The geographic regions and real-world influences are: Mythical continents are also added: In the 1980s a group of friends — Vernie Taylor, Steven Cordovano, and Stephan Michael Sechi — who played a highly customized version of Dungeons & Dragons with new, specialized character classes and magic spells, decided to publish their improvements to the game.

The setting was a bit more unique, as it portrayed an antediluvian world of myth (though it also contained some off-key elements including typical fantasy races of D&D and even druids).

[5] In 2005, Khepera Publishing released Atlantis: The Second Age[6] replacing Bard Game's original role-playing rules with Morrigan Press's Omni System.

The following year, doing business as ZiLa Games, Ladage ran a Kickstarter to re-release The Arcanum in a new, cleaned up and re-edited form.

Frances had good things to say about both The Lexicon — "oodles of pretty maps" — and The Bestiary — "my favourite because of the illustrations by Bill Sienkiewicz (of Marvel Comics).

As a supplement [to another role-playing game such as Dungeons & Dragons] Arcanum is unsurpassed, easily one of the best treatments of magic ever published."

Swan concluded by giving the game a rating of 3 out of 4, saying, "For those interested in expanding the magic systems of other fantasy RPGs, Arcanum serves as an excellent source of ideas.