From: Jason Mulligan <[s--li--o] at [test.com]>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: ICE Chapter 7...more info
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 14:01:25 +1100

Here's some further info regarding ICE that turned up on the RM list.

Date: 27 Oct 2000 16:57:48 -0400
From: "The Roach" <[r--a--h] at [gmx.at]>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 22:51:09 +0200
Subject: Talk with Pete Fenlon
Message-Id: <[E 13 pGW 2 0004 bl 00] at [post.mail.nl.demon.net]>

Hi.

I spoke to Pete Fenlon today during the Essen Game Fair. I thought it 
might be interesting for you to learn what he had to say, and I got 
his permission to tell :-)

The "straw that broke the camel's back" was, according to Pete, not 
so much Tolkien, but a problem with the licensee for "Dark Age of 
Camelot". I.C.E. had been making small winnings, and was mostly on 
track with their restructuring (which was supposed to take 5 years). 
But, when the licensees defaulted on an instalment payment for the 
license, I.C.E. was forced to throw what little winnings they had had 
against the open payments, and then decided that, much as they would 
have loved to continue, it simply wasn't worth the trouble, with 
results being too small compared to the effort.

Though I asked him outright, Pete did not say anything about whether 
Tolkien Enterprises had achieved a judge's order before threatening 
the banks, though it was clear that the banks _were_ intimidated, and 
that also was part of the "too much effort, too little result".

Pete hadn't yet heard about the push for a fandom movement to buy the 
rights to RoleMaster and open source it, though he seemed impressed 
and said it would be a nice thing to do. He then said that he'd hate 
to see RoleMaster just curl up and die, as he was part of the group 
that, years ago, created the system for their own roleplaying 
pleasure.

All in all, I found Pete (Hi, when you're back and read this) to be 
an affable fellow, easy to talk to, and the way he behaved 
(especially considering he was under double stress - meetings at the 
fair, and the development of the chapter 7) made me wish I could have 
been in that austere gaming group years ago :-)

So much for now, I thought you might be interested to hear this.