Hendrik Jan Pfeiffer, Art Turney and Ray Turney originally planned to publish information on the fictional world of Glorantha from White Bear and Red Moon as a supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, but Greg Stafford wanted an original role-playing game created for Glorantha.
Ideas for an original gaming system for Glorantha came about during a conversation between Steve Perrin, Steve Henderson and Warren James at a Greyhaven party, and they were soon joined by Ray Turney from the original team.
[1]: 81 Perrin and Turney designed RuneQuest which was published by Chaosium in 1978.
[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The rules system for RuneQuest was created by Perrin, Turney, Henderson and James.
[10] Chaosium considered publishing Arduin in 1976, but found the game too complex and derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, and according to author Stu Horvath in 2023 "it took a couple of years before designers Steve Perrin and Ray Turney struck upon the right formula for the RPG that would become RuneQuest.