Haven’t had a nice Dragon Pass set in the shop in years, so I set this one aside for some photos.

Dragon Pass was a later, updated edition of White Bear and Red Moon.

“[Greg] Stafford began writing stories set in Glorantha while at college in the mid-sixties, imbuing his fantasy universe with a deep lore inspired by Stafford’s own lifelong interest in mythology, spiritualism and legends.

A letter of rejection for one short story led Stafford to create a Glorantha-set board game, White Bear and Red Moon. After struggling to find a publisher willing to take on the project, Stafford founded his own label – The Chaosium – in 1975. A second board game, Nomad Gods, followed, with a third part of the planned ‘Dragon Pass’ trilogy never completed.

Glorantha became the background to RuneQuest, the roleplaying game co-designed by Stafford and Steve Perrin in 1978 that spawned the innovative Basic Roleplaying system that would power Chaosium’s later RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu. At its peak, RuneQuest was second only to Dungeons & Dragons in terms of roleplaying game sales.”

Tabletop Gaming


Dragon Pass box set 92

Dragon Pass: The Return of Prince Argrath and the Lunar Empire Wars

1980 … Robert Corbett & Greg Stafford … Chaosium 1001-X

Dragon Pass in the shop

White Bear Red Moon in the shop

Noble Knight


I ran across an intriguing PDF book, The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass.  An encyclopedic – 382 pages! – reference to the strife in the region. “…warriors, soldiers and mercenaries of the opening periods of the Hero Wars, their arms and armor, their cultures, histories and organization, the terrain they traveled, the battlefields on which they fought, their fortifications, their magic, and their gods.”  PDF at DriveThruRPG


White Bear and Red Moon 1976 set
White Bear and Red Moon set that came through the shop in 2015

Dragon Pass cover detail
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I love the wrap-around graphics on the bottom lid
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Rulebook and Credits
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Rulebook has a lot of art… not often seen in a board game ca. 1980
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Counter sheet A
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Counter sheet B
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Dragon Pass Addenda (errata)
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Poster map / play mat
White Bear Red Moon Dragon Pass maps coll
1975 White Bear Red Moon map (top); 1980 Dragon Pass map (below).

I was a little confused until I noticed that the White Bear Red Moon map had Top as West. [Rotate WBRM counterclockwise and the maps line up.] Both cover the same region, Dragon Pass of course.


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Chaosium Fall – Winter 1980 Catalog and mail-in comment card

See also: 

Dragon Pass (Avalon Hill Edition, 1984) over at my RPG Reference site

Griffin Mountain (Runequest, 1981): US and UK editions

Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine (1989 – 2002)

Thieves’ World as a Rosetta Stone of early RPGs