[Savage Worlds] Secret License Revealed: Savage World of Solomon Kane!

[solomoncane]

Solomoncane is thrilled.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This would also make a handy supplement to mine for Northern Crown.

 

[Yellow Sign]

Now I just need a Savage World to True20 conversion document.

 

[mmadsen]

Wow, that's awesome. I got goosebumps when I saw that art. If that's any indication, they've definitely got the "feel" of Solomon Kane.

Agreed. The art works.

Here's the blurb:

In the spring of 2007, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, in conjunction with Paradox Entertainment, Inc. will produce "The Savage World of Solomon Kane™ Roleplaying Game." God’s angry warrior, Solomon Kane™ is Robert E. Howard’s (Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn and many other incredible characters) most unusual creation. Black-clad and steely tempered, Kane bestrides demon-infested Africa and the war-torn Europe of Queen Elizabeth I to dispense relentless justice with the point of his sword. Pirates, vampires, mad queens, winged Furies, rapacious bandits, the berserk warriors of lost Atlantis – evil cannot escape justice from Solomon’s slashing rapier.

Pinnacle's CEO Shane Lacy Hensley is a long-time fan of the Kane stories: "Our game Savage Worlds is in large part inspired by the classic pulps, with my personal favorite Solomon Kane™ at the absolute top of the list. I've read and re-read Solomon's adventures for years and am thrilled to be doing this project. As you know, Pinnacle isn't known for licenses, but this is one that's very near and dear to our hearts. We feel this is a perfect match for our talents, our history of historical horror, and our game system."

The Savage World of Solomon Kane™ will be a full-color, 256-page book, written by Shane Lacy Hensley and Paul Wade-Williams, with a cover by Matt Wilson of Privateer Press. It will contain the award-winning Savage Worlds rules, background information on Kane and his adventures, all new locations, scenarios, and dark secrets for heroes to explore. New setting rules reflecting the incredible conviction of Kane are included, as well as a wealth of character ideas appropriate to Solomon's 16th century world of horror and adventure, and dozens of scenarios inspired by the Puritan’s own savage tales.​

 

[BadMojo]

This part is just uninformed speculation on my part: I would guess you could theoretically publish old Conan stories (or Solomon Kane), you just couldn't use their names in the stories (which I presume is what is actually trademarked). I could be way off base on that though.

I'm not a lawyer yet either, and I most likely never will be but I do think you're pretty much correct. I believe Conan, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn and Red Sonya are trademarked by Paradox Entertainment. At least some of REH's earlier stories *may* be PD, but at least as of a few years ago there was a huge amount of legal wrangling going on with that.

To make things even more confusing, "Red Sonja" is trademarked by a completely different entity and has nothing to due with anything Paradox owns. REH's Red Sonya was a character in a story set in the 17th century, while Red Sonja from the comic books and movies is, well, set in a fantasy environment suspiciously like REH's Hyborian age.

Anyway, I'm really excited to see this product. Solomon Kane is so unlike REH's other popular characters and has always been fascinating to me. I'm glad to see a resurgence in popularity for Solomon.

 

[dougmander]

This would also make a handy supplement to mine for Northern Crown.

Yep, for those of you who have been bugging me to do a Europe supplement for Northern Crown, there it is, basically.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I'm not a real lawyer yet, so take this with a salt-lick size grain of salt. Ordinarily, I think a copyright will last 70 years after the author's death.

It's not quite as simple as that, but you have it partly right. I pulled some info from here.

Works created after 1/1/1978—life of the longest surviving author plus 70 years—earliest possible PD date is 1/1/2048
Works registered before 1/1/1978—95 years from the date copyright was secured.
Works registered before 1/1/1923—Copyright protection for 75 years has expired and these works are in the public domain.

The Good News—works published in the United States in 1922 or earlier are in the public domain even if they are not yet 95 years old.
The Bad News—no new works will enter the public domain until January 1, 2019.

Of course, I will bet money that Congress will extend copyrights again right before January 1, 2019. The Supreme Court said this tactic was just fine for Congress to keep extending copyright in this fasion in a recent decision.

 

[Ian Sturrock]

The Solomon Kane stories, like most of Howard's work, are in the public domain -- see here for more info:

http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought4ws02.html

It's likely that someone with enough money to fight it out legally could release an unlicensed RPG based on Solomon Kane, but without using the name "Solomon Kane" (given that it's trademarked). Sherlock Holmes is in a similar situation; case law suggests that trademarks are unlikely to prevent the presentation of PD material in other forms, so long as those other forms don't infringe trademarks by using them in titles or advertising.

I suspect that's unnecessary in this case, though, as it certainly looks like the licensed Solomon Kane game will do a grand job by itself.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Ditto. This is very awesome.

Wow, that's awesome. I got goosebumps when I saw that art. If that's any indication, they've definitely got the "feel" of Solomon Kane.

 

[arscott]

IANAL, but:

The fact that someone has Solomon Kane trademarked doesn't mean that people can't use the name Solomon Kane in a product. It just means they can't call the product Solomon Kane.

Heck, Universal Studios owned the Trademark for "Dracula", but that didn't stop Columbia from releasing "Bram Stoker's Dracula"

The real difficulty here is that Paradox Entertainment claims to own "all rights to the library of author Robert E. Howard". Presumably, that means they either have the copyright, or have enough money and lawyers to say that they do and get away with it.

Given the unlikelyness of none of Howard's works having fallen into public domain, I'm inclined to believe that they're claim is more tenuous than they'd like to admit. It sounds like Paradox is just one of those two-bit Intellectual Property Blackmail schemes.