If he is the one running the game, set aside some of the regularly scheduled sessions to create Arduin Eternal characters and play Arduin Eternal. Make sure his adventure is awesome and make sure the players get what they want during character creation and during play, even if it means tweaking the rules for maximum game fun. If they have a good time, they will want to play it more. Another thought is to run a few sessions in the DND 3.5 game intended to conclude the campaign at the same time you are introduing Arduin Eternal.

I am a player in Anima RPG on Saturdays with my main group and I am going to start up GM'ing Arduin on Fridays with a different group who have told me they don't mind trying out new things. I am still recovering from open heart surgery ( 6-22-2011 ) so I am really house bound still. I do feel well enough at this date to start to want to get back in the action but some of the Saturday group have said that while my house is large enough to play I have too many distractions from my family.

I am cool with that, but don't feel well enough to travel far from my house and I don't have my driving privileges back from my doctor yet anyway.

So some of my friends are willing to travel to the gimp's place to play Arduin. I hope to get a great game going, we generated characters for a husband and wife team tonight and hopefully I will get at least two or three more players soon. I am not in a hurry to start it, as long as we can get everyone's character generated and the sessions started before the end of August I will be happy.

I really enjoy the Arduin Eternal system; I have been aware of it since 1983. I never owned any of the books until I bought the entire little booklet set in 2006. I liked how it was the same cover and style of print that the original White Box D&D was. Yes, I still have my WHite Box booklets around somewhere.

I do enjoy Warhammer 40K's Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch/Black Crusade series, but the game is always so...dark. It is refreshing to let the hair down and play a game where you can have fun without the possibility of summoning a major daemon every time you cast a spell (happened twice to our group; yes a Bloodthirster level daemon was summoned each time)

I guess my ramblings are meant to say, you have to know your players well enough to tell them it is a good system to learn to play. If the players can wrap their heads around Anima (I am really having trouble with the system) then they should have no problem with Arduin Eternal. AE is a far more intuitive system than Anima; ie it is easier for me to grasp. I am not saying it is a simpler system than Anima, by no means it is not. With my own RPG background it has simply been much more enjoyable for me to learn AE than Anima.

Thanks for reading my totally non-sensical rant.

Thanks, Starric! I do have a game question tho.

Arduin Compleat was chock full of all sorts of character races and monsters as well. The new Bestiary and Treasures was a great book, but was less than I was hoping for in the numbers of monsters. I seriously miss just the simple "wolf" or other animal encounter I can slip on the characters.

Is there any plans to have another book out with a wider variety of critters? Everything looked so....DEADLY pretty much. Not good for a beginner party. I can TRY to creat a lot of my own stats and available traits but you guys are for more familiar with the system than I am.

I noticed some feedback on a thread about characters and how much time to put into NPC'S. I personally am making some spreadsheets to auto-calculate all the stats and add everything up for me sot I can print a generic character for each race. I plan on making the Orcs and encounters with creatures like that just cookie cutter monsters but with enough bite from the new system on the sheets to make them say "SQUEE...." during the encounters.

For instance, I chose the "Savage" class for the Orcs and just used average Orc stats to plug into the character sheet. When I am satisfied, I'll print the sheet out and when I want them to run into a certain number of "Proficient" level Orcs I just turn the page in my binder.

If I want an Orc Caster, then I'll plug the stats into a "Medicine Man" file and print that out as well. I'll have a separate sheet for each level of the characters I do. In other words, I'll have a spreadsheet for "Proficient" Savage Orcs, "Trained" Savage Orc, all the way up the ladder. Lots of work for me. But I really love this new system. I don't add in Racial Choices, I consider the Players to be slightly better so they get those choices but the NPC's don't. The NPC's DO get the Racial Traits.

Each level the NPC's get a number of ranks suggested in the back of the book, I do allow the NPC's to use the full EPS instead of having to lose ranks to get the Secrets. Basically a Legendary Savage Orc would have 30 beginning Skill Ranks plus at least 570 that he has gained over the years along with 27 EPS to spend on Secrets. A little different than you had listed, but I just didn't want to try and figure out how old each Orc was. The only breaking factor is how many Skill Ranks will I allow a Legendary Savage Orc. I feel the group may have other concerns on their minds if they ever meet that orc....

I'm sure this effort would not work for most of the community.

Pretty much every creature not covered in Arduin Eternal that is present in Arduin Compleat. For example, wolves, giants, regular ogres and Vampyrs are not in the new Bestiary. What about the stats on horses? How many HP's do they generally have?

What would be cool would be if every creature was statted out so that if a player character wanted to play a giant he could. Giants' stats were present in Arduin Compleat, I did not see giants or Titans mentioned in AE like they were in AC2.

Not trying to be picky, I was just hoping for all the creatures that were in AC2 to be present.

If I have time tomorrow I will make a list of every creature in AC2 and every creature present in AE to see the difference.

Ok, cool! I was afraid that you were going to pretty much put out that one book and move on to other AE projects from there.

I so enjoy the system, it gives me great excitement. Excitement I have not had in years. (I have played various mostly non-d20 based RPG's since 1974) I find that there has been some online "resistance" to the system, but I personally enjoy it. It combines the best of so many systems I enjoy: Rolemaster, BRP, D&D White box Edition, 1st Ed D&D, and a "house" D&D based game called "Cal-Tech D&D"; a percentile based combat system that used damage dice similar to AE.

Thanks for the reply, Monty

Monty;

I started the list, then had a heart attack this past Thursday. With your subsequent reply I won't waste my time completing the list.

Chris

Chris,

I hope you are ok? Please let us know ASAP!

-Dave

Yes, pretty much, thanks Dave!

I had to have two stints put in on Friday and when I went to Physical Therapy yesterday they told me I had to wait two weeks and would have to restart more than likely. I was halfway thru! Totally bummed...

I still have twinges every now and then but I manage a game shop my brother owns so I don't have time for any more hospital stays. I had to close it when I had my open heart surgery and just recently re-opened it in a new, cheaper and better location.