New stories enter into Public Domain

If you aren't sick with the recent flow of Sherlock Holmes games, you will be glad that new stories will enter into Public Domain soon, including Agatha Christie's first Hercule Poirot. So Hercule versus Cthulhu coming soon...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/books/copyright-extension-literature-public-domain.html

 

Leave it to the New York Times to create an article that spends more time discussing the reasons why these works are entering public domain rather than focusing on the actual works themselves. LifeHacker provides links to lists for each category of work entering public domain as well as providing multiple examples of each category.

https://lifehacker.com/these-1923-copyrighted-works-enter-the-public-domain-in-1825241296

 

I don't know about the rest of you but I am F***ing PUMPED that "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is entering the public domain.

 

Little Rascles MMO FTW!!

(Huh... for some reason I thought all of wodehouse’s work was already pd.)

 

Been done. Sort of...
https://www.chaosium.com/horror-on-the-orient-express-pdf/
One of the most epic pnp rpg (published) campaigns ever created.

 

Wow, I play(ed) a lot of pnp, but I didn't know about his one. Now I have to order it and it's your fault!

 

It’s insanely large, but breaks up nicely.

 

Okay, it turns out I have played this module, but just the first quarter of it, up until Milan (unfortunately then I moved abroad from my home country so we couldn't finish it and it's not something we would like to play over skype). I just didn't know the exact title. (Although I should have recognize it because of the Orient Express, it goes through Budapest after all... )

 

Just what we need. More remakes.

Bah humbug!

Seriously though, Little Rascals as a game isn't too far from a real genius idea for a competitive online "shooter" idea which I will generously share for free.

A game with a bunch of cartoon, rascally school kids having a rock fight. TItle : Rock Fight. Nothing but an empty sandlot, badass dives, cartwheels, slides, legendary wind-ups, dislodged teeth, an classic red bumps on the head. Big kids eat more hits and throw epic boulders, but skinny kids dodge better and sling the lighting zingers which might bring down a Goliath. Only rules is destroy all the other kids. Fun for the whole family.

If somebody hasn't made this a couple years from now, I'm gonna. All you need it a great physics based character controller and rock-flight path. The rest is absolutely generic. Oh, and fun art style.

 

You missed the opportunity to call it "Kids Rock!" and license some epic Kid Rock music.

And BTW:

(Sorry)

 

Okay, I wanted some Cthulhu-experience, so I bought the "new" Cthulhu game on Steam. Oh boy, it's super-boring. I have fell asleep during "game-play".

 

Ugh. That’s not good to hear. I bought it a couple of weeks ago but haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

 

It has an okay story (it's a little bit obvious too I'm afraid), but they take away the control too much and when you get it back still too obvious everything and no real game play other than clicking on brightly flashing clue-points in the environment. And it has the worst stealth-mechanic I saw for a while...
But it looks 'okay' at least. Even great if we count that it isn't a big AAA software company.

 

I assume you've already played Dark Corners of the Earth, then?

That sounds great. What kind of time commitment is required to get into one of these?

 

Of course. I wish Bethesda would remake it with a modern engine and proper planning less bugs and stuff.
(Actually I kinda am working on a "spiritual successor" game, of course, much shorter, given the one man show stuff, but the shooting-puzzle-horror(ish)-bigbadgreatoldones lineup is a given with my own twist)

The Orient Express is a long one, at least for us it was, we haven't finished it and we played for six months at least weekly. We finished ~1/3-ish or so. But there are shorter modules and you always can make your own set up.
The Cthulhu rules are easy and relatively short (compared for example with D&D).

 

One thing I always wonder about: Even when the copyright expires, couldn't names such as "Hercule Poirot" still be trademarks if the author's estate keeps up with them? So even if you can freely copy and distribute these individual works, surely that doesn't necessarily mean you can just do whatever you want with the characters, does it?

 

If the organisation is still selling goods or services using the trade mark, you won’t be able to sell goods or services under the same mark.

However that doesn’t mean you can’t use their characters, including their names.