Died at the age of 70, one could only hope we could all have a long life doing the things we love... RIP Mr. Stafford

Quote from: Arkansan;1060014I fear we are fast approaching the day when the last of the early luminaries of the hobby are gone.

Same with musicians and actors, as there is nobody coming up worthy to to carry on the torch, which is why we mourn their passing all the more..

I met Greg at several conventions. He was always friendly, had time to speak and tolerated fanboys. He also remembered your name. I went up to him with some friends and greeted him, "Hello Simon", he said, and for a few minutes I was one of the Cool Kids, as not only did I know Greg Stafford, Greg Stafford knew me.

I wish I had a chance to meet him. He seems like the kind of person I'd have gotten along with and his impact on gaming is immeasurable for me.

We never got along. Might have had something to do with the day we met, which was a Saturday afternoon at the Student Center at the University of Denver during Ghengis Con I in June of 1979. He had this really cool new game that he had just released called RuneQuest and was running games for gamers who just showed up to play. This was in the days before organized play existed. To find out what kind of games you could play, one looked in the convention guide, then walked around checking the tables just before game time to see if any spots were open to play. In them days there was no charge at all for playing games, and no reservations either. GMs would just offer to run games and people would just show up to play. As I recall, we paid a $5 admission fee for the entire weekend, the University of Denver gaming club organized and hosted the event.

So I showed up at Greg Staffords table.  I think it was just him and Steve running the company then, and they were both there. The adventure they had was for Glorantha, and they had character sheets for Ducks, Fur Babies, and other critters, and they were doing character generation for new players to Introduce them to the game. I was actually quite put off, because the impression I got while rolling up a character was that they were subtly insulting gamers by forcing them to roleplay stupid critters just for the LoLs.

I wanted to roll up a traditional fantasy character, but they had zero interest in letting me play as a classic human or humanoid character for the game. After I finished rolling up the Duck, I stepped off the table, and quit playing, and went off looking for another game. They did not react well to that. I didn't react well either to being railroaded into trying something that basically seemed like an insult for traditional fantasy roleplaying. Pretty sure they wanted to make fun of D&D players, and at that time, I had not yet had any major differences with the crew at TSR, because the RPGA had not even been formed yet.

When Avalon Hill republished RuneQuest in 1983 they let Greg keep Glorantha, and did a Medieval Europe Campaign setting that was included in the boxed set, that I bought almost immediately, because it didn't have that insulting setting Glorantha in it. They also released Vikings which was a tremendously good campaign supplement for Viking age roleplay in Europe. That was the RuneQuest, I had originally wanted. The d100 system it used was intuitive and well put together, and I really have enjoyed running Runequest games over the years set in Europe. I have two deluxe boxed sets with a campaign binder on my bookshelf right now.

Glorantha though, was never a go for me, and I'm pretty sure Greg never got over me stepping off his game at GhengisCon I.

I loved early RQ and the games it spawned, particularly Early edition Stormbringer, that's based on the early RQ rules set.
At least he had a pretty long, good life and his contribution will be remembered.

In the first segment of the newest episode of Inappropriate Characters, I talk about Greg Stafford and his legacy.

[video=youtube_share;b15stY_czUo]https://youtu.be/b15stY_czUo[/youtube]