If you're talking about the initial shutdown/buyout of ICE, that would've been in the 2000-2002 timeframe. Prior to that, an "original" ICE author could be anyone who worked on the three different systems (RM, RMSS, RMFRP), though not consistently, as there were quite a few personnel changes/reductions along the way. Only a core group of people were around for essentially the whole run of the "original" ICE, namely Coleman Charlton, Pete Fenlon, Heike Kubasch, Bruce Neidlinger, and Jessica Ney-Grimm.
It, of course, depends on the perspective, but Heike Kubasch and Bruce Neidlinger were part of the Mjolnir company that took over after the original Ironcrown. These two stayed long after Coleman Charlton and Pete Fenlon had left. Nicholas Caldwell, the current director of Ironcrown, worked with Mjolnir for about ten years and wrote many of the best supplements that were released during this period. Another person worth mentioning is Terry K Amthor, who, until his untimely death, worked with the current Ironcrown but, before that, was a freelancer for the original Ironcrown.
As for the original question in the thread. RM2 was a mess of options and supplements that lacked any effort to create a balance. RMSS was a new edition where Ironcrown (a bit arbitrary) made a coherent decision of what options from RM2 could play nicely together. The goal was to make an edition that could support play in any era so you could have supplements about Firearms, Pulp etc so you had a standard system of roleplaying. In the end, just about everyone played fantasy with RMSS, so the nonfantasy supplements had bad sales. Spacemaster also still needed to be each own game so the standardization effort was IMHO mostly wasted.
RMFRP is literally the same game as RMSS but aimed at doing just fantasy. The organization of RMFRP takes some effort to get used to...the main book only includes part of the rules, and for instance, you need the School of Hard Knocks supplement to get the full skill descriptions. The main professions are split between RMFRP and Character Law. As a veteran user of RMFRP and RMSS, I think that RMFRP performs better at the gaming table when you have learned the organization. With RMFRP, there are fewer cases when more players need to have the same book; when I supplement my current RMU game, I am exclusively using RMFRP books.
If we turn to RMU that is the first Rolemaster edition that has a consistent way to enforce balance between professions, weapons and different options. Basically, there was a massive effort made by the designers of RMU to formulate hard rules to recreate the flavor Rolemaster without all the imbalances introduced into the game during the RM1 and RM2 periods. In the previous edition, you ultimatievly depended on the rule of thumb from the designers to keep balance, but it was never done in a consistent way. When you evaluate the old editions with new rules you find lots of differences.
We are with RMU back, with everyone needing to access that one book with rules, but with all the improvements in the rules, I couldn't imagine switching back.
