Got the chance to interview Coleman Charlton
http://randomwizard.blogspot.com/2013/10/coleman-charlton-interview.html

Topics include
D&D in the 70s and university life
Iron Crown Enterprises
Middle-earth RPG game plan
The Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson killed ICE? Bastard.

I doubt he was involved directly but Tolkien Enterprises wanted to kill off ICE's very open ended liscence which would have been a gateway to alternate liscences had they survived.  However, ICE's re-liscencing of the property in the late eighties came at a very high price and according to some sources, was never profitable afterwards, even at the height of the collectable card game boom.  Coleman mentions the gamebook boom and ICE did some very fine Middle Earth game books that Tolkien Enterprises forced them to take back and stop making.  Too close to new fiction in Middle Earth I suppose.

In our local gaming group we were playing D&D using A Campaign and Adventure Guidebook for Middle Earth,and Angmar, immediately when it was first released in 1982.

They were phenomenal good books that, along with the Iron Wind Campaign setting anchored I.C.E. as one of the pre-eminent up and coming RPG companies that would be able to challenge the TSR RPG supremacy.

At the time, no one other than I.C.E. had even considered getting a license from Tolkien Enterprises to produce an RPG, because of the black eye they had given TSR and Gary over the early edition D&D white book. TSR had included Hobbits and Balrogs and Wraiths and stuff in 0D&D. They hadn't bothered to ask permission first, and Tolkien Enterprises had sent them (at the very least) a cease and desist letter. I remember getting the third edition whitebooks, and in D&D Hobbits had been changed to Halflings, and Balrogs had been dropped entirely off the monster list and replaced instead with Type I-VI demons. What I didn't know at that time, was that the Tolkien heirs were no longer the IP holders for everything Middle-Earth related, and a lawyer now owned the IP.

In 1994, I sent some of the stuff we were putting together for our local Rolemaster games to Pete Fenlon, and was offered a writing gig for I.C.E. which I declined because they were paying writers only 4 cents a word. At the time I was making awesome good money in the technology Industry, and full-time writers pay would have me making much less than the kids making minimum wage. Monte Cook took that job.

In 1999 I was part of an American Investment group that tendered an offer for the bankrupt I.C.E. to keep Rolemaster going, even though they had lost the MERP license.

We were outbid in the bankruptcy proceedings by a U.K. based group.

In 2000 I sold my entire MERP and Rolemaster collection. Sooo... bittersweet for me as well. Would have been interesting to be a part of, and see what would have happened, if we had kept RoleMaster in the U.S.

For Coleman Charlton, Thank You! MERP and the early supplements MERP made an awesome game!

UK based individual actually.

I'm guessing you weren't too thrilled to see Bruce Niedlinger (whatever who cares) back in charge.

Quote from: David Johansen;704263UK based individual actually.

I'm guessing you weren't too thrilled to see Bruce Niedlinger (whatever who cares) back in charge.

What happened to I.C.E. happened because they couldn't generate enough revenue to support both Rolemaster and the Tolkien RPG license. The Tolkien IP holder had stepped on them....hard. Their previous agreements with them had left them unable to pay some of their writers (who were, unsurprisingly, in our bidding group), and in bankruptcy proceedings to boot. Would you have confidence in that leadership?

It wasn't so much what happened during the proceedings though, as what happened after. All of us wanted to see RoleMaster continue to be published. Some in our group wanted to keep seeing new Shadowmaster, RM2, and Space Law stuff, and others, wanted some completely new supplement lines as well. We sought opportunities for both... and that just didn't happen until recently.

Well, Nicholas Caldwell is at the helm now with Lord Miller as line editor.  On the one hand I expect things will move forward more now.  I'm pretty sure Bruce used a fair chunk of the money to set up a print on demand operation that he walked away with.  ICE made a big deal of doing POD in house and I've never heard that the equipment went with the ICE IP. I think he had long since given up on the gaming thing as a money maker and was looking for an out.  Though he's at least peripherally involved in the Metal Express Silent Death reboot.

For myself, I can't imagine wanting to put any work, effort, money or emotion into a property anyone else owns ever again.

Nicholas Caldwell had also ponied up funds for our bidding group. He was notable for his knowledge of both RoleMaster and MERP, and of the history of I.C.E., and really kept everyone in our group, including folks that were overseas up-to-date during the insolvency proceedings.

When he outlined his vision of creating the new RMSS system folks thought it was a good plan. I would have willingly continued working on RM stuff and helping if his vision had been implemented.

Now it is... finally after more than a decade, getting implemented, and ICE is calling for new writers and new material (Something we had planned on from the very beginning when we thought we would be able to revive RoleMaster).

I have every confidence that he will do a great job as caretaker of the IP, with new high-quality RM supplements, and we'll see new ShadowWorld and SpaceMaster as well. They are literally boostrapping RM though, going with PDF's and PoD.

Like I said earlier, bittersweet. I sold all my RM stuff back in 2000 when it was clear RM wasn't going in that direction.

It was a nice read but too brief!  Good to know some insider info about the Tolkien properties, wish there'd been more about Hero System (ICE published 4e).

Sadly, spending a year on the revision committee destroyed most of my interest in Rolemaster.   That's not to say that I don't think the new version will do well.  That's got more to do with marketing and getting product out the door.  It certainly cleans things up and unifies the system at any rate.

But I honestly can't imagine playing it.  I was very much an RMSS fan and every last thing I liked about the game is gone and indeed, generally gone with the kind of extreme prejudice that will ensure it never sees the light of day again.  I liked the attribute generation, the culture packages, the training packages, and the skill category split in particular.

What the system did was force a three dimensional character out of gamers who generally only look for the best bonuses.  You had to build up layers of background detail to get that character.  It was the best of both worlds if perhaps, slow because of it.

Thanks for the link to the interview. Too short, but some interesting stuff in there.

It was sad to see I.C.E. implode, as I was a big fan of their Tolkien-related properties (MERP, LotRAG, M-E Quest/Tolkien Quest, and the MECCG). I still play the CCG semi-frequently...

The Random Wizard Blog has moved. The new link to the Coleman Charlton Interview is

https://www.kirith.com/random-wizard/articles/coleman-charlton-interview.html

And there is a follow conversation with Mr Charlton

https://www.kirith.com/random-wizard/articles/coleman-charlton-conversation-part-1.html