Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 2455369" data-attributes="member: 20741"><threadjack>ICE's Middle Earth line never failed.  If you think that about the ICE line - you are just hopelessly misinformed.The problem with MERP and Rolemaster's Middle Earth line is that it became so thorough - so detailed - and so abundant that ICE simply ran out of new regions and new NPC's to print material on.It sold and sold well for 12 years.  The last three years or so of it's life - things got dicey.Ultimately, Middle Earth began to collapse under its own weight and its own success. They had simply done everything worth doing with the product line.ICE began reprinting and re-editing previously released material in new collections with some new artwork, but there simply were not enough changes to RMSS from RM2, stat wise, to ever require someone to go buy the modules again.  Existing fans did not buy product they already owned.  New fans were more difficult to come by - a problem for the entire industry in the CCG 90s.The reason ICE went bankrupt and could not come to terms  wit htheir creditors or reorganize was solely due to Tolkien Enterprises. They opposed any compromise or reorganization as a bankrupt ICE was exactly what they wanted.Once a Bankruptcy Order was made - ICE automatically lost its LotR licensing right by operation of a clause in ICE's Middle Earth license (this is a standard clause for IP license rights and was present in ICE's license). Ultimately that is exactly what happened - 1 year before the FoTR movie was due to be released, an event which ICE believed would be a bonanza for the Middle Earth line again. But Tolkien Enterprises didn't want that. An existing ICE license brought them no new rights fees.  A dead ICE license meant the license could be sold again to WotC (which was the plan - though Decipher ultimately got the deal).Tolkien Enterprises also refused to authorize the release of the last of ICE's Middle Earth stock from inventory. There were a dozen or so pallettes of Middle Earth material that the Trustee in Bankruptcy was forced to throw in a landfill site not because it would not sell - but because Tolkien Enterprise refused to let it be sold by the Trustee.  They didn't want the stuff on shelves  to confuse purchasers of anticpated new LotR material. </threadjack></blockquote>

Verification