/tg/ - Traditional Games

The dedication which opens the book gives us a good understanding of Hargrave as a GM, as we learn over the nearly four hundred player characters who had already died over the course of the Arudin campaigns in the time before the first book was even published.

We are treated to a battle between a pair of adventurers and a griffon. I personally love this image, as rather than showing it off as just a high-level mount, it actually appears as a monster, and a credible threat.

We continue to learn more about Hargrave. In particular, we learn his address, where he invites the reader to send him mail. Unfortunately, he's dead now, and can no longer address any problems with Arduin. Nor are we likely to see most game designers doing this, especially out of companies like WotC.

The bottom image gives a taste of Arduin styled monsters by providing the Grey Horror - a giant arachnid combining the worst parts of a scorpion and a spider. Three PCs try to beat it down, but appear to doing so with no success.

This is how you play the game. Or, at the very least, part of how you play the game.

One of the things I like about this chart is that, more of than not, randomly encountered monsters are not suggested to simply attack out of the blue - if anything, they are more likely to shy away, and possibly even flee.

Compared to some newer games, these rules aren't the best. Compared to AD&D, they're a major improvement.

There are typos here, as there were on the prior page, and will be throughout the rest of this boo.

Unlike D&D4E, Hargrave disregards the concept of solo monsters. Your party of six will face two red dragons, and you will like it.

>>226113

What I like most about the drawing is that they tend to actually feel like they're presenting the game as it actually is. You can see just by looking at the cover:

> some normalfag roleplaying as Clint Eastwod

> the autistic one who wanted to play a bug dual-wielding longswords

> the creepy guy who commissions pictures of his character to jack off too

I was advised to pull out the staples to get a better quality scan, but fuck that.

>>226108

We're finally getting into the interesting stuff now: Hargrave's Arduin charts. The first one we come to is the Experience Points chart, which describes the ways to gain XP.

One line that stands out is:

> Therefore, points are given for many reasons, but NOT for gold or other treasure.

For those who don't know: AD&D was a game where most of your XP for leveling up came from magic items and gold. Arduin chose to do the exact opposite, by making it based on your actions leading up to that goal.

Of course, finding cool shit still go you XP.

>>226120

Speaking of experience points, here is how much you need to level-up. Pay attention to the classes, and understand that, unless you have a book for OD&D or AD&D rules, you will never play as a Warrior (Fighter), Thief, Cleric, Monk, Mage (Magic-User), Illusionist, Druid…

Race is still tied to maximum level. The game allows you to play a massive number of races, which is pretty much useless, as human is the only race that isn't shit.

Explaining this was introduced in later editions of games. What do these ability scores mean? Why would your DM allow you to play a Balrog? These questions are never answered. Still, it's good to see how NPC-type enemies are treated - giants and so on are given full ranges of abilities.

In this regard, Arduin was well ahead of the d20 system in coming up with this. An interesting thing to note, consider that it's a d% system.

Character musculature is not often addressed in gaming. That is not the case of Arduin - your character may be fat, or boney, or whatever else. Random rolling is the suggestion here, because Hargrave loved tables. It was his special form of autism.

This chart is just a wonderful one, detailing the races from before in short. Some gems:

> Amazon

Push, man-baiters, frquently lesbian.

> Dwarf

Not well liked, touchy, fight a lot, greedy.

> Half-Elf

Usually denying one or the other part of themselves.

> Dragons

Can be a great friend but they'll usuall eat you.

> Minotaurs

Not much to say, always horny, always savage.

I'm running short on time for this night, quite a bit earlier than I planned to keep going for the day, but here we have it: the cream of the crop for charts to fuck with the players. This is the alignment chart.

And you thought D&D alignment could start fights.

Alright folks, lets continue. In our last session, we learned that Minotaurs are horny, Paladins always smile, and fat people sometimes go on adventures.

Today we continue our journey by looking into the "Special Abilities" charts for Arduin. There are different charts for different classes and class types, with different levels of benefit or disability. Sometimes, your character is completely fireproof because of your efreet dad. Other times, you have a poor flavor that makes monsters spit you out when they eat you. If you're exceptionally unlucky, you can roll "elf friend", indicating elves like you - and, more likely than not, that you are a faggot.

