Whew! Completed my 5th Edition conversion of Dave Hargrave's Arduin Dungeon #1 "Caliban" (1979) with five days to spare. A kind soul on the soon-to-be-ex Google+ Arduin Community gifted me some weapon card write-ups, and I was like "Oh $hit! I forgot about cards!" Dave Hargrave was big on handing out cards for magik items, and providing monster cards for DMs to use.
You can still purchase the Arduin Fantasy Card Collection from Emperors Choice on DriveThruRPG. Sadly none of the dungeon modules are presently available with their particular cards.
I used the card template that was shared with me to re-do the original basically OD&D write-ups to 5th Edition with somewhat funky results, but close enough for rock & roll.
It is also unfortunate that there is no clear way for any fan conversions to be publicly released to keep some of this Arduin fantasy alive. Of course Dave did "borrow" a ton of his ideas from other sources, which means a lot of the time there is a legally acceptable way to create a stat block based on Dave's third party source material. Emperor's choice, since they are sitting on the lion's share of Arduin intellectual property, ought to come up with some way to utilize the fan base to generate interest in the old Arduin classics.
Conversions into 5th Edition were fairly straightforward, probably the most I fudged on were experience points (ha, so am I that bad to think PCs level too fast?). Mostly I could find some root critter that was an aspect of what Dave had imagined, then just build in the other attributes. Many of Dave's beasties are amalgams of various thinks: Octopus-gorilla, Shadow and Titan, centaur-medusa, basilisk and griffin, etc. Easy-peasy to write up.
The magic items were fun too. Only trying to consider which ones required attunement was taxing.
The supporting gazette is the thing I wish I could share publicly. Around 50 pages of Arduin monsters, spells, and magik items. Oh well... Fight On Friday February 15th!
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