Arduin Map Collection

Dave Hargrave's The Arduin Grimoire (1977) and its two immediate sequels, Welcome to Skull Tower and The Runes of Doom (1978), are important artifacts from the first few years of the hobby of roleplaying and thus of great interest to all fans of old school gaming. These three books, often known collectively as The Arduin Trilogy, were not just mere flights of fancy by their creator, but outgrowths of Hargrave's home-brewed fantasy roleplaying game campaign, among whose hundreds of players was none other than Greg Stafford of RuneQuest fame. The Trilogy not only delighted many roleplayers during the '70s, but also included some of the earliest published artwork of Erol Otus.

Emperor's Choice Games, the current publisher and rights holder of Arduin, has big plans for Dave Hargrave's legacy, starting with the release of a large collection of maps based on those he made for his RPG campaign almost a half-century ago. These maps include not only the titular County of Arduin (an earlier version of which I positively reviewed fifteen years ago), but also maps of the continent of Khaora in which it is situated and the country of Chorynth as well. The new County of Arduin map is gorgeous and filled with lots of interesting and useful details.

If you're a fan of Arduin or just a lover of fantasy maps, please take a look.

White Dwarf: Issue #12

Issue #12 of White Dwarf (April/May 1979) features a cover by Eddie Jones, who had previously done the cover for issue #10. According to Ian Livingstone's editorial, Jones was the favorite cover artist in the poll he commissioned in the previous issue. For myself, I am regularly struck by how commonly 1970s fantasy art include spaceships and other elements we might today consider science fictional. It's a reminder of just how fluid those two categories were once upon a time. 

Livingstone also comments on a couple of other interesting topics. First, he notes that, thanks to the increase in its readership, White Dwarf is expanding to 32 pages from 28. By my lights, though, it doesn't seem as if those extra four pages are being used for content but rather for more advertising. Second, and relatedly, he notes that "the hobby industry" is not "mass market" and its prices will be accordingly higher. Livingstone then takes aim at "photocopier fanatics" who make copies of rules or magazines rather than buying them. He encourages his readers to give such miscreants "a bad time" and to support game companies by buying their properly printed products. 

"The Fiend Factory" presents eight more monsters for use with Dungeons & Dragons. Five of these are creatures I recall from the Fiend Folio, including the githyanki. Notable too is the fact that many feature illustrations by the inimitable Russ Nichsolson. Indeed, some of the illustrations look identical to those that would later appear in the Fiend Folio itself, though it's possible that my aged memory is simply playing tricks on me again. Lew Pulsipher's "Useful Dungeon Equipment" is a short article presenting a collection of pieces of specialized equipment he feels would be of use in dungeon exploration, such as a crowbar, an eyepatch, and noseplugs. I remember reading many articles like this over the years and have a strange fondness for them. They reflect, I think, a real culture of play, in which players regularly came up with inventive solutions to equally inventive obstacles created by referees. Articles like this speak to D&D "as she was played" back in the day and they're every bit as important to understanding the history of the hobby as the ins and outs of designers and companies.

"Open Box" presents five reviews, only two of which are of products with which I am familiar. The unfamiliar products are FGU's Rapier & Dagger (rated 6), Conflict Interaction Associates' Pellic Quest (rated 7), and Gametime Games's Spellmaker (rated 6). The last review is interesting, because the game's creator, Eric Solomon, is given a small space in which to reply to the review's criticisms. The two familiar reviews treat Chaosium's All the World's Monsters (rated 5) and The Arduin Grimoire, Volumes I, II, and III (rated 4). The review of the Arduin books ends with the following comment:

All this issue's reviews are by Don Turnbull, who, in my estimation, tends to be quite harsh in his judgments on non-TSR products. As I've commented before, I can't help but wonder if the combination of his obvious industry – he is one of early White Dwarf's workhorses – and his largely uncritical promotion of TSR played a role in his being made head of TSR UK in 1980.

"Pool of the Standing Stones" by Bill Howard is a "mini-dungeon" for 5th and 6th-level characters. Like so many dungeons of the past, it's an odd mixture of elements. There's a druid who's interested in maintaining the balance between Law and Chaos, bandits, martial artists, mad scientists, and more. There are a few genuinely imaginative elements, like the talking entrance doors, but it's mostly a bizarre mishmash that, while not bad, is still far from good. The best I can say is that it's certainly no worse than many dungeons I created in my youth, though that's very faint praise indeed. 

Part five of Rowland Flynn's "Valley of the Four Winds" appears in this issue, though, as with the previous installments, I can't say much about it, as I lost interest in it several issues ago. "Treasure Chest" offers up a large number of new magic items, a few of which are decent, if not necessarily inspired. Brian Asbury also offers some modifications to the barbarian class that appeared in issue #4, in light of the publication of the Players Handbook. On that very front, Don Turnbull's "A Dip into the Players Handbook" is a two-page examination of certain aspects of the AD&D Players Handbook from the perspective of its innovations over OD&D. I found the article strangely enjoyable. It's a piece of history and provides some insight on how the piecemeal publication of AD&D was received by the existing players of D&D. Turnbull, as one might expect, is a fan of most AD&D's changes, but, even so, his comments are useful bits of data for anyone with an interest in the hobby's history.

Greg Espinoza's Arduin Memories

To long-time admirers of the late Dave Hargrave's Arduin books, artist Greg Espinoza needs no introduction. He contributed many iconic illustrations to those early RPG tomes, some of which proved quite popular and influential on a later generation of artists. Recently, Greg shared recollection of his days working in the gaming industry, which he has very kindly allowed me to repost here.

