History
Buck Rogers was a fictional character created in 1928 by Philip Nowlan. A Buck Rogers comic strip written by Nowlan was syndicated by John Dille (who may have contributed the nickname "Buck" to the character). Ownership of Buck Rogers and other works passed into the hands of the Dille Family Trust.
In the 1980s, John Dille's granddaughter, Lorraine Williams, was the president of TSR. In that decade, business for TSR was booming, mainly as a result of their popular RPG, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Lorraine Williams decided to merge Buck Rogers and D&D to make the XXVc game setting, which came out in 1990 and was based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition rules, but there are some small differences. It was a new incarnation of the Buck Rogers world created by William's brother, Frank Dille. Its universe was limited to the solar system, and revolved heavily around interplanetary travel and terraforming. A few dozen expansion modules were published, as well as a line of novels and graphic novels.
The company TSR owned Advanced Dungeons and Dragons at the time and had worked with SSI on a computerized version of the rules. SSI developed their "Gold Box" game engine for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, so it was natural for them to use the engine for the XXVC rules.
Read more about this topic: Buck Rogers XXVC
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