It was originally my intention to write a review of the original D&D books that were released recently by WotC. After writing a few hundred words I changed my mind, since I was starting to fall into the snark again, and I think I’ve been snarky enough toward the legacy of E. Gary Gygax. I think I’d like to do an entry that details some of the weird and unnecessary aspects of the books — the harlot table, the incredibly complex unarmed combat rules, Gygax’s endless pontifications and his savage torture of the English language — but that’s for later. I decided that since I haven’t posted in so damned long I’d institute a new feature here, the Hall of RPG Oddities, a series of reviews of some of the stranger, lesser-known, or offensive publications that gamers have dealt with over the decades.

I’m starting off with a classic — the famous (and to some infamous) Arduin series by the legendary Dave Hargrave. From the top I want to make clear that I absolutely love the Arduin series. It contains material that I used for years in my D&D games, and in some cases still do. However, I am also of the opinion that the series is also one of the most insanely over-the-top examples of munchkin power-gaming ever published, one which remained unequaled until the publication of The World of Synnibar in the mid-90s (and don’t get me wrong — I also love Synnibar, for many of the same reasons — more on that particular work in a future entry).

Dave Hargrave’s contribution to the world of roleplaying is well-known. As one of the original cabal of west-coast gamers in the late 60s and early 70s, he and his compatriots, including such titans as Greg Stafford, Jeff Pimper, Steve Perrin, Clint Bigglestone, Tadishi Ehara and many others, brought their own ideas and sensibilities to the industry, injecting it with energy and imagination that drove it ahead for decades. Their contributions continue to be seen in the still-published Runequest and that classic of classics, Call of Cthulhu, a game that is still going strong decades after its original release.

Hargrave’s history and adventures have been amply chronicled elsewhere and they make for very interesting reading. His skills as a gamemaster, the high power-level and mortality rate of his years-long Arduin campaign, his elaborate house rules, fiery temperament, his feud with Greg Stafford and his legal tussles with TSR are all the stuff of history, and kind of beyond the scope of this piece — we’re going to focus on the obsessive madness that was (and actually still is) the Arduin series.

Journey to Arduin

Shannon Appelcline describes Arduin as  ”a collection of rather ‘gonzo’ house rules” but calling Arduin “rather gonzo” is like calling the language in a Tarantino film “somewhat profane.” Arduin is a joyful melange of every single bizarre idea that crossed Dave Hargrave’s eccentric mind, and despite his continual insistence that Arduin was its own roleplaying system, totally distinct and separate from that alliterative thing published by those guys in Wisconsin, his books contained a treasure trove of modular rules, tables, classes, monsters and treasures that could be slipped into a D&D game with all the subtlety of a GBU-28 bunker buster.

Once more I’m going to journey back to the late 70s when I was attending Portland State University and gaming every weekend. This was about the time that my original group was splitting at the seams after a new group of younger players had joined, bringing a more power-gamer oriented style of play and sending me and my immediate companions off into our own separate group (the one where we could cast unlimited Sleep spells and automatically retired at fifth level).

I stayed in touch with members of the old group however. Though the overly-competitive nature of their campaign turned me off, I was impressed by their willingness to experiment, to use house rules and to resist the rigidity that TSR was injecting into AD&D. Among the various features that they added were such things as the All the World’s Monsters supplements from Jeff Pimper and Steve Perrin, and a curious collection of digest-sized booklets — The Arduin Grimoire, Welcome to Skull Tower and The Runes of Doom, all authored by David S. Hargrave.

I liked what I saw — there were really off-the-wall monsters, bizarre treasures, new character classes and tables, Tables, TABLES! I was later to learn that Hargrave had presented this eccentric collection of supplemental materials to Chaosium as a self-contained gaming system, but that it had been rejected, triggering a feud between Hargrave and Greg Stafford that was to last for years. After this rejection, Hargrave struck out on his own, publishing the supplements himself, and the rest his history.

As I’ve previously noted, being a broke young college student I played D&D with photocopies of the original booklets. I similarly borrowed the Arduin books and copied parts of them as well — since they were written in more or less stream of consciousness style, broken up into individual sections and horrifically organized (see below), it was easy to copy only those portions of the books that interested me, such as the pages that had naked women on them.

I still have those photocopies today — they’ve held together surprisingly well. However, I was able to score copies of the original booklets in cut-out bins at local gaming stores over the years, so later editions of the original Arduin trilogy are now in my possession.

So let’s start with book one, shall we? It’s titled simply The Arduin Grimoire, and I can’t help but wonder whether Hargrave’s decision to publish it as a digest-sized booklet wasn’t influence by the fact that D&D was originally released in the same format.

The original printing features art by the awesome Erol Otus, who contributed extensive work to TSR’s AD&D books, including the cover for Deities and Demigods. He also provided illustrations for the Lovecraftian deities that were listed in the first edition of that volume, but excised later (along with Moorcock’s Melnibonean pantheon) due to copyright issues. The Arduin Grimoire was Otus’ first major project, and a preview of things to come.

Mind you, his art in this book is no great shakes — he’s clearly a talented but inexperienced artist, and in later editions of the book his work was removed and replaced by pictures from the more-established Greg Espinoza.

So what of the book itself? Well, like the other volumes in the original trilogy, The Arduin Grimoire is a heady glimpse inside the mind of its creator. Dave Hargrave was apparently an outstanding game master, and had a real talent for running games on the fly, throwing in everything but the kitchen sink and coming up with elaborate rule systems essentially off the top of his head. While this made for a really great GM and a fine game designer, what Hargrave really needed was the discipline and organization that a good editor and/or developer could provide. He would spew out the amazing ideas, the elaborate tables, imaginative monsters, new spells and artifacts, then his editor would whip the resulting chaotic jumble into something resembling a coherent final book.

In all honesty, none of the Grimoires show signs that anyone other than Dave Hargrave worked on them. They throw out rules that are alternately brilliant and silly almost at random, they are dotted with typos and clumsy revisions, and they are printed in an all but unreadable tiny, Courier-style font, a telltale sign that the whole thing was typed up on a word processor with no access to professional typesetting or layout services (and having done that job back in the days before desktop publishing, I’ll tell you that such services were not cheap).

And before we get into the meat of the work, we need to be honest with ourselves. Despite Hargrave’s protestations to the contrary, the Arduin books were intended as supplements for D&D. Any suggestion that they were anything besides this is silly. Certainly, Hargrave’s version of D&D differs significantly from the original (character levels up to 100+, anyone?), but at its heart Arduin must have been intended to supplement rather than replace D&D, since its rules modules slide and click into D&D so effortlessly.

In one particularly goofy instance of D&D imitation, Arduin’s monster statistics include an entry called “% liar.” Presumably this is a measure of how honest the creature is, but it’s also very telling since it’s a duplication of a similar statistic in original D&D called “% lair,” a rather silly number intended to indicate how often a creature was present in its home base. In the first edition of D&D, the statistic was misspelled “% liar” and this misspelling found its way into the Arduin Grimoire as if it was a legitimate statistic. Each and every monster stat block has “% liar” listed right after “Number Appearing.”