I’d been thinking about some of my earliest work recently, some of my gaming illustrations from the late 70s. Specifically my work for David A. Hargrave on his Arduin Grimoire books and the various game modules, and to a lesser degree, a game I did called Star Rovers for a company called Archive Miniatures. This is work I did roughly 43 years ago, but I’ve found over the years that people still remember the Arduin game books and modules fondly. I look in on the occasional gaming blog, and recently discovered a number of YouTube videos talking about the history of Hargrave’s books and his legacy. I am rather elated Arduin is still going strong.

I'm a little fuzzy on exactly when I met David A. Hargrave, who originally created the Arduin Grimoire as a self-published supplement to Dungeon & Dragons, which displeased D&D creator Gary Gygax, to no end. I think, roughly, sometime in 1978, a friend of mine had heard through channels that Dave Hargrave was looking for an artist for a project. I went to visit him at a gaming shop in Concord, CA., where he was based at that time. I found Hargrave to be interesting guy, enthusiastic and very opinionated. I showed him what could charitably be called my portfolio at the time. He liked what he saw. The first thing he’d hired me to do was draw illustrations for his third book, The Arduin Grimoire III: The Runes Of Doom. I worked directly with Hargrave. I met him in person periodically to discuss illustrations, with a lot of communication by telephone. This was pre-Internet, so I couldn’t send him a scan or take a picture on my phone to get approval. We talked it through, and he liked what I did. I only ever had to make an alteration at least once. At the time. I was still in High School and living with my parents in Napa, CA. I’d played Dungeons & Dragons with a group friends in High School when I lived in Napa (As I remember, some of us incorporated Arduin rules into some of our games).

I was a lifelong comics fan, cutting my teeth on Silver age Marvel Comics. Yeah, I was a huge Jim Steranko and Paul Gulacy (who had a strong Steranko influence) fan. I was also a big Jim Starlin fan, and obviously, Jack Kirby. I soaked up lots of influences as a kid; Harryhausen movies, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Outer Limits, Gerry Anderson shows. 1950s sci-fi movies, ect. You name it, I was probably watching it. A lot of what I absorbed up to that point can be seen in in my Arduin art. Dave wasn’t hard to work with. He had his strong ideas of what he wanted, but he gave me the latitude to come up with stuff. I was around 18 years-old, still working out my techniques. I think I was inking with Rapidograph pens, then. Still trying to get the hang of Crowquill pens, and still didn’t know how to use a brush. Didn’t know the right paper to use. Other than some fan art published by my friend Steven R. Johnson, this was my very first paying art gig. Being rather isolated locally, I never met any like-minded artists who did what I did, and didn't meet any until the mid-80s at a Creation Con in San Francisco, which would be Ken Hooper, Edward Luena, and Shepherd Hendrix. That would prove to be my gateway into the comics industry.

The Runes Of Doom experience went well, I did the covers and a dozen interior illustrations. Dave later had me do a new set of covers for his first book, The Arduin Grimoire, Volume One. My covers for this book replaced the covers done by the previous artist, Erol Otus, who would go on to greater fame creating art for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons books. I later did the cover art for three Arduin dungeon modules: Caliban, The Howling Tower, and The Citadel Of Thunder. There were no interior illustrations by me for the books, except, I think Citadel had two interior pieces. Each module included a sheet of die-cut monster and artifact cards. Dave used two other artists who did some great work on Arduin, Brad Schenck (A.K.A. Morno) and Michio Okamura, but I did the majority of illustrations. Hargrave sold his company to publisher Jim Mathis at Grimoire Games, who later produced a box set called The Arduin Adventure. I did a couple of interior illustrations for the booklet, but I also painted the box art, which at the time, I was rather proud of. When I finally saw the published set, I was rather dismayed to find my cover art reworked, with a lot of airbrushing added by someone named Anthony Delgado. I’m being honest when I state I wasn’t happy with it, and felt blindsided. Mathis also repackaged all three original Arduin books into a box set, and repurposed a Wizard illustration from The Arduin Adventure game book for the box art. I believe that was the last thing I did for them. In 2008 I found out that a company called Emperor’s Choice had acquired the rights to all things Arduin and I contacted them about doing some new Arduin-based work. My timing was good, as they were about to repackage the original Arduin Trilogy and George De Rosa hired me to create two new sequel covers based on my original Arduin Grimoire, Vol. I covers. I also created a logo for the book that EmpCho has repurposed for their Arduin Eternal book.

I created overall, roughly 98 (give or take) pieces of art for Arduin. I got paid roughly $5 dollars per illustration by Dave for the interiors on Runes Of Doom, $100. for the cover. later on, I got a slightly better rate for larger illustrations. I seem to remember I got paid $200 for The Arduin Adventure box art.

Dave treated me pretty well, but our relationship was strictly professional. We never socialized and I never gamed with him. I was lucky I was able to get what little facetime I could with him as I didn’t have a car to get me from Napa to Concord regularly. I seem to remember I talked my Mom into driving me there a few times. David A. Hargrave passed in 1988, and was informed of this by one of his friends at a show where I was exhibiting.

Looking back on my art then, it's some of my earliest work, and to say it's unrefined is charitable. There are some things I’m still somewhat happy with, some of it I find cringe-worthy. You have to start somewhere. I have no idea who owns all the original Arduin art, or where it is (Emperor’s Choice?). I do know that probably a lot of hardcore, old-school Arduin fans might be willing to pay for a piece of that history.

