Exploring the wilderness could be a dangerous endeavour in the early forms of Dungeons & Dragons.

If the random encounter table indicated an encounter with goblins, OD&D suggested that the party discovered 40-400 of them! It paints a view of a dangerous world. Outside of the civilised nations, large warbands of monsters stalk the land.

It was only the humanoid monsters (orcs, kobolds, goblinoids, bandits, etc.) that appeared in such numbers. Other creatures appearing in values of 1-6, 1-8 or suchlike.

The humanoid groups also had leader-types that proved more challenging for the party.

It was comparatively safer to venture into a dungeon, where the level of the dungeon determined the number of monsters. The idea was that as you descended further, the threats likewise became more dangerous – as well as the rewards.

You had no such luck in the wilderness, where a great range of threats awaited the unwary party!

One of the features of the old style of D&D is that it contained a certain level of on-the-fly world-building. It had an interesting statistic for monster: an “In Lair” percentage. The idea was that when you met monsters, you rolled to see if they were in their lair. And so, more of the world was developed. Wise parties likely abandoned the orc caves. Can you defeat 300 orcs and their leaders?

Then the DM could mark the lair on their wilderness map, and design encounters based on that.

Treasures of the Lair

It is a general precept of D&D that wandering monsters do not have money – or, at least, not a significant amount. In the dungeon, that meant you would have to go into the prepared areas where monsters dwelled to find great rewards. (Be aware that in those days gold and gems typically gave 80% of your experience points!)

The greatest treasures tended to be in the wilderness. D&D 5E uses “hoard” treasure and “individual” treasure. This idea also existed in early D&D, but monsters had different types of hoard treasure. A table laid out nine variations of this treasure, which linked to monster types. The greatest treasures – treasure type “H” – belonged to dragons, of course.

In original D&D, this “H” treasure type gave:

• 3000 – 24 000 copper pieces (25% chance)
• 1000 – 100 000 silver pieces (50% chance)
• 10 000 – 60 000 gold pieces (75% chance)
• 1 – 100 gems (50% chance)
• 10 – 40 jewellery (50%) chance
• Four magic items of any type plus one potion and one scroll (20% chance)

Great rewards indeed! But those only appeared in the monster’s lair – had you found it? And could you defeat the great concentration of creatures that might occur there?

Finding the Lairs of Monsters

For the eager adventurer, finding and looting monster lairs is a lucrative endeavour if you are powerful enough to pull it off. And, while mid-level adventurers typically cannot defeat the larger humanoid tribes, what about a lair of 1-8 minotaurs? That seems doable. So, if you run into a solitary minotaur, the greedy adventure might ask, from where did it come?

This occurred this week in my Phandalin game. Yes, I am running fifth edition. However, the game is turning more and more into a sandbox with a lot of player-driven content as we progress.

The party found an owlbear, and they were interested in tracking it to its lair. My on-the-fly method was to roll the “In Lair” chance for each new hex as they followed its trail to see if they had found it yet.

Further thought afterwards showed that this might have meant the owlbear had travelled a very long way from home – which was quite unlikely. Contrariwise, a band of orcs could potentially be hundreds of miles away from home. I think I may need to consider those factors more.

In any case, the procedure I adopted was to require an additional check to follow the trail each hex entered, with the DC of the check increasing the further along the characters travelled, as the trail became older and harder to find.

In older editions, only rangers had a tracking skill – although I would not be surprised if a few DMs gave a similar ability to the characters based on background or the desires of the group.

My players did not find the owlbear lair – it was too far away, and they had to continue on their river voyage!

Lairs in Fifth Edition

While the use of randomly occurring lairs helps world-building in 5E, one of the key reasons to explore them – treasure – is not the draw that it was in early editions. Yes, players enjoy getting money and magic items, but there is not that much on which to spend money, and players find magic regardless.

Then too, the idea of amassing mercenary forces to deal with these threats – a portion of the wargaming background of Dungeons & Dragons – isn’t so prevalent. Though, if you examine Matt Colville’s work (especially Strongholds and Followers), you begin to approach a version usable with this edition.

For me, the interest as a Dungeon Master of this world-building comes from the adventures it then provokes. Even if the players don’t want to beard the orc chief in his lair to gain the treasure, other quests can present themselves. Rescue the captives. Stop the attacks on merchants. Prevent orcs gathering into an army to ravage the land! Or perhaps even form alliances with the orcs against greater threats to the land.

Sample “In Lair” percentages and number appearing in the wilderness & lair:

• Goblins (50%, 40-400)
• Hobgoblins (30%, 20-200)
• Ogres (30%, 3-18)
• Trolls (50%, 2-12)
• Giants (30%, 1-8)
• Ghouls (20%, 2-24)
• Manticores (25%, 1-8)
• Dragons (60%, 1-4)
• Gnomes (60%, 40-400)
• Bandits (15%, 30-300)
• Treants (nil, 2-20) – an unusual listing, which may be due to Treants having no lair treasure !