Billed as a fantasy role-playing game supplement, The Arcanum is both the first volume of a complete FRPG system and a supplement for your existing FRPG campaign. Bard Games published the second edition in 1985, but much of the material from this volume began years before as their "Complete" series of FRPG supplements. Starting with The Complete Alchemist followed by The Complete Spellcaster and The Complete Adventurer, the folks at Bard Games presented some 27 supplemental PC classes including a very extensive coverage of the alchemist, a magic system based on ten fields of magical study with 500 new spells and a skill system that allows for some individualization of each PC independent of class. Many of the classes combined elements of two classes and are dual classes. A new combat system including armor that reduces damage rather than chance to be hit and a hit-point system which makes low level PCs more able to adventure with high levels and keeps the system monsters a threat longer are part of the complete system.
When joined with The Lexicon and The Bestiary, the three Bard Games books make up the Atlantis Trilogy. Each is technically a stand-alone product which can be added to an existing campaign as supplemental material. Together they are described as a complete system themselves. The Arcanum filled a niche in the mid '80s when gamers such as our group, steeped in The World's Most Famous RPG, were looking for something different. The many games on the market by then included offerings that built upon the White Box and its successors (published house rules really) adding detail and variety to the class and level system and there were other game systems which rejected the class and level system in favor of skill systems and a few including The Arcanum, Rolemaster and The Palladium RPG which combined both.
In comparison with other systems lining the game store shelves, The Arcanum resembles The Palladium RPG more than any other I can think of. Both games are set in their own rich unique world (although Palladium would support their world with more books), both draw on The World's Most Popular RPG for mechanical inspiration while in ways dialing it up to 11 - more character classes combined with a basic skill system for specialization; lots of new approaches to magic including some excellent sections on magical signs and symbols, rituals, and summoning added a lot of flavor to the game helping magic to feel "magical".
The Arcanum escaped my notice during the '80s as my group encountered and experimented with other competing products. Over the years I started to take note of the legend of The Arcanum as I would read something favorable about the system, or hear another gamer talk about it fondly. Eventually I added it to my mental list of hobby products to acquire if given the opportunity and began to notice how seldom it was offered for sale on the second hand market and how much $$ it could often go for. It became one of those "hard to find" items which also added to its desirability. So I considered myself fortunate to recently run across the above copy at a local second hand store.
Being new to me, as I read through The Arcanum I can see what appeals to all the games that speak well of this old system. It compares quite favorably with many of the newer "old school" takes on rules. I can easily seeing a group jumping on this as a fresh alternative in 1985 or 2017. It strikes me as amusing that a hobby based on playing at legends is developing a few legends of its own.
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