Tombs and Crypts

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”

― excerpt from On Shakespeare. 1630

by John Milton, from The Complete Poetry

Poised at the Entrance

Did you ever wonder how DMs dealt with tombs and treasure before the publication of the boxed sets and three core books? Probably not. I never did. I never had to. There were tables galore in the 1e DMG.

Not so in 1977. There was only the Little Brown books, as we like to call them, and nothing more. DMs had to homebrew just about everything, including the rules. One imagines that tombs were simple affairs. A few rooms, a few traps, and probably more monsters than the surrounding realms could possibly sustain. I doubt many concerned themselves about such things then. Most adventures probably began in much the same manner as the tournament modules of the day: You find yourself standing before a set of massive doors. The orcs must surely be raiding the countryside from here.

Our Heroes Sneak In...

The heroes sneak in, or break down the doors; and once inside, they clear the place of anything that lives and breathes, and of a few others that don’t.

And take anything and everything they could lay their hands on, without a thought about how it came to be there. The hoards were there for a purpose, after all. XP and a means to pay for the next bout of training. No one thought about the morality of what they were doing, killing and tomb raiding. Orcs are evil and deserve to die. And all this gold ought to be back in the economy, and not be purposed for burial rites. Besides, have you seen how much gold it takes to level up? Paladins needed a ton or two of gold to pay their way to greater glory. The long and short of it was that there was a need for treasure, and lots of it.

The Burial Chambers

So, how did DMs divvy out the treasure back then? Judiciously? I think not. Sporadically? Never! Arbitrarily? Possibly. I expect more than a few DMs turned to the pages Dragon magazine to help them figure out how they might spread it around.

And Dragon magazine existed for just that purpose. To advise.

Here’s a gem from those early issues, if you will pardon the pun.

From Tombs and Crypts, by James M Ward, from Dragon #9, 1977

I’ve cleaned it up some. The below text and tables were crammed into a small space at the end of the magazine, and the tables were, shall we say, not particularly well aligned. And I’ve edited a few of the numbers, changing a few -14s and -3s, to 15s and 5s. I hope you will forgive my hubris in doing so. 

	Soldier	Hero	Priest	Pair	Mated	Lord	King	Patriarch	High Priest	Wizard	Arch-mage	Being
Gold Pieces	-	15	20	25	20	25	20	25	20	25	30	45
Gems	10	15	20	25	40	30	35	40	45	20	40	45
Maps	-	-	5	5	5	10	20	25	10	-	30	40
Jewelry	-10	-5	-	-	10	15	25	10	5	5	20	30
Magic item	-15	-5	-5	-	-	5	15	10	10	10	15	20
Misc. M. Item	-30	-20	-15	-15	-20	-10	-	-5	-	-	5	10
Special Item	-20	-15	-10	-10	-5	-	5	-	-5	-	-	5
Artifact	No	No	No	No	-	-9	-5	-4	-4	No	-	5
Tomb Itself	-50	-40	-40	-10	-9	-9	-1	-1	-1	-5	30	45
Guardian	-30	-25	-25	-20	-20	-	10	10	-	20	30	40

1.  Roll a d12 to see what is buried in the tomb.
2. Roll for each of the 9 items using the charts given below. For each item, check the row to add, subtract, or leave alone the resulting percentile roll. “Pair” stands for more than one being buried in the tomb, for example: 2 brave fighters that killed each other in battle. The mated pair stands for a husband and wife type tomb not necessarily a human type.

The Dearly "Departed"

Using this system and the rest of the charts it is easy for the judge to make up many of these tombs for his castle or outdoor map. When going over the possible 100% total just assume that you rolled a 100 and roll again without the bonus given for the person in the tomb. If the number rolled totals less than 0%, assume you have a 01% roll.

“Being” refers to an intelligent creature whose followers thought enough of it to place it in a special crypt of honor.

Finally to all those critics who loudly clamor that there is too much of a chance for treasure and goodies in these tombs, I point out that anyone that goes to the trouble of making a tomb for any dead person will logically have a higher percentage of good things to put in that tomb. 

