Chaos Elements is one of the longest-running role-playing game companies in existence. The author of this article worked for the company from 1996 to 1998 and is dedicated to introducing the history of various companies in the industry. Let us take a look at his personal experience and insights .
In early 1975, there was only one role-playing game on the market, Dungeons & Dragons, so Chaosium (then called The Chaosium) was founded and released that year by Greg Stafford ( It’s no surprise that Greg Stafford’s White Bear & Red Moon was a board game company, not a role-playing game company.
Origins of tabletop games: 1975-1981
As a freshman in 1966, Stafford began to create the world of Glorantha. However, after receiving an unusually rude rejection letter from a fantasy doujinshi, Stafford decided not to submit it for publication, but instead made the first work describing the world of Groanza in the form of “write your own story”. Come out, this is the game “White Bear and the Red Moon”. He also didn’t think about publishing the game himself, but after he sold it to three different companies, each of which went out of business (or didn’t get started), plus tarot divination on the matter showed good omen , he finally decided to follow this instruction and publish “The White Bear and the Red Moon” by himself.
“The White Bear and the Red Moon”
The Chaos Elements Company was born, and White Bear and the Red Moon was published in 1975.
Between 1975-1981, Chaos Elements published 11 different board games, some with multiple versions, most of which are not recorded in the history of role-playing games, but there are exceptions:
The ancient world of Groansa continued with the publication of Nomad Gods in 1975. The third game in the series, Masters of Luck & Death, was scheduled but never published.
“Nomad”
Elric, published by Greg Stafford in 1977, is a war game based on a license from Michael Moorcock. As we’ll see, this license later helped Chaos Elements expand its game product line.
“Elric”
“Elric” Greg Stafford’s 1978 book “King Arthur’s Knights” caught up with the second wave of adventure games – following the release of Tactical Research Rules (TSR) Dungeon’s footsteps. Adventure games bring some of the concepts of role-playing games to the traditional tabletop game mode, such as individual game characters that can grow. When it comes to Chaos Elements’ (perhaps) most famous board game, published in 1984, we’ll encounter the adventure game genre again.
“Knight of King Arthur”
Arthur’s Knight follows in the footsteps of some early pioneering game companies, such as Avalon Hill and Simulation Game Publishing Company (SPI). Concise, some are more complex. However, Chaos Elements stopped the release of such games in 1981, because they built up a new force silently for four years.
That’s a role-playing game.
Origins of role-playing games: 1977-1981
A few years ago, by chance, Greg Stafford received what may have been the first ever sold Dungeons & Dragons. At the time, one of his former partners, who lived in Varna Lake, Wisconsin, was picking up catalogues from a printer when he met a young man, Gary Gygax. ) – Picking up the first print edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Knowing that he was also working on a fantasy game at the time, Stafford’s partner bought a printed copy of Dungeons & Dragons directly from Gigax and sent it to Stafford.
Soon after, Stafford also decided to release Groansa World as an RPG. The first attempt, led by Hendrik Jan Pfeiffer, Art Turney and Ray Turney, planned to feature “White Bear and the Red Moon” as “Dragon” Dungeons & Dungeons was published, but Stafford preferred to make an original role-playing game for the world of Groansa. So when he met Steve Perrin, Steve Henderson and Warren James at a Grey Harbor party[1], They started planning it – and Ray Turney would later join the new team of developers. The system of RuneQuest thus entered the development stage.
1977 was the first year that Chaos Elements began releasing role-playing games. In those days, everyone was releasing expansions for the original Dungeons & Dragons. Although Stafford decided to avoid taking Groansa down this path, he was happy to publish Steve Perrin and Jeff Pimper based on Dungeons & Dragons “All the Worlds’ Monsters” by The Monster Manual.
“The World of Monsters”
World of Monsters and Expert Dungeons and Dragons also had accompanying monster manuals published later that same year, but the expanded World of Monsters still put Chaos Elements among RPG publishers . At that time, this nascent industry was only composed of Tactical Research Rules, Flying Buffalo, Game Design Workshop (GDW), Judges Guild, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Metagaming Concepts. And some other smaller companies – Chaos Elements was probably one of the only two companies left in this nascent RPG era.
That same year, Chaos Elements nearly released another well-known role-playing game, Arduin Grimoire. Dave Hargrave submitted the game’s manuscript to Chaos Elements, but it was ultimately rejected because it was too much like a Dungeons & Dragons spinoff and didn’t have a full system of its own. While Chaos Elements is happy to publish a Dungeons & Dragons expansion, if they’re going to publish a full game, they want a game with its own unique system.
Since 1978, Chaos Elements has developed its own unique game system, and began to publish the Basic Role Playing game system developed by itself starting from “Rune Quest”. We’ll talk about Rune Quest later, but until 1981, Chaos Elements remained a true giant in the industry.
“Rune Quest”
Rune Quest In 1979, they began publishing a comprehensive role-playing game magazine called Different Worlds, supervised by Tadashi Ehara, the second employee of Chaos Elements.
Then, in 1981, Chaos Elements released a title that was unprecedented in the industry, possibly before Wizards of the Coast’s The Primal Order was released in 1992, which was also a post-production title. No one, this is Thieves’ World, published in 1981, a role-playing game expansion based on Robert Asprin’s novel of the same name.
“World of Thieves”
The reason why “World of Thieves” and “World of Thieves” are particularly famous is that it is the earliest expansion product of role-playing games that is compatible with multiple numerical systems, as well as rules corresponding to different games, including “Expert Dungeons and Dragons”, ” Adventures in Fantasy, Chivalry & Sorcery, DragonQuest, Dungeons & Dragons, The Fantasy Trip, Rune Journey, Traveller and Tunnels & Trolls. The game’s credits list is staggering, filled with many of the game’s biggest names of the period, including Dave Arneson, Eric Goldberg, Marc Miller , Steve Perrin, Lawrence Schick, Greg Stafford and Ken St. Andre.
World of Thieves was also one of the few early RPG titles that Chaos could legally use the Tactical Research Rules trademark in its own fantasy game system, as a result of Tactical Research Rules’ 1980 book Gods and Demigods. Unauthorized use of the trademarks “Menibone” and “Myth of Cthulhu” in Deities & Demigods, both of which Chaos Elements was developing at the time. A deal has been struck: Chaos Elements has the right to use the Tactical Research Rules logo in World of Thieves, in exchange for the latter’s continued use of the two Mythical logos… ironically due to popular fear of demon worship , Tactical Research Rules almost immediately discontinued both trademarks, a fear that was growing in the industry at the time.
But 1981 marked the end of the early days of Chaos Elements, and they stopped making generic expansions for other games. They briefly restarted this approach five years later, publishing Carse and Cities for Midkemia Press in 1986, and Figures in 1987. Tulan of The Isles, but the era of Chaos Elements supporting other publishers is largely over, as they developed a successful title of their own: Rune Quest.
Note 1: The Greyhaven party is a cultural salon in a Berkeley house by author and poet Paul Edwin Zimmer, Diana L. Paxson Celebrities and other celebrities were once tenants here.
Original address: https://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory3.phtml
Author: Shannon Appelcline
Translated by: Carlyle
Edited by: Sakurai Ruoxue
This article is reprinted from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9845
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.