I spent this past weekend with friends at an historic miniatures gaming convention in Nashville, Tennessee. White Box (and therefore the RPG hobby) has its beginnings in wargaming with miniature figures. Like many of my era, my involvement in miniatures wargaming predates my exposure to role-playing by a number of years. Among my friends there is considerable cross-pollination with some having started their hobby interest with role-playing and moved to miniatures and some vice versa. Some favor fantasy, some historic subjects while gaming. Many of us graze freely on both sides of the fence.
Knowing my love of such items, at the beginning of the trip one of my friends presented me with the above volumes. At down-times during the trip and since I have been reading in said volumes and although it isn't my first acquaintance with either, I find new things to think and talk about each time I have perused them.The first thing to grab me this time was the cover art.
Supplement I Greyhawk has the more simple illustration of the two. A rather stiff looking warrior with sword and shield facing a beholder, who looks something like a sleepy moon. Perhaps the warrior, who looks to be drawn in a very sword and sorcery style with winged helm, lots of bare skin and sandals, has been paralyzed or turned to stone, hence the stiffness and the beholder is looking at the reader with a slight drool! I am wondering what the pile is just in front of the warrior's left foot? A rock and plant? A campfire? A pile of ash from the beholder's disintegration ray that used to be the warrior's companion?
The illustration on the cover of The Runes of Doom, The Arduin Grimoire vol. III has more density. Again there is a moon-shape in about the same position as the beholder, but this is clearly a moon with exaggerated craters. Why is it there? A small winged figure hovers just below the moon. In the foreground of the composition is a combat between three adventurer types (one looking like Clint Eastwood/David Hargrave) and a tentacled horror of some sort. The background is dominated by a mountain fortress complete with skull architecture and shining beacon.
I like to see what kind of story I can come up with to imagine based on an illustration and the cover of Runes of Doom offers quite a bit to work with. The citadel with the beacon is the source of trouble (obviously!). The old sorcerer who lives there is messing with forces man was not meant to control in his desire for world domination. The beacon has made a gate connection with the moon from which the tentacled beast and winged fellow both originate and is drawing in local peasants to feed the tentacled godling. Having penetrated the sorcerer's defenses and discovered his secrets, the adventurers fled the citadel (for reinforcements?) only to be pursued by the sorcerers' minions. I am sure you can come up with a better story, but you get the idea.
"Fantasy being what it is, it appears that there will never be an end to the development of fresh ideas," writes E. Gary Gygax in the Foreward (sic) to Supplement I. I certainly hope Mr. Gygax is correct. Two years after Supplement I, David Hargrave published Vol. III of the Arduin Grimoire in an effort to add his own fresh ideas to the fantasy gaming hobby. Obviously Mr. Hargrave is building on ideas first published by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, but he certainly is adding his own ideas among which in this volume are a hundred each of new spells and new monsters, new character classes, new rule variants and random tables galore. That's David Hargrave, energetic and enthusiastic about the hobby almost to the point of mania. Mr. Hargrave is both cheerleader, always getting me excited about the hobby and inspiration, always prompting ideas. Many of his random tables are merely lists. Two of my favorites from Vol. III are Most Wanted Highwaymen & Brigands in Arduin & Its Environs and The Recorded Areas Of Treasure And Death Within The Arduinian Borders. Around these two tables an enterprising referee could probably build an entire campaign. Any single entry can be an adventure in itself.
Supplement I is of course the introduction to the Greyhawk campaign including the unique character classes, rule mechanics and monsters found in that milieu. The supplement is organized along the same lines as the original LBBs with headings titled Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Mr. Hargrave organizes the material for his Arduin campaign in a similar way, although without the headings. Toward the front of each volume the new character classes may be found. For Greyhawk the thief class and the paladin subclass are described. One of the Arduin character classes listed in Vol.III is also Mr. Hargrave's take on the paladin.
It is common for Mr. Hargrave to dial things up to "eleven" in Arduin and paladins are no different. He starts by saying the existing paladin is just a fighting cleric. Paladins in Arduin are "warriors with a near-mystical religious fervor". The Arduin paladin is basically a berserk fanatic who constantly seeks to convert others. The rule changes make the paladin fit more with the Arduin milieu where everything seems a bit bigger, more powerful and extreme.
Greyhawk offers changes to White Box rules such as the addition of a weapons verses armor chart variable weapon damage and variable hit dice, and new ability score bonuses. The Runes of Doom also offers changes to the rules including a new hit point system which greatly increases 1st level hit points and decreases the rate at which hit points accumulate as the PC progresses up in levels. The stated result is so that low level characters may more readily join expeditions alongside higher level PCs and not seriously jeopardize the game. In White Box higher number of hit points are a major way in which PCs improve therefore making them much more resilient in combat. Arduin with it's much higher character levels (150+), uses a number of rule changes to manage play at the higher levels.
The Runes of Doom follows the format of the previous two volumes in the Arduin Grimoire series mixing rules and tables with commentary and advice from Mr. Hargrave regarding how he runs his game. Arduin is world, rules and philosophy all in one. Sometimes referred to as a gonzo setting, maybe the first such, because technology is freely mixed with fantasy and anything else that Mr. Hargrave thinks would be cool to add to his game/multiverse, vol. III offers brief commentary on "Techno Magik" (Magik in Arduin is always spelled with a "K") reminding me of Arthur C. Clark's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
After running afoul of the Tolkien estate lawyers, Mr. Gygax got rather touchy about IP and conflicted with Mr. Hargrave over Arduin, but I can't help but think The Arduin Grimoire represents the kind of fresh ideas that he himself predicted would continue to flow from the field of fantasy...being what it is.
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