Pinnacle Losing Solomon Kane

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Someone called Cabinet Entertainments (see the first link). No one knows yet what they are planning to do with the license, though. My guess is licensing it out to Modiphius for a 2d20 Solomon Kane RPG!

...

I'm half joking.
 
I would not be surprised if it was Modiphius at this point. They have snagged some good IP.
 
Tommy Brownell said:
Someone called Cabinet Entertainments (see the first link). No one knows yet what they are planning to do with the license, though. My guess is licensing it out to Modiphius for a 2d20 Solomon Kane RPG!

...

I'm half joking.
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In 2019
Game was beginning

Pinnacle: "What happen?"
Lawyer: "Somebody lost up us the license."
Office Guy: "We get signal."
Pinnacle: "What?"
Office Guy: "Main Skype turn on."
Pinnacle: "It's you!!"
Modiphius: "How are you gentlemen?"
Modiphius: "All your game are belong to us."
Modiphius: "You are on your way to destruction."
Modiphius: "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Modiphius: "Ha ha ha ha!"
Office Guy: "Boss!!"
Pinnacle: "Take off every Bennie!"
Pinnacle: "You know what you doing."
Pinnacle: "For great justice!"
Pinnacle: "Move Bennie!"
 
Wonder if a bundle of holding is far behind....
 
Well they make beautiful books, so if they do get it then it will look great, every bit as much as the SW edition.
However I just don't dig the 2D20 system, so if it is them then I'm not following.
In any case, the SW edition is great, it's worth sticking with.
 
Cabinet Entertainment is just the company that owns Solomon Kane, so the rights are just reverting. Doesn't seem to be anything about a new RPG in the works, Modiphius or otherwise. However, aside form Modiphius, they have licensed properties out to the Helmgast and Free League before.

I wouldn't be surprised if Pinnacle is the one ending the deal. Game lines are usually diminishing returns, and when you are paying a license fee, you reach a point where it just ceases to make sense.
 
Pinnacle never really did much with it, unfortunately. I'm never touching another 2d20 game again, so I would hate to see Modiphius get it.

I ran a game of it last year, but if I use that setting again I will probably go with BRP or OpenD6.
 
spittingimage said:
Robert E. Howard died in 1936. Wouldn't Solomon Kane be in the public domain by now?
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From what I understand (and I'm no lawyer), Cabinet Entertainment claims to own the trademark of various Robert E. Howard characters, even though some of the stories are in the public domain. Cabinet Entertainment bought the rights from Paradox Entertainment.

As with Lovecraft and Chaosium, it sounds like some of it falls into a legal grey area.

I can't speak to the veracity of this article, but...
 
Technically, Conan because public domain in 1963, one year before Disney had the Copyright laws rewritten. However, Paradox (at the time) having more money to make suing them for illegally squatting on an IP both pointless and cheaper to just licensing it from them.
 
I own the three hardcovers. It's a nice game, but I would prefer to use another system. I really don't like Savage Worlds much and I also think other systems would be a better fit. BRP/OpenQuest/Renaissance would be nice. LotFP might work as well.
 
carpocratian said:
Pinnacle never really did much with it, unfortunately. I'm never touching another 2d20 game again, so I would hate to see Modiphius get it.

I ran a game of it last year, but if I use that setting again I will probably go with BRP or OpenD6.
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A pretty comprehensive, standalone game, two large supplements and a small one?

I thought they did a nice job of covering all the bases without trying to build a bunch of extra around the source material. But YMMV and all.
 
carpocratian said:
As with Lovecraft and Chaosium, it sounds like some of it falls into a legal grey area.
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Chaosium managed to keep it a grey area for decades, but I'd say they've completely lost their grip on Lovecraft's creations at this point. I consider that a good thing as Lovecraft seemed to have only a positive reaction to people using the entities he created.

I think the trademarking of fictional characters as a form of perpetual IP protection may be legal to the letter of the law, but I find it dubious. It is just a way to thwart the rightful passage of culture into the public domain. Trademarks are your companies brand. I can kind of see Disney keeping Mickey Mouse as a trademark as he is their logo, but the practice of trademarking every notable character in every movie seems to be twisting the idea of a what a trademark is.

"Quick, Nineteen Eighy-Four is about to enter the public domain in the US. We need to release a line of Winston Smith rat poison to keep it behind our IP wall."

Tommy Brownell said:
A pretty comprehensive, standalone game, two large supplements and a small one?

I thought they did a nice job of covering all the bases without trying to build a bunch of extra around the source material. But YMMV and all.
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One of the things that drew me to Savage Worlds was that Pinnacle was weary of the supplement treadmill after Deadlands Classic, and they became a company that would just give you a full, ready-to-go setting in a single book. I view the size of their Solomon Kane line as a plus.
 
Tommy Brownell said:
A pretty comprehensive, standalone game, two large supplements and a small one?

I thought they did a nice job of covering all the bases without trying to build a bunch of extra around the source material. But YMMV and all.
Click to expand...

I'm not criticizing the materials they put out. Since they apparently weren't going to do any more, though, I would prefer to see the license pass to someone else.
 