Some highlights are the "big" benefits. For warrior-types, this means that your character is in fact a young giant. For wizard-types, this can mean being exceptionally magically competent. For religious-types, this can mean being a singing evangelist. For thief-types, this means having a vampire father. For othert ypes, this means just rolling about randomly - or maybe being a were-creature. Or maybe even an obese glutton who gains a bonus to saves versus poison from being so incredibly fat. So much for rolling "boney" on the table a few pages back.

>>226175

Glad to post it.

>>226231

The "Amoral" and "Amoral Evil" alignments are the ones I find the most amusing, as they, more than any traditional alignments, are the ones that most accurately reflect the behavior of all too many roll-players.

Now lets start looking at class. To start us off, we get to look at the first of Hargrave's classes - the Jew Merchant. Unlike other classes, the Merchant gains XP through commerce - by selling and buying materials, goods, and services. They are not very competent in combat, possessing only 2nd Level Illusionist powers at Level 100, but they have a broad range of cool features, and can help turn a massive profit for their party. And when you can outfit your whole party in amazing magic items, what does it matter how powerful you are yourself?

It's definitely a nice class to look at, and it shows the dedication Hargrave had to ensuring that players could play as pretty much anything they could imagine.

Turning the page, we get to see two other classes - the Psychic and Barbarian. The Psychic is not a very physically tough class, but boy do they have a bunch of nifty special features which, as is natural for the Arduin books, have virtually no explanation whatsoever. What does telekinesis necessarily mean? What does yogi do? How frequently can they employ their powerful abilities? Fuck you if you want to know any of that.

But they can blow up a persons heart with their brain at Level 50, so don't mess with them.

Barbarians take the exact opposite route. Their abilities are similar to those of the Barbarians later to be released in the AD&D Unearthed Arcana, but it is quite clear that there is a major difference in theme - while D&D barbarians were designed to allow a roleplay as Conan the Barbarian, these barbarians are meant to be brutal savages.

Another thing to note is fear of strange magic. Unlike D&D barbarians, which shrug off magic for some reason and will attack mages on sight, these Barbarians are vulnerable to it as a result of their overt belief in its power, and are absolutely terrified of the undead - to the point that even a Level 100 Barbarian may be cowed by a wizard sending a few dozen low-level skeletons at them.

The "pre-barbarian" rule is an interesting one, as well as the note that elves are always civilized. Arduin elves, unlike D&D elves, do not live in forests and trees. As we will see further along.

But of course, many games allow you to play a merchant, or a barbarian, or even a psychic. What about more obscure classes? Well, here they are.

The Rune Weaver is a class fairly unique to Arduin. More powerful and more accurate than standard magic-users, with more hit points to boot, where the Rune Weaver suffers is in a greater amount of time required to cast spells, and oftentimes a greater cost to gain that accuracy. Further, they must spend at least a few levels as a Runeling, which sounds quite ridiculous.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Techno, a class born as a result of Hargrave wanting to throw technology into his game. The equipment of a Techno, what their abilities actually permit, and so on, are not at all explained. But hey, a class that denies the existence of magic in a world where magic is literally everywhere? Why not.

To close this off for the day (or possibly not), the rest of the classes added in this book -

The Medicine Man is essentially an African druid of some kind, with a small horde of animal servants, and a good range of spells, including powerful drum magic.

The Witch Hunter, on the other hand, is one of the most complicated classes in the system. With a great variety of special abilities, as well as a long list of special disadvantages, they are particularly potent against the forces of evil, save when the forces of evil employ traps. Hence the reason why many Witch Hunters abstain from sex entirely - they never detect them, and always get AIDS.

High Judge of Heaven is a badass level title, though, so it's worth hit.

On the opposite page from the level chart, we are provided a chance to look at the equipment prices of Arduin. Unlike D&D rules, where this is set in stone, a range is instead provided for the prices of these goods and services. Quite useful, and a nice touch.

Today we get to look at Magic in Arduin.

There is nothing strange at first - just basic D&D spell memorization. The difference is that the mages here cast spells not based on casting time, but based on the individual rounds. At least, that's what's suggested. It's hard to say with Hargrave.

We get an explanation for why mages do not wear armor, thankfully, along with a nifty feature that mages can use magic swords - thus, if you want to go full Gandalf, you have the option upon reaching higher levels.

More than that, there are the interesting rules on saving throws and spell resistance, and the idea of individual mages having their own magical signature.

The Phumble Phactor shows up here as well - the chance of failing spells, and causing shit to go very badly.

