Chaosium
Encyclopedia
Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing game
s still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford
, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon
, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods. White Bear and Red Moon is notable for containing the first published material about Glorantha
, later used as the primary setting for the role-playing games RuneQuest
, Hero Wars and HeroQuest
. Chaosium is the publisher of Call of Cthulhu
, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
(BRP). These generic rules formed the basis of many of Chaosium's later RPGs, such as Call of Cthulhu
, Stormbringer
, Nephilim, and Ringworld.
Chaosium and Greg Stafford
are also responsible for Pendragon, an Arthurian RPG now published by White Wolf, Inc.'s
ArtHaus imprint after a spell with Green Knight Publishing
. Other games of note include Mythos, Elfquest
, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld
, Hawkmoon
, Stormbringer
, and the frequently forgotten Prince Valiant
.
Several notable RPG authors have written material for Chaosium, including Steve Perrin
, Sandy Petersen
, Lynn Willis
, Keith Herber
, David Conyers
, Ken St. Andre
, and Arduin
creator David A. Hargrave
.
s, all of them defunct, had been published by Chaosium to promote its products:
, Portuguese
, Japanese
, German
, Spanish
and Italian
, and were available in France
from Jeux Descartes
, in Germany
from Pegasus Press, in Spain
from Joc Internacional and La factoría de ideas and in Italy
from Stratelibri and Grifo Edizioni.
In the mid-1980s, Chaosium entered into a complex arrangement with Avalon Hill
to publish RuneQuest material while Chaosium maintained editorial control over Glorantha-based material for the game (which Avalon Hill would publish). While this agreement reportedly kept the company in existence, it also left RuneQuest moribund, leading to products of questionable quality, long gaps with no products published at all, and, eventually, the death of the game altogether.
craze, Chaosium released the Mythos
CCG. Initially it was a great success, but the crash hit hard.
In the late 1990s, Chaosium effectively split up into various successor companies, each maintaining its focus on a few of the company's products. Green Knight Publishing
formed to focus on Pendragon, Chaosium "proper" retained Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, and Mythos, while Greg Stafford founded Issaries, Inc.
to publish HeroQuest
and focus on bringing new Glorantha
related material into print. Also, Wizard's Attic (no longer in business) was formed in order to act as a fulfillment house
. Charlie Krank became president when Stafford left.
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
s still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford
Greg Stafford
Francis Gregory Stafford , usually known as Greg Stafford, is an American game designer, publisher and shaman.-Glorantha and gaming:...
, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon
White Bear and Red Moon
White Bear and Red Moon is a fantasy board wargame set in the world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford and published in 1975. Stafford set up the Chaosium game publishing company solely to produce and market the game....
, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods. White Bear and Red Moon is notable for containing the first published material about Glorantha
Glorantha
Glorantha is the Fantasy world created by Greg Stafford and since used as the background for several role-playing games, including RuneQuest , Hero Wars and HeroQuest , as well as several works of fiction and the computer strategy game King of Dragon Pass...
, later used as the primary setting for the role-playing games RuneQuest
RuneQuest
RuneQuest is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1978 by Chaosium, created by Steve Perrin and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of Glorantha. RuneQuest was notable for its original gaming system and for its verisimilitude in adhering to an original fantasy world...
, Hero Wars and HeroQuest
HeroQuest (role-playing game)
HeroQuest is a narrativist role-playing game written by Robin D. Laws and published by Moon Design Publications under license from Issaries, Inc....
. Chaosium is the publisher of Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...
, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
Background
The rules of RuneQuest, Chaosium's first role-playing game, were distilled down into a generic, genre-neutral format known as Basic Role-PlayingBasic Role-Playing
Basic Role-Playing is a role-playing game system which originated in the fantasy-oriented RuneQuest role-playing game rules...
(BRP). These generic rules formed the basis of many of Chaosium's later RPGs, such as Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...
