Greg Stafford
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
game designer, publisher and shaman.
Glorantha and gaming
Stafford is perhaps most famous as the creator of the fantasy world of GloranthaGlorantha
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...
, but is also a prolific games designer - he was designer of Pendragon, he was co-designer of the 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...
, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant 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....
role-playing systems
Role-playing game system
A role-playing game system is a set of game mechanics used in a role-playing game to determine the outcome of a character's in-game actions...
, founder of the role-playing game companies Chaosium
Chaosium
Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing games 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...
and Issaries
Issaries, Inc.
Greg Stafford's Issaries, Inc. is a publishing house for mythic material. Its flagship game is HeroQuest ....
, designer of the 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....
, Nomad Gods, King Arthur’s Knights and Elric! board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s, and co-designer of the King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass is a 1999 computer game published by A Sharp. Set in the fictional world of Glorantha, it depicts the lives and fortunes of one of several barbarian clans, settling the untamed lands of Dragon Pass over the course of several decades...
computer game.
Greg Stafford's interest in roleplaying and gaming originated in his adolescent fascination with mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
. During his adolescent years he read anything he could find on the subject, and when he exhausted the libraries, he started to write his own stories in his freshman year at Beloit College
Beloit College
Beloit College is a liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin, USA. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, and has an enrollment of roughly 1,300 undergraduate students. Beloit is the oldest continuously operated college in Wisconsin, and has the oldest building of any college...
, in 1966. This was the start of the world of Glorantha.
Around 1974, Stafford created 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....
, a board game about the violent struggle between several cultures in the Dragon Pass region of Glorantha. In essence the game centered around the conflict between the barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
Kingdom of Sartar and the invading Lunar Empire, which has remained a central theme for Gloranthan publications since then.
Not able to find a publisher, Stafford founded a company of his own, Chaosium, in November 1975. At the same time the game of Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
(and the concept of tabletop role-playing games) was becoming extremely popular — role-players wanted to use the setting of White Bear and Red Moon in their own games, so Chaosium published 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...
, which was written by "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...
, Ray Turney, and Friends".
Despite Glorantha being the focus of his life's work, Greg considers his masterpiece
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
to be the Arthurian chivalric role-playing game Pendragon, which was published in 1985 by Chaosium, and republished in 2005 by White Wolf. Stafford won the Diana Jones Award
Diana Jones Award
The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in gaming". The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, product, publication, company, organization, event or trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does...
, 2007, for his work on Pendragon.
In 1999 Pyramid
Pyramid (magazine)
Pyramid is a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March...
magazine named Greg Stafford as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons "at least in the realm of adventure gaming."
Other works
Stafford is also a practicing shaman and member of the board of directors of Shaman's Drum, a journal of experiential shamanism. He has had some short articles of Arthurian interest published. Stafford recently lived in MexicoMexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
for 18 months, tutoring English as a foreign language, exploring places of archeological and shamanic interest.
For some years, Stafford has been slowly writing several novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s set in Glorantha. Novels that he is known to have been working on are Harmast's Saga, Arkat's Saga, and his "Lunar novel". He is currently finishing his first part of the Harmast Saga with the support of Friends of Glorantha.
He was one of the designers on the Glorantha based video game "King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass
King of Dragon Pass is a 1999 computer game published by A Sharp. Set in the fictional world of Glorantha, it depicts the lives and fortunes of one of several barbarian clans, settling the untamed lands of Dragon Pass over the course of several decades...
".
Miscellaneous
Fantasy author David A. HargraveDavid 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...
pays homage to Stafford in the 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...
series of supplements, the most widely know example of this being the Stafford's Star Bridge 9th-Level mage
Wizard (character class)
The Wizard is a type of magical character class in certain role-playing games and computer role-playing games. Wizards are considered to be spellcasters who wield powerful spells, but are often physically weak as a trade-off. Wizards are commonly confused with similar offensive spellcasting...
spell (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...
I, page 41).