1980. The RPG industry was six years old and still growing. The second wave of fantasy roleplaying games was booming, led by AD&D. Another member of that class, RuneQuest, had opened up the industry to new ideas about skills divorced from character classes. Traveller, Villains & Vigilantes, and Gamma World were popularizing new roleplaying genres, while Dallas first suggested the idea of licensed products.

Enter Pete Fenlon. He'd been playing Dungeons & Dragons since its introduction in 1974 and had even rejected an offer from TSR for some of his work. However, his role playing group at the University of Virginia was interested in doing more. In the late 1970s, while playing a campaign set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, they began to develop a set of roleplaying rules all their own.

And upon those ideas a company would be founded. It would be called Iron Crown Enterprises, after the legendary regalia of Middle-earth, or ICE.

Rolemaster Beginnings: 1980-1982

ICE was formed in 1980, shortly after most of the principals graduated from the University of Virginia. Fenlon was at the head of the company but at his side were S. Coleman Charlton, who'd write most of the rules, Richard H. Britton, Terry K. Amthor, Bruce Shelley (later of Avalon Hill, Microprose, and Ensemble Corp.), Bruce Neidlinger, and about four others. The company had little financing and its principals would soon realize that it'd be years before they could pay salaries to everyone, so very shortly the 10 people who had founded the company became just 6 and those remaining employees started working jobs on the side to make ends meet. Fenlon himself commuted from law school at William & Mary for two years, while Britton ran the firm. Despite the part-time status of its employees, ICE soon had put out three products: Arms Law (1980), The Iron Wind (1980), and Manassas (1981).

Arms Law, ICE's first publication, would be the start of their Rolemaster line--though it wasn't seen as its own RPG at the time. Instead Arms Law was offered as an alternative combat system for AD&D. This sort of freeform expansion to TSR's core games was common in the industry at the time. Judges Guild had made a business of it, but the shelves were full of others such as Chaosium's All the Worlds' Monsters, early releases of Arduin, and publications by Gamescience and others.

Arms Law replaced the simple target-number based combat of other early games with complex charts, which cross-referenced weapon type and armor type to show very discrete results for different ranges of die rolls. Each weapon had a chart, so players pulled a table when they pulled their weapon. In addition, the percentage-based system introduced "open" dice rolls and integrated "critical hits," which could result in maiming or death.

The Iron Wind, meanwhile, was a generic (AD&D) book that described a campaign set on a fantastic island, complete with weather, ethnologies, NPCs, and other background details. It also featured an eight-level dungeon. It would form the basis for the "Loremaster" set of campaign books (later subsumed into "Shadow World"). Loremaster was by no means the earliest campaign world. The City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Glorantha, Greyhawk, Tekumel, and Traveller’s Imperium were just a few of the worlds already being detailed at various levels by 1980. Loremaster was nonetheless an early entrant to the category. However after this first publication the world would not be revisited for four years.

ICE's last early offering, Rick Britton's Manassas, was a Civil War era wargame set in ICE's home state of Virginia. It was well received, but lies largely outside of this history of RPGs, though it does point toward ICE's interest in strategic games from the very start.

The next Rolemaster release was Spell Law (1981), a plug-in spell system that was most notable for the fact that it organized spells into lists. These lists gave users access to multiple, related spells, as they reached additional character levels. Then ICE produced Character Law (1982), a book which provided character creation rules, and thus finally tied all of the books into a (somewhat) cohesive whole. Spell Law, Arms Law, the related Claw Law, and Character Law were then published as a boxed set, called Rolemaster (1982).

Despite its origins as an AD&D plug-in system, Rolemaster ended up being a unique system all its own. If anything it derived more from RuneQuest than AD&D, especially given its focus on skill-based characters. Though they might seem a bit quaint now, the Rolemaster system was pretty innovative back in 1982. The critical hits of Arms Law were one of the first systems of their type, while the related spell lists of Spell Law can be seen as prefiguring later linked spell groups, from the spheres of magic in the current Dungeons & Dragons to Jonathan Tweet's original magic system in Ars Magica.

