ICE makes open call for authors

[Rasyr]

The Guild Companion (an online ezine) recently posted a message about an open call for authors on its message boards for Iron Crown Enterprises. Read it HERE

I have copied the main body of the message below!
****************************************************

ICE is looking for experienced authors to write products for 2003 and beyond.

Qualifications required:

Prior publishing credit(s): Applicants must have at least one author credit on published paper rpg/game product, such as a module. This does not include online magazine articles etc.
Excellent writing skills, creativity, and flexibility are a must.
Authors must be able to meet deadlines.
Authors must be able to take direction.
Authors must be familiar with the Rolemaster rules.

Please note that all writing for ICE is strictly work for hire. ICE does not pay royalties. All copyright, residual rights etc. transfers to ICE upon acceptance and payment for the work. There are and will be no exceptions to this policy.

This is not a call for unsolicited manuscripts!!!! The product schedule for 2003 is complete. ICE is looking for authors who are interested in working on products that our on our schedule.

All interested authors must submit a resume and a writing sample, even if you have previously written for and been published by the old ICE. You may however, submit an excerpt of a product that you have written. Do not ask me to go into the archives and dig out something that you have written. I do not have the time.


The Writing Sample

Please submit no more than 3000 words. An excerpt from one of your previously published pieces is fine. If you have written for ICE in the past, then the excerpt should include a sample of a monster, spell list, or profession that you have created. If you have not previously written for ICE, then your writing sample must include one of:
A sample spell list
Monster
Profession

If you are interested in writing for ICE please email your resume and writing sample to:
Heike Kubasch
miretar@aol.com

 

[Abulia]

Why is the ICE System Line Editor (Rasyr) making a post about the Guild Companion posting an open call for ICE authors?

Aren't you ICE? Nothing on the ICE website about this open call, either. So technically ICE isn't making the open call, apparently--TGC is on behalf of ICE.

What's going on, Tim?

[Edit] Found it! The call is also on the ICE website hidden in their announcement forum. No details on rates or terms.

 

[ichabod]

Be very careful when dealing with ICE. I would trust the people who run it about as far as I can drop kick them. Totally IMHO, of course, and I am not talking about Rasyr.

 

[Vaxalon]

I would respond to this, if the ICE rules didn't have so much in common with hard vacuum.

 

[Rel]

Ichabod, if you didn't know, ICE is under entirely new management after sale at bankruptcy. ICE had a very bad reputation in the past about paying it's authors and deservedly so. I say this with authority because I was one of them.

However, the new "no royalties/work for hire" policy seems designed to avoid that problem in the future. I for one intend to give the new company the benefit of the doubt until shown reason to do otherwise.

Vaxalon, I see no need for comments such as yours. I understand that it might be your opinion that the "ICE rules" (and by that I assume you mean Rolemaster) suck. And if you wanted to cite specific deficiencies in that rule system, I would likely agree with a lot of what you had to say. But saying "X rules system suck" as the sum total of your argument seems unnecessarily inflamatory. There are plenty of posters on these boards who have played and continue to play Rolemaster and other ICE games and I think it is rude and unseemly to resort to that kind of name calling.

I am an infrequent poster at the Guild Companion message boards and I have made the exact same argument to the people there who have spouted off with "d20 sucks" or "D&D is a remedial game for the childish and immature".

I defended D&D from unsupported attacks there and I'll defend Rolemaster from the same sort of attacks here.

 

[Rel]

double post

 

[Vaxalon]

Let me rephrase:

I would respond, except that they're requiring a thorough knowledge of the rules.

Since I have such an intense personal dislike for the rules, which has nothing whatsoever to do with their actual quality as rules (which is, as we all know, a purely subjective judgement that can have no objective basis) I feel that I cannot respond with clear conscience.

Is that better?

 

[Rasyr]

Why is the ICE System Line Editor (Rasyr) making a post about the Guild Companion posting an open call for ICE authors?

Aren't you ICE? Nothing on the ICE website about this open call, either. So technically ICE isn't making the open call, apparently--TGC is on behalf of ICE.

Posted about the one on the TGC forums cause their servers can handle a larger load of people than my little desktop (which is where our forums are sitting until we can get them setup on the same servers as the rest of the company site (waiting on Mindspring to get their NT boxes up and running).

Originally posted by Abulia
[Edit] Found it! The call is also on the ICE website hidden in their announcement forum. No details on rates or terms.

Nor will you see information on rates or terms, those items will be between the authors and ICE, and not for public consumption. Though I don't know the industry standards on rates right now, I consider our rates to be very good.

 

[Rel]

Is that better?

It is indeed. And I admire the fact that you took the time to rephrase your statement even though you didn't have to.

Thank you.

 

[Rasyr]

However, the new "no royalties/work for hire" policy seems designed to avoid that problem in the future. I for one intend to give the new company the benefit of the doubt until shown reason to do otherwise.

Yup. ICE will not be making any royalty contracts. Those (along with several contributing factors) caused many problems in the past. The "work for hire" statement means that ICE will do general design work on future projects, roughing out the type of material we want. Then an author will be assigned/selected, and further development will occur, and then the author will write it. This has the added advantage of providing folks with a more unified view of the whole system.

My personal opinion is that a lot of the books from the old ICE had a slap-dash approach, in that there was no planning by the company, taking only what came their way. Now, we are directing and guiding the game, and can do so in a manner to help fix things that we consider to be broken within the system.

I defended D&D from unsupported attacks there and I'll defend Rolemaster from the same sort of attacks here.

Which is the same as I do on both the office ICE forums, and here. As the forum administrator for ICE's official forums, I slap down all such posts, where somebody tries to slam other systems. I feel that all systems have their merits, as well as their drawbacks. There is no such thing as a perfect system, or one that works for every single genre. There is just too much variation in genre for a single system to cover every genre, let alone every single style of play.

Variety is good, especially as it breeds innovation!