Revisiting an Old Favorite

Arduin is back!

I have the fondest memories of this "gonzo" FRP product line. It completely fascinated me when I first stumbled across the little brown booklets that were instantly identifiable as belonging to the hobby I loved. Compelling art and infectious enthusiasm for the role-playing game are my strongest associations with my personal Arduin experience - and that is a good word to use - it's an "experience" reading Arduin for the first time and really on each subsequent rereading. There is so much content packed into those little volumes that I expect one could spend a lifetime exploring what author David A. Hargrave has left us regarding his Arduin multiverse.

Mr. Hargrave freely "borrows" from more sources of inspiration than I can count and I am certain that I miss a few as my knowledge of popular culture is anything but exhaustive. Rather than making Arduin seem derivative as can be the case when an author lifts directly from a widely known and popular source, the fact that Arduin is mixing Mr. Hargrave's original content with "this, that, and another" inspiration, while making it all seem to fit nicely together in his fantastic multiverse, is a rather impressive achievement in itself. He does this while making me think of even more things I can add to the milieu, thus personalizing my own Arduin.

The first volume was self-published by Dave Hargrave in 1977, the same year I discovered the role-playing or adventure game hobby as we called it back then, but it was some years later before I saw a copy here in the Midwest abd by then the Arduin Grimoire had grown to a trilogy. (Trilogies were a popular format in the era immediately following publication of a famous one written by J.R.R. Tolkien!) In those days The Original White Box version of The World's Most Popular Role-Playing game was hard to find on the shelves of local stores, presumably due to its run-away popularity. My own copy of  "white box" D&D had been ordered through the mail - much like most of my game purchases today now that I think on it - and had become quite worn with use by the time I saw Arduin hiding on a store shelf. I can't recall if I recognized those Arduin books for one of the better game products, or just thought that the familiar little brown book format looked compatible with my beloved "white box", but some force guided my hand and I purchased the trilogy that day. Despite the existence of Dragon Magazine with its game system advertisements and reviews, most of my FRP game product knowledge came via word-of-mouth from fellow gamers. (College students like me didn't have money for magazines. I barely had money for a new game supplement and the Arduin Trilogy was almost certainly my only purchase that day.) 

I was pleased to see that the Arduin trilogy pictured above is still available. Although the original format of three individual digest sized paperback books is long out-of-print, the trilogy collection is recently available thru a popular online digital and print-on-demand game resource or in a hardcover physical form from Emperor's Choice Games. 

The early era of role-play game publishing seemed to be characterized by amateur designers possessing an attitude of "share the fun". By the time I entered the hobby the attitudes were starting to be more focused on "how do we make money off this hobby". Litigation and intellectual property rights protected this ability to make money. Cease and desist letters went back and forth and from my perspective the fun suffered. David Hargrave was not immune from this changing attitude and you can read a little of his thoughts in the Foreword he wrote in later Arduin volumes. About 1980 he published The Arduin Adventure as a stand-alone introductory FRP game in which he recommends using his Arduin Trilogy if one is desirous of adding more detail to their game. The Arduin Adventure evokes a flavor distinctly its own which can be glimpsed in the cover illustration below.

Mechanically The Arduin Adventure uses a D20, but the game has its own magikal appeal distinct from any other D20 game I have encountered. (Mr. Hargrave spells magik with a "K")  The cover illustration by Brad Schenk is a busy mess and also full of imaginative action and flavor. The image hardly stands still, which is something that could also be said of Arduin in general - its a setting in perpetual motion even decades after its publication. The game's art alone can hold my interest and get me thinking about world's as yet undreamed of - to borrow a phrase. Yes, one can see similarities (of a sort) in The Arduin Adventure which at once feels familiar, yet not. In much the same way that he does with the Arduin Grimoire volumes, Mr. Hargrave blends and builds and makes something fun and exciting. Isn't escape to a fun and exciting place not the very essence of adventure gaming?

I will also remark that over the decades since I first discovered it, Arduin has frequently served as a sort of tonic for my lagging interest in the hobby. I have come to understand that when the RPG hobby starts to wear thin for me, when the corporate greed and the vast array of never ending new product starts to overwhelm me (and my pocketbook) and when it all just seems so boringly "more of the same", I can turn to Arduin, read the text David Hargrave penned and find his energy, his enthusiasm for the game that he dreamed of, played, and wrote about in these books, and for me it all becomes fresh and exciting again. That's some real Magik!

Over the decades I have heard many gamers talk about Arduin and they nearly all remark how reading it has "changed their game". Few products can be said to have had a larger or more pervasively positive impact on our hobby. And Arduin Grimoire (as it was once widely known) holds up pretty well, even by today's standards! Not in production quality, or presentation, but in shear imaginative no-holds-barred creativity and energy. If I re-discover Arduin a hundred times, I can't imagine ever not being inspired by its raw power to generate fresh ideas and excitement such that I can't wait to get to the gaming table and share the fun of tabletop fantasy role-playing in a fantastic milieu.