With the Level 1 key under my belt, writing the key for Level 2 was simply a matter of refining the format using the map I drew on our second night without power. Note that I did connect this map with the first map, via the stairway in the center-west portion of the map. I included only one other exit from the level to the east-southeast, hidden behind a secret door.
There was also the nearby circular room with two levers and a floor circle, which I recall thinking of as some sort of elevator platform/shaft while drawing; but it, too, was concealed behind secret doors. Getting off this level would be a challenge, as providing those inter-level connections wasn't an objective at the time I was just doodling a map. I also wish I had drawn passages leading off the map, to expand the level horizontally. I mean, I still can with some Photoshop trickery, but I wish I'd thought to.
In designing Level 1 for this megadungeon, I added two stairs down to level 2, so I knew I had to add those connections to this map as well. My stocking rolls came up with two additional "Stair" results: one "Stair down 1 level" and one "Stair down 2 levels." The descending stair on the original map (near the "elevator" room) was proving difficult to sync up with the map for level 3, so I made that stair the one that went down two levels (to Level 4) and made both newly-rolled stairs a single-level drop to Level 3. The elevator platform ended up also descending one level to Level 3.
After adding the new points of egress, keyed room numbers, a title, and shading, the map looked like this:
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My content stocking rolls (for a 40-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:
–Empty: 11 (27.5% / 35%)
–Monster: 10 (25% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 13 (32.5% / 25%)
–Stairs: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Treasure: 2 (5% / 5%)
The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).
This is definitely a monster-heavy level. To determine the room monsters with no treasure, I rolled three times on DMG table I (zombies, fire beetles, and skeletons), once on DMG table II (a human cleric and 2 fighters, plus retinue), once on Fiend Folio table I (giant bats), once on FF table II (snyads), and four times on Monster Manual 2 table I (bandits, giant rats, and giant toads).
For monsters with treasure, I rolled seven times on DMG table I (fire beetles, berserkers, shriekers, hobgoblins, giant rats, manes demons, and hobgoblins), twice on FF table I (tween, xvarts), once on FF table II (giant toads), twice on MM2 table I (bats and giant bats), and once on MM2 table II (giant toads). A decent mix of normal and weird creatures, and with so many results rolled from dungeon level I tables, each encounter is twice the standard numbers. There's a lot of HD down here.
While rolling from FF table I, the tween result came up three times, prompting one of the few dice roll fudges I've made thus far. A comment by @doccarnby on an earlier post where I referenced this incident pointed out that it is likely that the percentage range for tweens on the stocking table was transposed with that for the xvarts. It makes more sense that there would be a 7% chance to encounter an "Uncommon" monster like the xvart, and a 1% chance to encounter a "Very Rare" monster like the tween. I kept one tween result and rerolled the others. The tween is a monster loaded with awesome potential but the design has some major playability issues.
Next, I rolled up the 15 treasure results (13 with monsters, 2 without). Again, mostly coinage. I don't think I was ever aware just how heavily weighted the dungeon stocking tables are to coins for treasure, as compared to gems, jewelry, and magic items. I never used these tables to generate treasure before now, instead relying on the Monster Manual's "Treasure Type" tables to inform what I seeded my dungeons with, based on the monsters that lived there.
In all honesty, I don't recall ever calculating treasure amounts to any sort of xp goals back in the day. I remember being fairly generous with treasure, but also having a good sense of power scale and knowing to avoid the "Monty Haul" syndrome. I'd immersed myself in the DMG and Gary's classic run of early modules, so maybe I picked up a feel for it through osmosis. We played multi-year campaigns to get our characters into the teen levels and everyone was happy with the progress, so who knows how close I got to the ideal? Gaining a better understanding of the math that underpins the game has been a huge benefit of relearning AD&D as a grown adult. I recently scanned in all my old gaming materials from high school and college... I should go back and audit one of my old dungeons to see how well I did.
Anyway, in OSRIC Table 12: Treasure Amount, you have an 85% chance (on a d20) to roll coins: 25% copper, 25% silver, 15% electrum, 10% gold, and 10% platinum. Five percent of the remaining treasure is in the form of gems (62.5%) or jewelry (37.5%), determined by rolling a d8. Another 5% results in either a magic item (15%), or nothing (85%), also determined with a d8. The final 5% is in the form of a magic item roll. I don't get the weird "something or nothing" result (a '19' on 1d20) at all. The fact that I'm rolling on this table means there is a treasure... I've already determined that.
In AD&D (Table V. G: Treasure), 90% of treasure (on a d100) is coinage: 25% copper, 25% silver, 15% electrum, 15% gold, and 10% platinum. The remaining 10% of treasure is in the form of gems (4%), jewelry (3%), or magic item (3%). When stocking the dungeon with the DMG, you roll on the treasure table once if the treasure is unguarded, or twice if a monster guards it, but you also add 10% to the total of each roll.
