Arcanum – by Bard Games
A game that for many, was better than D&D
I cut my teeth on Basic D&D. I was 13 when I got the red box set, and we poured over it. Soon, that became not enough, and my friends and I combined our meager funds and were able to but the AD&D 1e DMG! That was an excellent book. But, without a PHB, it is very difficult to play. Hence one day when my mother took me to Waldenbooks. She told me I could get a book if I wanted, so I dashed to Walden’s RPG section. It was filled with RPG stuff from many of the 80’s RPG company giants. Most of all was the vast amount of AD&D stuff. Right there before me was the PHB that we so yearned for. I had it in my hand, I was getting ready to turn around in glee when… something caught my eye. A forbidding black book with a large red pentagram on the cover. Above the pentagram were the words “THE ARCANUM”. What was in that book? I had to know. I set the PHB down and took THE ARCANUM off the shelf and read the back…. Almost thirty classes, over 500 spells in seven colleges of magick, new races undreamed of, compatible with other fantasy RPGames… I opened it up, and immediately fell in love. I sat in that corner of Waldens for over an hour before my mom found me. She noted that the book I held was not the PHB I had been babbling about for hours before. “Mom, I want this.” I said. She raised an eyebrow to the pentagram on the cover, and she looked through the book. After a careful perusal, she asked me why I wanted it. I explained about all of the cool new classes, and the all the different types of magical colleges, and… and… She smiled and said… okay! She claims to have not heard another peep out of me during the several hours shopping that followed as my face was buried in the book.
Needless to say, my friends were not all that thrilled that I had bypassed the PHB for The Arcanum… until I opened its cover and told them about all of the classes that they could be. They were in shock! Then I told them about the magicks, and the vile hatred the demons and devils had for one another. I know that we never looked back. We never did buy that 1e PHB. We instead bought the Bard games supplement to arcanum: the Bestiary. We never found the Atlas. Together these products formed the Atlantean trilogy. (Our love for the company did lead us to Talislanta as well! ) The system in Arcanum was similar to 1e in many ways, and we happily used the 1e DMG, Arcanum, and the DnD Rules Cyclopedia together for years. Long after 1e left and when 2e was in its dying days, I picked up the 2e books. We found them so banal and flavorless, we dumped them and returned to our old favorites. 3E changed all of that. The D20 revolution brought vast amounts of flavor and diversity, as well as a serious improvement in mechanics. We were astounded how some of the Arcanum’s concepts seemed to have snuck into 3e. There were a lot of differences, sure, but there were some similarities. Our love for Arcanum never has died. Every campaign, at least one player wants to take one of the Arcanum classes and convert it to 3e. Or someone wants to access some of the flavorful magics and bring them into 3.x.
Now why would I take you, the reader, down this trip thru memory lane? Well… (drum roll) Morrigan Press has gotten the rights to Talislanta, and is on the verge of releasing Talislanta D20 as well as a full line-up of Tal supplements. Details can be found in the Talislanta D20 thread in the publishers forum on this site. In that thread, Scott Agnew, head of Morrigan Press had this to say:
“Rumors eh? Hmm, well some rumors you can believe and others you can't. On this one, all I can say right now is that those in attendance at GTS next week will see a new entry on our In Development for 2005 list... it's called Atlantis: Second Age. I'll leave it at that for now.
Cheers,
Scott Agnew
President, Morrigan Press Inc. “
That is great news, and the people I game with went a little batty at the news. There is no o ETA on the product, bt in the meantime, if you have Arcanum and would like a great guide to converting the existing material to D20 go here:
http://members.aol.com/CountryGrrlHere/dndchick.html
Anyway, I thought I would announce the good news, and open up a thread so that people who have played the original could spout off what they liked about it, what was ahead of it’s time, and what didn’t work so well.
I plan to keep this thread alive until that book hits my sweaty hands….
Razuur
A game that for many, was better than D&D
I cut my teeth on Basic D&D. I was 13 when I got the red box set, and we poured over it. Soon, that became not enough, and my friends and I combined our meager funds and were able to but the AD&D 1e DMG! That was an excellent book. But, without a PHB, it is very difficult to play. Hence one day when my mother took me to Waldenbooks. She told me I could get a book if I wanted, so I dashed to Walden’s RPG section. It was filled with RPG stuff from many of the 80’s RPG company giants. Most of all was the vast amount of AD&D stuff. Right there before me was the PHB that we so yearned for. I had it in my hand, I was getting ready to turn around in glee when… something caught my eye. A forbidding black book with a large red pentagram on the cover. Above the pentagram were the words “THE ARCANUM”. What was in that book? I had to know. I set the PHB down and took THE ARCANUM off the shelf and read the back…. Almost thirty classes, over 500 spells in seven colleges of magick, new races undreamed of, compatible with other fantasy RPGames… I opened it up, and immediately fell in love. I sat in that corner of Waldens for over an hour before my mom found me. She noted that the book I held was not the PHB I had been babbling about for hours before. “Mom, I want this.” I said. She raised an eyebrow to the pentagram on the cover, and she looked through the book. After a careful perusal, she asked me why I wanted it. I explained about all of the cool new classes, and the all the different types of magical colleges, and… and… She smiled and said… okay! She claims to have not heard another peep out of me during the several hours shopping that followed as my face was buried in the book.
Needless to say, my friends were not all that thrilled that I had bypassed the PHB for The Arcanum… until I opened its cover and told them about all of the classes that they could be. They were in shock! Then I told them about the magicks, and the vile hatred the demons and devils had for one another. I know that we never looked back. We never did buy that 1e PHB. We instead bought the Bard games supplement to arcanum: the Bestiary. We never found the Atlas. Together these products formed the Atlantean trilogy. (Our love for the company did lead us to Talislanta as well! ) The system in Arcanum was similar to 1e in many ways, and we happily used the 1e DMG, Arcanum, and the DnD Rules Cyclopedia together for years. Long after 1e left and when 2e was in its dying days, I picked up the 2e books. We found them so banal and flavorless, we dumped them and returned to our old favorites. 3E changed all of that. The D20 revolution brought vast amounts of flavor and diversity, as well as a serious improvement in mechanics. We were astounded how some of the Arcanum’s concepts seemed to have snuck into 3e. There were a lot of differences, sure, but there were some similarities. Our love for Arcanum never has died. Every campaign, at least one player wants to take one of the Arcanum classes and convert it to 3e. Or someone wants to access some of the flavorful magics and bring them into 3.x.
Now why would I take you, the reader, down this trip thru memory lane? Well… (drum roll) Morrigan Press has gotten the rights to Talislanta, and is on the verge of releasing Talislanta D20 as well as a full line-up of Tal supplements. Details can be found in the Talislanta D20 thread in the publishers forum on this site. In that thread, Scott Agnew, head of Morrigan Press had this to say:
“Rumors eh? Hmm, well some rumors you can believe and others you can't. On this one, all I can say right now is that those in attendance at GTS next week will see a new entry on our In Development for 2005 list... it's called Atlantis: Second Age. I'll leave it at that for now.
Cheers,
Scott Agnew
President, Morrigan Press Inc. “
That is great news, and the people I game with went a little batty at the news. There is no o ETA on the product, bt in the meantime, if you have Arcanum and would like a great guide to converting the existing material to D20 go here:
http://members.aol.com/CountryGrrlHere/dndchick.html
Anyway, I thought I would announce the good news, and open up a thread so that people who have played the original could spout off what they liked about it, what was ahead of it’s time, and what didn’t work so well.
I plan to keep this thread alive until that book hits my sweaty hands….
Razuur
