David Hargrave, the Dream Weaver of Arduin

A chance post on the lead Adventure Forum reminded me of David Hargrave, one of the prominent gamers from the California scene in the mid 70s to the late 80s. I cane across him through his first three books, the Arduin Trilogy, which looked strongly like the original 3 D&D books right down to the brown covers. Technically, you could just his three books for gaming if you were experienced, but in reality they were used to supplement D&D campaigns.

The first three books, and the later ones – there were 9 by the time he died in 1988, in addition to adventures and other materials – gave some detail on his campaign world of Arduin. It was one of those early kitchen-sink gonzo campaigns, which, while ostensibly based in on the traditional medieval fantasy paradigm, featured technology and spaceships and aliens and multiple dimensions. Similar to Judges’ Guild’s Wilderlands setting, but with the weirdness turned up to 11. An average adventuring party might be comprised of an Amazon, a Techno with a ray gun, an insectoid Phraint, and a dwarven gladiator. Variety and experimentation with rules and concepts were the backbone of Hargrave’s game.

I remember my cousin David had those three books first, and I found them tremendously inspiring reading through them. Most of the adventurers were shown getting killed by strange monsters, and all the variant rules and classes and wonderful illustrations and bizarre world lore were too damn cool. The lists of known dungeons in the back of the first book, listing how much each had been explored, built a longing in me to create such a worthy roster of hideous locations. All the extolling of dead companions and the few successful adventurers sang to me of a vivid world. In fact, Arduin was part of the Multiverse as he explained it, and that may have been one of the first times such a concept was used in gaming.

There were some controversies, and maybe I should have turned this into a research piece; but there are already a few out there on the net. I just wanted to give a shout out to a gamer whose works were inspiring and influential on me.

There is a company that has kept his work alive, Emperor’s Choice, through reprinting his original books and editing other documents into new books. They have an atlas of his world of Khaas, which contains the lands of Arduin. they also sell some minis of his stranger monsters. I am very glad to see that his vision is still being sustained in this age of gaming.

Dave passed away in his sleep from heart complications and his diabetes, according to Wikipedia, in 1988. The Us Army vet who had served for 6 years in ‘Nam was only 42.

Hoist a mug of Rumble Tummy’s Ale to the Dream Weaver, and all who stood against the tides of Chaos on Arduin and everywhere in the Multiverse!