This means that for treasure guarded by monsters in AD&D, there is now only a 15% chance of finding copper when guarded by a monster, so the distribution is already worth more. In addition, there is now a 13% chance to find a magic item since the spread of table results is 11–110%. The percentage distribution of all other coins remains the same. This essentially quadruples the chance of a magic item being found when a monster is also present, but it makes logical dungeon sense. It works the same in OSRIC, except instead of adding the 10% to two percentage rolls, you add 1 (i.e., 5%) to each of two d20 rolls. This gives us a 20% chance for copper at one end of the table, and a 10% chance for a magic item at the other.
Speaking of magic items, OSRIC contains a major deviation from the AD&D stocking guidelines. In AD&D, though the chance of getting a magic item result increases in the presence of a monster, the table instructs you to "roll once," whereas all the other treasure amounts indicate "per level." In OSRIC, however, you multiply the result by the dungeon level, meaning (according to a specific example provided) that if you roll a Magic Item result for level 5, there are actually five magic items found as part of that treasure.
The same multiplier for level applies to quantities of coins in OSRIC as well, and the amounts of each specific type are given in dice ranges (e.g., 2d10 x 100 sp, for a range of 200–2,000 sp times dungeon level). AD&D gives hard quantity numbers for each coin type (e.g., 1,000 cp, 750 ep, etc.), also times dungeon level. OSRIC calls for 1–3 gems per dungeon level, while AD&D allows for 1–4 per level. Both provide for 1 piece of jewelry per level.
I've been using the OSRIC tables for treasure rolls, with one change: If I roll a '19' on the d20 (which is the weird "magic item or nothing" result), I changed "nothing" to "gem or jewelry" instead. In addition, as mentioned in my writeup for Level 1, I started adding three free magic item rolls per dungeon level to the total haul. When rolling up the actual items, sometimes I use OSRIC and other times I use the DMG, but there is no procedure to it. I just use whichever one is open or closest.
For Level 2, I rolled one jewelry result and no gems. I did, however, roll two magic item results (meaning four items since this is Level 2), which turned out to be: a Potion of Invisibility, a Potion of Plant Control, two pots of Marvelous Pigments, and a set of Leather Armor +4 (!). In OSRIC, there's a 15% chance to get a magical suit of armor or shield, with a 10% chance for leather armor. You roll the magical bonus separately and have a 5% chance to get either a +4 suit (65%) or a +5 suit (35%). In AD&D, there's also a 15% chance for an Armor/Shield result, but magic leather armor is only found at +1. Magic leather armor goes up to +3 in Unearthed Arcana, but there's a 50/50 chance to get on the right table, and then only a 4% chance to roll +3 Leather. This is a potent item, for sure, but I hid it in a secret room and added a complication to its use. I think it's an awesome find, so I'm letting it stand.
The extra item rolls came out to a Ring of Warmth, a Philter of Love, a +3 Sling, a Cursed Military Pick, and two scrolls: Clairvoyance (3/MU) and Plant Growth (3/Dr). I placed all these treasures in the dungeon, with suitable concealment and/or traps (I later went back and took out a couple of excess traps after reducing their % frequency in my methodology).
The final pieces were the two "Trick/Trap" results. I rolled in the DMG for these and came up with a spear trap and a 20x20 elevator room. Coincidentally, I had drawn this one room with a circle in the center that I'm almost certain I drew to represent an elevator platform, so this roll cemented that idea as fact. The level map also had these three octagonal rooms, side by side, and I knew I wanted to make that some sort of puzzle or trap. I'd already placed two of the treasures in the central octagonal room, so I slotted the spear trap into the two outer rooms (same trap, two occurrences) as a guardian. To the map, I also added the pit shaft from level 1 (room 38) at its terminus on level 2 (room 37), as well as the (treasure) pit trap in 2.8 and the debris pile/pit trap in 2.20.
This whole level snapped together pretty easily, without adding much material (other than seeding the extra magic items and placing the teleport chamber). The rest of it was just fleshing out the existing details and syncing up the connections with levels 1 and 3 (based on the content rolls I'd already made).
All told, there are ~187 HD of enemies down here (not including wandering encounters), for an approximate total of 3,572 xp. Monetary treasure comes out to 8,750 xp (not counting individual loot for enemies like hobgoblins or brigands, while magic item xp runs to 7,950 for items kept in AD&D; 1,830 for items kept in OSRIC. Selling the items nets 37,900 xp in AD&D, or 18,300 xp in OSRIC. Total xp for this level should run around 20,272 (50,222) using AD&D rules, or 14,152 (30,622) using OSRIC.
>>Hurricane Dungeon – Level 2 Key
>>Hurricane Dungeon – Level 2 Map
<<Dungeon Level 1<<
>>Dungeon Level 3>>
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