 7th- through 10th-level may be encountered. Where are all the 5th-level characters? And why do NPCs higher than 10th-level abandon wilderness adventures to return to dungeon environs? To avoid getting ahead of myself, and because ultimately it is probably not meaningful, I'll forego examining this further, but I invite others to put forth a contrived explanation.)

While there are high-level character-type NPCs out adventuring, the assumption is that most are not interested in doing so. Instead, "they will happily allow the player characters to stand the hazards" of adventuring. The player characters are after all "aggressive" (read more accurately, probably, as "overactive"), so why not let them expend their energy in a mutually productive way? Adventuring is referred to here as "dirty work" and, if the player characters are successful, the NPCs are assumed to benefit. Player character adventurers sound a lot like simple-minded pawns to be exploited by those wise enough to be content with wielding their power in relative safety, but that's not the whole story. 

The third point of interest in this excerpt is that it suggests that NPCs view the presence of adventurers as a threat to the "established order". If the player characters are indeed the most aggressive/overactive adventurers in the region, this makes sense. They have to deal with the aforementioned Gygaxian expensive and irritating NPCs, nobles and powerful officials who will embroil them in social conflict at the slightest insult in the city streets, tax them relentlessly and indenture them to servitude if they fail to pay, and subject them to them to hefty tolls if they wish merely to use the road to travel to the nearest dungeon to make their fortune. Gygax has ensured that the established order kind of sucks - what player character wouldn't chafe against it?

Not only does the NPC reap the benefits of successful adventures by utilizing the player characters as pawns, but the NPC also removes the player characters to some more remote frontier area where they pose less of a threat. Here Gygax makes a direct comparison between adventurers and Wild West "gunfighter-lawmen" like wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp - transient individualist vigilante-types who might bring order (at the end of the barrel of a gun) to frontier places temporarily, only to later be replaced by a more permanent, less dangerous lawman approved by the establishment. The gunfighter-lawman would then move on to the next frontier and do it all over again. Sound about right? D&D is not medieval! It's a Western. 

But adventurers need not always threaten the established order. Eventually, they might build a stronghold, "which will help to maintain the stability of the area" (emphasis mine). The adventurer thus becomes part of the establishment.

That is probably an oversimplification, as just because one has a stronghold, that does not necessarily mean that the player character is beholden to the existing establishment. The land-holding AD&D fighter is not generally vassal to another, higher-ranking lord - the fighter does not necessarily pay taxes and is not necessarily called upon to provide fighting men to anyone else, although this is a possibility. 

The landed player character does, however, have a self-interested motivation to clear the area around their stronghold, patrol it regularly, and provide for the safety of their tax-paying subjects. This does not preclude the possibility of warring with or otherwise menacing their neighbors, but perhaps maintaining "stability" (i.e., the absence of monsters) is valued enough by the establishment such that it more or less looks the other way when it comes to other threats posed by these types.

The takeaways here are thus: while player characters are not the only adventurers active in a given area, they are assumed to be the "most active", perhaps to afford the players the level of agency required for an engaging game. They are not (at least not at the start of play) the most powerful characters, either. More powerful character-types adventure as well, but not generally. Instead, powerful character-types elect to use the player characters as pawns. This serves dual purposes - it spares the NPC the labor and danger of adventuring while allowing them to reap the passive benefits, and also removes threats to their power to more remote and dangerous locations. 

The player characters are viewed as threats by the powers-that-be. While the player characters' adventures may allow them to accumulate more power (and thus more threat potential), the assumption is that they will ultimately settle down in their strongholds and contribute to the greater good of the region my stabilizing the frontier areas where they once made their fortune, thus bringing themselves into the fold of the established order.

Much like the Gygaxian maxim that NPCs should be expensive and irritating to deal with, this notion should color every interaction the player characters have with the local rulers. Adventurers are useful, but also ambitious, unpredictable, and dangerous. They are outsiders to circles of power...until they're not. 

The only way in from the cold for them is not merely to serve as pawns, in which state they will always be viewed as threats, but to prove their ultimate usefulness by allowing the march of civilization to take another step forward by the conquest and holding of dominion over the wilderness. While that may not be every player character's ultimate goal, they will remain outsiders unless it is achieved.