Regarding my work on Star Rovers, I seem to remember meeting Archive Miniatures publisher Nevile Stocken at a gaming convention, possibly a DundraCon. I had a table and was doing character sketches, he bought some of them. Dave Hargrave had started work on a game for Archive called Star Rovers, a science fiction-based role-playing game, but left the project. I think he may have recommended me? Stocken and I met at his store in Burlingame and he cherry-picked some pre-existing art from my portfolio, which included some panels from early, and very crude ‘zine work. I created a number of new illustrations (41 total), front and back covers for the game book, and the box art. I was asked to keep the proportions of the illustrated characters close to the proportions of the miniatures, so the some of the character look like they are escapees from the movie, Time Bandits. Once I turned in the art and later received my copy of the game, I was disappointed to find some of the pencil pieces he bought from me, he used, but hired another artist to ink them…badly. He also had the box art reworked and colored. I think the nail in the coffin for me doing any further work was a discussion we had over the phone regarding me getting my art back. He flat out told me he was keeping the art. We had no discussion about that prior, and I don’t remember it being in a contract, and I sure don’t have a copy of that contract anymore. Fledgling artists take note: one of my first hard lessons learned in working freelance, state any questions or concerns upfront, otherwise it’s your own fault. It was still quite a few years away before I’d learn the term “work-for-hire.” I don’t think I talked to Stocken after that. Maybe once? I never played Star Rovers. I still have my comp copy of the game and some of the miniatures.

Finally, a little Arduin trivia: Shardra the Castrator was originally a sketchbook piece. Dave bought it, and named the character on the spot. Black Wind was inspired by an Outer Limits monster from the episode, The Man With The Power. The Brain Eater was inspired by the B-movie, The Brain From Planet Arous. I’m reading in a few place that Dave had based a character on the Arduin covers on Clint Eastwood. I seem to remember I just drew the character like Clint on the Runes of Doom cover and he liked it. He did want me to go back to that design when I drew the new covers for Arduin, Vol.1. The one time he wanted a major change was to draw a top on the bare-breasted female warrior on the back cover of Arduin Grimoire, Vol. 1. I can’t remember if there were actual complaints about the nudity, or he was trying to head them off. I have no idea where the heck Attack Of The Kill Kittens came from. I think that was all Dave. and a piece of art people still remember. And finally, one of my artist pals, Ken Hooper told me a few years ago Hargrave had talked to him about working on Arduin before me.

As I mentioned at the outset, It’s gratifying to see the various YouTubers talking about Arduin. It’s mind-boggling that the out-of-print Arduin books are going for hundreds of dollars. And also surprised to see all the piracy with my Arduin art on t-shirts, mugs, hoodies, etch. I even found some of my old monster cards badly redrawn in a knock-off Arduin monster card set

So, there you have it. Since those halcyon days of gaming art, I’ve freelanced in comics and animation for close to 40 years. I did one more game project: designing some guns (five illustrations) for a game book called Worlds Beyond for Other Worlds Games in 1989. I’ve worked for Eclipse comics, TSR (their comics line), Tundra/Kitchen Sink Press, Image Comics, did art for a Wizard Of Oz Tarot deck for Illogical Associates, Printed In Blood’s 30th Anniversary The Thing Art Book, among many other projects.

Greg Espinoza (8/14/21)

The original post appeared on Greg's Facebook here. You can also keep in touch with him and his art through his Instagram.

Different Worlds: Issue #13

Issue #13 of Different Worlds (August 1981) opens with an article entitled "The Land of Faerie" by Scott R. Turner. It's an odd piece, in that it contains no game statistics whatsoever. Instead, it's an overview of a variety of  myths and legends about fairies – mostly from the British Isles – strung together as a semi-coherent whole. There's even a bestiary of sorts, which provides brief descriptions of many fairy creatures. Articles like these baffle me somewhat. They're usually too short to present information that most players of fantasy RPGs don't already know. Likewise, the lack of game-specific information limits their utility.

Strangely enough, Iain Delaney's "The Travellers' Aid Society" follows a similar pattern, being both very short and almost entirely lacking in game statistics. Rather, what Delaney offers is a limited and particular interpretation of the iconic organization from GDW's Traveller game. Even more so than "The Land of Faerie," it's too short to present anything a Traveller fan didn't already know, as well as lacking in game rules that might otherwise make it useful.

 The oddly titled "Role-Playing in the Land of Xanth" by Leonard Kanterman is, for the most part, a book review of first three volumes of Piers Anthony's series of fantasy novels. The review also provides cursory suggestions on how to use Xanth as a setting for a RPG campaign. At the risk of repeating myself, I found the article mostly useless, owing to its short length and lack of game rules. but I suppose it's possible that it might serve as an introduction to the setting to the uninitiated (assuming one considers that a good thing).

Jane Woodward's "The Cult of Erlin the Harper" is a gateway cult for RuneQuest. It's a very welcome counterpoint to the previous three articles, in that it contains a great deal of game-specific information that's useful even in RQ campaigns set on Glorantha. There are not only new music-based rune spells but also details of musical instruments and how they can used in the game. Steven Marsh's "Samurai Swords" follows a similar path, offering lots of details on the schools of Japanese sword-making and the weapons they made. Rather than simply being historical in nature, the article also provides rules for each type of sword, including possible magical powers associated with the weapons. It's more detailed than I expect most people need, but I couldn't help but appreciate the detail nonetheless.

John T. Sapienza reviews "Samurai Figures," focusing on those available from Ral Partha, Archive, and Stan Johansen. The accompanying photographs are quite nice. Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun and Dave Hargrave's Arduin Adventure are both reviewed positively, though with a few caveats in the case of the Arduin Adventure. Larry DiTillio's "Sword of Hollywood" looks at two movies, one I've heard of and one I have not. The first is Dragonslayer, which DiTillio liked a great deal. The second is The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire, which he also liked – indeed, he liked it well enough that he wants it to become a weekly television series. Gigi D'Arn's column talks a fair bit about a supposed scramble by various publishers to secure the righs to Conan the Barbarian-related game products, as well as hints of trouble at SPI. 