However, Rolemaster really made its own impact on the industry through its careful simulation of real-life systems, from its weapon-by-weapon hit charts to its complex experience methods which gave points from everything from receiving critical hits to traveling.

This careful simulation was based upon simple concepts that were nonetheless rooted in a complex, table-based presentation--and that would soon become a detriment when ICE signed a very important license in 1982.

The Origins of MERP: 1982-1984

The original Rolemaster systems had been developed by Fenlon, Charlton, and Kurt Fischer during Fenlon's 6-year campaign set in Tolkien's Middle-earth. Thus it made sense for the young ICE to approach Tolkien Enterprises seeking a license for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. What's surprising, however, is that they actually received it. According to Tolkien Enterprises, the reason was simple: no one else had ever asked.

Thus in 1982 ICE signed an exclusive, worldwide licensing agreement with Saul Zaentz's Tolkien Enterprises and locked down the biggest and best license in the history of the roleplaying industry (at least until West End licensed Star Wars about five years later).

ICE started the Middle-earth line off by following the same path to success that they'd pioneered with Rolemaster. They produced a generic sourcebook that could be used with AD&D or other games. It was called A Campaign and Adventure Guidebook for Middle-earth (1982) and it was mainly an excuse to package Pete Fenlon's first map of Middle-earth.

The maps of Middle-earth produced by ICE are worthy of note. Besides that first, large, map, Fenlon would also pen smaller scale maps for all the campaign supplements. These designs would be used until almost the end of the line. They covered broad swaths of Middle-earth in exacting detail, and continue to be lauded for their technical skill.

After the Middle-earth Guidebook ICE started producing Middle-earth based sourcebooks for their brand-new Rolemaster game. The first of these early supplements was Angmar (1982) by Heike Kubasch (who continues on with ICE to this day). There would be a total of six supplements published for Rolemaster before ICE decided upon a different tack.

In these early supplements, ICE also made an interesting decision. Rather than setting their Middle-earth supplement at the end of the Third Age, during the War of the Ring, they instead decided to set it about 1400 years earlier. The first supplements wobble from 1600-1700 T.A., but ICE eventually selected 1640 T.A. as the official year of the ICE campaign.

This is always a hard decision in a licensed product, as you must decide whether to place a game in the most interesting era for players, when the books/movies/comics/etc. were placed, or whether to place them in a different era where the players will have more free will. As one of the earliest contenders in the world of licensees, ICE took the latter path. One of the flaws in the decision was ultimately their inability to totally stick with that setting. Most books conformed to the 1640 T.A. line, but every book talked about how to use it in other time eras, and the occasional book came out that just couldn’t be used in the context of 1640 T.A.

(And, I don't know how common my own experiences are, but the two MERP campaigns I've played in were both set near the War of the Ring, not 1640.)

Early on, ICE was also intent on using the Middle-earth license to their best ability, and not just for RPG books. From 1982-1984, ICE put out several board games, from The Riddle of the Ring (1982), a clever game of card management and bluffing, to The Battle of Five Armies (1984), a chit-based wargame. However, by 1984 ICE was largely moving out of the board game industry. It'd be 10 years before they published another Middle-earth based board game.

The actual Middle-earth Roleplaying, or MERP, system was only released in 1984. The MERP system itself would always be a somewhat controversial. It simplified Rolemaster, because ICE wanted to make it easier for people drawn in by the background to play the game. However it still retained the very mechanical, highly simulationistic details of its parent. Combat was much more detailed than was really necessary for a game that many thought should be about characters and story--and the magic system, which was pretty vanilla-RPG with some small encouragement not to cast spells, seemed totally out-of-whack with the background. In later years games like Pendragon (1985) would show the power of deeply wedding a background and a game system, but unfortunately MERP did not.

