Iron Crown Enterprises

Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) is a publishing company that has produced role playing, board, miniature, and collectible card games since 1980. Many of ICE's better-known products were related to J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth, but the Rolemaster rules system, and its science-fiction equivalent, Space Master, have been the foundation of ICE's business. History Early years and Rolemaster In college in the late 1970s, while running a six-year Dungeons & Dragons campaign set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton, and Kurt Fischer began to develop a set of unique house rules; after most of them had graduated from the University of Virginia in 1980, many of the group's principals decided to turn their rules into a business and formed Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), named after a regalia of Middle-earth. Besides Fenlon and Charlton, the original ICE also included Richard H. Britton, Terry K. Amthor, Bruce Shelley, Bruce Neidlinger, Kurt Fischer, Heike Kubasch, Olivia Johnston, and a few others. The company originally only had a few full-time staff, relying on volunteer work from the other founders. But as income increased, it brought more on as employees. ICE quickly published three products: Arms Law (1980), The Iron Wind (1980), and Manassas (1981). Arms Law was the first release of the house rules from the University of Virginia days, and thus became the start of Rolemaster, although at that time Rolemaster was not seen as a standalone RPG but was offered as an alternative combat system for AD&D. The Iron Wind was a system-generic campaign centered on a fantastic island, and although it was unsupplemented for years it would eventually be recognized as the first release in ICE's Loremaster campaign setting. Manassas was an American Civil War-era wargame set in ICE's home state of Virginia.