All in all, issue #13 is something of a disappointment to me. My guess is that the shift from bimonthly to monthly left Chaosium with less quality material to choose from for each issue and it shows. I hope that, as 1981 wears on, things will improve.

California Gamin' (Part 2)

 As one might expect, there's a section of Moira Johnston's article in New West that touches on the importance of California in the growing popularity of roleplaying games.

I've touched on the topic of California and its gaming scene before, but I especially like this paragraph for its quotes from Gygax and Stafford. Gygax's comment that "the East was slow at first" intrigues me, since, by the time I'd entered the hobby, it was pretty well entrenched in the region. The Baltimore/DC/Northern Virginia area seemed to be positively crawling with gamers, which makes sense, with its preponderance of universities and military bases, two breeding grounds for the hobby. Still, there's no denying the foundational role that California (and the West Coast more generally) played in not just embracing Dungeons & Dragons but in creating early alternatives to it.   

The Perils and Pleasures of Dungeons and Dragons

I tell this story often, so, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably heard it before: I first learned about the existence of Dungeons & Dragons due the media hoopla surrounding the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in August 1979. My father was quite intrigued by the story and read everything he could about it in newspapers and magazines. I remember his asking me if I knew anything about D&D and, at the time, I hadn't. His interest is what prompted my mother to buy him a copy of the Holmes Basic Set, which I later "inherited" when it turned out he had no real interest in the game itself, only the story of Egbert's disappearance. 

A consequence of this is that, once I did start playing RPGs, I would instinctively clip out any articles I came across that talked about the hobby and put them into a huge binder. I left the binder at my parents' home when I went away to college and, over the years, it disappeared. I regret that, because it contained a large number of interesting articles from various early 1980s sources, articles I've been unable to find again, even in library archives. 

Once I started taking a more serious interest in the history of roleplaying games, I again started collecting contemporary articles that talked about them. An excellent early article is "It's Only A Game – Or Is It?" by Moira Johnston, which appeared in the August 25, 1980 issue of New West. New West, for those who don't know, was a sister periodical to New York magazine, focusing on the life and culture of the American southwest (which generally meant California, though not always). It's on this basis that Johnston's article appears, since it opens with a recounting of the time she and her thirteen year-old son played RuneQuest at the Berkeley home of its creator, Greg Stafford. "It's a bit like being invited to play piano with Mozart," she explains.

Despite its somewhat sensationalistic title, which I assume was a copy editor's idea, the eight-page article is evenhanded and surprisingly full of factual information. Unlike so many articles about roleplaying, whether written then or now, Johnston took time to get the details right. For example, in recounting her adventure in Glorantha, she talks about "the Lunars, the despotic empire to the north" and Snakepipe Hollow, "one of the worst stinkpots of chaos in the whole of Dragon Pass." This might seem like a small thing, but it's not. Johnston not only played a session of RuneQuest, she seems to have understood what was happening in the session and retained it, which is more than many journalists assigned a story about roleplaying back in the day did. 

Johnston also gets kudos from me for interviewing lots of people and listening to them talk about the games they played and why they enjoyed them. In addition to Stafford, she talked to Gary Gygax, Lee Gold, Dave Hargrave, Clint Bigglestone, Steve Perrin, and numerous players of the game, most notably a young woman named Deanna Sue White, whose campaign setting of Mistigar gets quite a few paragraphs devoted to it. The article is not a hit piece but rather a sober examination of the phenomenon of roleplaying games from a variety of perspectives, most of which quite positive, even celebratory, about the fundamental goodness of this new hobby. 

All that said, Johnston also gives space to criticisms of roleplaying and its supposed dangers, particularly from a psychological/psychiatric point of view. Mention is made, too, of Heber City, Utah, whose school board banned the playing of D&D as part of after-school clubs (mentioned in an issue of Different Worlds), but it's quickly followed up by criticism of its own. Likewise, though the disappearance and later suicide of Egbert is also mentioned, but it's neither dwelt upon nor is it implied to be indicative of any inherent danger in roleplaying. If anything, the article suggests that roleplaying – or FRP, in the parlance of the time – is a "blessed sanctuary for the fragile egos of the shy, sensitive, and cerebral." Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin are both quoted as agreeing with this assessment.

If I have a complaint about the article, it's that Johnston occasionally come across as dismissive of the people involved in creating RPG materials for publication. For instance, she introduces Gygax to her readers as "a former shoe-repairman, insurance underwriter, unpublished novelist, and unemployed gaming enthusiast," while she describes Dave Hargrave as "a shuffling, black-bearded bear of a man whose 250-pound body is archetype of the physically passive fantasy gamer." It's hard to say whether Johnston was genuinely disdainful or if it was simply a way to flatter her readers with the assurance that the middle-aged men who like this kind of thing are weirdos unlike themselves. Whatever her motivation, I find it mars what is largely a decent examination of the nascent hobby from the point of view of an interested outsider.

Early on in the article, Johnston describes roleplaying thusly:

There's an intriguing mishmash of ideas there and many of them get explored throughout the article, particularly those of a psychological bent, as I mentioned earlier. This seems to have been a common theme in early articles about RPGs. It's a reminder, I think, of just how innovative the concept of roleplaying as a form of entertainment was – so innovative that many people at the time genuinely had a difficult time viewing it as anything but evidence of mental instability. The story of James Dallas Egbert simultaneously birthed and fed off of these ideas, creating a lasting impression of roleplayers that survived well into the 21st century. 