Even though they now had a game system, ICE continued to push MERP books as generic. The logos for MERP and Rolemaster didn't appear on MERP supplements until 1987. Pete Fenlon would later admit in a 1992 open letter that he suspected more people used the MERP supplements with D&D than with the MERP rules themselves. Nonetheless, beginning in 1984, there was indeed a game system at the core of the Middle-earth releases.

And somewhere along the line, ICE became a truly professional company. Between the release of the boxed Rolemaster in 1982 and the first Middle-Earth modules, ICE was making money. Neidlinger and Coleman both went full-time in late 1982, and started taking salaries. ICE was on its way up.

Early MERP Releases: 1982-1987

MERP was one of the best selling RPGs in the mid-1980s, largely because of its success in the book trade and overseas. A couple of different reports suggest that first-edition English-language sales were in the 250,000-300,00 range. MERP did better in Europe than in the United States, and it was translated into 12 languages over its lifetime. However, despite any success it found, it was a remarkably ungamelike game during its first edition run, from 1982-1992. MERP was background heavy and there were no truly crunchy game-mechanic books published at any time during MERP's first edition history.

The Middle-earth campaign/background books, which began with Angmar (1982), and ran to 21 books by the end of the first edition, were the core of the MERP line. Edited by Fenlon and, later, Jessica Ney-Grimm, they were some of the best and most extensive setting books ever published for roleplaying, begun 5 years before TSR started a similar program for the Forgotten Realms. Today they still utterly eclipse other attempts to detail worlds like Glorantha, Talislanta, and Tekumel. (Though some comment that the MERP sourcebook releases oddly avoided many of the most important realms of Middle-earth. For example, The Shire was not detailed until 1995, 13 years after the line began. Barad Dur never was.)

Despite their success as setting backgrounds (or perhaps because of it) the MERP campaign books were also somewhat odd ducks in the world of RPGs. Some call them "Encyclopedia Middle-earthia." They provided such specific & deep details, with so little game information, that they probably encouraged an even greater reader-to-player ratio than most RPG lines, which isn't a very healthy pattern for longevity.

There were 15 actual adventure modules published in MERP's original adventure line, from Bree and the Barrow-Downs (1984) to Dark Mage of Rhuduar (1989), but up until 1987 these read more like small-focus background books, with a few (usually very short) adventures thrown in.

It seemed to underline the same philosophy shown in the campaign books: lots of background, and just a little bit of game material thrown in to spice things up. Insiders at ICE say that they believed that MERP and Rolemaster gamemasters wanted a lot of creative freedom. The attitude was pretty common in RPGs throughout the 1980s, and perhaps the MERP supplements don't suffer when compared to the other publications of the period; they just took a different tack--settings instead of dungeons. However, with MERP now divorced from Rolemaster, the lack of crunchy rules for Middle-earth became increasingly noticeable.

It wasn't until the late 1980s that MERP started to really develop as its own game system--not just a series of system-agnostic campaign books. As noted, the MERP logo entered wider user around this time. In addition ICE produced a series of stat books, beginning with Lords of Middle-Earth (1986) and continuing on with more books of NPCs, monsters, and treasures.

Down the line, new campaign modules would provide more precise details for cities like Minas Tirith (1988) and Minas Ithil (1991), offering more gameable backgrounds. Finally, new "Ready-to-Run" adventures (1988-1992) would finally put the focus on real RPG adventures in a way that MERP hadn't seen before.

More Rolemaster Editions: 1984-1989

Meanwhile ICE was facing the opposite problem with their other line. With the release of MERP as its own game, ICE's Rolemaster system was suddenly without a setting. In 1984 ICE introduced a fourth book to their core line, Campaign Law. Even more novel than some of their earlier books, Campaign Law described how to run an entire campaign, and thus was one of the earliest GM guidebooks on the markets. Addressing the problem of a setting, Campaign Law also reintroduced the world of Loremaster by describing three new islands, called "The World of Vog Mur". At the same time ICE re-released The Iron Wind and published a few other supplements set in that world. However, the experiment was short lived, and soon the Loremaster line would be abandoned for a second time.

