Let me indroduce myself first, I am Altin Gavranovic and ARPLE is my brain-child. I sealed my fate a good 7 years ago, when I first purchased a box with a big red dragon on it. It was in danish, and contained cheap paper cutouts of NPCs and PCs used in the game. It was a copy of AD&D.

Seven years later, I regularly attend roleplaying conventions and consider those who assume trenchcoats appropriate summer-wear in Sydney's 40 C summers the best kind of people to be locked in a room with for 3 or more hours. I'm a gamer, these are my annals.

ARPLE started because I didn't have access to gaming material. It's difficult to find AD&D supplements in the middle of Bangladesh, Egypt or any number of other exciting tropical locales I've had the pleasure of enduring during my time. Of course, it wasn't called ARPLE, or anything in particular for that matter back when I first created it. In the beggining it was a combat system that didn't need those rare D20's and a skill system that didn't require too much use of my precious, but decaying Player's Handbook.

As I matured, so did my gaming, and AD&D just didn't cut it anymore. I went through many many systems, including the deadly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying and the dice-heavy World of Darkness. I was most impressed by the GROUPS engine but found it far to complicated for the rules-light games (and gamers!) I found myself DMing for and with. So on a rainy Febuary afternoon, I decided to have a go at my own system.

ARPLE grew mainly out of my immagination and interaction with other gaming engines, especialy GROUPS, although the observant will spot quite a few influences from other gaming engines and systems. My original combat and skill systems remain pretty much intact from the early days of creation, but the rest of the the system undegoes almost daily changes. In fact, the ARPLE seen here is only the best of all the ideas and rules I came up with during a 2 year period during which I would pick this up once a month and twiddle with it for a day or two. In previous incarnations, ARPLE supported firearms, had a pathenon of gods, and even priest-like classes and abilities. In fact, character creation was based around the 4 basic classes that predominated early roleplaying before I decided to go with the GROUPS-inspired engine.

During this process I also decided that realism had been does as well as one could hope in the excellent Call of Cuthulu and that, anyway, there's no place for realism in fantasy gaming (unless you count Pendragon but that's hardly even fantasy). You'll notice, for example, that a begginging player character with strenght 8 can take more 3-4 axeblows and remain in full fighting form. However, in order to cater for all tastes, I included optional rules in the newer versions of ARPLE which increase realism but complicate the rules slightly.

I put up this site because I feel that ARPLE has reached a stage in which it is playable but still very much untried and untested. So here is the result of many hours of hard work and even more hours of rolling dice and pretending I was Milo the Archmage or Pilk the Master Thief along with my freinds; download it, read it, play it and enjoy it. And after that, if you'd like to send me a comment , please feel free to do so, your feedback is appreciated and, who knows, you might even be contributing to the Next Big Thing in roleplaying (hey, a guy can hope, right?).