, Stormbringer
Stormbringer (role-playing game)
The Stormbringer fantasy role-playing game published by Chaosium puts the players in the world of the Young Kingdoms, based on the Elric of Melniboné books by Michael Moorcock. The game takes its name from Elric’s sword, Stormbringer...
, Nephilim, and Ringworld.
Chaosium and Greg Stafford
Greg Stafford
Francis Gregory Stafford , usually known as Greg Stafford, is an American game designer, publisher and shaman.-Glorantha and gaming:...
are also responsible for Pendragon, an Arthurian RPG now published by White Wolf, Inc.'s
White Wolf, Inc.
White Wolf Publishing is an American gaming and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine, and was initially led by Mark Rein·Hagen of the former and Steve and Stewart Wieck of the latter. Since White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with...
ArtHaus imprint after a spell with Green Knight Publishing
Green Knight Publishing
Green Knight Publishing was founded by Peter Corless after he bought the rights to the award-winning Pendragon role-playing game from Chaosium in 1998. From 1999 to 2001, Green Knight published supplements for the role-playing game, in which players take on the roles of knights and ladies...
. Other games of note include Mythos, Elfquest
Elfquest
Elfquest is a cult hit comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978. It is a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons. Several published volumes of prose fiction also...
, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld
Superworld
Superworld is a superhero-themed role-playing game published by Chaosium in 1983. Written by Basic Role-Playing and RuneQuest author Steve Perrin, Superworld began as one third of the Worlds of Wonder product, which also included a generic fantasy setting, "Magic World", and a generic science...
, Hawkmoon
Hawkmoon
Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln is one of the fictional characters created by Michael Moorcock in his series of the Eternal Champion books.-Overview:Dorian Hawkmoon is one of the less "problematic" characters Moorcock ever created a series around...
, Stormbringer
Stormbringer
Stormbringer is the name of the infamous black sword featured in a number of fantasy stories by the author Michael Moorcock. Created by the forces of Chaos, it is described as a huge, black sword covered with strange runes carved deep into its blade...
, and the frequently forgotten Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant (role-playing game)
Prince Valiant: The Story-Telling Game is the official role-playing game based on Hal Foster's comic strip of the same name. Created by Greg Stafford the game was first published by Stafford's company, Chaosium, in 1989.-Setting:...
.
Several notable RPG authors have written material for Chaosium, including Steve Perrin
Steve Perrin
Stephen Herbert Perrin, born January 22 1946 and simply known as Steve Perrin, is a game designer and technical writer/editor.Perrin is probably best known for creating the role-playing game RuneQuest for Chaosium...
, Sandy Petersen
Sandy Petersen
Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen is a game designer.Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology....
, Lynn Willis
Lynn Willis
Lynn Willis is a wargame and role-playing game designer who has done work for Metagaming Concepts, Game Designers' Workshop, and Chaosium.Willis began by designing science fiction wargames for Metagaming, starting with the Godsfire in 1976. He also designed the microgames Olympica and Holy War...
, Keith Herber
Keith Herber
Keith "Doc" Herber was an American author, editor, and musician.Herber was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was known for his work on Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. He was employed by Chaosium from 1989 through 1994...
, David Conyers
David Conyers
David Conyers writes predominantly science fiction and Lovecraftian horror.Most of his childhood was spent in the Adelaide Hills, before moving to Melbourne. There he achieved a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the University of Melbourne in 1993...
, Ken St. Andre
Ken St. Andre
Kenneth Eugene St. Andre is a retired public librarian, fantasy author, and game designer, best known for his work with Tunnels & Trolls. He has been an active member of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since 1989.-General information:St. Andre was born in Ogden, Utah. He lives...
