OSR Campaign Starter Commentary - The Dave Hargrave Arduin Angle With An OSR Twist Up

 

So going over some OSRIC notes from 2006 there's  a whole section on Dave Hargrave's Arduin?! Hmm that might be a tad hard for some OSR folks. If only there was a far more easier way to combined these two?! By using OSRIC with Ruins of Arduin for Swords & Wizardry Light this might give us exactly the sorta of Gonzo that would work! But what's the advantage here?! 

Well besides getting all of the goodness of two well edited OSR products here's an old school flare without the fiddly bits of some of the original copies. This would be a cultclassic echo of the origins but with a more modern flare. 

Now you might be asking yourself why do this?! Several reasons but the biggest?! There are a ton of OSRIC adventures that could potentially be run as lower tier Arduin adventures. This is because of a comment that Ken Moscardini made on one of our Facebook posts; "
One of the issues is a lot of the talk is about the first book an its impact on the hobby. The first book stands alone. The second and third book begin to introduce us to his actual game style. He created a system for example where low and high level characters could adventure together. In a sense the first book stands alone as a supp. to Grayhawk, in fact he copied tables from Grayhawk to add to his book. The other two books form a duality in that you need both to get all the information. After that the rest of the books were used to share details of his world." 
So this got us thinking why not go with OSRIC as a possible Arduin style rpg & then go back into many of the classic adventures of the OSR?! This gives the player's PC's an 'in' into Arduin without killing the player's PC's outright. This goes against the 'Bloody,Bloody, Arduin'  grain in a way. This is the formula for a more successful campaign set up.  Couple this with a classic OSR adventure such as Dragon Foot's 'The Village With No Name' By Robert James & the PC's are off to the races! 


 If we want to keep the spirit of Arduin's power attracts power then suggest combined this adventure with Jon Thompson's 'The Beast of Geshtein'.  Now your off & running with a month or two of OSR adventure goodness. 


From here's a simple leap frog into the world of Dave Hargrave's Arduin using OSR refined rpg retroclone systems. The DM can easily transition into the warped Gonzo world Hargrave adventure goodness!