Baulderstone said:
One of the things that drew me to Savage Worlds was that Pinnacle was weary of the supplement treadmill after Deadlands Classic, and they became a company that would just give you a full, ready-to-go setting in a single book. I view the size of their Solomon Kane line as a plus.
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Yeah, I always liked the one setting book, maybe a companion book a bit later, but not much more than a few books.

Though I'll admit that the Triple Ace Hellfrost method has some appeal as well... as long as it isn't just endless bits of mechanics and is just a lot of atlas material.
 
carpocratian said:
I'm not criticizing the materials they put out. Since they apparently weren't going to do any more, though, I would prefer to see the license pass to someone else.
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Gotcha. That makes sense.

EmperorNorton said:
Yeah, I always liked the one setting book, maybe a companion book a bit later, but not much more than a few books.

Though I'll admit that the Triple Ace Hellfrost method has some appeal as well... as long as it isn't just endless bits of mechanics and is just a lot of atlas material.
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I thought the original Savage Worlds approach was perfect, but the reality is gamers are apparently happier when you milk something to death.
 
I have the books but I'm going to buy some of the Savage World poker chips.

We all know that it will end up as another terrible 2d20 product. That's the world we live in. I'm supposed to pretend that somebody wanted Fallout to be a 2d20 system game and not Powered By GURPS?
 
How much of a "setting" is there to Solomon Kane, really? I loved running it because the adventures all but wrote themselves in my head. It really was just regular old pulp horror in the 16th-17th Century. We played it almost as WFRP with the Earth serial numbers printed back on. You could get WFRP1 modules, LotFP modules, CoC modules, hell, anything sword & sorcery or horrific and use it with a modicum of adaptations.

I deployed many of these and I also used WoD books as inspiration for monsters of the week (plenty of mileage from Changeling: the Lost).

I still haven't run my Colonial Rio de Janeiro/France Antartique/Villegaignon's Men SK game, though. This one would be tits.
 
The Butcher said:
How much of a "setting" is there to Solomon Kane, really? I loved running it because the adventures all but wrote themselves in my head. It really was just regular old pulp horror in the 16th-17th Century. We played it almost as WFRP with the Earth serial numbers printed back on. You could get WFRP1 modules, LotFP modules, CoC modules, hell, anything sword & sorcery or horrific and use it with a modicum of adaptations.

I deployed many of these and I also used WoD books as inspiration for monsters of the week (plenty of mileage from Changeling: the Lost).

I still haven't run my Colonial Rio de Janeiro/France Antartique/Villegaignon's Men SK game, though. This one would be tits.
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Sabres and Witchery is the system for a Solomon Kane game. Take a look at it ts free. I've taken that and folded, spindled, and mutilated it in to what I want super easily.
 
I mean, I found Savage Worlds worked pretty great for it, too. But then, when I'm the guy that decided SW was the way to run Pendragon, that's probably not surprising.
 
The Butcher said:
How much of a "setting" is there to Solomon Kane, really? I loved running it because the adventures all but wrote themselves in my head. It really was just regular old pulp horror in the 16th-17th Century. We played it almost as WFRP with the Earth serial numbers printed back on. You could get WFRP1 modules, LotFP modules, CoC modules, hell, anything sword & sorcery or horrific and use it with a modicum of adaptations.

I deployed many of these and I also used WoD books as inspiration for monsters of the week (plenty of mileage from Changeling: the Lost).

I still haven't run my Colonial Rio de Janeiro/France Antartique/Villegaignon's Men SK game, though. This one would be tits.
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Yeah, between the oodles of adventures and foes they already provided, the adventure generator in the book (I love my random tables), and the flexibility of the setting, material isn't hard to come by.
 
Funny to think of Pinnacle "losing" a franchise that they did years ago and promptly quit supporting. I mean, after that early flurry of books they didn't really do anything else with it.
 
Tommy Brownell said:
I thought the original Savage Worlds approach was perfect, but the reality is gamers are apparently happier when you milk something to death.
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Obviously.
Though not me. I like Solomon Kane even with just the corebook:smile:.
 
finarvyn said:
Funny to think of Pinnacle "losing" a franchise that they did years ago and promptly quit supporting. I mean, after that early flurry of books they didn't really do anything else with it.
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The "losing" part is relevant because, at the end of the year, it's not for sale anymore. No picking it up on DriveThru on a cheap sale, or snagging a book off of Pinnacle's website. I would imagine the remaining books on the secondary market will spike in price, because that's what people do.
 
Pinnacle could have done more with Solomon Kane. I mean the whole nature of Kane is a wanderer. The IP sets you up for an award winning series of modules. The problem with Pinnacle is, they don’t do adventures, they do Plot Point Campaigns.
 
They released three books that were nothing but, or primarily, adventures. Even the "monster book" was "here's a foe, and here's an adventure that goes with it".

Even the PPC is just a bunch of unconnected (or very loosely connected) adventures, with the only actually-tied-together adventures being the ones where you get one of the Big Special Weapons To Fight The Big Bad At The End.

(Which is generally true of most of their plot points campaigns.)
 
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