, and Arduin
Arduin
Arduin is a fictional universe and fantasy role-playing system created in the mid 1970s by David A. Hargrave. It was perhaps the first "cross-genre" fantasy RPG, with everything from interstellar wars to horror and historical drama, although it was based primarily in the medieval fantasy...
creator David A. Hargrave
David A. Hargrave
David Allen Hargrave , known as The Dream Weaver, was a prolific and sometimes controversial game designer and writer of fantasy and science fiction role-playing games...
.
Magazines
Three magazineMagazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s, all of them defunct, had been published by Chaosium to promote its products:
- Wyrm's Footnotes ran for fourteen issues from 1976 to 1995. Initially it was a supporting material publication for White Bear and Red Moon but for its 11th issue, in 1981, it had become the official RuneQuest magazine.
- Different WorldsDifferent WorldsDifferent Worlds was an American role-playing games' magazine, now defunct.-History:Different Worlds was launched in 1979 by Greg Stafford to promote the role-playing games from his own editing house, Chaosium...
. Forty-seven bimonthly issues from Different Worlds were published. Chaosium, from 1979 to 1985, published the thirty-eight first ones and Sleuth Publications, from 1985 to 1987, the nine last ones. In spite of being an old Chaosium's and Stafford's collaborator, Tadashi Ehara was the editor of the magazine during the periods concerned by both publishing houses. - Starry Wisdom, a Lovecraft themed magazine, three issues of which Chaosium published in 1997.
Distribution
Some Chaosium products have been translated into FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and were available in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
from Jeux Descartes
Jeux Descartes
Jeux Descartes was a French publisher of roleplaying games and board games. Their most popular lines included: Eurogames, a set of serious board games, previously published by Duccio Vitale's independent company; Blue Games, small card games for larger groups; and Games for Two.Jeux Descartes was...
, in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
from Pegasus Press, in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
from Joc Internacional and La factoría de ideas and in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
from Stratelibri and Grifo Edizioni.
In the mid-1980s, Chaosium entered into a complex arrangement with Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...
to publish RuneQuest material while Chaosium maintained editorial control over Glorantha-based material for the game (which Avalon Hill would publish). While this agreement reportedly kept the company in existence, it also left RuneQuest moribund, leading to products of questionable quality, long gaps with no products published at all, and, eventually, the death of the game altogether.
Failed ventures/new directions
In response to the collectible card gameCollectible card game
thumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
craze, Chaosium released the Mythos
Mythos (card game)
Mythos is a collectible card game published by Chaosium. It is based on the Cthulhu Mythos stories of the horror author H. P. Lovecraft, as well as on Chaosium's own Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.-Overview:...
CCG. Initially it was a great success, but the crash hit hard.
In the late 1990s, Chaosium effectively split up into various successor companies, each maintaining its focus on a few of the company's products. Green Knight Publishing
Green Knight Publishing
Green Knight Publishing was founded by Peter Corless after he bought the rights to the award-winning Pendragon role-playing game from Chaosium in 1998. From 1999 to 2001, Green Knight published supplements for the role-playing game, in which players take on the roles of knights and ladies...
formed to focus on Pendragon, Chaosium "proper" retained Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, and Mythos, while Greg Stafford founded Issaries, Inc.
Issaries, Inc.
Greg Stafford's Issaries, Inc. is a publishing house for mythic material. Its flagship game is HeroQuest ....
to publish HeroQuest
HeroQuest (role-playing game)
HeroQuest is a narrativist role-playing game written by Robin D. Laws and published by Moon Design Publications under license from Issaries, Inc....
and focus on bringing new Glorantha
Glorantha
Glorantha is the Fantasy world created by Greg Stafford and since used as the background for several role-playing games, including RuneQuest , Hero Wars and HeroQuest , as well as several works of fiction and the computer strategy game King of Dragon Pass...
related material into print. Also, Wizard's Attic (no longer in business) was formed in order to act as a fulfillment house
Fulfillment house
A fulfillment house is a company specializing in product fulfillment services, on behalf of the product owner.- Fulfillment house overview :...
. Charlie Krank became president when Stafford left.