And so the fun begins with Hargrave’s opening dedication, which I reproduce below in its entirety:

I am deeply indebted to many people, without whom many of the ideas on these pages would have died stillborn. It has been a long, long year of trial and trouble, but made easier by friends both old and new. This supplement is dedicated to them certainly and with heartfelt gratitude, but it is also to those characters that lived, loved, and died in pursuit of loot and glory that my true dedication goes.

Keryu, leader of the forty-seven Ronin; Elric the Hell-Lost; Daniel the True Defender of the Dreaming Isles; Jothar, Champion of the House of the Rising Sun and Baron of the Realm; Kazamon, the Ring Bearer, hobbit and changeling; Benk the Benighted; Hismal Assad’s Twelfth Lancers; Mithrom, bandit turned demon; Mogadore the drunken dwarf; Zorella, amazon leader of the doomed Hell Raid; Lasuli, elven and unafraid; Fredrick the Bold, Slayer of Smaug and Sauron; Bolo Mark Nine, destroyer of a dungeon and near slayer of an entire world; the Seven Spartans and their never broken shield wall; Talso the grim mage; all of you are forever graven int he iron legends that will forever follow your steps through alternity. To you and the shades of near four hundred dead I lift a tankard of Rumble Tummy’s ale in respectful salute.

Without all of you I could never have dreamed my dreams of glory, nor beheld the beauty of the Misty Mountains of Arduin.

I’d say that there was an entire column’s worth of material in that dedication alone. First of all – four hundred fucking dead? Did they print character sheets on toilet paper or something? Jesus Christ that guy was a freakin’ sociopath… (And I mean that in the nicest way possible.)

And then there’s Bolo Mark Nine… Keith Laumer fans I’m sure know that a bolo is a giant cybernetic tank equipped with nuclear missiles and capable of laying waste to an entire continent. Yes, folks… giant nuclear-armed cybertanks could be player characters on Arduin.

I’m not even going to mention Fredrick the Bold and his twin victories over both Sauron and Smaug. Hell, not even Gandalf could have pulled that shit off. Holy crap, we are in for one major roller coaster ride here, kids.

(Rumble Tummy’s Ale? Seriously, Dave? Seriously?)

After his dedication, The Arduin Grimoire kicks off with what Hargrave calls a “Forward.” Now I know it’s kind of petty of me, but I think that he meant “Foreword”, and to add insult to injury I feel compelled to point out that forewords are not normally written by the author. This might best be called an “Introduction” or possibly a “Preface,” but certainly not a “Forward.”

Hargrave immediately gives us a taste of the take-no-prisoners trench warfare that was roleplaying publication in the 70s when he notes: “About three years ago fantasy role playing games began to become extremely popular… At first it was something new and wonderful… About a year or so ago things began to change: the joyous game was becoming big business. And those non-amateur game designers took on all the trappings of those things that have profit as their main motivational force: greed, secretiveness, hunger to ‘control the market’ and all of that other garbage.

“Amateurs who tried to publish their ideas were being told to cease publication if their ideas even remotely resembled any those big business types had published. Yet those same people ripped the amateurs’ ideas off quite freely, and with dismaying frequency.”

After reading a few of Gary Gygax’s vitriolic columns with their condemnation of APAs and anyone who wasn’t Gary Gygax, I can’t say that I’m unsympathetic to Hargrave’s position here. On the other hand, roleplaying games presented a fairly new phenomenon in the world of copyright, in that they presented the basic rules, but others produced work that derived from those rules and could be used with them, but at the same time did not actually COPY anything. In the end, I sympathize far more with the David Hargraves of the world than with the Gary Gygaxes.

As I said above, The Arduin Grimoire would have benefited from the services of a good editor. The first thing I noticed, after the crudely-typed word-processor text, was that all of the books are horrifically organized, written almost stream-of-consciousness, with each topic given one or two pages before Hargrave barreled on to the next. The subjects are broadly grouped together, but within these sections, topics are presented willy-nilly with no regard for order. Almost nothing is in alphabetical order.

Rather than a solid, concrete set of rules, Arduin reads instead like notes for a future roleplaying game. The text refers to rules, systems, spells and character classes that apparently don’t exist, rules are very ambiguously worded, effects are mentioned but never described, and so on.

The book starts promisingly, with a section called HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, which opens with a paragraph titled OVERLAND TRAVEL. While this paragraph does indeed describe movement distances, overland travel procedures, etc., it then segues into rules for random monster encounters, combat procedure and how to determine initiative — topics that wander quite a distance from the original subject matter.

Now we jump to a page called POINT SYSTEM in which XP awards for various events are given, such as death (yes, you get XP for dying in Arduin), being the sole survivor of a party (apparently this happened quite a bit), being cursed, obtaining cool magic items, casting certain spells, etc.

Next comes experience tables for Arduin character classes such as Thief, Slaver, Techno, Courtesan, Assassin and so on (as noted, not in alphabetical order), with XP totals for levels one all the way up to 105th level and beyond.

Next, in keeping with D&D’s strange obsession with keeping non-humans down, is a table with level limitations by class for each of 41 (count ‘em — 41, all jumbled together in non-alphabetical order) player races, including the standard humans, elves, hobbits (Hargrave didn’t seem too concerned about Tolkien’s estate and their lawyers), dwarves and half-orcs, but with the addition of such exotica as uruk hai (different from half-orcs how?), amazons (yes, amazons are a race in Arduin… More on them later), kobbits (a kobold/hobbit hybrid… OH MY GOD!!), saurig (lizard-men), phraint (insect-men), gnorcs (gnoll/orc… since I think gnolls were originally supposed to be gnome/troll hybrids, this is getting downright messy), and so many more. These seem a bit harsh — as in D&D, humans can advance an unlimited number of levels in every class, while other races are severely limited.

Immortal, arrogant elves who have built ancient and powerful civilizations and act like they’re better than everyone else, for example, can only advance to 10th level as warriors, and 8th level as Clerics, Mages and Thieves. They are, however, allowed unlimited advancement as Psychics, and “All Others”, but cannot become Monks or “Palidins” (sic).

Most races are like this — they are seriously limited in most classes, forbidden from a few, and able to advance to unlimited levels in one or two. The distribution of these limitations seems, well, pretty random. Half-elves, for example, can be 10th level clerics, but only 6th level wizards, 12th level thieves but only 8th level warriors. Centaurs can be 4th level clerics, 12th level warriors and 3rd level psychics. And so on.

No wonder humans run the show. They can rise to 100th+ level in everything. Hell, if I were a human I wouldn’t be the slightest bit scared of an elf warrior, since he can never be higher than 10th level.

Next come ability limitations by race and gender. This has always been something of a sore point in roleplaying, since females invariably are given lower Strength and Constitution scores than males, but usually higher Intelligence and Charisma. I know that on average women are not as strong or large as men, but I’ve known women who were almost as tall as me, and one or two who could have put me through a wall, so I think this concept is kind of outdated. Just roll your stats and let the chips fall where they may — if you have a female with an 18 Strength, then have fun with her.

Next comes one of those tables that makes Arduin so much fun. It’s called the NOTES ON FANTASTIC BEINGS, and includes columns for player races’ average lifespan, age of majority, usual alignment, “ability to mate fertilly with humans” (so that’s where all those half-elves come from… and no, “fertilly” is not a word, but that never stopped Hargrave), general temperament and notes.

