OD&D - Mixing in some Original Arduin Trilogy 001

For those familar with both OD&D and Arduin you know what I am talking about. For those who know nothing about Arduin start here:Tribute to David Hargrave by Paul Mosher and by Mark Schynert. That takes you to a large amount of links from circa 2003/2004 in The Wayback Machine aka the internet archive. The first volume of Arduin is copyright 1977, although the Arduin campaign as an OD&D campaign dates back to sometime in 1974. Arduin as developed by David Hargrave owes a lot to the David Arneson vision of OD&D as they are in many ways the same gonzo style.

If you want to learn more a good place to go is over on Jeff Rients blog at Arduin Grimoire cover to cover part 1 from back in 2010 just follow the menu on the side of the blog. The final essay in this series appeared in February 2011. Another place to get some info is at (beware a NSFW image) Anthony Pryor's blog at The Hall of RPG Oddities: The Arduin Grimoire (Okay there is ONE NSFW image in this because I got bored and ran out of pictures…) and follow the links at the end of the essay for the next essay.

The internet including the Wikipedia (no surprise there) has a lot of misinformation about the first volume of The Arduin Grimoire, here are the correct printing details as I am personally aware:

The Arduin Grimoire (Arduin Grimoire Vol. I), 1977. There are four different editions (printings) of this volume. These editions (printings) differ via internal verbiage, cover and back cover artwork and some internal artwork (p. 79, among others). The first edition (printing) of volume one features cover art by Erol Otus and references to Dungeons & Dragons. The second edition (printing) of volume one features cover art by Erol Otus and the references to Dungeons & Dragons have been whited out and typed over. The third edition (printing) has the cover picture of multiple characters fighting and on the back cover the female character is topless and is the David Hargrove character known as Shardra the Castrator that appears topless in the drawing on page 1 of Vol III The Runes of Doom, the page following the Table of Contents. The fourth edition (printing) and later printings, which comprise the vast majority of copies of Vol 1, are identical to the third edition (printing) except that the topless women on the back cover has a halter top (editorial swimwear) added to cover her up.

Once you start reading the original Arduin books it becomes apparent that these are his house rules recorded in a stream-of-consciousness onslaught. It is messy and glorious, brilliant and silly all at the same time.