I've reduce the size of the table for brevity.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $beholder_default = 'beholder';
my $param = get_param();

my %monster_lookup = (
  'beholder' => {
    book => 'Monstrous Manual',
    beholder => 1,
    page => 21,
  },
  'death kiss' => {
    book => 'Monstrous Manual',
    beholder => 0,
    page => 21,
  },
);

# this saves duplicating data in your code
my @monsters = keys %monster_lookup;


my $monster;
if ($param){
  $monster = $beholder_default;
}
else{
  my $rand = int rand @monsters;
  $monster = $monsters[$rand];
}

my $book     = $monster_lookup{$monster}{book};
my $page     = $monster_lookup{$monster}{page};
my $beholder = $monster_lookup{$monster}{beholder};

if (not $beholder){
  print "$monster ";
}
print "beholder ($book, pg $page)\n";

sub get_param {
  # get your input from somewhere
  my $param = 0;
  return $param;
}

[download]

In reply to Re^6: Creating a random generator by wfsp
in thread Creating a random generator by Lady_Aleena

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.