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.