In my last post, I took a look at the odds of encountering a deserted castle in AD&D. For completeness, let’s take a look at the odds of encountering an occupied castle. A cursory look at the castle inhabitants table shows that for small castles, it’s more likely to be deserted than not, medium is even odds, and large castles are more likely to be occupied than not. Overall, castles are occupied 48.5% of the time.

This all stood to reason since the overall odds of being deserted were previously calculated at 51.1%. Castles can be occupied by either Humans or Characters. Humans in this case are either Bandits, Brigands, Berserkers, or Dervishes as described in the Monster Manual.

Characters are classed characters as described in the Player’s Handbook.

What does it all add up to? Well, it varies based on terrain of course, but roughly an exploring party will run into an occupied castle two to five times per year. Interestingly, running into character types, across all terrains is more common than running into other Humans.

And, the human types, broken down by type, are relatively uncommon. A party could wander around the wilderness for several years and not encounter any.

The classed characters are all more common than the humans. Yet, most classes are still hard to come by. The Fighter, by far, is the most common. Only the fighter, could one expect to meet at least once a year, but even then only in scrub, forest, or marshes.

It turns out the uninhabited/wilderness areas are, well, uninhabited for the most part. Now, the odds here are somewhat lowballed. Because of the other 19 out of twenty encounters one might also meet humans and characters, and some of those encounters will be in lairs, some of which might be castles.

So it’s kind of heartening to think those deserted fixer-uppers are more available. The reality is fixing up a castle will occur considerable costs, including transporting a lot of skill labor into the wilderness, and likely attract attention of the evil and greedy. But, I think we can all agree that ousting people out of an occupied castle bears costs too. And, dangers.