Francis Gregory Stafford (February 9, 1948 – October 10, 2018), usually known as Greg Stafford, 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 after picking up a copy of U-Boat by Avalon Hill, and in 1966 as a freshman at Beloit College he started writing about 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 created Chaosium. He derived the name partly from his home, which was near the Oakland Coliseum, and combining "coliseum" with "chaos." White Bear and Red Moon (1975) was Chaosium's first published game, and was also Stafford's first professional game. Stafford designed the board game Nomad Gods. Stafford also designed the wargames Elric (1977) and King Arthur's Knights (1978). Stafford wanted the world of Glorantha to be part of an original role-playing game; this ultimately resulted in Steve Perrin's RuneQuest (1978), which was set in Glorantha. Stafford and Lynn Willis simplified the RuneQuest rules into the 16-page Basic Role-Playing (1980). He designed the miniatures game Merlin. Stafford considers his Arthurian chivalric role-playing game King Arthur Pendragon (1985) his masterpiece. He co-designed the Ghostbusters role-playing game (1986). Stafford designed the Prince Valiant roleplaying game (1989), which featured a strong storytelling basis and other innovations. Stafford decided to produce a fiction line for Call of Cthulhu after he realized that many Lovecraft fans of the early 1990s had never actually read Lovecraft's fiction but were only familiar with him through Call of Cthulhu. Stafford co-designed the computer game King of Dragon Pass (1999). 1998–2000s: Issaries Stafford left Chaosium in 1998, taking all of the rights for Glorantha, and founded the game company Issaries. Stafford approached Robin Laws to create a new game based on Glorantha, which became known as Hero Wars, published in 2000 as the first fully professional