David A. Hargrave - Role Playing Games

Role Playing Games

From the mid-1970s through 1988 David A. Hargrave was very active in the role-playing community. He authored ten books based upon this Arduin game world. Hargrave also produced four Arduin Dungeon Modules and several fantasy item collections, which were published by Grimoire Games.

Hargrave's work was perhaps the first "cross-genre" venture into fantasy RPG, and it included everything from interstellar wars to horror and historical drama. His work was, however, based principally upon the traditional (and not so traditional) medieval fantasy genre.

Arduin was one of the earliest challengers to TSR's Dungeons & Dragons, and a leading representative of the high-entropy, multiversal campaigns then prevalent in RPG circles. While Hargrave was considered one of the best of the best of Game Masters, he was also known for having a somewhat volatile personality. The original role-playing community at large was split between love and mere tolerance of Hargrave's passions (his falling-out with Greg Stafford, which resulted in Hargrave naming a spell after him as revenge, is one such example.)

Hargrave also frequently contributed to various magazines such as Different Worlds, Alarums and Excursions, and Abyss. As a game designer, he authored various Call of Cthulhu adventures for Chaosium, Inc., and was an integral part of the design team for the sci-fi game Star Rovers, among others.

Circa 1979 Hargrave operated a game store in Concord, California, called Multiversal Trading Company.

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