The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermGeneral term1974

Wandering monster

A creature met by chance rather than placed in a room, determined by rolling on a table at intervals. Wandering monsters make lingering in the dungeon dangerous; their video-game heir is the JRPG random battle.

A creature met by chance rather than placed in a room, determined by rolling on a table at intervals. Wandering monsters make lingering in the dungeon dangerous; their video-game heir is the JRPG random battle.

Origin

Wandering monster tables were part of original Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Quick answers

What does "Wandering monster" mean?
A creature met by chance rather than placed in a room, determined by rolling on a table at intervals. Wandering monsters make lingering in the dungeon dangerous; their video-game heir is the JRPG random battle.
Where does the term "Wandering monster" come from?
Wandering monster tables were part of original Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Nearby in the archive

Dungeon crawl

Tabletop term

An adventure in which characters explore a confined labyrinth of rooms and corridors, fighting monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles and hauling out treasure. It is the oldest scenario in roleplaying and the template for countless board and video games, from Dungeon! to Diablo.

Procedural generation

Digital term1980

Creating game content such as dungeons, maps, loot or entire histories with algorithms rather than by hand, so each play-through differs. It descends from the random dungeon and treasure tables of early D&D.

Painting: a young hero with a sword and shield on an overworld path, a small cute blue slime blocking the way, a castle and a dragon-shaped mountain far away.

Dragon Quest

Japanese RPG1986

A lone descendant of the hero Erdrick sets out from Tantegel Castle to face the Dragonlord: Yuji Horii's streamlined Famicom RPG, drawn by Akira Toriyama and scored by Koichi Sugiyama, that made the role-playing game a Japanese national pastime.

Gygaxian naturalism

Tabletop term

The habit, seen in Gary Gygax's early rulebooks, of treating monsters as parts of a functioning ecology, with lairs, young, diets and numbers appearing, rather than as isolated combat encounters. The phrase is used approvingly by old-school players who like dungeons that feel like places.