The criticisms and negative comments Johnston reports from various sources are counter-balanced by those with positive experiences and perceptions of RPGs. That's why I generally look on the article as balanced, especially when compared to other articles published around the same time. That said, I understand that, when it was published, opinion of it was quite divided within the roleplaying world, with some seeing it as painting the hobby in a bad light. Perhaps my admiration for Johnston's willingness to play RuneQuest and talk to a diverse group of people is blinding me to the shortcomings of her article, I don't know. If nothing else, this is probably the longest article on the subject from the time period I've ever read and that alone made it worthwhile.

Different Worlds: Issue #8

Issue #8 of Different Worlds (June/July 1980) features a cover by Steve Oliff and opens with an article by Robert Harder entitled "Teaching Role-Playing," another entry in the continuing "Better Game Mastering" series. Despite its title, the article is not about how to teach someone to play a RPG but rather about the process of becoming and developing one's skills as a Game Master. I have a fondness for these kinds of articles, especially older ones, since they sometimes offer unique perspectives on the art of refereeing. Harder has a number of worthy insights to share, including his emphasis a gaming session as a "social gathering" and his belief that a session "should not exceed three hours." The latter point is one I feel very keenly these, though I would never have accepted it in my youth, when four to six hours – or longer – was a more common length.

John T. Sapienza has written D&D variant article called "Sleep vs. Mixed Parties." Sapienza's concern is that, as written, the sleep spell is difficult to adjudicate against enemies with mixed hit dice. Consequently, he proposes rewriting the spell to be both clearer and somewhat less powerful, while also leaving the door open to higher-level versions of the spell. I don't have much to say about Sapienza's specific point, but I will say that I generally appreciate seeing articles like this, since they reflect a culture of play and reveal the idiosyncrasies of individual referees. To my mind, this is where roleplaying lives and it ought to be applauded.

"Alien and Starships & Spacemen" by Leonard Kanterman is a both a review of the 1979 science fiction film, Alien, and a scenario inspired by it for use with the aforementioned RPG. It's fine for what it is, though it's very grim for a game inspired by the original series of Star Trek. John T. Sapienza re-appears with another article, "Talent Tables," intended as a follow-up to his "Developing a Character's Appearance" piece in issue #5. This article is in a similar vein, providing a D1000 table that confers minor (+1 or +2) bonuses in a wide variety of situations to characters. For my tastes, it's a lot of unnecessary work for very little mechanical benefit, but, again, I think articles like this arose out of the play of individual campaigns and, for that reason alone, I have a certain affection for them nonetheless. Sapienza also penned a review of four RPG products from a company called Bearhug Game Accessories. The products are a series of counters for keeping track of equipment and treasure – an idea I've seen in other contexts and that definitely has something to recommend it.

Lewis Pulsipher's "Defining the Campaign: Game Master Styles" is an overview of the kinds of decisions a referee must make in describing his campaign, such its degrees of believability, risk, reward, the extent to which the referee is truly impartial, and so on. Pulsipher does a good job, I think, of outlining many of the big questions. Simon Magister's "Composite Bows" is a historical article about the development and use of these weapons and interesting if you're into this kind of thing. There's a review of Heritage's Dungeon Dwellers line of miniatures by – guess who? – John T. Sapienza. I didn't own many of this line, but I enjoy retrospectives on old school minis like this; they're a terrific blast of nostalgia.

Anders Swenson provides a very positive review of the D&D module The Keep on the Borderlands. Ron Weaver's "Zelan the Beast" is a Gloranthan cult for RuneQuest. Dave Arneson and Steve Perrin review the two volumes of Walter William's Tradition of Victory Age of Fighting Sale wargame and RPG. Perrin also reviews Advanced Melee and Wizard by Steve Jackson, both of which he highly praises. Lee Gold, meanwhile, describes "How I Designed Land of the Rising Sun," her RPG of feudal Japan. This is a fine article, since Gold talks not just about how she designed the game's rules but also the process of research, writing, and rewriting that led to the game's final form – very fascinating stuff! "Alignment on Trial" by David R. Dunham is exactly what you'd expect: another entry in the hoary genre of why alignment is too simple/limited/inadequate/just plain dumb. To be fair to Dunham, his perspective is more nuanced than that, though it does at times have the air of a teenager reading philosophy for the first time and suddenly thinking he's thought things no other human has ever thought. 

The issue ends with Gigi D'Arn's column, filled, as ever, with terrific tidbits from gaming's past. For example, it notes that the three volumes of Dave Hargrave's Arduin series have sold 40,000 copies! Not bad. There's also a reference to TSR's ending of its exclusive distribution arrangement with Games Workshop, no doubt a prelude to the establishment of TSR UK. Apropos recent discussions, Gigi notes that the name of SPI's then-upcoming fantasy RPG had run into a trademark snag with Martian Metals, which is not what I was expecting to read. There's also mention that school board of Heber City, Utah has "chucked D&D" (whatever that means in this case) because "townspeople found it un-Christian, communistic, liable to leave players open to Satanic influence, etc." I've said before that I never personally experienced much pushback against RPGs because of their supposed Satanism, but it was apparently a very real thing in some places and this is evidence of that, I guess.

In any case, Different Worlds is clearly growing more confident and interesting. I very much enjoyed this issue and will be curious to see where the magazine goes in future issues.

Arduin for the Masses

Once upon a time, Dave Hargrave's Arduin books were somewhat controversial – and in some RPG circles, they still are. There are many reasons for this, starting with the fact that, as Mike Gunderloy explains in his 1979 article, "Arduin for the Masses," 

The Arduin Trilogy is not D&D, nor is it a second-generation game, but rather it is a rules supplement designed to be used in conjunction with D&D or other FRP games.

