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.

The company TSR owned Advanced Dungeons & Dragons at the time and had worked with SSI on a computerized version of the rules.

Three of these alliances that grow to be superpowers are the Russo-American Mercantile ("RAM"), the Indo-Asian Consortium ("IAC"), and the Euro-Bloc Faction ("EBF").

Buck is sent into space to destroy "MasterLink" - a heavily defended satellite that acts as the hub of the Soviet war machine.

The MasterLink satellite is primarily controlled by an eponymous artificial intelligence, but as an experimental system, it is supplemented by a Soviet cosmonaut named "Karkov" - who coincidentally murdered Rogers' parents years before while they were flying in a commercial jet the Soviet Union declared a spy craft.

The battle ends badly for both combatants; the Masterlink satellite is neutralized (but not destroyed), and Karkov dies from space exposure.

However, the "Last Gasp War" begins before a rescue can be attempted, and his preserved form is left drifting in space for the next five centuries.

In the year 2456, Rogers's spacecraft is discovered, and a number of factions race to recover it for various unrelated reasons.

Following lackluster response, TSR decided to try again with a more conventional table-top RPG, this time based on the original 1928 Philip Francis Nowlan novel Armageddon, 2419 A.D. (Ace, Aug 1978, ISBN 0-441-02939-6) and subsequent 1929 comic strip continuity, in which resurgent tribal Americans overthrow their Red Mongol conquerors.

The High Adventure Cliffhangers Buck Rogers War Against The Han Campaign Supplement (Dec 1993, ISBN 978-1-56076-683-4) was designed by Steven Schend alone.

Although published by TSR as a licensed Buck Rogers property, this game is unconnected with the XXVC universe.