These brief, concise overviews of racial characteristics are extremely useful  for GMs who want to come up with characters on the fly, and for players to provide guidelines on behavior. Mind you, they’re also kind of weird. The Amazon, for example, has a lifespan of 90, age of majority of 18, alignment Neutral, able to mate with humans (assuming they want to), have a general temperament of Boastful & Arrogant, and under notes we learn that they are “Pushy, man-baiters, frequently lesbian.”

I’m not even going to get into how sexist Arduin is (or maybe I am, but later), but come on, Dave. An amazon is a powerful, aggressive, proud female warrior, so naturally she’s arrogant, a man-hater and frequently lesbian. I don’t know about you, but I’ve known a few amazons, only some of them were lesbians, and they all liked me just fine.

Next comes another useful table, the CHARACTER AND ALIGNMENT OF PLAYERS CHART. Apparently you have the option of choosing your alignment at random, and this chart gives guidelines for behavior and outlook for no fewer than 14 alignments (rather than the paltry eight of 3E and the paltry two of 4E). I have to admit, when Dave Hargrave goes, he goes big.

We have the familiar Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil axis, as well as a couple of others such as “Moderately” or “Marginally Lawful” (oddly enough there’s no “Marginally Chaotic”), “True Chaotic” (which us purists insist on simply calling “Chaotic Neutral”), “Amoral,” “Amoral Evil” and “Insane.”

Each alignment has a column for “Kill Factor,” “Lie Factor,” “Tolerance Factor,” “Loyalty Factor,” and “Cruelty Factor” although there is no explanation of what this means. If nothing else, it illustrates Hargrave’s penchant for reducing everything to percentage rolls. Does “Kill Factor” equal the percentage chance that a character of that alignment will try to kill you? How about “Cruelty Factor”? What the hell does that mean? The chances that the character will be cruel? Of so, how?

The last column is a hoot — under “General Notes” it tells us that Lawful Good is “Goody two shoes type, always smiles,” Marginally Lawful is “Losing ‘faith’ in the ‘system’”, Neutral Good is “Ready to accept most any decent idea,” True Chaotic is “So unpredictable even he doesn’t know what’s next” and Chaotic Evil says “You never know what he’ll do, but you can be sure it’s nasty!”

As loony as all this sounds, it really is a breath of fresh air compared to the stodgy, pretentious stuff that was coming out of TSR at that time. This, remember, is when Original D&D was switching over to AD&D, and Gygax was busy telling us that we had to play the game exactly as he’d written it, or we were all traitors who would wreck everyone else’s fun. As Hargrave was a huge advocate of critical hits, spell points and other heresies, my guess is that he sat squarely in Gygax’s crosshairs.

Next we come to one of the most fun collection of tables you’ll ever see — the Special Abilities chart. Each group of classes has its own percentile table, with a list of abilities ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. Roll a 37 for a fighter and you get “Ex-seafarer, who cannot be drowned even in full armor (he sheds it).” A roll of 18 for a wizard yields “Time and gate competent, with total inability to use all ‘cold’ spells.” Roll a 60 for a cleric and you get “Desert born, add plus 3 to constitution and ability to find water (90%).” Roll 00 for a techno or courtesan and you hit the jackpot — “Roll once on any three tables of your choice ignoring this number, but if you can’t use what you roll up, tough, you’re stuck with it.” And so on.

I loved these tables and used them a lot, though my characters invariably got abilities like “Hates all animals (and they can sense it so will attack 85% of the time)” or “Obese glutton of unsanitary and foul habits, -6 charisma, plus 6 versus poison” while my friends got stuff like “Sexual athlete, plus 5 charisma versus opposite sex, never get enough” or “Flesh tastes bad to monsters (98% chance they’ll spit you out).”

If you happen across a copy of The Arduin Grimoire, I strongly urge you to at least check out these tables — they will fuck your campaign up in the most entertaining way possible.

Next we finally get to character classes (remember what I said about organization?), including several (but not all) of the character classes listed earlier — here we have (once more in glorious non-alphabetic order) the Trader, Psychic, Barbarian (the class had not been introduced by TSR yet), Rune Weaver, “Techno’s” (sic), and Witch Hunter. Notably absent are the Courtesan, Slaver, Alchemist and Saint, even though they were discreetly listed on the earlier XP chart.

The classes are a strange lot — the rules for them are typically amorphous, with lots of room for GM and player interpretation (and, I’m sure, argument). The psychic can’t use magic, has to have low physical stats and gains special abilities such as “Mental scream” every few levels. The Barbarian is listed as being “extremely vulnerable to magik,” but no actual rules for this vulnerability are presented. As we all know, Barbarians can “go berserk,” adding +4 to their attacks but subtracting -3 from their defense. “Once berserk, they will fight blindly for 1 melee turn for each level less than 20th level that they are, even if all of the enemy are dead. There is also a 60% chance for 1st level Barbarians going berserk uncontrollably, rolled for every melee turn.”

Okay, I’m confused. A Barbarian can go berserk at will, but must fight “blindly” for a number of rounds — say 10 for a 10th level Barbarian. What does he mean by “blindly”? He’ll attack anything? Attack the nearest figure? Attack trees and rocks? Attack the darkness? And when that period is over, is he still berserk, and can he continue to use his +4 to hit? Once more, it feels as if we’re reading someone’s campaign notes, rather than a coherent rules set. No wonder Chaosium rejected Arduin.

And so it goes — Rune Weavers are spellcasters, but it takes them one round per spell level to cast, and they get more spell points than regular casters. “Techno’s” (sic — dammit, Hargrave needed a copy of Strunk and White!) “are specialists that disbelieve 100% in magic and work from a strictly scientific point of view… They are constatnly dismembering dragons to see where the flame thrower was hidden!” Medicine Men are “Barb    ian priest/mages” (sic), Witch hunters “are religious fanatics (99% Chritian) that are obnoxiously ‘holier than thou’ in their attitude towards just about everyone and everything.”

The entries are all organized differently, as if (surprise!) Hargrave developed them all separately, then pasted them together for the book. Some have a single mass of text with the rules all run together, others (such as the Witch Hunter) are organized with headers and specific rules, each given its own lettered paragraph. Witch Hunters have entries for “Advantages” and “Disadvantages” but no other classes do. They have a level chart listing their “Fighting Capability” as being equal to “Man +1,” “2 Men,” “3 Men,” “Hero,” “Myrmidon +1,” “Super Hero,” and so on (reflecting the original D&D fighter level table, though I can’t for the life of me figure out what is meant by “3 Men.”).

The characters really are all over the map, with rules ranging from ironclad specifics to vague guidelines. To play them would require a huge amount of GM interpretation, yet Hargrave assures us that everything in Arduin has been playtested over “hundreds of hours “ of gaming. Clearly these rules worked for him and his fellows, and given that he brags about over 400 PC deaths, his players kept coming back.

I think that more than anything else, Arduin’s character classes tell us a lot about David Hargrave and the state of gaming in those days. Despite TSR and Gary Gygax’s insistence that everyone march in lock-step and play the game exactly as written (lest they be condemned as talentless fools and hateful luddites), a lot of people (I would even go so far as to say “most people” but I have no real proof of that, beyond the people that I myself gamed with) played the game any damned way they pleased.

