This sparked some interest about the availability of the Middle-earth license along with the remote and highly hypothetical possibility of reviving MECCG.
I wanted to find out what the original designers of the game thought about all this, so I wrote a little note to both Pete Fenlon and Coleman Charlton.
I just got a reply, which I wanted to share with the community. It came from Pete Fenlon earlier today. I asked him if he would mind if I shared his reply with the community, and he said I could go right ahead. Here are his words:
So there it is. I guess any revival of MECCG is not entirely ruled out, but it probably won't be easy and it will certainly take a considerable amount of greenbacks to boot. Still, a slight possibility is better than nothing, wouldn't you agree?Dear Mr. Teroux,
Thank you for your kind words. We appreciate your interest in, and passion about, our MECCG. Unfortunately, however, neither ICE nor its old principals have any legal rights to publish the game. We cannot grant that which we do not have, so you’ll have to approach The Saul Zaentz Company. They own Tolkien Enterprises. You can find them in Berkeley, California. You’ll likely speak with Laurie Battle.
Should you secure the requisite rights re Middle-earth, you’ll then need to approach ICE. ICE’s owner, John Seal, controls the rights to the old ICE CCG rules system. This includes the iconography.
This is all the help we can offer you now or in the future. Good luck on your quest. Take care.
-Pete Fenlon
Incidentally, when I asked Pete if I could quote him, I also asked him if he might be interested in working on MECCG again if the opportunity arose. But to that he provided no reply.
Does that mean we can take it from his silence that he's not against the idea? That's a definite maybe
So if anyone has a lot of cash to spare, you know who to get in touch with...