Sometime in the mid-1970s a guy named David Hargrave started to mess around with ideas which broke the accepted rules of the fantasy RPG genre. These ideas gave birth to Arduin.
I’d not heard of Arduin. That was, I’d not heard tell until Fr. Dave mentioned it on his blog, almost in passing, in an article.
Fr. Dave recommended the “Dragon Tree Spell Book” by Ben and Mary Ezzell. I tracked it down and took a look… and found options for alternative ways to use D&D-type magic. But I also noticed other publications on their site… like Arduin.
Eventually I managed to track down Arduin Eternal.
Arduin Eternal
I have no idea why I bought this book. It was a cold purchase, out of the blue, unplanned.
At around 820 pages it’s a massive tome. If ever there was a book in need of a .PDF version, this is it… and the electronic version would be best provided with the chapters separated as well as the whole book as one.
It’s daunting; unwieldy as a book because it’s too heavy to hold for any length of time. Arduin Eternal (AE) is also poorly written and riddled with missing words, typos and linguistic mistakes. It’s raw. The art is poor.
But AE is actually fairly awesome to use.
Rediscovery
- Fantasy should be fantastic.
- Choices make the game.
Fantastic Fantasy
Choices
Arduin makes you think. It makes you choose. Each character becomes highly varied, unique even. I realise that this is what I want.
Will I Play Arduin?
I’d like to say, “Yes!”
Probably we’ll end up not doing so, however.
Character creation took me a couple of hours. All those choices make for slow. 820 pages is a lot to read… although I am enjoying the effort.
The truth is that Arduin is a game I can steal from. As I develop my own game system, Beta, I feel that Arduin offers me a way to develop a lot of good ideas that appeal to me. My work will be derived from this (and other) games. But then I’m writing for me… for my players… for our needs.
AE was totally worth buying . Worth every minute of reading and play so far. Arduin Eternal is a mine of great ideas and systems just waiting to be used… or stolen.
Game on!