Mjolnir LLC

History

Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) was a game company that produced role-playing, board, miniature, and collectible card games such as Middle-earth Role Playing, Rolemaster, and Spacemaster for twenty years.

When I.C.E. went bankrupt in 2000, holding company Aurigas Aldebaron LLC purchased the rights to I.C.E.'s name and intellectual properties. Shortly afterwards, it licensed these out to Phoenix LLC, a company headed by CEO Bruce Neidlinger and President Heike Kubasch.

Phoenix LLC renamed itself Mjolnir LLC and using the name "I.C.E.", began publishing I.C.E. products in 2002.

The following year, Mjolnir released a new role-playing game, High Adventure Role Playing (HARP), a simplified version of I.C.E.'s Rolemaster role-playing game rules system, that garnered favorable reviews and won a Silver ENnie in the "Best Non-d20 Game of 2004" category.

Despite this, HARP did not enjoy much success, and by 2005 Mjolnir was ailing financially. Although the company continued to produce products for HARP and Rolemaster, it was not able to establish a strong player base for either product. In early January 2011, Aurigas Aldebaron LLC announced that despite "foregoing a substantial amount of royalties which provided cash support for Mjolnir LLC to correct this situation", Mjolnir had not been able to reach financial viability, and Aurigas Aldebaron was withdrawing the I.C.E. license from Mjolnir. Shortly afterward, Aurigas Aldebaron transferred the I.C.E. license to Guild Companion Publications Ltd.

References

References

1. Huss, Aaron T.. "Review: Iron Crown Enterprises – HARP Fantasy".
2. "2004 Noms and Winners".
3. Shannon Appelcline. (2014). "Designers & Dragons: The '80s". [[Evil Hat Productions]].