Hargrave’s campaign was clearly high-powered, had a huge death-rate, and was pretty much over-the-top in every aspect. It was also very fast and loose, and given the vagueness of many of the “rules” he cites in his work, required some pretty heavy GM interpretation.

Fun as it is, the confused jumble of half-rules, guidelines and polite suggestions that passes for character class entries is followed by the Multiversal Trading Company Price List. Interestingly enough, armor is listed as “Defensive Weapons” which is an odd designation, but the chart is pretty familiar to any rpg-er.

Now we get to the magic rules which are, as always, pretty vague and make sense only in reference to the original D&D rules from which they are derived. Hargrave discusses in considerable detail how long it takes to memorize spells (one hour per spell divided by the number of spells that the mage may memorize at his or her current level).

In his example, a fifth-level mage takes three hours to memorize one third, two second level and one third level spell. Honestly, who ever really did that? Everyone I ever gamed with simply assumed that the mage’s spells automatically regenerated each day and didn’t bother intricately mapping out how long it took to memorize spells. I can imagine the real effects now:

It’s bright and early in the morning in the Lost Dungeon of Death. The party has awakened, unspiked the door, eaten a hasty breakfast and is preparing to set forth once more.

FIGHTER: Hey, guys, let’s go! I want to investigate that temple complex we found yesterday! I think there might be lizard men!

THIEF: You betcha! That idol with the giant gemstone eyes looked pretty sweet! Come on!

WIZARD: No, wait up guys. I have to memorize my spells.

FIGHTER: Criminey! Always with the spell memorization. How long is that gonna take?

WIZARD: Only three hours or so. Just hang on and I’ll get started.

THIEF: Oh, fuck. Here we go again. Okay, who wants another pot of tea?

Hargrave then goes over some familiar rules. Mages can’t wear metal armor. At fifth level they can use magical swords and a tenth level they can use all magic weapons (there is an uncomfirmed report that Gary Gygax experienced a minor stroke when he read that rule).

Then we get into one of the more bizarre rules that Arduin presents. Apparently, you only get one saving throw against a given spellcaster’s magic. If you save once, you save every time that caster throws that particular spell at you. The opposite is true too — if you fail a save against Magico the Magical’s fireball, then you continue to fail every time he casts a fireball at you. Until of course, “you yourself go up a level” at which time presumably everything resets and you can start making saving throws again.

Holy crap, that sounds complicated. I’d have ignored this rule the first chance I got.

Next comes something that sums up Hargrave’s love of minutiae and his fondness for percentage rolls all in one beautiful paragraph.

The upshot of all this is simple; you have to have to have your magical goodies where your hot little hands gan get them at an instant’s notice. And if you want to really jazz up your game, just add in a PHUCKER PHACTOR. What’s a P&P you ask? Simply put, it is a percent for mages or whomever, to grab the wrong end of a wand or to read off the wrong spell on his scroll in his haste to slay the onrushing purple uglys (sic) that are going to eat him. A suggested base is 50% to start, going down 2% per level attained, and modified by your dexterity (-5% per each point over 12 or conversely adding 5% for each point less than 9).

Oh my God. Seriously? Phucker Phactor? Mage’s have a 50% chance of accidentally grabbing their wands upside-down? You’d think they’d take that into account. Wouldn’t a fumble on the Attack roll be more realistic?

Hargrave goes on to suggest a surprisingly modern-sounding solution to a common problem that was not addressed until D&D 3E — touch attacks. If a magical attack simply requires contact and not penetration, he suggests giving the attacker a flat +4 bonus to do so. That’s elegant, though I think I prefer the “Touch AC” solution that D20 adopted.

Finally we get to another of Gary Gygax’s sore points — spell points or, as Arduin calls them, “manna points”. Here’s the formula that Hargrave used: “Take the mages (sic) intelligence and multiply it by his level, then if his intelligence is 8 or less, divide by four. If it is 9 to 12, divide by three, and if it is 13 or greater divide by two. Therefore, a 7th level mage with an intelligence of 16 would multiply 16 x 7 = 112 and divide 112 by  2 = 56 manna points that the mage will generate each twelve hour period of rest.”

Whew. More math. More fun. And the fun continues when we actually start casting spells. Most first level spells, we are told, cost one to one and a half manna points. One and a half? In addition to all that multiplication and division we’re expected to keep track of half points. At this point, Gary Gygax’s complaint that spell points add more unnecessary bookkeeping is beginning to sound better and better.

A mage can use his “manna” (I believe the correct spelling is actually “mana” which Hargrave uses later in the book) points to cast spells he has memorized, but how many spells can he memorize? Again, Hargrave’s answer is in the form of a guideline, but he essentially tells you to use whatever system you like:

…the Dungeons and Dragons game has a nice workable system but as this is the Arduin Grimoire, here’s mine: For every two levels of experience, a mage can use one level of spells… However, there is a limiting factor based upon intelligence… the user’s intelligence is divided by two, thus a mage with an 18 intelligence could do up to ninth level spells…

So take whatever I have that you like, use the old established system, delve into Empire of the Petal Throne, Red Moon and White Bear (sic… The game was actually called White Bear and Red Moon, and can be purchased on Amazon for a mere $269) in a magic system. Who knows, it may end up such a good system that people will want you to publish your supplement!

And so once more we have the general outline of a decent magic system, but lacking any specifics or exceptions. How do mages get spells to memorize in the first place? Do they have spellbooks as in D&D? Spells can be cast at fractional power with similarly fractional mana expenditure — do you round up or down? Does “half power” halve the range as well as the damage? If you are using spells from another game such as D&D, how much mana do those spells cost? And so on.

There’s a really joyful sense of experimentation and chaotic wildness to Hargrave’s work. It’s mad, to be sure, but it’s a pretty intense and infectious madness. I keep coming back to how rigid TSR was growing at this point, and how imaginative and unfettered the rest of the growing gaming industry had become. The entire situation seems today like a huge disconnect between TSR and their customers, as Gygax savagely condemned the very people he should have been encouraging.

Another welter of charts follows — the “Turn-Away” (i.e. turn undead) chart, the “Detect Ability” chart which lists percentage chances for various classes and devices to detect such things as poison, evil, magic, alignment, weather, enemies, undead, treasure, traps, invisible objects, etc., etc., and tables of saving throws for items, character classes and races.

I love the next table to death — it’s a random matrix for generating magical items. Roll a 50 in the “Type of Weapon” column and, for example, you get a bolo (yes, a bolo — the weapon, not the giant cyber-tank). Continue to roll, and you discover that it is a +3 attack, +2 damage, Intelligence 15, Ego 16 magic bolo with the ability to detect undead, makes its user 100% immune to dragon breath and has a 9-step level draining ability.

Whew! That’s a lot for a damned little bolo. This table gives some other goofy results, like a dancing vorpal crossbow or a battleaxe of elemental conjuring.

Next we have a table for “prismatic walls and their usage.” I’m not entirely sure that prismatic walls deserve a full table here, but in any event you learn that a Bronze prismatic wall “stops all spells fired from wands, and does damage only to wands (they explode).” This is still more of Hargrave’s rough-note taking that takes the place of actually writing rules, and is only one example. I presume that any wand that “fires” through a bronze prismatic wall explodes, but the rule says “does damage only to wands.” Is the explosion harmless to the wielder, then? If so, how much damage is inflicted and does the wand get a save? I’m sure that all of this was handled by Hargrave on the spot, and may have changed from gaming session to gaming session.

