Grim Monday: Critical Fumble!

A lot of people talk about what it was like to game in the old days. These two tables come straight out of my gaming roots, reflecting some of the deadly nature our game sessions used to have. We first started using these tables in the early 80s. Our best guess as to their origin is "some guy at Virginia Tech made them." The originals are typewritten (yes, with a real typewriter) and have nearly disintegrated from use. I created electronic copies and cleaned up some of the typos in the originals, but the results are about the same. Death and mayhem.

We used these with all flavors of D&D (primarily 1st edition back then). Our house rules were that a one was a fumble and a 20 was a critical on any to hit roll. Both characters and their foes were subject to the whim of charts, allowing even the lowliest kobold to pose a significant threat to the party. So without further ado, here they are:

• Critical Hits Table
• Fumble Table