Founded in 2000 by co-owner Simon Rogers and Pelgranista Emeritus Sasha Bilton, Pelgrane Press is a UK-based tabletop roleplaying game publishing company which publishes character-focused and story-driven tabletop RPGs. The company’s main office is in London, but the Pelgranista team spans multiple countries. It is co-owned by Simon Rogers and Cat Tobin.

 

Our groundbreaking GUMSHOE roleplaying system shifts the focus of investigative play from finding clues (or worse, not finding them) to interpreting clues, solving mysteries, and moving the action forward. Each GUMSHOE game includes the system adapted for that setting. The first GUMSHOE game, The Esoterrorists, along with its sibling system Fear Itself, both by GUMSHOE system designer Robin D. Laws, remain two of the most accessible to GMs and players new to the system. Its collaborative mystery-solving play structure is exemplified by the mythos RPG Trail of Cthulhu, and the high-octane spies-vs-vampires RPG Night’s Black Agents, both by Kenneth Hite. Kevin Kulp’s game of timeline-preserving time-travelling agents, TimeWatch, and new swords and sorcery RPG Swords of the Serpentine with Emily Dresner, take GUMSHOE in a more pulpy, action-packed direction.

 

We’ve recently adapted the GUMSHOE system for one player, one GM play in the GUMSHOE One-2-One system; this can be seen in the noir mythos Cthulhu Confidential, and the intense spies-vs-vampires thriller Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops.

 

Our DramaSystem, found in Robin D. Laws’ Hillfolk, facilitates interpersonal relationship building, which promotes affecting dramatic interactions between characters – as do our story game anthologies, #Feminism, Seven Wonders, and Honey & Hot Wax.

 

We also publish 13th Age by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, an epic fantasy game using the d20 system familiar to many gamers, which weaves characters’ backgrounds and unique traits into every narrative, resulting in engaging, heroic adventures.

 

Pelgrane Press is also the home of the webzine See Page XX, The Birds comic, and RPG soundtracks by James Semple and fellow composers.

 

If you’d like more details about us, or you want to contact us rather than read about the company, see Contact Us; if you’d like to know who we are, see the Pelgranista Directory bellow.

Simon Rogers
co-founder / joint owner

Currently on sabbatical. He co-owns ProFantasy Software Ltd with Mark Fulford & The Noteboard with Mark and Ralf Schemmann. He finds good people and asks them to do things.

Cat Tobin
Managing Director / co-owner

Pelgrane’s only full-time employee, Cat oversees design, development, production, marketing, and sales. As a company director, she’s jointly responsible for business strategy, new projects, and creative direction. She’s been involved in RPGs in Ireland and the UK since the late ’90s. She likes coffee, hates mornings, and her favourite vegetable is the potato.

Robin D Laws
Writer

Robin D. Laws designed such roleplaying games as The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, Hillfolk, Feng Shui, and The Esoterrorists. He is the winner of eight Gold and seven Silver ENnie Awards and the coveted Diana Jones Award. Other works of gaming and narrative analysis are Hamlet’s Hit Points and Beating the Story. The most recent of Robin’s nine novels is The Missing and the Lost. His works have been translated into eleven languages. Hear his insights on gaming, narrative, history and weirdness on the weekly podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

Kenneth Hite
Writer

Kenneth Hite is a line developer and writer for Pelgrane Press, creator of Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents and Ken Writes About Stuff. He claims to have bought the first copy of Call of Cthulhu sold in Oklahoma City, in August of 1981. Since then, he has moved to dread and night-haunted Chicago, written all or part of seventy or so roleplaying game books (including Nightmares of Mine, Dubious Shards, and Adventures Into Darkness), and acquired the requisite Lovecraftian cat. His “Tour de Lovecraft: The Settings” column appears in Weird Tales magazine; his Suppressed Transmission column explores the Higher Strangeness in Pyramid. He and Robin Laws are the cohosts of the award-winning podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. His wife Sheila knits.

Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
Writer

Gareth’s a full-time writer for Pelgrane. He’s also a veteran of the Irish convention circuit, and accidentally parleyed adventure writing for conventions into a career in game design. He’s contributed to more roleplaying books than he can easily recall, including Esoterrorists 2.0, The Zalozhniy Quartet, Dead Rock Seven and Eyes of the Stone Thief.

Rob Heinsoo
game designer

Rob is the co-designer of 13th Age and 13 True Ways, the 13th Age line developer, and design lead at Fire Opal Media. He was the lead designer of the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons(R) and has designed dozens of other card games, board games, and miniatures games, including Three-Dragon Ante: Legendary Edition, the first two sets of Epic Spells Wars, and Wrestlenomicon. He blogs about games and books here.

