Join me in Celebrating Dave Hargrave Day May 25th

Join me in celebrating Dave Hargrave Day, today May 25th his birthday. I am new to Dave Hargrave and to Arduin, so this will be my first impressions after looking through Volume I, The Arduin Grimoire. It is easy for me to see why he was called The Dream Weaver.

This first volume is just a hodge podge of everything he thought of. There is no editing, it is all very raw and in your face, a stream of consciousness effort. This is what we would love to see from all the creative people, everything unedited and then as DMs and players we get the fun of sorting through it. Brilliant stuff side by side with just silliness. Gonzo and over the top, nothing held back and yeah, this is the kind of game I want to have, where my players are open to anything.

When you can play like this, you can go anywhere because no you have freedom to explore and create and keep what you like and discard the rest.  Dave Hargrave did us a great favor in that he put it all in there and let us decide what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to discard instead of doing it for us. I like that, especially because sometimes it seems like authors discard the good stuff and we never see it and they only give us the things that we discard and roll our eyes going "where is the good stuff?" But Dave Hargrave gave us his diamonds and his chunks of coal, and said, "Here it is, take a look, I'm sure you will like something." And we do like a lot of it.

I like all of the tables, with information like the Age of Majority for Fantastic Creatures. The table says Pixies are adult at 30 but Phraints are adult at 12, and Afreets are adult at 100. How cool is all that, but it is modular, you don't have to use it unless you want to. You can use all this stuff to tailor your campaign to whatever you want it to be. Me I like looking at his tables and then thinking of other tables that I could make myself.

Special abilities tables, several of them, all kinds of classes including the Merchant Class. Or how about the Rune Weaver, I want to know more about the Rune Weaver.

One of the highlights is the Mulitversal Trading Company Price List in Gold Soverigns with things like an aerial saddle, artificial limbs and a hand hook of steel or iron. How about buying a Rapier instead of a short sword or a long sword.

Dave Hargrave and Arduin pass the real test of usability and that is does it inspire you to do something yourself in response that is a resounding yes!

Happy Birthday Dave Hargrave!