Iron Crown Enterprises

Iron Crown Enterprises

ICE's "Classic" logo
Industry	Gaming
Successor	Aurigas Aldebaron LLC, Guild Companion Publications
Founded	1980
Headquarters	Virginia
Key people	Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton, Bruce Neidlinger, Rick Britton, Terry K. Amthor
Products	MERP, Rolemaster, High Adventure Role Playing (HARP), HARP SF, HARP SF Xtreme, Shadow World, Spacemaster

Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) 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, Spacemaster, have been the foundation of ICE's business.

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 Felon and Charlton, the original ICE also included Richard H. Britton, Terry K. Amthor, Bruce Shelley, Bruce Neidlinger, Kurt Fischer, Heike Kubasch, Olivia Fenlon, and a few others.

ICE was incorporated in 1980, shortly after the youngest of the principal founders graduated from the University of Virginia. Among the founders were Pete Fenlon (then in Law school), Rick Britton, S. Coleman Charlton, Bruce Neidlinger, Terry K. Amthor, Kurt Fischer, Bruce Shelley, and Heike Kubasch. 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.