About Us

Our award-winning roleplaying games, boardgames, and fiction have been acclaimed as some of the most engaging and innovative of all time. For more than forty years, Chaosium Inc. has captivated gamers, readers and mythic adventurers worldwide.

The Chaosium was founded by visionary game designer Greg Stafford in 1975.

"The first published RPG was Dungeons & Dragons, shortly followed by some other imitative games. Chaosium, however, was never content to imitate but published games that were original in style of play, content and design. We quickly became renowned for our originality and creativity, and were responsible for introducing many things to the hobby that are standard today." - Greg Stafford

The roleplaying games RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, King Arthur Pendragon, HeroQuest – as well as such classic board and card games as White Bear & Red Moon (later called Dragon Pass), Nomad Gods, Arkham Horror, Credo, and Mythos all originated at Chaosium.

Many of Chaosium’s product lines are based upon literary sources. Most notably, H.P. Lovecraft’s 1920’s horror fiction provides the basis of our Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game line. The Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos also provides the inspiration for many of the books in our Chaosium Fiction line.

We also publish Basic Role Playing (BRP), the core of our roleplaying game systems, and the first to use skills based upon the d100 mechanic. Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest and most of our other RPG lines use BRP as the basis of their rules. Once you’ve learned to play one of these, you've learned to play the others.

Chaosium began as a board game publisher, and in 2017 returned to producing board games again after a twenty year hiatus, winning multiple ENnie awards with our first two releases. In 2018, the King Arthur Pendragon RPG returned to Chaosium ownership. In 2019, Chaosium acquired critically acclaimed 7th Sea RPG, and 7th Sea creator John Wick joined the company.

Over the years Chaosium has won so many awards that we have actually lost count, including more than thirty ENnie Awards since 2014. Greg Stafford won the Diana Jones Award for Gaming Excellence not once, but twice (2007, 2015), and both he and Sandy Petersen have been inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art and Design GAMA Hall of Fame. The Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon RPGs are also GAMA Hall of Fame inductees.

Chaosium celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2020. In 2016 Greg Stafford's World of Glorantha celebrated its 50th anniversary. In 2018, it was 40 years since the debut of RuneQuest, and 2021 was the 40th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu.

Chaosium fully supports inclusivity and diversity — #WeAreAllUs

World View

The Chaosium exists deep underneath the bottom of the lowest Underworld. It is the Fount of Chaos and spews forth our collective unconscious – fantasies and monstrosities alike - into our world. Artists, lunatics, and gamers are all inspired by its restless dreams. The Chaosium speaks to us:

“We are all Us.”

“You must cut the Dragon Head off yourself, take it with your left hand and make it part of you. You must slay the dragon and wield its power.”

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!”

The Chaosium lets us dream the dreams of dead gods and construct the universe out of its essential runes. It lets us travel along the Lightbringers Quest to revive the murdered sun or walk the non-Euclidean pathways of R’lyeh’s nightmare corpse-city.

In this mundane and grey world, the Chaosium brings your untamed imagination to life, through role-playing games, books, board and card games, comics, and more. Guard yourself with the Elder Sign and fortify yourself with Rune Magic, it is time to begin your adventures!