Most importantly is the "spell point"/"manna" system, a completely different viewpoint than the Vancian system employed by D&D. It allows things such as releasing spells at half-power or doubling them, and the existence of spells up to the 30th Level. There is also a mention to Greg Stafford, who helped Hargrave out a lot in the early days. This will be important later.

The closing part of the magic section discusses all sorts of things. I encourage everyone to read it, if only for this line:

> For you will never know the joys of having your Jewish Kobold run up to every dwarf he see's and ask for a penny

Slightly more mundane is the chart for Turn Undead, which definitely seems out of the blue. What is a Morghoul? Let's find out. Liches are definitely more powerful here than in D&D, though.

The next few pages have more charts. Among them are:

> a chart to determine the percent chance of success for detect spells of every type based on the class of the user, or the object used to detect

> a chart to determine saving throws for magical equipment

> saving throw charts based on race and class alike

Not much to say, but they're fun to look at.

Now we get a few more exciting charts.

The first is a rather length, fully comprehensive chart that, in as low as seven rolls, allows you to create your own fucked up magic item.

To give an example, I rolled up a +2/+2 Composite Bow with an Intelligence of 19 and an Ego of 15 - an arrogant super-genius, the perfect thing to stick in a mid-level weapon. Of course, don't let it know that - the damn thing is great for archers, bestowing a +3 to Dex, the Haste spell, and the ability to Mindblank against caster-types. To help further improve that efficiency, the bow provides 100% immunity to fire and lightning. With its Chaotic Good alignment, variety of effects, and generally lower-tier physical strength, I like to think this bow was created to give non-caster mage-hunters a chance against evil-alignment mages.

The most interesting part of this is the direct tie-in between intelligence and magical power - the smarter the weapon, the more abilities it has. Without an Intelligence of at least 14 (smarter than many characters…) the weapon can never hold anything more than one ability. So it's certainly not for everyone.

The next page after that lets us see into Prismatic Walls, greatly expanding upon them, to the point of reaching well beyond the Prismatic Spheres and so forth shown in D&D.

Then we get a Saurig.

But more than just that Saurig, here is our first glimpse at spells in Arduin. Enjoy the incredibly specific usage of a Anti-Web Aura.

And here we have our first 20th Level spell:

> The Asktalonian Avert Spell (or "Go Away Stupid!")

What power might such a spell have? In this case, it's nothing major. The spell gives a 75% chance for the one it is cast upon to remove any curse cast upon them, retroactive based on the power of the caster. Sure, it can only be tried once per curse (Arduin rules, after all), but the effect is to send that curse back. A bit niche, but that's old-school casting for you.

Remember that incredibly specific spell Anti-Web Aura from last post? The next few pages provide the reason why it exists: Rune Weavers, and their broad array of web-type spells. These are actually kind of cool, and tie into the whole "weaving" theme.

If you have mages with heavy spider-motifs in your game, such as the Drow, these are a few great things to homebrew in. Sure, everyone expects a Drider to cast a web. But a burning web that screams, alerting every monster in the area? That, not so much.

>>227820

Still alive. Just short on free time.

I skipped this page for a moment, because it deserves to stand alone.

Yes, there are some interesting spells here, like the Curse of Tindalos referenced on the last post. But the most pertinent is a relatively standard one:

> Stafford's Star Bridge

Why is this spell here? Why this, of all of the possible spells? Well, refer to a prior mention in this thread. Stafford was a friend of Hargrave, who left to move on to another game company.

Hargrave did not like that. Hence, the spell, which causes individuals outside of a specific keyed type to:

> fall through selectively

Fa/tg/uy drama. As old as fa/tg/uys themselves.

To close off what I have for this evening, we have some magic items. Some to take note of:

> Gauntlet of the Fencing Master

Quite broken, in the right hands, but an interesting weapon to make single-weapon combatants quite viable - within the restrictions given. As we progress on to the later books, and finally get to the Arduin Assassin, you'll see just how viable that is.

> Doctor John's Salve

Just a good name for an item.

> Boots of Banana Peel

Zero co-efficient.

> Ring of Ruthlessness

Wet dream for That Guy.

Closing everything off on this page, we have a picture of a Boogie Man. The most demonic manifestation possible for the common bat, and a great example of a monster made by Hargrave: both ridiculous and terrifying at the same time.