Tuesday, March 9, 2021

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. 

10 comments:

  1. why are gunderloy's comments self serving? did he work on arduin?

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    1. Perhaps a better term might have been "self-justifying," since Gunderloy like Arduin and sees its shortcomings as actually boons in disguise.

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    2. oh, in that way, I agree with him. Arduin has too much energy and ideas frothing about for us to sit around analyzing balance or exactitude...

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    3. He didn't work on it, but was on good terms with Dave Hargrave and used portions of the Grimoires in his own games. Both of them posted together on Alarums and Excursions back in the 70's and early 80's. Especially Hargrave, who published a good 80+ pages in A&E, much of it has never been printed anywhere else.

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  2. Perhaps "symbiotic" would have been a better term than "hybrid?"

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  3. When I first got Arduin as a kid it opened up whole new vistas of D&D and roleplaying for me. A big chunk of that was my trying to make sense of its big mess of ideas... along with the art... to fit all those puzzle pieces into something like a cohesive picture.
    So a lot of MY Arduin was spun off of that process.
    A bit like reading Tarot cards or a Rorschach blot, after a couple of gummies.
    Arduin is the reason I was playing Rifts with Gamma World long before Rifts came along.

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  4. Gunderloy touched on a very important point that people seem to forget about the original Arduin Grimoires: they were a peak into Hargrave's world and the ideas he was coming up for his OD&D campaign and were presented for other DM's to use anyway they wanted. Very much the same way the LBB's versions of Greyhawk and Blackmoor--especially Blackmoor--were presented when you think about it.

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  5. Where can you get the Arduin books? Just looked for copies on eBay and they’re spendy.

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    1. http://empcho.bizhosting.com/arduin_i.html

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  6. "...the last half century." Makes one think, eh?
    *raises a glass and thinks*

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