Rolemaster itself, however, remained more successful. It underwent a minor revision and was republished in a second edition in 1986. ICE would soon afterward introduce a series of yearly rule supplements, beginning with Rolemaster Companion (1986). Each of these books offered new spell lists, new classes, and other new rule systems for Rolemaster. On the one hand it seemed a good direction for a rules-heavy system, but on the other hand it highlighted the system's weakness by making it even more complex and convoluted with every release. Some would also complain about poor playtesting in the Companions, and that many of the new rules greatly unbalanced the game.

Another iteration of Rolemaster second edition appeared in 1989. This remains one of the best-loved editions of the rules by most early fans. At the same time the new "Shadow World" background, designed by Terry Amthor, appeared. The Wold of Vog Mur and other older Loremaster elements were retrofitted into the new campaign, which was extensively supported over the next year.

Piles of New Products: 1985-1989

At the same time as Rolemaster and MERP were picking up speed, ICE continued to try and expand their company in about every way possible. At least six major new lines appeared in the late 1980s, covering RPGs, solo game books, and miniatures.

The first new product line was the Space Master RPG, designed by Amthor and Kevin Barrett, which enjoyed first (1985) and second (1988) editions in the eighties. By the second edition, with its extensive world building and starship construction systems, it was obvious that Space Master was trying to go straight up against Megatraveller (1987), the recent rerelease of GDW's classic SF game.

The second new product line was the Cyberspace RPG (1989), which used an iteration of the Space Master system, but set it in a new, future cyberpunk era. As with many of their releases, ICE was following the trends. R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk (1988) had just kicked off the genre, and FASA's Shadowrun (1989) was released that same year as Cyberspace. There was a joke running around the ICE office in 1989, following the release of Cyperspace, that said "if ICE does a game in a genre, you know that genre is dead now".

The third new product line consisted of a set of three different solo game book series. By the mid-eighties full-fledged solo gaming books had become very popular, with product lines such as Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf in full production, and ICE wanted into this booming market too. They started off with Night of the Nazgul (1985), the first of their Tolkien Quest books (later renamed Middle-earth Quest). A few years later they'd build on this with a series of Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries, the first of which was Muder at the Diogenes Club (1987), and a series of Narnia Solo Games, the first of which was Return to Deathwater (1988). Unfortunately there were serious problems with this line, which we'll return to momentarily.

The fourth new product line included a couple of miniatures games. The first was Barrett's Silent Death (1990), a combat game which used the Space Master background, but soon became a solid gameline of its own. Another was Bladestorm (1990), which came in a big box of rules, but also linked to a miniatures line.

Even more notable than these new internally-developed product lines was a 1986 publication deal with Hero Games. Hero Games was similar in ICE to many ways. Hero had gotten started just a year after ICE, and they had a solid core game system that was successful enough that they'd used it as the basis for several different games, including Champions, Danger International, Fantasy Hero, and others. However, unlike ICE (or at least, moreso), Hero Games was constantly struggling, with production and financial problems that plagued the company. Thus in January 1986 ICE arranged to take over the game production and distribution for Hero Games, leaving Hero with the editorial and other creative tasks.

There were problems with the changeover, however. Within a year all of the original creators from Hero--George McDonald, Steve Peterson, and Ray Greer--had taken jobs in the computer and movie industries and the Hero Games production had become anemic. As a result, ICE decided to do things themselves, and they brought on a new editor, Rob Bell, who would be the head of Hero Games production under ICE for several years.

Before Rob Bell the Hero System had been disjoint, with similar, but not identical systems being used on many games (much as was the case with Chaosium's BRP system). But by now GURPS (1986) was gaining steam, and the benefits of a truly universal system were becoming more obvious. So, Rob Bell unified the Hero System. With the release of Champions Fourth Edition (1989), Hero System Rulesbook (1990), and Fantasy Hero (1990), there was a second generic and universal system on the market.

