Post originally by Jay Triplett at 2003-05-23 08:52:12
Converted from Phorums BB System

I got a chance to correspond a little with Greg on this subject, and it turns out that he played very little D&D (just a few games)and that his game has no origins in D&D. His world, Gloranatha, was originally used for wargamming and was around before RPGs were being designed. The RuneQuest task resolution system (Basic Roleplaying System) was totally the brainchild of Steve Perrin and was assisted by Ray Turney. Pendragon was totally the brainchild of Greg Stafford and he was deliberately trying to keep his system different from the RuneQuest system when he designed it. When I mentioned Hero Wars, he said he had considered using the Pendragon system as a basis for the rules, but then decided against it and he didn't say much more about it. Some of his direct quotes are elsewhere in the topic threads of this review. I got the strong impression that the Personality Traits of Pendragon were the roots of storytelling systems which use pools of dice and numbers of successes to resolve tasks and dramatic systems that cover situations that either can't be roleplayed or won't be roleplayed. Greg designed the system for GhostBusters which was later used for Star Wars and he also designed the Prince Valiant system which greatly contributed to the evolution of storytelling systems of roleplaying.