RJK Estate Intellectual Property Library
Managing the RJK Estateʼs Extensive IP Holdings
We form partnerships with high-end entertainment industry companies and investment capital entities to develop and produce feature films, streaming series, documentaries
and docuseries, mainstream publications (fiction, nonfiction, comics), video games, animated series and TTGs.
The above indicates the breadth and depth of the estateʼs properties and their multimedia cross-over potential.
RJK Estate Property Categories
The following categorized sections describe the many types of IP holdings that the estate manages. Each section contains IP listings by title, whether these are available, contracted or licensed, and their current development thrusts and history. Each entry is generally or specifically described. Due to the great number of available holdings the property entries are constantly being updated to full synopsis forms in between work on current contracted projects and development deals.
Credentialed representatives of entertainment industry and capital investment firms can contact rjk.estate@orange.fr for full details on select available properties and for "first look" options on those properties under development.
The RJK Estate does not list contracted projects (currently one) that it is contractually obligated not to list. We list Contracted Properties, Available Properties and those currently Under Development.
Contracted Properties
Last Updated: 3/12/21
Fiction
Lake Geneva Days, The Novel. Status: Not available, financed. Mass Market publishing rights assigned to a California investment firm.
RPG Licensing, 1st Edition/OSRIC
Original Greyhawk™ Properties
(23 titles) for Osric/1st Edition development. Status: 23 titles not available from the estateʼs RPG library for Osric/1st Edition development; 1E print only rights and limited accessory production/merchandising rights assigned to TLB Games & Legends of Role Playing out of Nebraska.
Plus one major partnership/IP collaboration which cannot be listed due to contractual obligations. This will be listed when green-lighted.
Available Properties
Last Updated: 3/12/21
Fiction — Comics — Animated Series — Film
The Adventures of Wolfar. Type: Swords & Sorcery. The adventures of Robert Kuntzʼs "civilized barbarian" debuted in his published 20,000 word novella, "Black Festival."
Prolog... Wolfar regarded the parchment before him. He smiled. Old memories were stirring again. Wolfar had known the brutish whip of Moorish slavers, the wars of the Lombards, the intrigues of the Church and the friendship of Benefice, his teacher and savior. For it was Benefice who had pilgrimaged to Spain and there freed him from the galley he had been a prisoner upon for years. He owed Benefice his life.
Now Benefice had sent him a message to meet him at Borg village, a way-stop in southeastern Aquitania.
Wolfar made his preparations without pause
and rode to the village. He reached it an
hour before midnight on his second day out.
Wolfar studied the bleak countryside. There
was something in the air tonight. Death. The
lands hereabout were full of it, and the
barbarian in him felt its presence. He looked
at the decrepit inn and noted its name on the
signboard above the entry door: "The Ravenous Wretch". Wolfar grinned. The heady smell of mead was in his flaring nostrils.
Adventure, intrigue, a filthy inn, mead, and the smell of death. Times were getting better, he thought.
RPG Licensing, 5th Edition
Original Greyhawk™ Properties. All of Robert Kuntzʼs Original Greyhawk Castle Levels and Original Greyhawk Campaign maps and mss dating from the dawn of RPG history are available for 5th edition licensing and development.
Request the entire list of titles. Each title includes a brief synopsis. rjk.estate@orange.fr
Digital Products — Film
Rob Kuntzʼs CASTLE GREYHAWK/
Original Campaign Properties
1973-Present
Title: Extensive Castle Levels/Planar Realms/Regional and Other World.
Type: Digital Products, Film.
Status: Various states, from finished/ published to partials, with all maps rendered and extant. Very large manuscript/title repository.
Project History: Begun in 1973 by Robert Kuntz when he became co-DM of the Original Greyhawk campaign with his mentor, E. Gary Gygax, during their ongoing playtesting of Dungeons & Dragons. As Garyʼs time and duties shifted to guiding TSR, Kuntz took over the creating and maintaining of the campaign and greatly expanded all environs in the fantastic surround.
Synopsis: Finally in addition to all of the campaign and castle information Rob has in his head he still retains his own design notes and maps for the greater campaign. The contribution of these materials would be invaluable to the success of projects regarding either the campaign or castle. -- Paul J. Stormberg, Curator of the Gygax, Arneson and Kuntz Estates.
Request the entire list of titles. Each title includes a brief synopsis. rjk.estate@orange.fr
Under Development
Last Updated: 3/12/21
Feature Film — Streaming
Series
Title: "Lake Geneva Days"
Type: Streaming Series or Feature Film.
Status: Detailed chronological treatment being finished by Kuntz in parallel with a novelization.
Other: Treatment is dual purposed for mass market
novelization; includes a large, comprehensive database of period piece photos, illustrations, diagrams and specific story-boarding.