The entry for Violet prismatic walls is similar — its effect is “General anti-magic shell, insanity.” What the hell does this mean? Anyone inside it goes insane? Anyone who tries to cast through it? Move through it? Look at it? Arduin is delightfully goofy and exuberant, but don’t expect specifics here. Ever.

Now we finally get to spells and even though there are only a few pages of them, they are indeed impressive. I can only go over a few of the more choice spells. They’re all identified by name, level, mana cost, range, area and effects. As I’m sure you’ve guessed they are jumbled together in random order, but thank goodness they are organized by character class.

Given the vagueness of Hargrave’s “rules” up to this point, his spells are surprisingly specific. The first spell in the druid list, for example is Yalywyn’s Spell of the Singing Winds:

Level: 3rd; Mana cost: 3 plus 3 per hour to sustain. Range: 120′; Area Affected: 60′diameter plus additional 10′ per level over level needed to use. Effects: A wonderfully scented gentle wind blows melodious music within the spell area, which immediately charms all up to 6th level into sitting and listening raptly.

Holy crap, that’s only the first spell! To me it seems like a pretty damnably powerful spell, since it apparently automatically (and “automatically” says to me “no saving throw”) charms every single life-form of level 6 and under in an area of over 45,000 square feet! And it evidently continues for as long as the caster cares to maintain it!

The fun never stops in Arduin — mage spells have names like Stephan le Strange’s Spell of the Instant Idleness, which essentially does the same thing as the Singing Winds spell, although targets are granted a saving throw. Masayuki’s Mist of Malevolent Misery creates “a purple, roiling, squirming greasy fog that moans and gibbers,” causing all victims of 2nd level or under to automatically choke to death (you get a save if you’re 4th level or higher, but still “suffer from intense confusion, dizzyness, nausea and watering eyes as long as still in the cloud,” even though there is no explanation what game effects these conditions have). Yorgan’s Falling For Forever Spell causes the target to become weightless and “fall” upward away from the planet at a rate of 100′ per turn. Khurluu’s Call of the Hell Spawn summons one demon locust +1 per level over minimum.

Clerics aren’t neglected either — they get things like Visions of Hell that causes victims to “see all your deepest ID nightmare sin living color and stereophonic sound. They can kill if they’re believed in.” The Spell of the Horns of Joshua (yes, the Judeo-Christian faiths are alive and well in Arduin) buildings to collapse (though again there are no specifics for the size of building, how much damage they do, etc.), and inflicts damage on everyone in the area.

As you can see, Hargrave didn’t hold back when it came to spectacular, Biblical-level spells. Jehovah might be a pretty mellow guy in this reality, but in Arduin he’s a fuckin’ badass. Real Old Testament Wrath-o-God shit here, kids.

Rune weavers then get some of their own spells, webs that they weave with magic. The webs are all different colors and have various effects — white webs cause cold damage, flashing metallic blue webs cause electrical shock, while mottled grey-green webs cause those caught in them to be “stoned for the duration of the web.” As this web is called Argoth’s Spell of the Spider Golem I strongly suspect that when Hargrave said “stoned” he meant “turned to stone” rather than “being reduced to complete dumbass status after using recreational drugs.”

Magical items follow, and they’re exactly what you’d expect from David Hargrave. The Misty Boots of Silent Speed allow the wearer to move on any surface, even illusions (!) at double speed and with absolute silence. Consider the consequences, my friends. An illusionist casts the image of a bridge across the deep chasm and presto! The rogue with the Misty Boots is across in a trice… Damn.

The Golden Drops of Heavenly Essence will “100% restore any dead being regardless of damage or how little of said being is left. They will cure disease, insanity and amnesia. They are so rare that only 21 drops have been seen in the last 1,200 years!”

Now I admit that I skipped most of the next section, packed with combat charts, guidelines for melee and missile combat and other stuff that I never really cared for in the first place. One of the best-known, most widely-known and infamous sections of Arduin is next, and it’s the part that I turned to most often. I speak, of course, about David Hargrave’s legendary Critical Hit and Critical Fumble tables!

But I think that’s going to have to wait until the next entry, as it’s getting late, my entry is already downright epic, and I’m exhausted. Tune in next time for the last part of the original Arduin Grimoire (including monsters and demons!), and the next two volumes in the series — Welcome to Skull Tower and the Rooms of Dune!

Excuse me. I mean Runes of Doom. My apologies. Peace out.

So hi again — Christmas proved to be marvelously uncomplicated, with me leaving the house only to have dim sum with various friends, then returning to work on some home recording projects and nurse a series of glasses of expensive tequila, so I’m in a pretty expansive mood, believe me. My attempt to get through an exciting action scene in my dungeon crawlers novel proved less successful however, so I’m going back to working on the adventures of the thick-headed Valerius, the bootilicious Saren, the follicly-challenged Grimslade and the klutzy, luckless Indel.

When last we left the heroic quartet, they’d been confronted by a ghastly vision — the image of their old mentor Gavin, who was apparently some kind of freakin’ wizard, and got himself in trouble, forcing him to call on his old flunkies for help. The next installment opens as the adventurers set out from Gavin’s inn to rescue their friend and mentor, Grindal.

I’m noticing that whoever wrote this really likes names that begin with “G” by the way, which is likely to cause confusion. After all, Ralph Bakshi got so confused by two villains (Sauron and Saruman) with “S” names that he renamed one “Aruman” in shameless contravention of Tolkien’s tales. Mind you, the actors kept forgetting and calling him “Saruman,” but no matter.

While Bill Willingham’s art continues to improve and really looks too damned good for a crappy advertising campaign like this, the editing leaves something to be desired, for in the second panel Grimslade says “Weve walked a long way,” proving that wizards don’t need to mess about with namby-pamby shit like punctuation.

Ever the master of the obvious, Valerius then says “Yes. The moon will be up soon,” and Saren purses her pouty, dark-red lips and says “There is somthing (sic) strange about these woods.” No one ever claimed that spelling was a D&D adventurer’s strong suit, but hell — this is for kids dammit — at least try to use correct spelling.

Indel of course remains the world’s most inept rogue, and carelessly utters, “Nah! It’s just your imagina… ulp!” This last comes when an arrow embeds itself in a tree about an inch from his face. Frankly I really wonder why they continue to associate with Indel, but they’ve already left the inn and it’s too late to turn back.

The arrow shooter is another cute blonde woman in a green Robin Hood outfit, accompanied by a bald druid-looking mofo, who shouts “Who dares tresspass (sic) in the woods of Oakthorn?!” Hell, the spelling in this installment is going from bad to worse.

Saren handles the situation, telling Oakthorn that they didn’t mean to disturb anyone, but this isn’t enough for the druid and his blonde companion, for Oakthorn intones “Enough! They must… not leave… the forest!” as he and the woman transform into wolves.

Okay, shit just got real. The wolves leap at our heroes while Indel, ever the comic relief asks, “Uh… Couldn’t we talk about this first?!”