(A more complete discussion of the Hero System will have to await a history of Hero Games, sometime in the future.)

The sixth new product line of the late 1980s was ICE's "Campaign Classics" line, which detailed various historic and mythic backgrounds in excellent one-off sourcebooks that were dual-statted for both Rolemaster and Fantasy Hero. There were five in all: Robin Hood (1987), Mythic Greece (1988), Vikings (1989), Pirates (1989), and Mythic Egypt (1990).

Though well-regarded and generally lauded, the Campaign Classics line also highlighted how poor the Hero/ICE fit was. Fans, freelance authors, and even in-house authors for ICE wanted little to do with Hero, and vice-versa. Monte Cook, for a time the editor in charge of both lines, would later recount having to deal with complaints from fans on a daily basis, who all felt like space was being wasted in their books with stats they'd never used.

By the start of 1990, things looked generally good for ICE, with Rolemaster, Space Master, Cyperspace, Silent Death, the "Campaign Classics" line, three solo book lines, a few miniature lines, and the entire Hero System set of games all under the ICE umbrella. However, problems had been brewing in the background since 1986, and by the end of 1990 they'd become much more visible to the general gaming public.

The Bad Years: 1990-1992

There tend to be three notable signs when an RPG company is floundering.

First of all, freelancers stop getting paid. And, this was definitely the case for ICE by 1990. Freelancers have stated since that during this time period they stopped submitting proposals to ICE as a result. One staff member recounts that in this time period perhaps 20% of his time was spent talking with (rightfully) irate freelancers.

Second, the employees face pay cuts or delays. Between the late 1980s and 1992 experienced ICE employees like Kevin Barrett, John Morgan, Monte Cook, and even Rick Britton (the VP of the company!) left ICE for more stable pastures.

Third, book production grinds to a halt. Sherlock Holmes Solo and Narnia Solo both ended in 1988, Middle-earth Quest in 1989, in all cases with unpublished books awaiting production. At least one of these books, a final Sherlock Holmes mystery, was even published overseas, but not by ICE. MERP production dropped from a dozen books a year to just two in each of 1991 and 1992. Space Master saw just a single book in each of 1991-1992, while Cyberspace was supported with a princely three supplements in 1991, plus a new edition in 1992. Rolemaster proper was the only line supported at its old levels during the 1991-1992 crash, with over a half-dozen books total, plus some new "genre books" which replaced the "Campaign Classics" line, but without the controversial Hero support. However, Shadow World only saw two books, after 15 releases in 1989-1990.

The ups and downs of ICE were really dramatic. In the mid-1980s they were selling 5000 copies of their average books, and more of their best-selling Rolemaster Companions and MERP books. But by 1992 they were at a nadir. One day staff members showed up to work and found the door locked, with a sign that said "closed by order of the sheriff." ICE hadn't been paying its rent. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt would be run up during this low point--but then repaid during the next ICE high point, in the middle of the 1990s.

The problems leading to ICE's near-bankruptcy in 1990-1992 originated from those solo gaming books, especially the Middle-earth Quest books.

By 1986 the first three MEQ books had been released as "Tolkien Quest" gamebooks, and the fourth was on the way. The books had already been approved by Tolkien Enterprises, but suddenly Tolkien's book publishing licensee George Allen & Unwin (also ICE's UK book distributor) claimed that both ICE and Tolkien Enterprises were in violation of their contract. ICE was forced to recall and destroy all four books. Two different sources put the loss from this and other Solo Quest issues at $2.25 million to $2.5 million dollars, a disaster for a self-financed firm.

Meanwhile a remarkably similar problem overtook the Narnia Solo books. The Narnia licensor turned out to not have all the necessary rights, and went bankrupt owing ICE considerable damages.