Arduin's dependence on Dungeons & Dragons is almost certainly one of the reasons that Gary Gygax famously mocked its first volume through the cursed item, the vacuous grimoire. Beyond that, though, I think there was a snobbery about Arduin and similar products that took D&D – and fantasy roleplaying more generally – in different directions than those that Gary favored. To be honest, I share some of that snobbery myself, despite the best efforts of others to dissuade me of it. Nevertheless, there's no denying the impact that Arduin had on the early hobby, which is why I found Gunderloy's article from issue #5 of Different Worlds worth commenting upon at greater length.  

Gunderloy then dubs Arduin a "hybrid game" that "depends on another set of rules for its basic foundation, but expands and changes almost every facet of the game." He elaborates as follows:

The emphasis on "Dave's style of gaming" is an important one, I think, and a reminder of how often what we judge to be "bad" (or vacuous) says more about our own personal preferences than about the thing being judged. Consider, for example, how many gamers, body today and back in the day, judge Gygaxian D&D to be an awful thing. When it comes to one's entertainments, everyone has their own tastes and preferences and, while I don't think such things are wholly subjective and therefore impervious to reasoned discussion, I also don't think it's possible to reason someone into liking pistachio ice cream, if you get my meaning. The same is true of RPG rules and settings.

Gunderloy notes that The Arduin Trilogy contains "a large number of character classes," some of which are "rewrites of familiar classes" and others that "expansions of ones barely mentioned in the original D&D rules" or "totally new ones." He adds that, although he believes that all of these classes are "well playbalanced [sic]," some of them are not as well explained as they might have been. Nevertheless, Gunderloy believes that this lack of explanation "should serve mainly to encourage some thought on the part of the original GM, rather than slavish use of the rules because they are rules."

I know from experience that some, perhaps many, reading Gunderloy's comments will dismiss them as self-serving, presenting ill-explained or just plain poor rules as somehow intentionally an occasion to exercise thought and creativity. There's some truth behind that dismissal. At the same time, I also genuinely believe that what Gunderloy is saying reflects a primal approach to the activity of gaming that has been, if not completely lost, buried under decades of other approaches intended to limit, if not eliminate, rules ambiguity and – especially – the need for referee judgment. "Rulings, not rules" is not just a slogan but in fact a pillar of what roleplaying is all about. The fact that it's nowadays seen as a facet of "old school" play is, I think, evidence of just how much the hobby has changed over the last half century. 

In this respect, The Arduin Trilogy, for all its stylistic differences from Gygaxian (or even Arnesonian) Dungeons & Dragons is still very much a reflection of the earliest traditions of the hobby. 

Different Worlds: Issue #5

Different Worlds: Issue #2

Issue #2 of Different Worlds (April 1979) features a cover by William Church (creator of one of my favorite RPG maps) and Steve Oliff. The issue kicks off with another installment of Charlie Krank's "Beginner's Brew," this one subtitled "... and you say that this is a game?" The article is aimed at first-time referees and focuses on the nuts and bolts of designing an adventuring locale. Krank even offers up a sample locale to illustrate his points. Like last issue's article, this is fine as far as it goes and the adventure locale it presents is actually quite intriguing. 

Steve Lortz reviews a game I've never heard of, Legacy, written by David A. Feldt. If Lortz's review is to be believed, Legacy is "a signal work in the expansion of role-play," but it's difficult to tell precisely what the game is about. It appears to be a game about the Neolithic era, but the review says little more. A quick search online reveals that Legacy is quite infamous for its convoluted and unclear rules, something even Lortz alludes to in his otherwise positive review. 

The second part of Mike Gunderloy's "Specialty Mages" is a meaty one indeed, covering six pages and providing details on mages of light, darkness, fire, and ice. While none of this is material I'd personally use in any of my own games, it's nevertheless fascinating to see early D&D variants, particularly those that appeared in publications outside of TSR's orbit. Elaine Normandy and John T. Sapienza Jr have written "Character Name Tables," which are just that: random tables for generating the names of humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits, as seen in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The next installment of "My Life in Role-Playing" includes articles by both Steve Jackson and David A. Feldt, writer of the aforementioned Legacy. Jackson's piece is very fascinating and includes some interesting anecdotes about his The Fantasy Trip campaign, as well as his thoughts on roleplaying, that I'll share in an upcoming post. Feldt's article article is fascinating too but only because it's so bizarre. In it, he presents a probably tongue in cheek future history in which it's revealed that reality is itself a roleplaying game of sorts overseen by the Game Overall Director. I'm still confused.

"Starships & Spacemen Expansion Kit" by Leonard Kanterman is a collection of new rules and options for his 1977 Star Trek-inspired RPG. "Lord of the Dice" is a humorous set of one-page roleplaying game rules by Greg Costikyan. I share the developer's notes here, since they give you a good sense of the thing's overall flavor.

"Arduin, Bloody Arduin" is Dave Hargrave's overview of his famous game and campaign setting. Accompanies by a hand-drawn map, it's a good article for anyone interested in the setting and Hargrave's own philosophy of gaming. Like the previous installment of this series in issue #1, I enjoyed this one a lot and look forward to seeing more designers talk about their home campaigns. 

Steve Perrin writes about "The Cacodemon Cult" for RuneQuest and Steve Lortz appears again with "Dramatic Structure of RPGs." I must confess to finding the article, which begins by comparing RPGs to movies, quite tedious. It's precisely the kind of unnecessarily abstract philosophizing about gaming that sets my teeth on edge. Much more enjoyable is the very first column by the pseudonym Gigi D'Arn, the roleplaying hobby's famed gossip columnist. I could – and probably should – write an entire post about this first installment, because it's filled with lots of amusement, not to mention genuine gossip, such as 

So far as I know, the identity of Gigi has never been revealed, though I believe the most common theory is that she was not a single person but rather a house name used by editor Tadashi Ehara and anyone else who submitted bits to the published piece. From the vantage point of 2021, though, it's fun to read columns like this, if only to get a sense of what the hobby was like at the end of the 1970s – small but growing and still very clubbish. This is right before I started gaming and, though I never participated in its directly, being just a little too young, echoes of it could still be heard. I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss those days.

