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Greg Stafford Condolence Thread


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RIP Greg Stafford.

I cannot relay how important it was for me to escape into Chaosium's Call of C'thulhu (i.e. H.P. Lovecraft's 1920s) & RuneQuest's Glorantha when I was young.
I have so *many* happy memories, and life-long friendships made face-to-face and over the table playing your games.

Thank you so much!

-Jerry M. Chaney II

“Nothing on the face of this earth --and I do mean nothing- is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.”
-- Master Li Kao (Tang Dynasty)

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Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan. One giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. –The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

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So sad to hear this. I never got to meet him, but his influence on my gaming choices is beyond words. I once wrote to Chaosium being a precocious Swedish teenager in the late eighties to pose some questions about Stormbringer and Elfquest, and got the nicest reply back straight from Greg himself. Rest in peace, Mr Stafford. 

Edited by Farandar
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I'm like everyone else here immensely saddened by the news that Greg has left us. My heartfelt sympathies go out to his family, friends and colleagues everywhere. My life has been greatly blessed by Greg's writing and the wonderful games that he's bequeathed to us all. His spirit will continue to enrich all of us through his body of work for many generations to come. I have very fond memories of meeting Greg a few times at earlier Continuum conventions here in the UK and he enthralled me by taking the time to grace us with playtesting his upcoming mass battle rules for Pendragon and at a RuneQuest seminar encouraged me , who timidly plucked up the courage to ask a question ( and at the same time having to admit I'd got no experience of gaming in Glorantha or where I might best start that wonderful journey yet to come ) , he was gracious and warm with his response and I immediately felt welcomed in to the Gloranthan tribe and my nervousness melted away. His advice was one I can wholeheartedly pass on to those who ask me and one that is echoed by others, start small, don't worry about the bigger landscape of Glorantha and start with exploring the wonders of Dragon Pass. When I've wiped away the tears and raised a few glasses to his memory later I intend to roll up a new character or two using the wonderful new rulebook I received in the post from Chaosium only a week or so ago and set off on adventures new with Greg firmly in my thoughts as I do so. We are all us....RIP 

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„Der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.“

-- Friedrich Schiller

Human only plays when in complete fulfilment of the word human, and human is only fully human when playing.

Goodbye Greg, homo ludens, playing/playful human being, and thank you for sharing your inspiration and imagination with all of us. You're missed, and you will be remembered whenever we play in your worlds.

 

640px-BurgBacharachInnenhof.jpg

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So many thanks for everything you did, Greg. RuneQuest changed my life back in 1979, and is still my game of choice. I gamed better, I was inspired to learn much more about myth in general, and I made a number of lifelong friends, including my lady of thirty years. Condolences, hugs, and gentle songs to Suzanne and to the rest of your family. 

Edited by filkertom
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Back when I was a teenager, I started to pick up Runequest stuff because that's what all the cool kids in the APAs were talking about. The rules were fine, a little confusing, and a little deadly. The next summer I went to I picked up Cults of Prax. It probably kicked around for a few weeks after before I got around to reading it. I remember sitting on my mom's couch just riveted.

Suddenly, this world from the rulebook made sense, but all these other things made sense too. I knew it was a fictional world, but suddenly I "got" the way that the connections between mythology and a religion and culture centered around them would actually function. Encountering Glorantha didn't just change my gaming, it changed my life. I explored alternative spirituality. I studied anthropology and world religion. As I thought about his loss today, I am just in awe of exactly how much a simple RPG setting has had on the direction of my life.

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"North of Dragon Pass, in the region called Peloria, there arose the Red Moon Goddess.  In her were balanced Constancy and Change, Life and Death, Love and Indifference, and all the dichotomies of the Universe, including a touch of Chaos.  Her arrival changed the face of the land."

So too did Greg's arrival change the face of gaming and helped launch the world of tabletop roleplaying which I discovered in the form of RuneQuest back in 1982.  

12 years later at RQ Con 1, I met Greg for the first time where I had the chance to talk about my explorations of Glorantha, Imther and the Lunar Empire.  That began a correspondence with Greg through which he shared his thoughts and guidance as I explored the mythic side of Saird, Sylila, and the Lunar provinces.  He was happy to help in that exploration even though little of my work in that period has surfaced beyond a few fanzines.

While we talked more in person at RQ Con 2, my favorite memory of Greg was during a trip to the Bay Area in 2001.  Chaosium was in the former naval yard in Oakland at the time and Greg invited me to visit and gave me a personal tour of the offices including much of the unpublished files.  We had dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in Berkeley.  A very enjoyable day!

I'm sad to hear the news of his passing, but glad that he was able to see the restoration of Chaosium and the return of RuneQuest to its roots.  Condolences to all his family!

 

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It's sad that I couldn't get to know about Glorantha ealier in my life. I'm from China. Pretty much nobody in China before me really knew anything about Glorantha. I only picked it up a few years ago.

I hope Greg would be pleased to know that his words spread way beyond what he had imagined. There is a community growing in China. And I will continue to spread his vision wherever I go. That's the least that I can do. Condolence to Greg's family.