Project History: Started in 2018 as an in-depth memoir. Robert Kuntz was queried about the memoir by several film industry professionals in 2019. Soon afterwards the rights for a novelization of his memoirs were granted to a firm from California. Kuntz decided to render both the book and the film/series treatment at once.
Availability: Available upon treatmentʼs finish; query for first look options.
Synopsis: A tale of the meeting of master and student in a one-of-a-kind place of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Period 1967-1985.
Sergio Leone stated that the world resides in America; given that view it is also true that the magic of America resided in Lake Geneva and could not be divorced from the events taking place there. Lake Geneva was not just a backdrop for TSR Hobbies and the advent of the Dungeons & Dragons® game, the Yerkes Observatory, the Playboy Club, or for the rich Chicagoans. It was foremost a magnet that the further you strayed from beckoned you more mightily back to it -- to its beauty, to its wealth, to its majesty; and if you were not appreciative of this magic and instead misstepped within its confines, it was to your ultimate and resounding demise.
From grit to grime, from the good to the bad to the way too ugly, from the salacious to the sublime, from the hard workers to the hardly aware, from a drunken farmer wetting his pants at one end of a bar to the most respected eye surgeon in the county at its other end, to the sad irony of the fastest runner in Lake Geneva who had chased down and finally caught the 2nd fastest runner (this author) only to many years later return from the Vietnam War -- with no legs; and whom I then shed a tear for and shared a joint with. From the sad to the ultra-wild that was but a refrain for the normalized weird. Action! That was everyoneʼs middle name during Lake Geneva Days or you werenʼt living.
This just samples the magic that made everything insanely improbable, but possible none-the-less, within its yearning confines.
Lake Geneva Days is tell-all story -- a riveting view of the rawest of the raw that compels one against their will to acknowledge its often gut-wrenching, yet purely human, details, only to then reveal the most scintillating of diamonds that begs no attention yet by its very existence receives it all.
It will leave you breathless with its depth, breadth and pace just as it left me, the student and the master, Gary Gygax. For no matter where we were at, no matter what was before us, its magical lure could not be resisted even if that choice had been ours to make.
Video Game — Animated Series —
Film
Title: "Castle Perilous"
Type: CRPG, Feature Film or Animated Cartoon Series
Status: Upon treatmentʼs finish it will be offered to high end CRPG companies. Substantial time is being allotted for its completion in between Kuntzʼs current contracted
projects.
Other: Original concept cover art by Eric Bergeron. Featured as the 3rd Castle (with Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk) in the Three Castles Award, a yearly award bestowed at North Texas RPG Convention for excellence in RPG design.
Derivative products about it have been spawned over the years including Mordenkainenʼs Fantastic Adventure, Up on a Soapbox articles by Gygax, and the award-winning Maure Castle for issue #112 of The Dungeon magazine.
Project History: Based upon the legendary extended Castle El Raja Key, one of the two original D&D play-test castle dungeons (very early 1973). It was created and used to originate and adventure Gary Gygaxʼs PCs Mordenkainen and Yrag and many other LGTSA membersʼ player characters.
This allowed Gygax and Kuntz to switch perspectives (DM<>PC for Gygax and PC<>DM for Kuntz) during the intense, formative playtests of Dungeons & Dragons; and before the gameʼs release in 1974 to then merge their design attitudes for their creation of the 2nd Castle Greyhawk.
Though Kuntz had been sensing a way forward for its commercial release as far back as 2009, work to turn it into a polished CRPG offering was begun in 2019. Castle Perilous has an intense and evolving story arc that is readily adaptable to film or a series.
Synopsis: A magical edifice that has no permanent anchorage due to the circumstances that propelled it on its chaotic journey through time and space.
Animated Series — Comics —
Fiction
Title: "Drystaff The Wizard" Story Cycle
Type: Novelization, Short Stories, Comic/ Animated Series.
Status: Novel and four (4) short stories completed.
Project History: Started as short stories in 1976 and culminating with the novelization in 1990. Includes the series world map. The initial story was a satirical piece, "Quest for the Vermillion Volume," and was TSR's first published fiction. It appeared in issue #6 of their periodical, The Strategic Review.
Synopsis: Initially envisioned as a one-off satirical piece to push back against Industry giants Avalon Hill and Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) who were in attack mode against TSR and its popular Dungeons & Dragons game. It featured the bumbling Inspector Clouseau-like wizard, Drystaff.
Drystaff was soon re-imagined as a wizard whose stricken magical powers and memories are the result of his rivals having trapped him with an ancient magical curse. His dramatic, antic-ridden quest to regain his identity spans the short stories "Drystaff and the Pot Oʼ Gold"; "Drystaff the Mercenary"; "The Significs of Harewood"; and culminates with the novel, "The Twelve Labors of Drystaff".
Disclaimer: Dungeons & Dragons® and Greyhawk™ are registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast.
The RJK Estate Uses FADE IN Professional Screenwriting Software for its Apple Products.
