AD&D Random Monsters: Build It, Then Kill It
Create monsters like an evil scientist!
Back in Dragon Magazine #10, Paul Crabaugh handed us a monster-making machine. It’s not fancy. It’s not balanced. But it’s pure old-school gold.
The whole idea is simple. Roll some dice. Get a creature. Maybe it has 3 legs, maybe it flies, maybe it spits fire and commands wolves. Who knows. What you end up with is something your players have never seen before... and that’s the point.
In AD&D, the moment players start memorizing the Monster Manual, you lose part of the game. That sense of mystery fades. Orcs hit this hard. Trolls regenerate. Dragons breathe fire. Boring.
But when they meet a pale, one-eyed, flying crab that bites through shields and is immune to magic missiles... they start asking questions again.
This article gives you the bones. Hit dice. Body shape. Limbs. Weird traits. You roll it all. Then you give it a name and let it loose. It doesn’t need lore. It needs teeth.
Use it when your players get too comfortable. Use it when you’re short on prep. Use it when you want to keep the pressure on and the dice rolling.
Want to make it even better? Let the party kill it. Then drop a second one that looks identical... but has completely different stats. Watch them panic.
Random monsters remind us that not everything needs to fit neatly into a system. Sometimes the best encounters come from chaos, from a scribbled table, from a single line in a forgotten magazine that says “roll twice for special abilities.”
Build it. Drop it. See who survives. That’s the game.