Warlocks of the Dark Star

Here's an advertisement from the back of Book of the Dragons, written by D.H. Casciano and M. Fisher and appearing in 1977. Warlocks of the Dark Star did eventually appear in 1979 and was apparently a hex and chit style wargame in which one player takes the role of the magic-using Warlocks and the other takes the role of the scientific Technoids. The theme of science/technology vs magic remains a staple of fantasy even today, but it seems to have been enjoyed a high point during the 1970s, with Ralph Bakshi's Wizards being a noteworthy example of it. 

Regardless, this advertisement – and the book from which it came – is a reminder that the history of the hobby is replete with dark alleyways and forgotten lore of the sort that Jon Peterson has been busy chronicling for some time now. How many of us have ever heard of the Attack International Wargaming Association, for example? There are many more companies like it, producing original RPG material with very limited budgets and small print runs. Their products, though perhaps not as well known or influential as, say, Dave Hargrave's Arduin books, are another reminder of the reckless ferment that characterized the first five years of the hobby

The Other Howling Tower

After yesterday's post, I was reminded that The Howling Tower is also the name of Arduin Dungeon #2, published in 1979 by Grimoire Games. So far as I can tell, there's no connection of any sort between this dungeon and Leiber's short story, but I have not looked at it closely in some time (but may do so for a future retrospective). So far as I can recall, the main attraction to the module is the inclusion of some artwork by a young Erol Otus before he was employed by TSR (though this is hardly unique to The Howling Tower).

A Shout-Out to Dave Hargrave

It's no secret that, when it comes to RPGs, I have a fairly narrow range of interests. In my younger days, the Holy Trinity consisted of AD&D, Traveller, and Call of Cthulhu (in that order). I played other games, of course, but I played very few of them with the same level of frequency and enthusiasm as I played these three. During the late '80s and throughout much of the '90s, I expanded my interests somewhat, partially because I was trying my hand at professional RPG writing and it only made sense to cast my net as widely as possible, but those years were unusual.

Consequently, I haven't been paying much attention to the development of a fantasy RPG called 13th Age, written by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo and published by Pelgrane Press. From what I had gathered, 13th Age is a kinda-sorta clone of D&D IV. Since I wasn't interested in 4e the first time around, I certainly had no interest in its clone version.

The reason I mention 13th Age at all is because of a blog post by Jonathan Tweet, pointed out to me by reader Greg Oakes. In it, Tweet heaps praises upon Dave Hargrave of Arduin Grimoire fame and notes the degree to which his latest game owes to him. It's really gratifying to see this, as I think Hargrave is under-appreciated outside the OSR. Heck, even within the OSR, I think there's less appreciation of him than there ought to be (says the man guilty of this very thing for years). 13th Age doesn't really sound like my kind of game, but knowing that its designers took a page or two from Dave Hargrave -- and aren't shy about saying so -- made me smile nonetheless.

Mail Call

A Hargravian Coincedence

I'm not a regular reader of RPGnet, but I do read Shannon Appelcline's "Designers & Dragons" column from time to time, since he's often done some terrific work presenting the early history of the personalities and companies of the hobby. His latest column discussed the pre-history of Grimoire Games, which published Arduin. In it, he briefly mentions a fact about the life of Dave Hargrave, creator of Arduin:

Dave Hargrave got into RPGs through a variety of different paths. He first heard of roleplaying in 1968 at the Military Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland — prior to his work with the Defense Intelligence Agency.

What's interesting to me is that Hargrave was stationed at Fort Holabird in 1968. Among other things, Fort Holabird was -- it no longer exists -- was home to the Army Intelligence School, where my father was sent upon entering the military. The year? 1968.

Now, I realize that a lot of soldiers were stationed at Fort Holabird, especially since it was also home to an Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station and this was during a period of escalation in the Vietnam War. The odds of my father and Hargrave knowing one another, even though they were both stationed at the same post and were enrolled in the Military Intelligence School at the same time, is small. Still, it's an amusing thought.

The Vacuous Grimoire

From page 155 of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) by Gary Gygax:

A book of this sort is totally impossible to tell from a normal one, although if a detect magic spell is cast, there will be a magical aura noted. Any character who opens the work and reads so much as a single glyph therein must make 2 saving throws versus magic. The first is to determine if 1 point of intelligence is lost, the second is to find if 2 points of wisdom are lost. Once opened and read, the vacuous grimoire remains, and it must be burned to be rid of it after first casting a remove curse spell. If the tome is placed with other books, its appearance will instantly alter to conform to one of the other works it is amongst.

If I ever publish a fanzine, I'm calling dibs on The Vacuous Grimoire as its title.

My Arduin Education

As I admitted years ago, I long held an unthinking prejudice against Dave Hargrave's Arduin books, a prejudice I still haven't wholly overcome, even if I've made great strides in that regard. Even if, ultimately, Arduin "isn't for me," I have started to appreciate it in its own right and have found that, despite the stolidity of my imagination, little bits of Hargravian has seeped in over the last couple of years.

