Greg Stafford

Francis Gregory Stafford (February 9, 1948 – October 10, 2018) was an American game designer, publisher, and practitioner of shamanism.

Stafford is most famous as the creator of the fantasy world of Glorantha, but he was also a prolific games designer. He was designer of Pendragon, he was co-designer of the RuneQuest, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant and HeroQuest role-playing systems, founder of the role-playing game companies Chaosium and Issaries, designer of the White Bear and Red Moon, Nomad Gods, King Arthur's Knights and Elric board games, and co-designer of the King of Dragon Pass computer game.

Gaming industry career 1970s: Chaosium Greg Stafford began wargaming with U-Boat by Avalon Hill, and in 1966 as a freshman at Beloit College he began to create the fantasy world of Glorantha. After rejection from a publisher, Stafford created White Bear and Red Moon set in Glorantha, and after three different companies were unable to publish the game, he founded Chaosium. He designed the board game Nomad Gods. He co-designed the Ghostbusters role-playing game (1986).

In June 2015, Stafford and Sandy Petersen returned to Chaosium Inc., with Stafford taking the positions of President and CEO.

Stafford died at his home in Arcata on October 10, 2018, at the age of 70.

Glorantha

Greg Stafford's interest in roleplaying and gaming originated in his adolescent fascination with mythology. 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, in 1966. This was the start of the world of Glorantha.

Stafford's 1974 board game White Bear and Red Moon had featured the violent struggle between several cultures in the Dragon Pass region of Glorantha. The heart of the game was a conflict between the barbarian Kingdom of Sartar and the invading Lunar Empire, a theme which has remained central to Gloranthan publications since then.

As Stafford was founding his company Chaosium, the game Dungeons & Dragons (and the concept of tabletop role-playing games) was gaining great popularity. Role-players were keen to use the White Bear and Red Moon setting in such games. So Chaosium published RuneQuest, written by "Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, and Friends". Stafford left Chaosium in 1998.

For some years, Stafford slowly wrote several novels 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 was one of the designers on the Glorantha-based video game King of Dragon Pass.

Shamanism-related works

Stafford was a practicing shaman and member of the board of directors of Shaman's Drum, a journal of experiential shamanism. He had some short articles of Arthurian interest published. Stafford lived in Mexico for 18 months, tutoring English as a foreign language, and exploring places of archeological and shamanic interest.

Honors and reception Fantasy author David A. Hargrave pays homage to Stafford in the Arduin series of supplements, the most widely known example of this being the Stafford's Star Bridge 9th-Level mage spell (Arduin I, page 41).

Stafford was inducted in the Origins Award hall of fame in 1987.

In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Greg Stafford one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, "at least in the realm of adventure gaming."

Stafford won the Diana Jones Award in 2007, for The Great Pendragon Campaign, published by White Wolf and in 2015 for Guide to Glorantha, coauthored with Jeff Richard and Sandy Petersen and published by Moon Design Publications

He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being featured as the king of hearts in Flying Buffalo's 2011 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck.