Greg Stafford has passed away

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Oh no! My favourite designer. So much excellence, hard to imagine the hobby without him, from hiring Sandy Peterson and releasing CoC, to creating Glorantha, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant and his masterpiece Pendragon, few could even claim to match his achievements.
 
I came to BRP games late, but what a monumental figure in the gaming industry and true creative genius. My condolences to his family and friends.
 
Wow. You know the founders of the hobby are getting older and we’ve lost so many already, but it still hits hard when you lose someone who brought you so much and was responsible for so many of the great memories of your life simply by sharing with you their imagination.

It hits especially hard coming in a d100 renaissance and new life for Glorantha and Pendragon.

A titan has fallen. Not many remain.
 
Damn. I was reading his website just the other day.
 
Sad. He was a legend in our hobby and he will be missed.

My condolences go out to his friends and family.

First we lost Gygax and Arneson, then we lost Stewart Wieck just a few years ago, and now this. It's very disheartening when you think about it.
 
OMG.

Waking up this morning to read this sad news.

Greg Stafford has been an influence in my life since my early teens, and I am now in my mid-forties.

As far as I am concerned, he is up there with Tolkien for me, having discovered their works about the same time.

I am yet just one more person whose life that has been enriched by Greg's creativity, wisdom, and humour.

RIP Greg Stafford, you are already missed
 
I think D6 is his greatest masterpiece!!! Usable for all genres!
But is that really "his"? There are three names credited in Ghostbusters: Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford.

Re: d6 vs. d100, I'll say it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Flipping a coin works fine for Prince Valiant, too!
 
But is that really "his"? There are three names credited in Ghostbusters: Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford.

Re: d6 vs. d100, I'll say it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Flipping a coin works fine for Prince Valiant, too!

Sure I think it’s “his”. Just like I think Dave Arneson created D&D.
 
I’d really like to run a Mythras-powered Glorantha game in memory of Stafford. I realize Third Age would be ideal but I’m a sucker for the old Mongoose Second Age material.

I’m not really in a position to realistically plan any sort of campaign right now, but add that to the queue. :blah:
 
The two games that are solely Greg Stafford's creations are King Arthur Pendragon and Prince Valiant, although he is also the creator of Glorantha too (which has been used as a setting in multiple games). He made significant contributions to RuneQuest, HeroQuest, Ghostbusters and possibly some other Chaosium games, but was not the sole creator of them. He was the founder of Chaosium, however, and a GAMA Hall of Fame inductee.

Quite a huge representation in all.
 
The two games that are solely Greg Stafford's creations are King Arthur Pendragon and Prince Valiant, although he is also the creator of Glorantha too (which has been used as a setting in multiple games). He made significant contributions to RuneQuest, HeroQuest, Ghostbusters and possibly some other Chaosium games, but was not the sole creator of them. He was the founder of Chaosium, however, and a GAMA Hall of Fame inductee.

Quite a huge representation in all.
Even if Pendragon was all he had ever done, that would be enough.
 
Just recently Chaosium announced they will be distributing new hardcopies of Prince Valiant and Pendragon for Nocturnal Media. Prince Valiant is going to have full-colour art instead of B&W. Very excited to get my dirty mitts on physical copies, my 3rd edition of Pendragon is lost to the mists of time. I have electronic copies but am jonesing for the real thing.
If they are like the Kickstarter copies, then Prince Valiant is in full colour, and Pendragon is also in full colour in certain pages (the chapter headers) and has a new layout anyway (it's not black and white).
 
People like the settings a lot but he also had a real talent for mechanics.

I believe the "Roll under your stat, highest roll wins" mechanic was his--and incredibly elegant. Rarely beaten.

I agree, I think the combat system in Pendragon is brilliant for instance, gritty and detailed without being clunky and fiddly.
 
The Pendragon system is, for me, very simply the best BRP variant bar none. It is one of the very few, long lasting game systems that has managed to remain almost entirely unchanged since it's inception in 1985 and is still played as written today. Compare that to D&D say, and you can take that as an indication of the quality of it's design.

Marry that to an impeccably researched yet highly playable setting, that works on multiple levels of depth and symbolism, and you certainly have a candidate for the best fantasy RPG ever written.
 
Fuck me, for years I thought it was a Greg Costikyan design. Got my Gregs all mixed up.

D6 Glorantha would be fun. Ditto BRP Ghostbusters.
But is that really "his"? There are three names credited in Ghostbusters: Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford.

I think its fair to consider Costikyan an equal member of the D6 design team even if he wasn't part of the original Ghostbusters team. I love Ghostbusters personally, but when people talk about D6 as a generic system, they are usually talking about the version that looks a lot more like Costikyan's Star Wars than Ghostbusters.

Taking the highly experimental system in Ghostbusters and making it more conventional while still holding onto the magic that made it special is an impressive design feat, something that the second edition of Ghostbusters failed at.

The Pendragon system is, for me, very simply the best BRP variant bar none. It is one of the very few, long lasting game systems that has managed to remain almost entirely unchanged since it's inception in 1985 and is still played as written today. Compare that to D&D say, and you can take that as an indication of the quality of it's design.

Not to argue the brilliance of Pendragon, but I don't think its fair to judge the quality of a game over whether later editions made changes. Changes to later editions are frequently business driven or to fix perceived problems that never actually occur in play. Is Traveller: The New Era an indication of design flaws in classic Traveller? To bring it back to Stafford, is the crunchier second edition of Ghostbusters a sign of flaws in the original design?

And to beat Gronan of Simmerya Gronan of Simmerya to the punch, people do still play old school D&D, probably more than play Pendragon.

None of which changes the fact that Pendragon is a perfect RPG design.
 
Not to argue the brilliance of Pendragon, but I don't think its fair to judge the quality of a game over whether later editions made changes. Changes to later editions are frequently business driven or to fix perceived problems that never actually occur in play. Is Traveller: The New Era an indication of design flaws in classic Traveller? To bring it back to Stafford, is the crunchier second edition of Ghostbusters a sign of flaws in the original design?

And to beat Gronan of Simmerya Gronan of Simmerya to the punch, people do still play old school D&D, probably more than play Pendragon.

None of which changes the fact that Pendragon is a perfect RPG design.
I think that (the final point) is the point though. Nobody has thought to make incremental changes to Pendragon, as they generally are done in most other games through multiple editions, because he got it so right at the first attempt.

Yes you could say that old school D&D players still play old editions of D&D, but I bet a whole bunch of them house rule it to bits. Certainly for me, Pendragon is one of the few 'old school' games where there has never been much temptation of houseruling at all. There could be an argument that this is because, really, it's a development of the older RuneQuest rules - and addresses some of the issues inherent from the older game - but it also just shows the good judgment of Stafford when he was designing it at the time. It's not as if I can't still find reasons to house rule parts of Call of Cthulhu 7E or RQ:G for example. Pendragon is a superior system to both of these.
 
The thing in RPG design is that due to the small returns it is rare for the duties to be split between people, let alone teams, as they are usually done in modern video game design for instance.

So Stafford was great at rules design/develoment, clear and articulate writing and the imaginative content. A real triple threat.
 
I already have Prince Valiant in color. You guys dont?
 
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