Talk:Imagine (game magazine)

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Notability

Imagine Magazine is notable for being the only peiodical published by the now vanquished TSR Inc outside the United States targtetted at an audience outside the United States. It was the second professionally produced monthly periodical to be released into the UK market focussed on role-playing games after Games Workshop's own White Dwarf.

Many of the UK based contributors to Imagine Magazine went on to publish commercial products for TSR, including Don Turnbull, Graeme Morris and Jim Bambra.

Additionally, the acclaimed Neil Gaiman published his first short story, Featherquest, in the pages of Imagine magazine.--Calabraxthis^(talk) 11:30, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It makes more sense to cite assertions of its notability in the article itself instead of on its talk page czar · · 07:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maintenance tags

I was asked to back up my maintenance tags. The interview comes from a forum, which isn't a independent, reliable source. The Gaiman personal page citation doesn't back up the claim—maybe he moved his pages around? Anyway, these should be addressed and I think the claims are straightforward, so I added specific inline templates. czar · · 07:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings Czar, thanks for your response. My thoughts on your four requests for sources are as follows, reflecting the order in which they appear in the article:

(1) Do you think that WP:RS is really relevant here? The statement in the article appears to make an uncontroversial claim about the number of issues printed. The truth of this statement can only ever be evaluated by physical inspection, that is by looking at the magazines and counting them and then being comfortable that there are none missing. For my own part, I was a collector of the magazine in the 1980s and possess a copy of each of the 31 magazines, but I can't put that in a footnote, despite its veracity. By way of comparison with the treatment in other Wikipedia articles, have a look at the entry for the first Harry Potter Book. This article makes various claims in the blue infobox down the right hand side, including that the book has 17 chapters and that the UK edition has 223 pages. However this can only be verified by physical inspection so has no sourcing tags. Doesn't the remark about IMAGINE magazine having a print run of 31 issues fall into the same category?

(2) This one is a little harder to defend. I note that there is a cross-link to another Wikipedia article although this should not be used under the rules to defend a claim against WP:RS. How would you propose that this statement might otherwise be verified?

(3) I think what has happened here is that the citation on Neil Gaiman's web page at one time did correctly refer to the How to Sell the Ponti Bridge story, but then he has gone ahead and changed his web page. Once again, I own a copy of the magazine in which the story was first printed and so the truth of the statement can be verified through physical observation but this will not translate into a Wikipedia footnote. However I do not think the article is compromised if it fails to cite any source.

(4) I note that you state that the thekyngdoms.com is not an independent reliable source - I simply do not know enough about the website to know how true or untrue this is. However plenty of Wikipedia articles abound where just such sources are cited precisely because there is nothing better. In a specialist area such as the history of role playing games in the 1970s and 1980s where the creator of the game in question has himself since died, I suspect that a source such as this is as good as you are ever going to get (and it made a fascinating read for me, some 20 years after the actual events). In terms of IMAGINE magazine being critical of TSR and Gary Gygax, I note the following passage from the interview with him which appears to support the claim made where your fourth tag appears in the article:

As for lower echelon staffers believing that they were paid to be independent critics of TSR products, somehow being given free rein to exercise their budding critical talents, I can only shake my head in wonderment at such hubris. Biting the hand that feeds one has always been considered in bad taste. If such persons felt so overwhelming an urge to be independent, they should have sought employment elsewhere or struck out on their own. In short, I have absolutely no sympathy for such views. The very reason for their employment was to promote the TSR line and its success paid the wages for their livelihood.

Anyway, my view is that this article would not be irredeemably tarnished if your WP:RS tags were to be removed. The subject is simply not sufficiently "mainstream" for there to exist any higher quality sources. What do you think? Kind regards --Calabraxthis^(talk) 22:24, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure that better sources exist for notable claims in this article, so I left a note for help at WT:RPG as they're really good at this. While RS rules are somewhat more relaxed in niche topics, I don't think it would be appropriate to call a forum post copy of an interview reliable. For #3, perhaps switch the ref to that original source? czar · · 21:10, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Regarding (2), (3) and (4) I shall leave as is for the time being until the people at WT:RPG provide comment. However for (1) I am strongly of the view that detail regarding the number of issues does not need to be footnotoed or validated in any way if it is possible to achieve same by physical inspection - see my comment above rearding the Harry Potter article. Kind regards --Calabraxthis^(talk) 02:38, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted the first tag, absent a response from the RPG crowd. This is really just an observable fact - not controversial - a matter of simply counting the issues which were printed between 1983 and 1985. I will hold fire on the other tags in case the RPG team has insight to provide. Kind regards Calabraxthis^(talk) 12:07, 25 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge" reference and unreliable source - the reference can be found by following the link given, though a couple of clicks through the relevant categories from the target website leads to [1]. Generally its not reliable to link to specific pages within a website, which maybe subject to internal reorganisation, but to a more stable entry point from which the relevant material can be found. Sawatts (talk) 15:33, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am happy to upload a scanned copy of Neil's story as originally published in IMAGINE magazine #24 (March 1985, pp 20-22) if any other editor wants proof that it was published. Kind regardsCalabraxthis^(talk) 07:27, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see that, actually! BOZ (talk) 12:36, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No problem BOZ - I have saved it to the web at the following link [2]. Please drop me a note on my Talk page if you cannot access it for any reason. The file shows the cover page, the contents page listing the name of the story together with the three page story itself. Kind regards Calabraxthis^(talk) 05:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rename article

The magazine contain more than articles about AD&D as it launch with a D&D adventure, Beacon at Enon Tor, issue 4 had Aramax One, a Star Frontiers adventure and issue 8 featured DragonQuest. (source: Acaeum Imagine Magazine Index) Suggest Imagine (gaming magazine) or Imagine: Adventure Gaming magazine. Spshu (talk) 17:53, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me. JEB215 (talk) 02:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine (role-playing games magazine)? 2001:558:6033:DB:4CB2:272E:895F:9F1A (talk) 12:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Legacy Section

The legacy section is a tad inconsistent, mentioning Game Master in one sentence, then Game Masters in another - neither of which ring any bells with me. I saw G.M. and Gamesmaster International magazines in the late 80s, early 90s - does anybody know if either or both of these magazines were related to Imagine? sheridan (talk) 16:03, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have flicked through the early copies of G.M. and Gamesmaster International and neither have any particularly bad words to say about TSR (G.M. - the earlier of the two magazines even has a congratulations letter from one E. Gary Gygax). If a specific reference in the magazines isn't supplied I'll probably reword this section. sheridan (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]