Lord of Light

Another project we pitched to Games Workshop back in the early '80s was a boardgame of Roger Zelazny's seminal SF novel Lord of Light. We didn't have the rights, but we figured that was something GW could sort out. We can't remember if there was any talk at the time about the movie, which is where the illustrations by Jack Kirby came from, but it came to naught anyway.

The concept: an Earthlike planet is colonized by a starship, but the original crew keep their origin a secret from the future generations of colonists, while using technology to augment their own abilities and make themselves effectively immortal. They pattern themselves on the Hindu pantheon and, years later, to the ordinary people, they are the gods. It's Clarke's Third Law in action.

The game played out on two levels: the conquest of territory and individual combat. We had nice rules systems for both, especially the duels, which used a non-random mechanic in which you had to weigh off fatigue (paid if you won a round, but recovered fast) against injury (paid if you lost a round, recovered very slowly).

What would we have done if Ian and Steve had gone for it? Zelazny might have dug his heels in, having got a whiff of Hollywood interest, in which case we'd have had to rebuild it around a different mythology. Maybe Greek or Mesopotamian -- which probably would have gone down better in the modern Indian boardgames market, if there is one. We'd have been sorry to lose Rild and Nirriti, both great characters in the novel. (In the movie, if it could even be made today, Sean Harris should play Rild and we'd cast Paul Dano as Nirriti. Unless it's the Bollywood version, in which case your guess is as good as ours.)