Pete Fenlon on the Rise and Fall of Iron Crown Enterprises

Throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, Iron Crown Enterprises was my favourite role-playing company. Of course, like most, I started out in this hobby playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I bought a lot of books and games from TSR during the 1980s – not just for AD&D (although that certainly was my focus), but other games as well, like Star Frontiers and Gamma World. Many of Gary Gygax’s classic AD&D books and modules I cherish to this day. I also was a fan of a few Chaosium games, and I had a strange fondness for Gamelords’ Thieves’ Guild products. I remember liking SPI’s Dragonquest as well (and still have the softcover rulebook – purchased forty-three years ago! – on my bookshelf). At some point in the late 1980s and well into the 1990s I became somewhat interested in GURPS, and was always impressed by their sourcebooks. But overall, well into the late 1990s (a time when I wasn’t gaming that often but always wished I was), I was most loyal to ICE’s Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Rolemaster and Shadow World. (I also owned and liked the original Spacemaster but I never actually played it.) In fact, I followed ICE until it ultimately went bankrupt. (I also remained interested in what ICE produced when it was later resurrected – I bought Rolemaster Classic and Rolemaster Express two decades ago – but by that time I wasn’t really playing Rolemaster or MERP. My last, short-lived MERP campaign was in 1999.)

The driving force behind the original ICE was Pete Fenlon. In addition to running the company for about eighteen years, he helped to design Rolemaster – and of course he created all those beautiful Middle-earth maps! Indeed, Fenlon’s amazing mapwork earned him spot number four on my list of “top 5” fantasy role-playing artists. (Angus McBride’s wonderful covers for many of ICE’s MERP books earned him second place.)

Recently I discovered (thanks to a post by “Mankcam” at the RPG Pub) an illuminating interview with Pete Fenlon (by Wolfshield Games) on Youtube. It’s in three parts, with each part about 31-35 minutes long – so it’s a pretty informative and involved discussion.

Here is where you can find the three parts: 

1. Part One: The Birth of Iron Crown Enterprises (link).
2. Part Two: The Rise of Iron Crown Enterprises (link).
3. Part Three: The Fall of Iron Crown Enterprises (link).

I was already familiar with some of the events described by Fenlon (e.g., the reasons for ICE’s financial troubles and the eventual loss of the Middle-earth license). But there was a lot of new information (for me, at least)!

Here are some of the things that came up that I found especially noteworthy:

• Apparently TSR, and especially David Sutherland, were impressed by the early drafts of Arms Law (the combat system for Rolemaster) and the Vog Mur mini-setting (eventually part of ICE’s “Loremaster” series, and then Shadow World). But TSR could only offer a small amount of money at the time and so Fenlon (and “Iron Crown Productions”) declined. It’s probably a good thing that TSR failed to offer enough money to purchase that early version of Rolemaster. ICE needed to be the autonomous to properly create the game. But I can’t help but wonder how different the history of role-playing games would’ve been had TSR been able to make a decent offer at the time.

• ICE acted fast when SPI lost the license to produce Middle-earth games. Even though TSR acquired SPI, Fenlon knew that Tolkien Enterprises (which controlled the license) had had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with TSR, thanks the use of “hobbits,” “balrogs,” and the like in early D&D products. So Fenlon judged that if they made a decent offer Tolkien Enterprises would be happy to pass the license on to ICE rather than TSR. 

• ICE managed to make a deal with Dragon magazine that secured for them the full back cover of every issue (starting around number 67, I think) for their advertisements. They held that “space” for many years (certainly for as long as I read Dragon). I suspect that those gorgeous full-page ads helped MERP to become the second-best selling fantasy role-playing game during the late 1980s.

• It seems that Fenlon never really stopped working on his detailed map of Middle-earth and now has somehow returned to a situation where he may be able to legally make it available. (The precise details are a bit unclear to me – I’d have to listen to the second interview again, and even then, I doubt I’d fully be able to follow the chain of events.) If this is so, this is extremely exciting news! The release of a full “Fenlonian” map of Middle-earth would be a dream come true.

Even if you weren’t a fan of ICE or MERP the interview is well worth listening, in my opinion, if you’re interested in the history of role-playing games. The history of TSR has been documented extensively in recent years (and rightfully so, given its central importance in the creation and development of the hobby). It’s great that we’re learning about some of the other important games and companies from the early years (I would say the “Golden Age”) of RPGs as well.