In 1997, while conversing on the Babylon 5 discussion board, I had a conversation with Joe Cochran of Chameleon Eclectic.  At the end of the conversation, he suggested that I submit material for the Babylon 5 roleplaying game.  As I put together my submission, I noticed that Iron Crown Enterprises had yet to release a new version of Spacemaster.  An e-mail to their web representative revealed that no author had been assigned to the project.  I was delighted.  Spacemaster was my favorite roleplaying game of all time.  It was delighted just to get to pitch the idea.

I put together a proposal for a single supplement for Rolemaster Standard System called Future Law.  It contained a sample of my writing for the Back Cover and a sample profession, the Fighter.  I never expected to hear from them.  I fully expected to get the job working for Babylon 5.  I mean, I had an in.

Of course, I never heard back from Chameleon Eclectic.  A month later, however, I received a call from John Curtis of ICE.  He said he had received my proposal and he had a few concerns.  It took a while for me to realize that he was telling me how he wanted me to write the book.  Even better, he wanted two books, Future Law and a genre book I would create, designing a new Spacemaster universe.

I was on cloud nine.  This was only slightly spoiled the next day when he called me to tell me that he was giving me a co-writer, Ron Carnegie.  Evidently, he had submitted a proposal at the same time.

Ron and I worked out some of the initial concepts.  We decided that he would write the section on psionics and star system creation.  We went back and forth on the psionics until I came up with the idea for the current system.  I had two ideas for the universe, the current one and another that must remain secret.  He suggested we do both.  We did.

Sometime during that year, Ron decided that he needed to drop out.  There were certain dictates made to us (which don't apply today) that he felt would hinder the game.  I paid him for the work he had done (both sections had only minor work done) and continued the project alone.  Somewhere in there, the genre book was cancelled.

Now John Curtis insisted that he needed 250,000 words, seeing as ICE could put 1,000 words per page.  I don't know if he was just thinking of the old Rolemaster Companions, which had much denser text than the RMSS line, or if he expected me to fall short.  Whatever the story, after I had shrunk the font and dropped the line spacing to 1 1/2, the resulting document was 850 pages and had to be bound in two volumes for shipping.

I wish I had weighed it.  I understand, after the fact, that this document became something of a legend at ICE.  I think they used it as a doorstop.  At any rate, it wasn't long before they called me and ask me to expand the book into an entire line.

So 1998 began with me working on Spacemaster Standard System.  The author that was supposed to write Blaster Law (then titled Weapons Law:  Energy Weapons) had dropped out, so now I was writing the entire line.  I worked through most of the year on it, was sidetracked on a Run Out the Guns! supplement that never happened, and was told that the project was being restructured again.  Rolemaster was going to be reprinted so that it could be played out of one book, and they wanted Spacemaster to be the same.

During this time, I went through two new editors, the first named Craig O'Brian and the second Brian Olson.  Both were good men, but there are always some false starts when you get a new editor.  Invariably, they will change things to fit their vision of the line.

In 1999, I received enough materials and files on Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying.  I worked on the project throughout the year. By 2000, I had finished Spacemaster: Privateers.  They were soon followed by all three Tech Law books.  I continued with my deadline schedule and finished up Privateers:  Races and Cultures and a revision of Blaster Law.

By this time, things had stopped moving forward on the ICE front. They had declared a restructuring bankruptcy and things were stalling. I was still sending them documents, but Vehicle Manual was becoming more and more delayed.  When it failed to reach publication, I stopped working on future products and decided to sit back and watch.

In November of 2000, ICE closed it's doors.  The story is sordid, but not because of ICE's role in the matter.  Rolemaster had been left in a fairly complete state.  I and other authors had some books in the production queue, but I'd have been happy to play the game as is.  Spacemaster, however, was woefully incomplete.  It was a tragedy,  but there was nothing to be done.

Then in November of 2001, I received good news.  John Seal had purchased the IP to RM and SM and had hired the former ICE owners to start a new company to handle the roleplaying properties.  Spacemaster lives again.