TSR UK's Imagine and forgotten Pelinore setting

[Gringnr]

Back in the early 1980's, TSR UK published a D&D support magazine called Imagine. The magazine featured scenarios and support material for D&D and other TSR games. Some of the adventures and articles also provided conversions for non-TSR games as diverse as Traveller, Champions and Daredevils. Each issue had a theme, be it superheroes or Vikings. There were also reviews of games, movies and bits of short fiction, some of them written by a pre-Sandman fame Neil Gaiman. Gary Gygax was a regular contributor. Much of the material originally printed in Imagine would later be used in books such as Unearthed Arcana.

Imagine also ran an ongoing series detailing a setting called Pelinore. Like many settings of the time, Pelinore was centered around a capital city, The City League, in the county of Cerwin. Details of the setting's customs, laws, organizations and gods were provided.

Imagine stopped after issue 30, or more accurately, after TSR UK published a collected book of all of its Pelinore material. Several of the Imagine staffers, apparently with some acrimony, started GameMaster Publications. As far as I can tell, this new company produced 5 issues of a magazine/scenario hybrid, focusing on the Pelinore setting. The first three issues used slightly changed, and therefore legally prudent, approximations of the Pelinore setting. But issues 4 and 5 made no such attempt to play it safe.

Pelinore is no longer an official D&D setting (if it ever was), and has long been unavailable. There is a blogger I have seen on various RPG forums who has collected most of the material, re-creating it in a cleaner, more legible (i.e., not scanned) "re-mastered" format. I have seen some attack this guy vociferously, even profanely, for stepping on TSR, or WotC's IP. And I won't argue for the legality of what he has done. But he isn't selling anything, and seems motivated only by the desire to preserve a piece of gaming history. With so much of our hobby lost to the ravages of time, I appreciate that.

Edit: almost forgot, as some of the former TSR UK/GameMaster staffers migrated to Games Workshop (though not all at once), ideas from Pellinore had an influence on early WHFRP. According to some of the writers in question, this influence is often overstated, but is definitely present.

[DMMike]

Yup, and if anyone's interested when we were at the Save or Die (saveordie.info) podcast we covered Pelinor in episode 126.

GM Mike

[Tadhg]

I downloaded that PDF.

Very cool city/surrounds setting.

I've only paged through the document, but I'm reminded of Gary's Yggsburgh, WHFRPG cities and TLGs Heart of Glass module.

Looking forward to reading through it in detail and I'll have to checkout Mike's podcast.

Thanks for posting.

[Rigon]

I've always heard about the setting, but have never seen anything about, so I'd be interested in looking at it. I always like to read campaign settings.

R-

[Gringnr]

Yup, and if anyone's interested when we were at the Save or Die (saveordie.info) podcast we covered Pelinor in episode 126.

GM Mike

Cool, I'll look for it.

[Buttmonkey]

The Grognaria blog included reviews of many of the issues of Imagine and discussed Pelinore quite a bit.

[Gringnr]

The blogger posted one of the "re-mastered" modules last year, it seems to be an ongoing project of his. And he has reworked a WHFRP module to be used in the Pelinore setting. I emailed him to see if he has any plans to "re-master" the remaining 2 GameMaster Publications modules.

[Tadhg]

Here is the PDF:

http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/reso ... linore.pdf

[Gringnr]

Well, if we're doing that, Rhu, one may or may not be able to find an archive of Imagine, plus the original Pelinore book (Gyford's, which you linked, may be incomplete) in PDF format HERE:

https://annarchive.com/imagine.html

And here is an RPGnet forums thread, as well as Kellri's blog, where his "re-mastered" stuff can be found with a bit of searching:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.ph ... d-Pelinore

https://kellri.blogspot.com/

[Tadhg]

Cool, thanks Gringnr. I didn't know all those issues were still around.

And . . son of gun, if this setting didn't ring a bell - I remember Kellrie's re-doing of the setting some years ago. I have it somewhere or I'll just DL it again.

Thanks for posting.

[Treebore]

Yeah, there is a lot of misconceptions about copyright, at least in the US, promulgated by the companies themselves. Basically, if they do not offer a product anymore, digitally or in print, there is no copyright protection. They will act all day, every day, as if there is, but there isn't. 2 key elements for being able to push copyright infringement center on something called profits. If your not selling a product in some format, you have no profits being threatened. Therefore, you have no copyright infringment case.

England/Europe have some significant differences, so not sure how it works over there.

[Rigon]

Thanks for the links guys. I'll check it out when I have time.

R-

[Treebore]

Direct link to Kellri' Pelinore PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8l15n ... NYSWs/view

[Treebore]

The PDF on Kellri's site and the Imagine archive site are identical.

[Gringnr]

The PDF on Kellri's site and the Imagine archive site are identical.

The RPGnet thread's pdf link goes to a G-Drive with Kellri's "re-mastered" version. Some of the modules are linked in the RPGnet thread, and some on his blog.

[Gringnr]

Yeah, there is a lot of misconceptions about copyright, at least in the US, promulgated by the companies themselves. Basically, if they do not offer a product anymore, digitally or in print, there is no copyright protection. They will act all day, every day, as if there is, but there isn't. 2 key elements for being able to push copyright infringement center on something called profits. If your not selling a product in some format, you have no profits being threatened. Therefore, you have no copyright infringment case.

England/Europe have some significant differences, so not sure how it works over there.

From what I gather Kellri is an American expat living in Vietnam. He also uses an Erol Otus illustration from Alma Mater as an avatar, so I am inclined to like this dude.

[Treebore]

The PDF on Kellri's site and the Imagine archive site are identical.

The RPGnet thread's pdf link goes to a G-Drive with Kellri's "re-mastered" version. Some of the modules are linked in the RPGnet thread, and some on his blog.

Oh yeah, this one is MUCH bigger!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8l15n ... w3Ums/view

By about 200 pages!

[Tadhg]

Yeah, there is a lot of misconceptions about copyright, at least in the US, promulgated by the companies themselves. Basically, if they do not offer a product anymore, digitally or in print, there is no copyright protection. They will act all day, every day, as if there is, but there isn't. 2 key elements for being able to push copyright infringement center on something called profits. If your not selling a product in some format, you have no profits being threatened. Therefore, you have no copyright infringment case.

England/Europe have some significant differences, so not sure how it works over there.

From what I gather Kellri is an American expat living in Vietnam. He also uses an Erol Otus illustration from Alma Mater as an avatar, so I am inclined to like this dude.

Yeah, he seems to be a pretty cool dude. We're friends on Facebook. I think he teaches English in Vietnam.

We got to know each other a bit on DF sometime ago. I seem to recall beating up on him (along with Fiffergrund and others) years ago before I became a mod there - when he would troll the C&C subforum.