#arduin grimoire

OSR enthusiasts still debate the best way to map wilderness areas with hex grids, but 1/4"=5 miles was good enough for author Dave Hargrave and mapper Carolyn Schultz in Death Heart: Arduin Dungeon 4 & Overland Adventure (Grimoire Games, 1980).

“Barghest” © George Bennett, accessed at his ArtStation page here

[Commissioned by @crazytrain48​, based on the moon dog from The Arduin Grimoire. Arduin’s moon dog predates the canonical good-aligned moon dog from D&D (which also appears in Pathfinder due to the Tome of Horrors’ licensing agreement), so I had to change the name. Fortunately, just about every county in Britain has its own name for a spirit dog, so I had plenty to choose from.]

Galleytrot CR 4 NE Magical Beast This monstrous hound is pale in color, limned in an eerie glow with eyes like lamps. Its teeth and tongue are black, and its breath steams with corruption.

Galleytrots are dog-like monsters that associate with the undead. Mindless undead like skeletons and zombies are completely passive around these creatures, and intelligent undead tend to view them favorably. They are especially prized by vampires, who use them as hunting hounds. Galleytrots can consume rotting and desiccated flesh, and are happy to feed on the bodies of a vampire’s victims that have been drained of blood.

Galleytrots are pack hunters, and are rarely found alone. They use their baleful howls to cause opponents to run in fear, flushing them towards other pack members waiting in ambush. Galleytrots favor multiple hit and run strikes, and flank whenever possible. Their bites strike with the force of a greataxe and carry a hallucinogenic venom—those that succumb to it become a danger to themselves and others. Galleytrots often spare confused victims from their primary attention, allowing them to lash out at allies or injure themselves before the dogs return to finish the job.

Galleytrots are nocturnal and love to hunt on nights of the full moon. They are sometimes referred to as “moon dogs” because of this habit. True moon dogs are benevolent outsiders, and view galleytrots as enemies to be dispatched. Galleytrots sometimes run in mixed packs with other monstrous canines such as hell hounds, yeth hounds and shadow mastiffs.

It took me a long time to put together a set of David Hargrave’s Arduin Grimoire books but holy wow, was it worth the wait. This is the first, The Arduin Grimoire. Originally self-published in 1977 with different art, this edition is part of a three-pack “Trilogy” issued by Dragon Tree Press around 1984 (last pic). The project was born out of Hargrave’s heavily house ruled Dungeons & Dragons campaign. 

Because these books are named after Hargrave’s fantasy world, I kind of expected a primitive sort of sourcebook, but no, they are just a collection of house rules. While they are organized around how they work in Hargrave’s world, and there are many things implied by the rules (the Techno class, for instance, and their use of sci fi technology), we don’t ever get a clear picture of the lands of Arduin in the Grimoires (not unlike the Greyhawk supplement, honestly). But that’s OK, because the rules? Pure gold. 

While the book never explicitly says so (for legal reasons, obviously), the rules are intended as modular expansions to the original white box D&D. Even knowing that, though, doesn’t make parsing them very easy – Hargrave is constantly referring to a mountain of material, only portion of which is in any given book. The “How to Play the Game” section is largely devoted to the mechanics of overland travel. I needed to get through all three volumes of the Trilogy before I had a handle on things to the point I could probably incorporate them into a game. 

There is so much, I don’t really know where to start. How about new classes? We’ve got Merchant, Psychic, Barbarian, Rune Weaver, Techno, Medicine Man and Witch Hunter. We’ve got piles of new treasures, monsters and spells. We’ve got musings on alignment, modified approaches to character creation and combat and a gloss of the 21 layers of hell. And charts! So many random charts! For mist generation, for fumbles, for character special abilities (some good – natural mechanic! – some bad – bad liar!), for traps. 

Runes of Doom (1978) finally ties up threads left dangling from the other two volumes. Thank goodness. It is probably my favorite of the Grimoire series. 

First off, we finally have rules for playing Phraints, humanoid insect warriors that are repeatedly mentioned as playable in the previous books, but without any indication as to how play them. I’d wouldn’t be surprised if you told me that they directly inspired D&D’s Thri-Kreen. 

Second, we finally get stats for the energy weapons used by the Techno class, which cements Arduin’s commitment to a strong flavoring of science fantasy, two years before Expedition to the Barrier Peaks saw print. 

Third, we can see a lot more of Hargrave himself coming through. An illustration towards the back of the book is entitled “Attack of the Kill Kittens,” which gives you a sense of his humor and to the overall uncompromising nature of his games (though, considering his claim in Skull Tower of having killed over 480 player characters in four years of running his campaign, I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise). You also get a sense of what Lawrence Schick meant when he said that Arduin is “unencumbered by good taste,” thanks to the illustration of a topless, axe-wielding woman warrior captioned “Shardra the Castrator.” As ever, your mileage will vary.