Idea for a Hyborian RPG Concordance

[jmccann]

My idea is to write a book which goes through all of REH's Conan stories and pulls out all of the useful bits (from the point of view of RPG players). Probably the arrangement would be alphabetical with a chronological index of some kind. There would be glosses, pictures of weapons, comparison to myths and legends and that sort of thing. It would be sort of a source book, but not an adventure setting.

I have done something like this for a few dozen pages of LOTR, and it actually goes pretty quickly. One thing I am worried about is that it may exceed fair use and therefore require a license from the rights holders which would probably kill the project (unless it were published in Australia where it is public domain... hmmmm...).

Would this be interesting to people?

[kesher]

Um, yes?

I have no idea if you could actually sell it, but yes, please!

[darkling]

I actually think that the original (i.e. before his death) stories of REH are public domain. I'm pretty sure that is why we have seen a wealth of Conan properties in recent years. It's the stuff that was published posthumously and all the later works by other authors where the copyright holds. Check though.

And why limit it to just Conan? I am sure the tales of Kull and Solomon Kane are ripe for the concordancing too.

[jmccann]

Nov 24, 2011 8:39:58 GMT -6 darkling said:

I actually think that the original (i.e. before his death) stories of REH are public domain.

...

And why limit it to just Conan? I am sure the tales of Kull and Solomon Kane are ripe for the concordancing too.

You're right, only the REH stories are public domain in Australia where the influence of the baleful mouse is less dire. I think '23 is the cutoff year in the US - Barsoom is the best OD&D inspiration in PD in the US.

Good point about Kull, Solomon not to mention Red Sonja and some other lesser known -- they'd fit right in as well.

[DungeonDevil]

I had started this kind of thing several years ago, but the project stalled because of RL issues and career.
I had once however seen a very thorough index of topics derived from the Conan RPG over on the Mongoose forum in 2008-ish, though I don't remember exactly which thread it was.
It's a great concept nevertheless and I wish you the best. There's almost TOO MUCH to mine from REH!

[Deleted]

Whatever happened to this project? I'd like to see more Conan RPG ideas.

[jmccann]

This is just one of many projects I am thinking about. I hope to get to it someday. I have made no progress on this.

[thegreyelf]

The problem with the Conan property isn't the PD status of the stories. It's the trademark status of the elements within the stories.

Copyright law in the U.S. is life of author + 70 years, which in Howard's case meant his tales went PD in 2006.

Here's the snag. While fighting over the rights back in the 60's and 70's, de Camp and Glenn Lord "solved" their differences by creating Conan Properties International (which is now an LLC owned in turn by Paradox Entertainment). In order to keep their property intact, CPI trademarked everything about the Hyborian Age that they could, from the words "Hyborian" and "Hyboria" to "Aquilonia," to the character of Conan himself.

Here's the important bit about that. While copyright expires, trademark does not, so long as someone continues to enforce the trademark. That means that so long as Paradox/CPI continue to enforce the trademarks on Howard's work, the stories themselves being in public domain is effectively meaningless. It's one of those pesky loopholes in intellectual property law that I really wish someone would fix.

[kesher]

That is hideous.

[thegreyelf]

Yup. There's a similar issue with the John Carter stories, which are trademarked by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.