Becky Smith
Admin Assistant

Becky is supporting the team with their busy workload. She lives in Cheltenham, England and used to work for an internet bank. She did her PhD in Parapsychology studying ghost and poltergeist experiences, but hopes that won’t be needed too often in this role!

Wade Rockett
PR & marketing / Writer / editor

Wade is our Seattle-based community relations and marketing person—a role he attained by, in his words, “being one of the few PR people whom game designers know and can tolerate.” He’s also a game designer, writer, and editor whose credits include Temple of the Sun Cabal, Crown of Axis, and the award-winning 13th Age Game Master’s Screen & Resource Book.

Noah Lloyd
Production Apprentice

Noah is currently a Ph.D candidate in eighteenth-century English literature in an east coast USA college, so he’s balancing his responsibilities at Pelgrane with both teaching and dissertating (which he claims, yes, is actually a verb, though maybe only in academia).

Freelancers

Some of the incredibly talented writers, designers, and artists whose ongoing contributions deserve special notice.

Kevin Kulp
Writer

Adam Gauntlett
Writer

Steve Dempsey
Writer

Notable Steve, Steve Dempsey is an ancient foundational relic of the company, freelancer and our number one Pelgrane GM.

Jérôme Huguenin
artist / layout designer

Jérôme created the look of Trail of Cthulhu, Mutant City Blues and the first editions of Fear Itself and The Esoterorrists, doing all the illustrations. He also provided artwork for this website. He has worked extensively in the French RPG industry and has worked on the French version of the Dying Earth RPG. More recently he has created interior and cover art for Trail of Cthulhu releases like Out of the Woods, Soldiers of Pen and Ink as well as the Cthulhu Confidential cover. See his portfolio and blog.

Jen McCleary
artist / layout designer

Christian Knutsson
artist / layout designer

Aileen Miles
artist / layout designer

Rich Longmore
artist

Dan Vasile
Website

Pelgranistas Emeritus

The very special people who greatly aided us in our journey.

Sasha Bilton
co-founder

Sasha co-founded the company with Simon. Sasha is the company enthusiast and black labrador (not the depressed type).

John Clayton
webmaster

John (Detective) Clayton is the resident geek in the basement, taking care of all things webmasterly, administratorly and other such words that probably don’t exist ending in ‘ly’. From his basement located in the far, far north of the UK, he writes code. Maybe it keeps the world running, maybe not. Are you willing to take that risk? If you have a problem with your website and no-one else can help you, look for him. You can also read his ramblings at Files and Records.

Paula Dempsey
Columnist / Writer

She came, she saw, she walked off with an ENnie. Occasional columnist with Page XX as Mystic Moo, she is the author of The Book of the Smoke

The Dying Earth Team
Writers

The Dying Earth was supported by the efforts of the excellent Jim Webster, editor of XPS and freelance writer and Ian Thomson, prolific one-man PDF factory. David Thomas wrote and edited much material and added much needed mockery of pretension.

Chris Huth
Artist / Layout designer

Chris is responsible for the layout design of many of our core books, such as 13th Age, The Gaean Reach, Lorefinder, and Night’s Black Agents.

Will Jobst
publishing assistant

Will is our publishing assistant, data-getter, and Johnny-on-the-spot. Based in Boston, Will can be found gleefully filling spreadsheets, making digital products accessible for millennials (technically Gen Z’s, he says), and anything Cat or Simon ask.

Beth Lewis
Pelgrane Emeritus

Former full-timer and Pelgrane Emeritus, Beth has a background in academic publishing so, naturally, RPGs were the next logical career step. She has moved on to Titan Books, where she is carving out an empire, and she deigns to assist us on occasion. She plays a vicious drow in 13th Age called Eyes and a half’lin scoundrel, Cactus Kate.

Graham Walmsley
Writer

Graham is the author of The Dying of St Margaret’s and The Watchers In The Sky, two bleak Purist Trail of Cthulhu scenarios, as well as Cthulhu Apocalypse. Aside from working for Pelgrane Press, he has published Play Unsafe, a guide to using storytelling and improvisation in games, Cthulhu Lite, and the murder mystery game A Taste For Murder

Sadhbh Warren
Project Manager

Sadhbh was Pelgrane’s part-time Project Manager and responsible for all those great side projects that no one has time to get into. She enjoys colour-coded to-do lists a little too much and tends to THINK IN CAPS when excited. Her name is pronounced Sive like five, and she is super-excited about meeting people at conventions.

Our playtesters

We’re eternally grateful to our playtesters, who make it through all the hurdles and provide us with a playtest report. Our games are substantially improved as a result of their input. Check See Page XX for opportunities!