The rampant combination of question marks and exclamation points in this installments makes one mourn the passing of the interrobang, which might have made the letterer’s job much simpler.

So ends another installment, with our heroes fighting for their lives after another of Indel’s pathetic failures. We pick up a few weeks later in media res, with the lithe Saren ducking away from a leaping werewolf while saying “A simple spell will paralyse (sic) this one !!”

Okay, hold on a minute. Are all spells “simple” in this adventure? And even though this was written before spellcheckers, “paralyze” is not that hard a word to spell. And once more, our heroes fight monsters and don’t kill them.

The lack of killing continues in the next panel as Indel finally tries to do something useful, like stab Oakthorn. But even this endeavor ends in failure, for the druid turns himself into a raven and escapes. Indel just can’t seem to catch a break.

So on they press. Unable to catch the fleeing bird, our heros (sic) continue their quest… Through the black samp of Lobella!

This whole spelling thing is getting silly. During this period, TSR was so busy trying to prove to the world that their game didn’t make kids kill themselves or worship Satan that they forgot to promote good, basic literacy. Sheesh, guys… Use a freakin’ dictionary or something.

…Ever closer to their final goal!

Now Grimslade points toward distant green blobs and says “Behold! The Mountains of Ash!”

Will Grindal be on the other side? the caption excitedly asks. Well, if past events are any indication, there are likely to be more monsters that run away or can easily be defeated by a simple spell. And also, some guy whose name begins with “G” even if it isn’t Grindal.

And so we come at last to the final installment in our heros’ adventures? Do they find Grindal? Are there more exciting exploits in the offing? Will we ever see Saren naked?

Well no, not really, since TSR apparently gave up on the whole enterprise, leaving the bold adventuring band suspended in limbo along with Pinsom, Jasmine, Wormy, Fineous Fingers and all the other comic strips that were started, then abandoned by the Game Wizards.

Well, anyway — the adventurers must be having problems in the mountains of ash, for the caption tells us that they’re caught in a sudden avalanche. Grimslade now takes on the panoply of Captain Obvious and says, “Evil forces are at work here!”

Valerius isn’t happy, for he’s carrying their female companion, and neither of them are dressed for the weather. “Saren has been hurt!” he says. “We must act quickly!!”

Grimslade is no slouch. “This magic scroll may provide us with an escape!” he cries. “DIMENSION DOOR!!” And with a Woooosh! sound effect, the spell carries our heroes…

…To an ancient castle! Could the end of the quest lie here?

Nope. We’ll never know. One wonders whether anyone ever tried to find out what happened after the strip ended, but as far as I know, Valerius, Indel, Grimslade and an unconscious Saren are still stuck in that damned castle and probably will be for all eternity.

Yet another ignominious end after a promising start. At least a decade or so later when TSR licensed Dungeons and Dragons to DC comics, the stories had beginnings, middles and ends. As for this little band of delvers and their destined-for-greatness artist, the road had come to an abrupt end.

And so my friends we come to the end of another installment. Maybe I’ll deal with another obscure D&D-related product or phenomenon next week, but in the meantime stay cool, have a happy new year, and keep fighting for what’s right.

Peace out.

You may have noticed that I dwell on the 1980s a lot — I guess it’s because that’s when I came of age, when I got married, got divorced, ran SF conventions, hung out with the SCA and dressed in cargo pants, an Ike jacket, a checkerboard shirt and a skinny red silk tie with bombers on it. It’s also when I did a lot of experimentation in the roleplaying world and actually started getting published as a game designer. Hell, there was a lot of stuff going down. Mind you the 90s and the 00s had their good points, and the teens are going pretty well too, but the 80s, well… They had their own special flavor.

It was during the 1980s that Dungeons and Dragons really caught on as a national pastime. It had been growing in popularity and sophistication through the 70s of course, but by now it had competition, and the genre of tabletop roleplaying games had finally come of age. Others like Chaosium, Flying Buffalo and GDW had their own products, but D&D remained the undisputed king of the roleplaying hill.

Unfortunately all was not well in the house of TSR. The Blume Brothers, Brian and Kevin had squeezed Gary Gygax out of power and proceeded to run the company into the ground, purchasing automobiles, furniture and needlepoint companies (no, really!), hiring far more people than the company needed, overprinting products and generally throwing spanner after spanner into the works. Gygax was briefly able to wrest control of his company back, but in a struggle of almost Shakespearean dimensions he was eventually forced out for good in 1985, after which TSR had a series of up- and downswings that eventually ended with the heavily indebted company sold to Wizards of the Coast in 1997.

All that was in the future however — in 1981, TSR was riding high and they were determined to go beyond the limitations of being a simple little game company from Lake Geneva. In the early ’80s they changed their logo to a bearded Greco-Roman profile emblazoned “TSR: The Game Wizards” on all their products. Though some were innovative (and others, unfortunately, were horrific), D&D remained TSR’s flagship product, and they were determined to expand their customer base.

So besides games, what do gamers love? If you say “Mountain Dew and Cheetos” you’d be right, but that’s not what I was thinking of. Besides games, gamers love comics, so a series of ads aimed at comic book readers was just what the doctor ordered.

In mid-1981, full-page ads began appearing in comics across the country, depicting the four-color adventures of the bold adventuring band that consisted of Valerius the fighter, Grimslade the magic user (why the hell didn’t TSR just call ‘em “wizards” anyway? More of Gygax’s obfuscation and complications, I guess) and cute l’il Indel the elf. Not Indel the thief, or Indel the rogue. Elf was a character class back then, gods only know why.

The first strip was, well, kind of special in the way that a cute but slightly brain-damaged puppy is “special.” It’s crudely-drawn, and the adventure portrayed was about as interesting as watching bread rise.

In the opening panel, we’re told that our bold adventurers have found a secret door in the ruins of Zenofus Castle, which as we all know is a pretty unpleasant place. Zenobus, clad ina grey smock, with a grey chamberpot on his head, approaches the door while Grimslade plays the better part of valor card and hangs back. In the rear rank Indel kind of prances and flits merrily, clad in a yellow tunic with red hose and hat. He really doesn’t look much like an elf to me — he really looks more like a malnourished hobbit, and by the scale of these pictures is about three feet tall.

Well, tiny and flitty though he may be, Indel uses infravision (remember infravision? That was before just saying “okay, okay… They can see in the dark…”). The passage, we’re told is empty, but Indel bravely volunteers to go on ahead. “It may be a booby trap,” he says.

What, the whole corridor? Wouldn’t “It might be trapped” be better? And it would also avoid using the embarrassing term “booby.” There are, regrettably no boobies in this strip, seeing as how our little dungoneering trio is a boys-only club. But wait! This will change, and will also allow me to post a few NSFW pictures later on in the article.

The adventurers proceed cautiously through narrow, twisting corridors, the caption tells us. This is portrayed by having Valerius crouch down slightly, holding his sword and puny little shield in such a way that he looks as if he doesn’t have arms, while Indel walks about a foot ahead of him, torch in one hand, creeping along in his little elf-boots.

Suddenly…

They hear sloshing noises, smell rotted vegetation; they see a shambling mound. Now I may not be the best grammarian in the world, but damn that’s a crappy sentence. Just because you’re producing a cheapo, crudely-illustrated pseudo-adventure strip to sell your damned roleplaying game.

