Hokay, me hearties, I'm getting kind of a low vibe on this Arduin Grimoire you kids have been talking about.  Like it keeps beeping on my radar and going, "Snausages...!"  I know a little bit about it: namely, that it's an old, old game which mixes in SF, fantasy and everything else the author dug...kind of like a real-life Encounter Critical.  

Am I right? Am I wrong?  What am I missing?  

Fill in the gaps in my knowledge, homies, with the spackle of your old-school lore.

You pretty much nailed it.  I got the first three grimoires.  They are solid gold.  Basically, the line started as Uncle Dave's crazy OD&D house rules and over the years evolved into something crazier and awesomer.  The organization, typesetting, and general production values are ass, but these days that only makes the game more charming to me.

A Puritan witch-hunter, a bug-man mercenary, and a cyborg with a machine gun walk into a bar.  The kitten under one of the tables disembowels all three of them Monty Python bunny style.  THAT is Arduin.

Quote from: jrientsYou pretty much nailed it.  I got the first three grimoires.  They are solid gold.  Basically, the line started as Uncle Dave's crazy OD&D house rules and over the years evolved into something crazier and awesomer.  The organization, typesetting, and general production values are ass, but these days that only makes the game more charming to me.

A Puritan witch-hunter, a bug-man mercenary, and a cyborg with a machine gun walk into a bar.  The kitten under one of the tables disembowels all three of them Monty Python bunny style.  THAT is Arduin.

So...S John was channeling Hargrave?

Yeah.  There were clearly other influences at work when EC was written.  But if you distilled Arduin down to 36 pages the result would be pretty Encountery and Criticaly.  But with more nonsensical violence.  Arduins crit and fumble charts are the stuff of legend.  I use them in my current campaign but never let the players see them.  Tee-hee.

My Need Rate for this game is approaching 75%.

I've been very curious about this game over the years too.  I got the Spellbook at one point, the only Arduin book I ever managed to get my hands on, and I remember that it had, as its top-level wizard spell, a spell where the spellcaster ripped open his shirt and shot out a green starburst line of energy that was 10000 feet long, and did 200 hit points damage for 1D12 seconds/rounds in that line.  For each second that he did it, there was a 5% cumulative chance that he'd be consumed by the spell and turn into a dessicated skeleton, but the skeleton would continue to stand there firing the starburst until the spell was over. That spell by itself convinced me this game fucking rocked.

RPGPundit

Dude, that is awesome.

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I ran this d20 Arduin module in my campaign.  It never made it into print but the author (RPGnetter Calithena) sent me a draft.  One PC was swallowed whole by a 50' long maggot.  My players still refuse to discuss the Vampusa Incident.  They never found the blaster pistol on the 2nd level, which kinda made me sad.

Stop it, Jeff, I know how much this game costs, OK?

Just do what I did.  Slum it on eBay.  I paid no more than ten or fifteen bucks a pop for my three books by looking for non-collectible reading copies (i.e. in shitty condition).  It took me a year to get the three I have, though.  But I'm cheapass and patient like that.

Emperor's Choice should still have reprints of the original books for sale. Ok they're not 100% reprints of the original releases IIRC but still cheaper.

Arduin is gonzo OD&D run by a legendary gonzo killer DM. I don't have the books but my understanding is they're very much stream of consciousness GM note stuff and a great example of the differences between OD&D and what came later. I think Erol Otus did art for one or more of the original books. Streams of addons to OD&D and stuff like a lie% for the monster stats stemming from a misprint of lair in OD&D.

If you like this I'd suggest also looking into Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, M.A.R. Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne/Tekumel, and Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy/City State of the Invincible Overlord. That's the two oldest still running RPG campaign worlds. There were rumblings of FFC being released on PDF for free but nothing's come of that yet, EPT is in reprint/on PDF, and most early Judges Guild stuff is on PDF. FFC is proto-D&D/campaign notes, EPT is a OD&D variant (and one of two ways to legimately get OD&D currently), and Judges Guild were elemental in fleshing out OD&D in the early days + has a good Newhonian feel. All three have sci-fantasy touches.

Mix 'em all up in a blender and hop from campaign to campaign along with Greyhawk, Boot Hill, and Gamma World/Metamorphis Alpha. Mmmmm good.

Found the complete set of Arduin Grimoire books for sale. The company is Emperor's Choice and they are the current publishers of The Arduin Grimoire

Be aware that Dave never really got around to organizing his very unauthorized and highly irregular D*D supplements. The pages were typed up on an electric typewriter, then photo-reduced and run off on a copier. Tons of white space and real teenie type. I have the first three booklets, and they are definitely products of their time. Lots of chart, barebones descriptions. Much left to the imagination.

The Arduin Grimoire is a powergamer's RPG. Lots of high-powered stuff, loads of silliness, complications for complication's sake. It was put together by a man who didn't take RPGs at all seriously. It was the first kitchen sink RPG, and has much the same vibe as raven c. s. mckracken's Synnibar (only better written and organized, which should tell you more than you wanted to know about Synnibar ).

Nothing about story, balance gets buggered by a large gourd, and the goal is to go out, kill things, takes their stuff, and become so godawful powerful major deities dive into cesspools to get out of your way. Think of Exalted as played by members of the United Kingdom's SAS.

It's gonzo.

If gonzo powergaming with outrageous crap aint your style, don't buy it. But if the occasional bout of over-the-top slaughter and treasure grabbing sounds like fun, go ahead and get a copy of each booklet.

BTW, Arduin was using a d20 for everything well before D&D was.

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It also, in addition to all the gonzo D&D-on-crack goodness that has already been mentioned, it also has lots of random tables and charts to tempt the good Doctor.  My current favorite of these are the charts that allow you to determine what, if anything, of note has happened to NPCs during the 'downtime' inbetween games.

That should kick up Rotwang's Need Rate to at least 85%.

Note that with the original books, it's pretty much assumed you're using them as supplementary material for the OD&D books, the rules really aren't complete in and of themselves.  Also, you don't really get a campaign setting described in any detail, but you do get lots and lots of intriguing snippits of little details from the world of Arduin, enough so to catch your interest and spark your imagination.

Of the original books, the first three concentrate heavily on the various rules that make Arduin, well... Arduin.   New classes, new spells, truly nasty crit charts, all sorts of whacked-out monsters, etc.   Books 4-8 has this sort of stuff as well, but a greater emphasis on stuff like NPCs of interest, legends and tall tales told, unique magic items, alcoholic beverages specific to Arduin, etc.  (I've never picked up the posthumously-released Vol 9, but I understand it's basicaly more of the same)  

Later, there would be the two-volume Complete Arduin line.  This was mainly crunch, with less fluff, rewritten to be a stand-alone game system.  I like it well enough for what it is, but these days I would never run it as is, preferring something more rules-light for my gaming.  You can download vol 1 of this (covering combat, character creation, spells, i.e. the 'player's handbook') here

There was also the Arduin Adventure released int he late 70's or early 80's, featuring a stripped-down and simplified version of the Arduin rules, comparable to the Basic/EXpert D&D rules.

Oh, and there were four modules released.  I only own one of them ("Death Heart"); quite frankly it's not very good, basically being a different-monster-in-every-room-killfest sort of thing.

Still, I have much love for Arduin in my little gamer heart.  Check out the original three books, if nothing else, to see of it works for you.  I'm betting it will, Doc.

Arduin is the only game where you might get attacked by a tribe of orcs riding on flying sharks.

FLYING SHARKS.