I would have thought that the Zelazny estate would be interested in cashing in since Roger has been gone for so long and fewer people seem to be familiar with his work. Any gaming exposure is bound to increase book sales, I should think, which would benefit the estate. I wonder why they are so reluctant to merchandise the Zelazny brand.
This is what I have heard about the issues. I may have been misinformed or my info might be out of date, so bear with me.
When Roger died, he was legally separated from his wife, but rights to the estate were still in his ex-wife's hands, and partially with his children. His partner at the time (Jane Lindskold) was left as executor of his estate. If you can imagine such a situation, you can get a pretty good idea of why it might not be terribly easy to negotiate things. Roger's literary agency was the Pimlico Agency, run by Kirby and Kay McCawley. Kirby died in 2014, and I'm not sure Kay is very active, or if the rights to his work are still with her. A check of the Best Business NY site (where they were incorporated) says that the agency closed in 1992, after 28 years in business. They may have transferred his representation to another agency, or they may have simply handed it back to his family and let them deal with his representation. I've heard conflicting stories about where the rights are.
This becomes complicated if you take into account that the holders of his estate might not have the rights to
The Chronicles of Amber for television/film, as there have been numerous attempts at bringing it to the screen. They may have sold those rights long ago, and in some cases, rights to ancillary projects are often tied into those rights, just as the
Lord of the Rings license encompasses almost everything other than the actual books by Tolkien. My guess is that Skybound Entertainment, who are working on the series, bought the rights from the Scifi Network, who had them beforehand. Or from some intermediary.
So the question is whether Phage Press had a contract that allowed new editions of the game to be created, if the rights allowed for transfer of ownership of the license, and if the rights are not in conflict with another licensee, in which case these things usually have to be negotiated.
Ultimately, though, if a license isn't easy and clear to get, there usually isn't enough money in RPGs to warrant sorting things out. Unless a roleplaying publisher has a legal advisor or lawyer on staff willing to work for free, it's going to be prohibitively expensive to resolve these sorts of situations.
If it were up to me, I'd do the following:
1. Find out who actually owns the rights to a new edition of the RPG
2. Discuss options with Diceless by Design, to see if using Wujcik's rules are the best choice moving forward*
3. Contact Skybound Entertainment and find out what the status of the TV series is. There's nothing about it on their website other than the announcement.
4. Coordinate with the above parties to do a Kickstarter for a deluxe, hardcover edition of the core rules and all sorts of associated merch, such as a tarot deck, GM screen, etc. Stretch goals would be a line of adventures or expansions from a dream-team of RPG authors.
5. Assess based on the success of the Kickstarter if there'd be any point in continuing a game line beyond the core book, but making those separate projects.
* I could make a strong argument for using a tarot based task resolution system, with a themed deck of cards.