This is all kind of clumsily presented, for in the first panel we see the shambling mound striding forward while Indel shouts, “LOOK! ASHADOW!” (that’s how it’s written, anyway). In the next panel, Indel is leaping up as if he’s on springs, his face even with Grimslade’s bearded visage, while Valerius hovers in featureless orange space nearby.

Grimslade, who apparently missed the elf’s original exclamation, says “What do you see, Indel?” while the mysteriously weightless Valerius shouts “QUICK! ATORCH!” (This adventure evidently took place before spacebars were invented.)

In the next panel, the three adventurers are standing calmly in the middle of the orange corridor while the mound’s shadow approaches. Valerius’ sword projects from his side and the shield appears stuck to his chest — again, he seems to be utterly armless, which is bad news if you’re a fighter. Beside him, Grimslade looks pissed-off, as if someone in the kitchens burned his omelet, and says “Maybe a hold-monster charm will save us!” to which Valerius replies, “We need a charm, quickly!” At least this is how the conversation appears to go due to the placement of the word balloons.

Next panel, Grimslade raises his arms and chants a bunch of squiggles inside a hexagonal word balloon, while Valerius, now mysteriously shrunk to the size of a pixie, stands rigidly at attention, his sword upright and his shield still epoxied to his chest. Jagged orange lightning leaps from Grimslade’s fingers, hitting the shambling mound with a “ZAP!” sound effect.

In the final panel, the mound is shambling off away from our heroes, but their troubles are far from over, for the walls are now green and dripping oozily.

“Look out! It’s dripping!” Indel cries. You can’t slip anything past that elf, let me tell you.

“Green slime!” shouts Valerius, now grown back to full size, with a real right arm clutching his broadsword.

“Don’t touch it!” Grimslade warns, reaching out a finger as if he’s about to touch it. “It is certain death!”

Boy, I’m worried for our heroes now. Are they ever going to get out of this bind? Well, we’ll just have to wait until the next episode, since that’s the end of part one. Instead of a final panel, we have one of those little dotted-line clip-and-send-in coupons that no one ever clips and sends in. This one says Explore exciting worlds of fun, fantasy and adventure with Dungeons & Dragons (R) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (TM) adventure games. Send in the coupon today for your free color catalog of games and accessories. At the bottom is the ubiquitous TSR “The Game Wizards” logo, along with seriously inadequate space for the eager new gamer’s name, address and zip code.

Well, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out what happened to our heroes, for a couple of months later the second installment hit comics. And damn, was it an improvement. The art was head and shoulders above part one, and the lettering and coloring were better as well. No longer did our heroes float in an orange void — now the dungeon actually had walls and doors. And Indel doesn’t look like a red-and-yellow clad pixie anymore.

But things looked grim for our boys, for the green slime nails Indel squarely, eliciting an AGGH! from the unfortunate elf. Though his friend is about to perish, Valerius knows that elf rogues are a dime a dozen and is more concerned for his equipment. “It’s eating my sword!” he exclaims.

Grimslade is sensible. “Forget the sword, Valerius,” he says. “We’ve got to save Indel!” So Valerius rolls his eyes and evacs Indel while Grimslade casts a fireball to take out the green slime.

Now our story takes a jarring left turn, for the caption tells us that Suddenly, a figure steps out from the shadows. And what a figure it is, too — a strapping blonde in a skin-tight tunic with her luscious thighs visible for all to see. And oh, yeah, she has a mace, so she must be a cleric.

Valerius knows this vision of clerical loveliness. “Saren!” he cries.

“No questions now,” she shoots back. “How’s Indel?”

Okay, so where was the cleric all this time? Or did they just forget that the party needed one when they threw part one together? And did it also occur to TSR that they should throw at least tiny bone to female D&D players and admit that not EVERY character is a strapping all-Hyborian male? Anyway, Saren is with the party now, and she’s a definite improvement.

Within the space of a panel, Saren’s powers restore Indel and the party loots the room. “A magic sword!” Valerius exclaims. “It’ll replace my ruined one!” Again with the sword, Valerius! Don’t you know that there are more important things than swords? Like hot, blonde clerics with impractical armor?

Grimslade is having none of this. He orders Indel to look for secret doors, and the poor elf’s luck deserts him yet again — not only does he fail to detect secret doors, he falls into one and vanishes.

Saren now shows that she’s just as good at stating the obvious as any man. “He’s gone!” she says, and the now-bald and -white-bearded Grimslade replies, “That means we’ll have to go even deeper into the dungeon, to rescue him!” And so, with yet another free catalog coupon, we end the second installment of Dungeons and Dragons comic ad cartoons.

So who’s the new artist, anyway? He sure makes a difference, and he seems to really like drawing women. Well, I’ll tell you — it’s none other than Bill Willingham, writer, artist and all-around talented guy, who got his start illustrating early TSR D&D modules like White Plume Mountain, Isle of Dread, Against the Giants and a bunch of other stuff. These days he’s known as one of of the comic industry’s leading writers, with such diverse books as Fables, the Elementals and Justice Society under his belt. His early work here added a touch of class to a rather unexciting advertising campaign, and still lives on in D&D nostalgia websites and blogs like this one.

Now, I’m the last person on earth to pander. You know that I hate the very notion of using such tawdry concepts as nudity, sexual titillation and innuendo to make my blog more interesting. So when I include a couple of panels from Bill Willingham’s erotic comic series Ironwood here I do so in the interest of historical scholarship only. And when I recommend that anyone who reads this blog and likes hot comic art with handsome guys getting it on with curvaceous women, and curvaceous women getting it on with each other, go out and find a copy or two of Ironwood from Fantagraphics, I’m doing it only so that the fine art and writing of Bill Willingham will gain greater and more widespread appreciation.

And I can’t mention Willingham and Ironwood without noting that my own Wulf the Freelance series (available right here on my Smashwords page in a variety of electronic formats, at a price that is so cheap I’m practically giving it away) drew huge inspiration from Ironwood, both in terms of appearance and concept, to the point that I’m not sure that it would have existed had it not been for Willingham’s work. My hat’s off to ya, Bill. Keep up the good work!

Anyway, back to our thrilling D&D adventure and the vaguely interesting exploits of Valerius, Indel, Grimslade and (yum!) Saren.

Soooo, we’re to Episode Three at last, in which the now much-better-drawn Valerius, Grimslade and “the mysterious Saren” (as the caption informs us) now search the dungeon for their lost companion, Indel. How do they do this, you ask? Well, by wandering around the dungeon, shouting Indel’s name.

Clearly our heroes aren’t terribly experienced with dungeoneering, since everyone knows that this is a pretty dumb thing to do. Sure enough, a band of evil goblins jumps from the shadows!! shouting “Get them!” and “Take their treasure!” as goblins are wont to do. Maybe next time they won’t go stomping about, making noise and bellowing at the top of their lungs.

Grimslade, all resplendent in his new white, wizardly beard, doesn’t bat an eye. He declares “Stand back! I’ll take care of them,” and sure enough in the next panel the goblins are all snoozing quietly. “A simple sleep spell stopped them!” Grimslade cries, while Valerius urges “Come…! We must find Indel!”