I own the first three volumes of the Arduin Grimoire series and nothing more. What I'd like to hear -- from fans of Arduin, not its detractors -- is whether there are any subsequent volumes or related products that you think might be helpful to me as I continue my education. Are volumes IV-IX worth owning? What about Hargrave's dungeons? The modern Arduin books by later authors? Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

California Gamin'

I had a delightful conversation with Victor Raymond last night, a considerable portion of which was devoted to discussing a seeming oddity of the early hobby. As I've mentioned many times before, I was "initiated" into the hobby in late 1979/early 1980 by older gamers, some of whom had been wargamers before OD&D was published in 1974. From them, I picked up a number of prejudices about the "right" way to play RPGs, one of which was that, while house rules were fine, there was a limit to how much you could/should change a game before you had house ruled it out of existence. I took me years to shake off this idea -- or, rather, not to care about it -- but I nevertheless think there's some validity in it.

This idea carried with it a disdain for "California games," which the older guys held up as paradigmatic examples of "what happens when you change too much." In particular, they seemed to have huge chips on their shoulders about RuneQuest and, especially, Arduin. Now, leaving aside the substance of those early grognards' opinions of the games, it is interesting to consider, as Victor and I did last night, that, within a few years of OD&D's release, California was the origin point of not just one but three different major variants to Gygax and Arneson's creation. (The third being Warlock, about which I had never heard until a few years ago).

Now, back in the days of my youth, I just took the word of my elders at face value -- after all, they were in high school or college. I never saw a copy of Arduin and my direct contact with RuneQuest was limited until the '90s. Having rectified this over the last few years (and having become more familiar with Warlock, too), I'm not sure there's a common thread that can connect Arduin, RuneQuest, and Warlock as "California games." For example, RQ and Warlock certainly share a similar fascination with "realism" in combat that probably owes its ultimate origin to medieval re-enactment (the SCA started in Berkeley, remember), but Arduin doesn't feel the same way. Likewise, RuneQuest drips with the need for a "coherent" setting steeped in the logic of myth and legend, something neither Arduin nor Warlock seems to care about.

So, I'm not at all convinced there really was such an animal as "California gaming," as I once was taught. On the other hand, I do find it really intriguing that California was a hotbed for D&D variants in the '70s in the way that the East Coast didn't seem to be (though someone who knows better can correct me if I'm mistaken in this). Was this just a function of its large population? Its extensive university system (Warlock was created at CalTech)? Something else? I'm not sure there is a single, definitive answer to this question, but it's a question worth asking nonetheless.

"Adventure Games"

Over at Mesmerized by Sirens, the Catacomb Librarian reminds us that significant portions of The Compleat Arduin is available as free PDFs from the Emperor's Choice Games website. The Compleat Arduin (sometimes called "Arduin II") was a compilation, expansion, and -- dare I say it? -- rationalization of the original Arduin books, begun by Dave Hargrave and completed by Mark Schynert after Hargrave's death. The finished product was published in 1992 and is still available from Emperor's Choice. I must confess I've never read it myself, though I'm starting to think I ought to grab a copy sometime and make up for this gap in my gaming publication. I encourage others to do the same.

Until I get the full book itself, I've been perusing the PDF excerpts that Emperor's Choice has placed online. One of the things I found most interesting is a section at the beginning of Chapter One, in which Hargrave says the following:

This game, Arduin, is part of the genre known as Adventure Games. Role-playing is at the heart of all adventure games, though other elements such as conflict, chance and strategy are also important.

Now, let me start upfront that I think it's too late to call the object of our shared hobby anything but "roleplaying games." However inadequate a term that may be, it's the term that we're stuck with and every attempt to alter it that's been attempted thus far has been alternately quixotic and pretentious. That said, the term "roleplaying games" is inadequate, or perhaps more accurately, it's too narrow.

As Hargrave rightly points out, roleplaying is definitely at the heart of our hobby, but there are other important facets to it as well. By adopting the term "roleplaying game" for the kinds of games we enjoy, I think we've unintentionally emphasized one of their facets to the point that it overshadows the others. That's a mistake in my opinion, which is why the description above pleases me. Conflict, chance, and strategy are essential elements of the games I enjoy (more on this in a future post) and their absence -- or at least diminution -- dissatisfies me.

I make no claim that this passage from The Compleat Arduin says anything that others have not said elsewhere, but it says what it does in a way that spoke to me today and I thought it worth sharing with others.

A Hargravian Oddity

I'm not an uncritical admirer of Dave Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire series. There's a lot of creativity in the pages of these books, but also a lot of nonsense. Despite that, I find myself regularly re-reading them, because, like the LBBs, I regularly find new things in them that I'd either not noticed before or that I had noticed and somehow had forgotten. Last night, when I was paging through the "General Notes on Monsters, Combat and the Like" from the original Arduin Grimoire, I came across this odd little note:

6. All fireballs and other offensive area effect weapons, have their damage points divided among all of those that are caught inside its limits. That means that if there are 4 people caught in a 6 dice fireball that does 20 points of damage on the dice roll, then each of the four takes 5 points of damage if they fail their saving throw, and 3 points (2-1/2 rounded up) if they make their save, NOT 20 point [sic] each!!!

Among old schoolers, Arduin has a reputation for being both gonzo and deadly, so I was bit surprised to read the passage above, because it severely weakens the power of spells like fire ball. It's also an interpretation of area effect damage in D&D that I don't think I ever encountered back in the day. That's not surprising, since I didn't start playing till late 1979, by which point AD&D had been released and this issue, among others, had been definitively clarified. But back in '77, using only the LBBs, Hargrave's interpretation wasn't implausible (though examination of Chainmail would have shed further light on the matter).

I won't be adopting Hargrave's interpretation in my own campaign, but I like reading about rules variants like this. One of the great things about OD&D is the way that it unintentionally demands judgment calls and interpretations to make it playable. And Arduin, for all the things about it I dislike, is nevertheless a terrific example of one referee's "deciding how [he] would like it to be, and then mak[ing] it just that way!"