I have been on a Lulu.com kick - the discounts show up in the OSR discord, how are you going to save money unless you buy some books? There are a fair few lists out there with recommended OSR fare to be had print-on-demand and The Dungeon Dozen - "Random Tables for Fantasy RPGs" by Jason Sholtis shows up on a lot of them near or at the top.
Fresh from Lulu, the Dungeon Dozen
So first impression is a funny one - I resisted purchasing this a while because I thought it was going to be a lot of ultra-crunchy tables adding more systems or other deeply esoteric bits of the rules. It is in fact a compilation of d12 tables from the Dungeon Dozen blog to randomly generate all sorts of fun and useful things. I probably should have done more research or at least trusted the buzz and picked this up an age ago. Given it came out in 2014, apologies, slow to the party.
What you actually get is a chunky 195 pages of typically 1 table per page (sometimes 2 if they are sub-tables) and on every 2-page spread at least one, usually two pieces of great art. The art is fantastic - Sholtis and Chris Brandt, John Larrey and Stefan Poag populate the book with art evoking a fierce-but-fun style of gaming with scary monsters and hard-bitten adventurers that sometimes end up in absurd situations. It perfectly captures a gonzo-style of world that all the tables also paint. The content is system independent so whatever you are using to run your table from 5e to Forbidden Lands to GLoG, this can work for you.
What makes this a really nice book to pick up, besides the art, is the great indexing that let you quickly find inspiration for whatever situation you have - there is both an alphabetic and thematic quick reference in the back - need something related to dragons you get specific tables from the quick reference or anything where a dragon is mentioned in the alphabetical index. Even just the titles of the tables are inspiring.
Particular highlights for me were p30 - the DM's emergency dodecahedral outcomes oracle - or what to roll when you've no idea what else to roll. Others were two of the dragon tables - what is this intelligent dragon obsessed with and why is this ancient dragon irritated. Lots of ways for your next dragon to be memorable there.
All in all this is a great addition to your DM's toolkit, whatever edition you are running. Grab it off Lulu.
For other reviews check out: An Abominable Fancy, Black Gate, Dungeon Fantastic or Gnome Stew.
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