RIP Greg

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My deepest condolances to Greg's family and close ones, this is deeply tragic.

While my own sorrow is of a much smaller nature, I'm still profoundly saddened by his passing, even though I'm just a novice in Glorantha. What struck me about his works, both literary and world-building, is that they had a seemingly never-ending depth that allowed players and enthusiasts alike to play around, and develop themselves while doing it - indeed, Glorantha is one of the very few settings where this is actively encouraged, imho, it being a fundamental force of the setting, far beyond runes or gods.

Rest in peace, and may your shamanic experiences see you safely to a good, pleasant Otherside.

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It is strange for me to put into words my thoughts on Greg Stafford. I never met the man in person. I wanted to do that so much, I was making very real plans on how to attend GenCon so I can finally see him in person.
 
I wanted to shake his hand, and thank him from the bottom of my heart for giving me the life that I have right now. Because, indirectly, he very much did that. My job, how I view myself, the woman I love. All of those came very directly from Glorantha, and thus from it's Great Shaman. I would like to think that Greg would have enjoyed that, and I am filled with such deep regret that I never got to do this.
 
All I can say, is that the man created something truly, and utterly beautiful and unique. He brought magic and wonder into our world and also into my own life. For that, I shall forever be grateful to him. The only thing now left to do is to mourn his passing, to honour his memory with one of his many games, and for me personally - To strive to maintain the man's legacy and his great work through my own.
 
Rest in Peace, Greg. We Are All Us!
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I only got into Glorantha 20 years into my gaming career but looking back I now realize what a massive influence Greg had on pretty much game I've ever played.  Looking back on games of Over the Edge, Vampire, Amber, Everway, Kult and a long litany of Indy games I've played in the 21st century, they *all* have DNA that traces back to RuneQuest, Pendragon, Prince Valiant or all three.

As someone who prides himself on creating his own game worlds from the ground up, Glorantha remains the sole world that I am deeply personally bought into and from which I derive huge pleasure in exploring.

Gods rest ye, Greg, by whichever door you exit the Courts of Silence.

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Deepest condolences to Stafford's family, his friends, and Chaosium.  This news is still sinking in with me, which is a sign of the breadth of his accomplishments and his interests and the reach of his influence and his inspiration.

I vividly remember when I first picked up Cults of Terror how Stafford's Glorantha was working on a completely different plane than other fantasy RPGs at the time.  With all due respect to Gygax* and Arneson, their RPG settings were a great goulash of Appendix N sources, but Stafford's original world felt like he was exploring an authentic but unknown mythology, one that merited serious consideration (inasmuch as one should take a game seriously).  Add to that imagination, his talent for game design—Pendragon's adaptation of Arthurian cycle is the best of any literary topic out there —and his dedication to publishing made him an indispensable figure.  Without his work, my interest in the hobby would have been stuck in the early stages and eventually dwindled away.  Stafford's still accumulating interest on the debt I owe him.

* As WoC's Mike Mearls puts it, "Gygax may have created the modern RPG, but Stafford defined it."

Edited by Travern
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Truly saddened to hear of Greg's death. If Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson flung open the gates to imagination with their RPG writings it was Greg who invited the Gods into play :)

In my mind not just one of the Greats of Gaming, but one who made it Epic! Thanks Greg :)

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Head Honcho of D101 Games
Publisher of Crypts and Things/Monkey/OpenQuest/River of Heaven
The Sorcerer Under the Mountain

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The person that set me off in 1979, thanks to him I can look back on near to 40 years of roleplaying, and most of the time I spent with one of his creations as the rulebook of choice.  Thank you for your inspiration, both in games, writing, and ideas. You are a star on the gaming firmament.

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I first picked up a copy of Runequest in 1982, in a sports shop that happened to sell some RPG books in Beckenham in Kent. The book had the cover many of you will know and love - a proud warrior-woman fighting some kind of lizard-creature in a misty, seemingly otherworldly environment. My 7-year old imagination was transfixed immediately. You can trace a path from that moment, through my becoming a huge fan of Runequest and various other RPGs through my teenage years, to meeting Greg at the Convulsion conventions, to a number of private or small group chats at conventions through they years where he was generous enough to share more of his personal philosophy and insight, through his unfinished works and King of Sartar which were unlike anything I'd read before, to various choices both important and trivial that I have made in my life, to now, with the unwritten heroic epics I tinker with daily in my head and the very lens through which I see the world. 

It is impossible for me to overstate the positive influence Greg had on my life. He was, without doubt, one of the three people who had the most influence on who I am today, and I would be unrecognisable as a person if I'd never met him. I am sure that many of you reading this will feel similarly.

I am sorry that a Great Man has passed from the world at too young an age.
For myself, I regret that, although I hadn't communicated with him in some time, I will not now do so again, and that I can not now ask him to officiate my Elvis-themed wedding when I finally reach that happy point...
Most importantly, I extend my deepest condolences to his family, for whom I have left these words here, in the hope that they will be some small comfort in the future. My very best wishes to you all.

Greg, whatever the universe has in store for you now, thank you.

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