Quote
Alexander Dotor once interviewed Greg Stafford, during which Greg Stafford stated the following:
Greg Stafford: I knew about D&D. I had a friend in Lake Geneva who was
picking up abelt buckle catalogue at the printer and he saw another
guy there and asked what it was. They guy said, A fantasy game. My
buddy said, Hey, I have a friend making one of those. Can I buy a copy
from you? And he did. Well, The guy was Gary Gygax and the gaming
system the first copy of D&D ever sold. We read it but if you know
that game, it was editorially terrible. At Chaosium we thought about a
role-playing game with Glorantha as gaming world, but we needed a
gaming system. I finally met Steve Perrin who had developed a gaming
system and he created our system: RuneQuest. It was published in 1978.
Question
Is this true (allowing for the difficulties that interviews with Californian Arkati Shaman-Publishers present to seekers of truth)? Did Stafford's friend acquire a copy of D&D directly from Gygax? Did he pay for it? (How much?) Were other copies sold beforehand?
Best Answer
D&D set the mode of play for RPG's through at least 1980... certain others deviate from the mode of play into more abstract in the 80's, and into more story driven in the 90's.
I'm rather certain that Greg was aware of RPGs before he bought a copy of D&D, as he was a game designer, and had seen play at conventions. (He's mentioned this in some discussions on WWG's Pendragon forums, now defunct.) When he wrote RQ with Steve Perrin, there were already at least 3 games on the market: D&D, Starfaring, and T&T. And Starfaring and T&T are in fact responses to D&D by Ken St. Andre.
Greg has not mentioned participation in the Braunstein games (which predate D&D by several years, and are part of the origin of D&D).
The quote in the question is the proof that D&D influenced RQ... Greg had a copy, found it editorially lacking, and set out to do better.
Note: RPGGeek cites Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin codesgined RQ1, and it was published in 1978; Boardgame Geek notes that White Bear and Red Moon was published in 1975. That frames the timeframe for D&D influence on RQ1.
T&T was 1975, as was Starfaring. Both by Ken St. Andre.