Arduin is a fictional universe and fantasy role-playing system created in the mid-1970s by David A. Hargrave. It was the first published "cross-genre" fantasy RPG, with everything from interstellar wars to horror and historical drama, although it was based primarily in the medieval fantasy genre.

Development history

Arduin was one of the earliest challengers to TSR's Dungeons & Dragons. It began in the mid-1970s as a personal project Hargrave created to share with friends, but became so popular that he was inspired to publish the material. Greg Stafford of Chaosium played in the Arduin game run by Hargrave for a while around 1976, and he approached Hargrave to get the game system published as "The Arduin Grimoire". Although the Arduin books did not explicitly claim to be a Dungeons & Dragons supplement, they were treated as such by most users. As follows, there was contention in the RPG world that the Arduin system lacked cohesion. It was only with the publication of the later book The Arduin Adventure (1981) that a true standalone system began to evolve, where other systems were not needed to adequately run a game. The Arduin Adventure was eventually written to replace use of the D&D core book. Material from all of these were subsequently used as the basis for The Compleat Arduin (1992), a standalone system.

Publication history

The original Arduin suite of supplements, dungeon modules, and gaming aids were initially self-published (1977–78), but were then later produced by Grimoire Games. Dragon Tree Press produced four further Arduin supplements in the mid-1980s before the Arduin rights and properties were purchased by David Bukata and George De Rosa of Emperors Choice Games and Miniatures in 1998.

Grimoire Games

Grimoire Games was a publishing company run by Jim Mathis. Active from 1978 to mid 1981, Grimoire Games's primary focus was the early Arduin series of RPG supplements, written by Hargrave. The Arduin Trilogy is the most famous of the Hargrave supplements.

Hargrave sold Arduin in 1978 to one of his players, Jim Mathis, who started Grimoire Games out of a UC campus apartment in Berkely to publish Arduin material by Hargrave beginning with a series of four adventure modules and two boxed sets.

  • Arduin Map Index An index of locations in the Country of Arduin an its border areas. 1337 entries; works with the original Arduin country map that was released in 2000, the 2024 Arduin country map, or as a stand alone list, 2024

Cardstock items

  • Monsters from Arduin (24 monster cards) (First and second printings with different images exist.)
  • Magic Weapons from Arduin (24 weapon cards) (First and second printings with different images exist.)
  • Magic Artifacts from Arduin (24 Artifact cards) (First and second printings with different images exist.)
  • Arduin Treasure Pak (a combination of the three items above).
  • Arduin Character Pack (illustrated character sheets; listed elsewhere as Arduin Character Sheets Combined Pack) This is a set of 24 character sheets for different Arduin races/character classes. Each sheet has a unique illustration.
  • Arduin Artifacts & Monster card set (64 Artifact cards) (As specifically found in the first four Arduin dungeons:
  • The Black Grimoire: All of Dave Hargrave's published spells.
  • Arduin Artifacts & Monster card set: (64 Artifact cards) (As specifically found in the first four Arduin dungeons: and a pool where Mazmanian's corpse was entombed. Created by Hargrave as a tongue-in-cheek tribute, the adventure itself was essentially a quest to gain life-prolonging treasure while avoiding Mazmanian's wandering Avatar, an extremely powerful Lich-like entity who would either attack or help a party on random percentage roll.

Per Emperors Choice Games & Miniatures Corp.: Lancers Rest has been fully developed and written and art completed in 2023 and is to be released with the new Arduin Bloody Arduin rules system in 2025.

Reception

In the April–May 1979 edition of White Dwarf magazine (Issue 12), Don Turnbull gave the just-published Trilogy a rating of only 4 out of 10, finding it disorganized, hard to read, and "a mass of information, no doubt useless to some and useful to others." Turnbull concluded "I could not advise anyone to buy The Grimoire from which to learn the fantasy game hobby from scratch, but if you want what is in effect a D&D supplement, don't mind the price and are prepared to be selective in what you extract from it, there will no doubt be useful snippets you could find."

In the Oct-Nov 1979 edition of Different Worlds (Issue 5), Mike Gunderloy admired the huge amount of supplementary information in the Arduin Trilogy that could be added to a D&D campaign. But he admitted the trilogy was not perfect, especially "the lack of organization. Rules relating to a single subject are often in different parts, even different volumes, of the trilogy. Worse, not only are there no cross-references to related sections, there is no index either." But Gunderloy concluded that any D&D gamemaster looking to improve their campaign world needed the trilogy: "No referee who has decided to expand his world should be without a copy of The Arduin Trilogy. Buy it, you'll be amply rewarded in the form of ideas and enjoyment."

Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, described Arduin as a "Fantasy system, derivative of Original D&D. In fact, the first Arduin rulebooks were thinly-disguised supplement for D&D – only later did Arduin grow into a stand-alone system. Arduin rules and scenarios are frequently unencumbered by the restraints of conventional good taste."

In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "with the Arduin zines, Hargrave plants the first seeds of transgression in RPGs. The zines seem calculated to shock, in the same way that some lurid heavy metal album covers sought to fluster squares with cartoon skulls, demons, and blood. That whiff of the forbidden would stick to RPGs for years, and it might be Arduins greatest legacy."

Reviews

  • The Playboy Winner's Guide to Board Games

Controversy and criticism

In 1977, TSR objected to certain contents of the first Arduin book. David Hargrave negotiated with TSR about two points. First, Hargrave's foreword made it appear as though he advocated people copying game books (such as D&D) without buying them. Hargrave removed that foreword from later editions. Second, a Prismatic Wall spell in Arduin appeared to be plagiarized directly from D&D; Hargrave changed some of the description, including some colors. Hargrave further distanced himself from controversy by using white-out and typing correction tape to mask all direct references to Dungeons and Dragons, and then the volumes were reprinted exactly that way. In some versions of the Arduin printings, these so-called "corrections" are clearly visible.

Arduin mechanics

Much criticism was made of Hargrave's combat mechanics, to the point where many Game Masters simply used either their own versions, or those of TSR.

Greg Stafford and Chaosium

While David Hargrave was considered one of the "best of the best" of game masters, he was also known for having a somewhat volatile personality. The original role-playing community at large was split between love and mere tolerance of Hargrave's passions, and his infamous falling-out with Greg Stafford, which resulted in Hargrave naming an Arduin spell after him as revenge, is one such example. The spell was called Stafford's Star Bridge (The Arduin Grimoire, Volume 1, Page 41):

Hargrave felt that Stafford had betrayed him over a Chaosium publishing deal, thus "falling through selectively". According to Stafford, Hargrave was later very upset with himself for having created this spell and for his behavior in the situation.

Notable illustrators

thumb|300px|Phraint vs. Vroat (1979) by [[Erol Otus (from The Howling Tower)]]

Several notable illustrators worked on Arduin materials at various times over the years, including the following:

;Erol Otus

:The first printings of The Arduin Grimoire (specifically, The Arduin Trilogy, Vol. 1) contained artwork by Erol Otus, an artist who would later become known for his illustrations appearing on and in TSR's Dungeons & Dragons publications.

:Otus' artwork was later removed from subsequent printings of The Arduin Grimoire.

;Greg Espinoza

:Greg Espinoza contributed many of the Arduin covers and interior illustrations (close to 80 pieces) from approximately 1978 to 1981. He drew many of the monster and artifact cards for several of the standalone dungeon modules, and also painted the box art (with airbrushing by Anthony Delgado) for Grimoire Games' The Arduin Adventure. Espinoza has created high-level work for decades via Blackthorne, TSR, Malibu, Eclipse, Antarctic Press, Tundra/Kitchen Sink Press, and Image Comics, among others. His Image Comics graphic novel "Pug" (with Derek McCulloch) was nominated for the 2011 Spinetingler Award, in the category of Best Crime Comic/Graphic Novel. In 2009, he was hired by Emperor's Choice Games to create new cover art for a hardcover reprinting of the original Arduin Grimoire Trilogy.

;Brad Schenck

:Brad Schenck (also known as Morno) contributed the cover of Welcome to Skull Tower (AG II). His is also the original design for the Arduin "Shield" now featured by Emperor's Choice Games and Miniatures as their trademark. He also did the cover for The Arduin Adventure rule book.

;Michio Okamura

:Michio Okamura was a regular contributor from the earliest volumes of the Arduin books, his distinct woodcut art style was featured on the cover of Dark Dreams (AG VI). Michio would later find employment at Blizzard North where he worked on Diablo and Diablo II.

References

  • Emperor's Choice Games and Miniatures