The long awaited world guide for Dave Hargrave's "Arduin" is now available at Emperors Choice. The World of Khaas: Legendary Lands of Arduin is a massive hardbound book containing 800+ pages and over 80 professionally rendered campaign maps detailing not only the country of Arduin, but Hargrave's entire world. For previews and other information, please visit World of Khaas Website
Arduin World Guide
- Thread starter Beardfoot
- Start date
Beardfoot said:
I failed to mention, the World Guide is completely "System Neutral". Although it describes some of Arduin's more (in)famous inhabitants, there are no game specific stats etc. This allows you to use the world of Arduin as a campaign setting using your favorite rules system.
JoeGKushner
First Post
So Arduin, which was originally a bastardized add on to some form of D&D (I have the original three little books), isn't a d20 book?
Man, if that's so, talk about missed opportunities.
It'd be like the guy who used to run Bard Games and came out with Talislanta reissuing the Complete Adventurer, Spellcaster and Alchemist as neutral books. Ugh.
Man, if that's so, talk about missed opportunities.
It'd be like the guy who used to run Bard Games and came out with Talislanta reissuing the Complete Adventurer, Spellcaster and Alchemist as neutral books. Ugh.
Hardcover and 800 pages? I'm almost afraid to visit the website to learn what the price tag on it is... :\
Now, I need to figure out how many copies of Big Bang need to sell in order to pay for it.
Now, I need to figure out how many copies of Big Bang need to sell in order to pay for it.
trancejeremy
Adventurer
Hmmm - it's $60. Not too bad. If I hadn't just spent my yearly gaming budget on Conan, I would be very tempted to get this. Maybe in 2006.
Sinjucala
First Post
Hmmmm. [monty python insert] I would like to buy an arguement please. [/monty python insert]
If honesty compels us to call things bastardized, you might say just about everything these last couple of decades has been bastardized. Still, the root of this isn't whether it was or wasn't but that they produced a damn large setting book. Sure, it wasn't d20, but who cares? I hate wading through pages of rules anyway just to find out about the bloody world in the first place. The book is sans mechanics, something I pointed out and was damn glad to find when I got my copy. I really don't need some one to give me a stat block for every city on the map. I want to know about their customs, what they eat, what they do for fun, how they fight, etc. I can slap mechanics from whatever I am playing at the time.
Missed opportunity? I don’t think so. Who says every idea, setting, and getup has to be d20 anyway? I play several different games, vampire medieval ages, 3.5E, a homebrew that's a mix of Arduin and 2E, and a CoC game. With a neutral setting minus the frequent baloney of someone’s current view on mechanics I can port folks from any of these into that setting and make them work with some minimum behind the curtain tinkering.
The Complete series from Bard Games expanded on character classes and gave rules, which is similar in vein to what the early Arduin Grimoires did as well. The world book of Khaas tosses out an entire world setting, albeit focused on one continent. Its doesn’t expand on the gaming system, provides rules, new character classes, or whatever. It does talk about the main races that inhabit the place and while some of them are similar to what’s everywhere else, a lot of them are not. There is no stats but there is great amounts of info on their culture, how they live, fight, worship, procreate and so forth. I can put stats to any of that stuff in a heartbeat.
I would say at least three times the amount of useful lies within it compared to say, the Forgotten Realms Campaign book, if you want a more equivalent analogy. Its closer to Talislanta than anything else, with close depth and about twice the material you find even in that book. If you don’t believe me, set the two side by side and after eyeballing just the mundane difference in thickness, start paging through them and see how they differ and are the same in the reach of detail about different races, cultures, and in handling geographic details. I’m not sure how you can equate that to the books by Bard Games. Maybe I missed something. I mean, its not all happiness. There are some things I don’t like and hope they will update or change. Still, almost everything I have noted is nitpicky little things I note in most other books as well.
I loved the maps, the amount of which I haven’t seen elsewhere. They have a bevy of maps that start at the world level and show all the continents, then zoom down to one continent. There is another that shows the spread of the countries on that continent, all 75 of them. Each write up for the countries has another map, a full page one, with a blow up of the country in question. That map has named areas, like forests, mountains, and what I guess are just cities - its one of those things that I wish they had been more clear on. I’d been nice if they had thrown in a scale too, but I can figure it out pretty plainly enough from the continent map how big each country is and how if fits with the others.
Anyway. I know I'm biased towards Arduin and Khaas (the world name. Who would of thought it was right under my nose in AG II after all those years...). Want an opinion? Buy one if you don’t have one. Check it out. Its really under priced for what it contains and a pretty ballsy production for a small company. Then again, Arduin has always been whimsical and contrary over the years.
JoeGKushner said:
If honesty compels us to call things bastardized, you might say just about everything these last couple of decades has been bastardized. Still, the root of this isn't whether it was or wasn't but that they produced a damn large setting book. Sure, it wasn't d20, but who cares? I hate wading through pages of rules anyway just to find out about the bloody world in the first place. The book is sans mechanics, something I pointed out and was damn glad to find when I got my copy. I really don't need some one to give me a stat block for every city on the map. I want to know about their customs, what they eat, what they do for fun, how they fight, etc. I can slap mechanics from whatever I am playing at the time.
JoeGKushner said:
Missed opportunity? I don’t think so. Who says every idea, setting, and getup has to be d20 anyway? I play several different games, vampire medieval ages, 3.5E, a homebrew that's a mix of Arduin and 2E, and a CoC game. With a neutral setting minus the frequent baloney of someone’s current view on mechanics I can port folks from any of these into that setting and make them work with some minimum behind the curtain tinkering.
JoeGKushner said:
The Complete series from Bard Games expanded on character classes and gave rules, which is similar in vein to what the early Arduin Grimoires did as well. The world book of Khaas tosses out an entire world setting, albeit focused on one continent. Its doesn’t expand on the gaming system, provides rules, new character classes, or whatever. It does talk about the main races that inhabit the place and while some of them are similar to what’s everywhere else, a lot of them are not. There is no stats but there is great amounts of info on their culture, how they live, fight, worship, procreate and so forth. I can put stats to any of that stuff in a heartbeat.
I would say at least three times the amount of useful lies within it compared to say, the Forgotten Realms Campaign book, if you want a more equivalent analogy. Its closer to Talislanta than anything else, with close depth and about twice the material you find even in that book. If you don’t believe me, set the two side by side and after eyeballing just the mundane difference in thickness, start paging through them and see how they differ and are the same in the reach of detail about different races, cultures, and in handling geographic details. I’m not sure how you can equate that to the books by Bard Games. Maybe I missed something. I mean, its not all happiness. There are some things I don’t like and hope they will update or change. Still, almost everything I have noted is nitpicky little things I note in most other books as well.
I loved the maps, the amount of which I haven’t seen elsewhere. They have a bevy of maps that start at the world level and show all the continents, then zoom down to one continent. There is another that shows the spread of the countries on that continent, all 75 of them. Each write up for the countries has another map, a full page one, with a blow up of the country in question. That map has named areas, like forests, mountains, and what I guess are just cities - its one of those things that I wish they had been more clear on. I’d been nice if they had thrown in a scale too, but I can figure it out pretty plainly enough from the continent map how big each country is and how if fits with the others.
Anyway. I know I'm biased towards Arduin and Khaas (the world name. Who would of thought it was right under my nose in AG II after all those years...). Want an opinion? Buy one if you don’t have one. Check it out. Its really under priced for what it contains and a pretty ballsy production for a small company. Then again, Arduin has always been whimsical and contrary over the years.
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