Why is there no Flash Gordon RPG?

[Audrik]

Not exactly Flash Gordon, but TSR did make a Buck Rogers game in the late '80s, and they made a couple computer games with the same engine as the Forgotten Realms games (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc ...).

 

[Samloyal23]

Buck Rogers was a tv show in the 1980s and then an RPG. You could probably re-skin the same set of rules and create a campaign on Mongo...

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't think Flash is really in the public mind - the property is nostalgic, rather than current.

I recently watched Ted (the movie). I think that was the first time since watching the movie at the cinema back in the early eighties that I thought about it. Back then I thought it was great. I'm not sure I could stand to watch it today...

 

[DuaneWoolley]

Seconded - and I would say "Spot on!"

Thirded (if that's a word) Savage Worlds and Slipstream are a good choice for a pulp sci-fi game.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Buck Rogers was a tv show in the 1980s and then an RPG. You could probably re-skin the same set of rules and create a campaign on Mongo...

FWIW, Buck Rodgers predated and actually inspired the original Flash Gordon stuff. Flash was created to be competition for Buck's comic strip.

...but your core point remains intact- reskinning the BR RPG would probably work just fine.

 

[Samloyal23]

Now that I think of it, it would be easy to do a Modern D20 version, too, though it may not be as pulpy...

 

[prosfilaes]

Because Lorraine Williams owned the rights to Buck Rodgers and not Flash Gordon, of course.

Look at Conan - by every right it should be public domain since the author died in 1937 unmarried and childless, but somehow a company in Sweden claims the copyrights on it.

"The author died in 1937" is the only part of that that matters in the US, and that only for works published after 2002. Works published before 1923 are out of copyright in the US, but US authors could lose copyright by failing to keep up with the bureaucracy, which Howard did for most works published in his life.* Conan as derived from the works published in his life should be PD, but proving that is non-trivial. Risk-assessment for any large production usually suggests paying off instead of getting into arguments about non-extant contracts and the valid form of a renewal.

And the Conan company probably also has trademarks, which can be worked around, but make it harder or impossible to simply to label your product Conan, no matter what the copyright issue.

* See https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm for a brief synopsis of the rules.