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Saturday, January 3, 2015

OD&D - Mixing in some Original Arduin Trilogy 002

Dave Hargrave created his game world of Arduin as an OD&D campaign and his style was similar to that of Dave Arneson in many ways - the main one being that it was "gonzo". :) He typed the first Volume of The Arduin Grimoire as a OD&D supplement and self-published it in 1977.  It contained many references to Dungeons & Dragons and Gary Gygax at TSR immediately moved to quash it.  One wanders what might have been had Dave Arneson continued as part of TSR and much more of the real Blackmoor ideas (First Fantasy Campaign) been published by TSR. One also wanders what might have happened if Dave Hargrove had been welcomed with open arms and brought into the TSR fold. Both Dave's would have benefited from good editing and a larger budget. But all were human and all had ego's as creative people do and it was not to be. At least we have what was published.

In the post below I updated the Wikipedia with the information in the first paragraph for The Arduin Grimoire (Arduin Grimoire Vol. I), 1977 and it is completely correct, although I fully expect Wikipedia to change it back to the incorrect information as they have a habit of doing. The only  printing of Volume One that  I have not seen is the first print with the OD&D references; however, in the second print which I have seen the whiteouts are clearly visible as such. The back cover of the third and fourth(and later) printing I have also personally seen and are as reported below. I have posted this here to preserve the correct information at least for a while. :)


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. 

Welcome to Skull Tower (Arduin Grimoire Vol. II), 1978.

The Runes of Doom (Arduin Grimoire Vol. III), 1978. The first printings of the first three books were self-published by Dave Hargrave. 

The Arduin Trilogy is a box set containing the first three Arduin Grimoires and published by Grimoire Games.

All three volumes are a great source of ideas and were never really intended to be adopted wholesale by anyone - they were Dave Hargrave's collection of specific campaign house rules for Arduin that he was compelled to share with all of us. Anyone with a long running campaign that flies by the seat of the pants and could remember or document everything they did would probably have a like collection of brilliant and silly stuff to publish and I only wish more of us had and did.

2 comments:

  1. I have a "topless "version of Vol 1 if anyone is interested....can't seem to find any on the net. I'm also not convinced that the warrior on the cover is shardra from Vol 3, but just my opinion. I am thinking of selling all 3 volumes since I have not played in 35 years and someone should get some enjoyment out of them.....including the she-warrior!

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  2. I have a complete set of all of the books except Vol 9. What do you want for that Vol 1, although I would all so be interested in a high resolution full page scan of the back cover of Vol 1 too.I don't really need the insides, just a copy of the back cover.

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