(Notice how everyone shouts in this strip, since every single piece of dialog ends in an exclamation point. They still haven’t learned that you need to keep quiet in a dungeon…)

Well, since Valerius mentioned Indel, we cut to the luckless (and somewhat clumsy) elf, who has tumbled down a shaft, shouting “Oh, my head!”, once more alerting any monsters that happen to be nearby, and this time it’s nothing so mundane as a bunch of goblins.

Indel (who is now blonde, even though last episode he had brown hair) mutters “A light from around that corner. Perhaps it’s a way out!” and blunders right toward it.

No such luck for Indel. After almost getting killed by green slime, then failing to find the secret trap door, he is now confronted by a glowering, green-eyed red dragon who, in typical draconic fashion, rumbles “Greetings, mortal worm!” to which Indel gulps “Oh my! I think I’m in trouble!”

That, Indel, is the understatement of the age, and just happens to be a pretty good cliffhanger to end our epic seven-panel strip on.

The next installment is the first one which Bill Willingham actually signed and opens with a recap of poor Indel (now once more a brunette) and his monstrous encounter. Indel should not despair however, for elsewhere the “mysterious” Saren tells her companions that “My powers tell me he’s behind this door,” while leaning forward against a door and displaying her rather curvaceous assets.

Valerius is all business however, and shouts “Then we must get through!” Clearly this dungeon was built by the low bidder for in the very next panel we’re told A mighty blow from the fighter’s shoulder opens the door with a crash, revealing Indel and his new scaly, firebreathing friend, who doesn’t look at all happy to see the intruders.

Well in the words of AC/DC, if you want blood, you got it, and as Valerius unsheathes his new magic sword and says “Now it’s your turn, dragon!” we’re primed and ready for some heavy-duty combat, with magical steel and courage pitted against dragonfire and magic. Wow, what a showdown it’s going to be… We’ve been waiting months for this and now…

Now, the dragon looks at the glowing yellow sword and his face takes on the expression of a disappointed puppy. “The great sword Naril!” he whines. “Stay your hand, warrior! You and your friends may leave in peace!”

Aw, crap! After all that buildup the great worm caves like a house of cards and lets our heroes escape unscathed. It’s kind of like Sauron’s army issuing from the Black Gate, only to have the big guy say, “Hey, Aragorn! Only kidding! You can be king and I’ll just leave, okay?”

So in the last panel, everyone’s smiling as if they’ve actually done more than just put some gobbos to sleep and bully a defenseless dragon. “What a day!” Indel says (laugh it up, buster… You’re the one who couldn’t find the stupid trap door). “Come!” replies the mysterious Sarel. “Gavin’s Inn has a warm fire to relax by.”

And so ends the first incredibly lame installment of Dungeons and Dragons comic book ads. The caption urges us to Watch for Indel and his friends in upcoming Dungeons and Dragons adventures! but it just doesn’t seem worth it at this point.

What I’m seeing here is evidence of TSR’s great 1980s wimpout. As D&D grew more ubiquitous and widely known, that whole stupid “D&D makes kids worship demons and kill themselves” trope grew with it. TSR was determined to become a wholesome family game company, and if they showed what really went on in D&D games (and in the pages of a comic book read by children yet!) they’d probably end up adding fuel to the fire. So as they removed references to demons and devils from 2E they also produced the infamous Dungeons and Dragons Saturday morning cartoon show (which featured a band of dumbass kids transformed into obscure D&D player classes such as acrobat, cavalier and barbarian, then set loose in D&D land along with the bleating horror known as Uni the Unicorn), and pap like these comic ads in which goblins are gently put to sleep and dragons are intimidated into letting the heroes escape.

Kill goblins? No sirree, not in our wholesome family game! We overcome monsters non-violently. After all, Valerius’ sword really doesn’t serve any purpose other than scaring off big lizards… If we actually had him stick it in something, that might be construed as violence, a thing that TSR and D&D would never, ever advocate!

Sorry, I wandered. We’re not done with the adventures of Valerius and company, since the strip ran for another four installments, longer than that other classic comic strip, the wretched Pinsom, which I blogged about a few months ago.

So we pick up our heroes’ adventures as they relax at Gavin’s, and for a few panels the story threatens to turn into a clip show.

Willingham’s art has evolved once more, growing more distinctive and detailed. There are a few slightly more “cartoony” elements to it (such as Saren’s surprised face in panel five), but overall it’s obvious that his artistic technique is improving by leaps and bounds.

Saren opens the strip by saying “That was a close call, eh Valerius?” (which it really wasn’t… the dragon was a complete and total pushover). Valerius — now with his helmet off, revealing a chisel-jaw and a full head of rich raven locks — replies, “Not nearly as close as our first adventure, Saren!”

Rolling his eyes upward Grimslade (now looking a little less angry mage-like and more peaceful and grandfatherly) reminisces, “It seems like only yesterday when we were introduced by my mentor, Grindal…”

And now of course we cut to a flashback, while Wayne and Garth wiggle their fingers and say “Doodle-oo, doodle-oo, doodle-oo,” and the wizened and balding Grindal (who looks an awful lot like Grimslade does now) encompasses the group with a wave of his hand, saying “…A healer, an elf and a fighter. They will be your companions on this quest, Grimslade.”

So your mentor gets to pick your companions for you? That seems kind of harsh, and I’d probably have issues with being given dungeoneering partners in that fashion, but Grimslade (younger now, with a ginger beard and a full head of hair) doesn’t seem to mind. The others all look pretty much the same, and the partnership turns out to be a match made in the seven heavens, for Grimslade then says that “We had to overcome many perils to find the fabulous Heart of Mekron!”

Now here they do show Saren and Valerius fighting a black dragon, but all the curvaceous Saren is doing is casting a defensive spell while bold Valerius just holds up his sword. Not exactly a rip-roaring blood-and-thunder melee, but I guess it’s better than just scaring the dragon off.

Grindal approves, since they don’t bother to sell the Heart of Mekron off for half book price, but instead bring it to him. He says, “You have all done well! You will make a fine wizard one day, Grimslade!”

All this reminiscing is strangely prescient, for now we cut back to the present, where a ghostly figure has appeared in the inn, wailing “HELLLP MEEE!”, causing Indel (who really is the Snails of the group) to fall backwards out of  his chair.

The apparition wastes no time in introducing himself. “It is I…” he begins, but Saren cuts him off, crying “Grindal!” Grimslade (who looks as if he’s had one too many) stares and says “GASP!!”

To be continued, kids. Where did the strange figure come from, what does he want, and what does fate have in store for our adventurers? Well, the fact is that we never do find out, any more than we learn that clod Pinsom’s destiny, but we’ve at least got a couple more strips to go before our heroes are consigned to limbo.

So with that I think I’ll bring this installment to a close, but stay tuned, for more descriptions of our brave adventurers’ brave adventures lie ahead. Personally I think they’re a pretty inept bunch of bunglers, but hey — at least they have their own comic strip, which is more than I ever had. See you all soon.

And oh yeah — Merry Christmas! Or Happy Solstice, Hanukkah, Festivus, Kwanza or whatever you’re celebrating. If we all wrote more gaming supplements, erotic swords and sorcery novels and blogged about trivialities, this would be a much happier world. Peace out.