By 1988 ICE had renegotiated a gamebook license with the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, and put four more Middle-earth Quest books out under license from George Allen & Unwin. This didn't make up for the lost revenues of all those destroyed books, but it at least gave ICE a new opportunity to take advantage of the book mass-market. Unfortunately the solo game market had already peaked in 1985-1986. By 1986-1988 it was going soft, with other lines like Wizards, Warriors & You, Sagard the Barbarian, GrailQuest, Endless Quest, and Super Endless Quest all ending during this period. ICE had missed the wave.

This would ultimately push ICE even further over the edge. Returns--always a danger in the book trade--apparently weren't that bad until the end of the Sherlock Holmes series. A larger problem was that when ICE cancelled the various Solo book lines, they had already invested in over a dozen books which were being prepared for publication in the various lines. This wasted investment just added to the injury of all those destroyed books. However, that original, and costly letter from George Allen & Unwin that told ICE to cease publishing the Middle-earth Quest books appears to be the real reasons behind ICE almost entering bankruptcy starting around 1990.

Bruce Harlick, the new line editor for Hero, offered one of the few public statements on ICE's troubles, in a response to the Internet in 1993. He said:

ICE is NOT in Chapter 7, Chapter 11, or Chapter 13. They were in a voluntary-type of receivership, but it wasn't a formal one. They are out of that now. They are even starting to pay off their back author debt! Or so I've heard. ICE should be in fine financial shape.

And indeed by 1993 things started to look up. In a pattern also seen in other game companies recovering from downturns, the period immediately after the near-bankruptcy was a revival for the remaining game lines. Though Cyberspace, Space Master, and the solo books were not published after the downturn, MERP and Rolemaster continued on, and each would receive some careful attention from ICE in the next few years, including new editions that were the most massive revisions that either game had ever seen (or would ever seen under this iteration of ICE).

The Fan Component: 1989-1993

However, not all of ICE's growth came from within. The late 1980s and early 1990s were really a bumper time for fan-created magazines being published in support of RPG lines, thanks primarily to the advent of desktop publishing technology. Among the many fanzines started in this time were: Redcap (Ars Magica, 1992), Tales of the Reaching Moon (RuneQuest, 1989), and The Traveller Chronicle (Traveller, 1993). Often these fanzines were able to support RPG lines through hard times, keeping interest in them up when production was down.

ICE was no exception to this trend. In 1989, just before ICE started faltering, Ross Henton and Lem Richards began publishing Grey Worlds, a Rolemaster 'zine. It ran for 14 issues through 1992 at which time it was taken over by ICE itself and produced at a more professional level. Unfortunately ICE was ultimately unable to make Grey Worlds work as a professional magazine. They published three issues in two years, then dropped the line just before the new release of Rolemaster. It would be replaced a few years later by Portals, which produced just two issues in two years, from 1996-1997.

The MERP fanzine, Other Hands had much better luck. Chris Seeman's 'zine began publication in 1993, and was thus in on the ground floor of the new second edition MERP line. Working with Jessica Ney-Grimm, Chris Seeman would act as a nexus of content throughout MERP second edition and Chris Seeman would later become an Assistant Line Editor for ICE. Even after MERP's demise, Other Hands would continue on for several more years. Other Hands also had the privilege of publishing ICE's first announcement of their new edition of MERP.

But for now let us pause in 1993, prior to that announcement. ICE is just recovering from its near bankruptcy of the early 1990s. Grey Worlds and Other Hands alike are supporting ICE's game lines. A few of the company's less successful lines have been shut down, but after their near miss ICE has decided to totally renovate their surviving products. In the coming years ICE will massively revise both their MERP and Rolemaster lines, and we'll look at that in the next article, which covers the second and third incarnations of ICE, running from 1993 to the present day.

A very extensive (but not yet complete) list of ICE games is found in the RPGnet Index.

Copyright © 2006 Shannon Appelcline, published by RPGnet under license.