Guarding Her Treasure

Gold Pieces

1-50%	1-100 Pieces
51-60	1-100 (x2)
61-70	1-6 Thousand
71-80	1-12 Thousand
81-90	1-20 Thousand
91-99	2-40 Thousand
100	100,000
Over 100	Roll again

 

Greyhawk Table I, part 1

Magic Items

1-50%	None
51-60	Sword
61-70	Armor
71-80	Misc. Weapon
81-90	1-6 Potions
91-99	Ring
100	Good Misc. Magic Item
Over 100	Roll again

Greyhawk Table I, part 2

Maps

1-80%	None
81-100	Judge option as to what map contains

Greyhawk Table II

Gems

1-50%	1-6 base 100
51-60	1-6 base 500
61-70	1-8 base 500
71-80	1-12 base 500
81-90	1-12 base 1,000
91-99	1-6 base 5,000
100	1-20 base 10,000
Over 100	Roll again

Greyhawk Table III, part 1

Jewelry

Pendants

1-50%	1-6 base 500
51-60	1-6 base 1,000
61-70	1-6 base 5,000
71-80	1-6 base 10,000
81-90	1-6 base 20,000
91-99	1-6 base 30,000
100	1-20 base 50,000
Over 100	Roll again

Greyhawk Table III, part 2

Greyhawk Table IV

Misc. Magic Item

1-60%	None
61-70	Table I of Greyhawk*
71-80	Table II of Greyhawk*
81-90	Table III of Greyhawk*
91-99	Table IV of Greyhawk*
100	Table V of Greyhawk*
Over 100	Roll again

·        *Refers to the Grehawk Supplement

Greyhawk Supplement Table V

Special Item

1-85%	None
86-100	Any Item of the Judges’ own manufacture

Artifact

1-90%	None
91-100	A Judge made object of great power

Tomb Itself

1-40%	1 room/cave/mound of dirt
41-50	Hall with spring trap of some type and a secret door at the end of it.
51-60	a 2-6 room/cave complex with many doors leading to other areas trying to lure the robbers away
61-80	1-10 rooms/caves with a secret door to the tomb and 1-10 traps in the rooms
81-90	1-10 rooms with 1-20 corridors, with 2-20 traps guarding the rooms and tombs and a secret door
91-99	1-10 connecting rooms with traps, secret doors, and magical guard spells (wizard locks, symbols, etc,) guarding the way
100	1-20 rooms with traps, secret doors, and a being guard. It requires special word to open the final door to the tomb. The word should not be found in the tomb

Guardian

1-30%	None
31-50	Magic spell (wizard lock, curse, etc.)
51-80	Invisible stalker(s) 1-4
81-99	Creature from the 6 level monster chart
100	A stronger monster in the tomb and roll again for another guard

Guardian of the Tomb

What can I say about this article? It’s short. A half page.

I have to wonder: Was this one of James Ward’s first pieces for Dragon? Or was he pressed for time to hammer out a short piece to fill a page? I don’t know, and it’s not worth asking him. I doubt he remembers it. It does not measure up to his later work, which is far better than this early item. The prose here is wordy, clunky.

That said, it’s not a bad piece. It’s purposeful. And I wouldn’t doubt that more than a few DMs found it useful, too. And continued to until two years later, when its brevity was brushed aside, replaced by the more  exhaustive, descriptive tables found in the 1e DMG.

Exhaustive? I would say so. The Treasure portion of the DMG spans from page 120 to 169.

One must always give credit where credit is due. This piece is made possible primarily by the Imaginings of Gary Gygax and his Old Guard, Lenard Lakofka among  them. More specifically, this piece would never have been possible without the imagination of James Ward.

The Art:

Giza by hamaterasu25

Exploration by joshie-the-bush

Nefertari-Tomb-With-Stuff-In-It by 

lich by llyncis

tomb-carving-queen-s-treasure-room by mightygog

Pendants by alloniya

Guardian-of-the-Tomb by dracoparvulus

 

Sources:

2011A Dungeon Masters Guide, 1st Ed., 1979

Dragon Magazine, 9