Fantasy Productions

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fantasy Productions GmbH
legal form GmbH
founding 1983
resolution 2012
Seat Erkrath , GermanyGermanyGermany 
management Werner Fuchs , Ulrich Kiesow and Hans-Joachim Alpers
Branch RPG, fantasy and science fiction literature

Fantasy Productions (FanPro) was a German book and games publisher in Erkrath . The company was founded in 1983 by Werner Fuchs , Ulrich Kiesow and Hans-Joachim Alpers and developed into one of the best-known and most influential publishers in the German role-playing game scene ; it was dissolved in 2012. The main focus of the publishing house was the fantastic genre.

history

The founding of Fantasy Productions by Werner Fuchs , Ulrich Kiesow and Hans-Joachim Alpers can be traced back to a number of activities carried out by the people in advance. Werner Fuchs began importing science fiction literature and comics from the United States as early as the mid-1970s , and in 1977 he opened the Fantastic Shop mail order business , with which he then also intensified strategy games , so-called "War Games", from the USA sales and, above all, worked with the company Simulations Publications (SPI). In 1978 he opened his first shop in Düsseldorf and due to the hardly existing competition at the time, he quickly became known in the developing role-playing and fantasy scene. Shortly afterwards, he also published a mail order catalog. From 1979 he concentrated completely on the gaming area.

At the time the publishing house was founded, the role-playing genre was booming in the United States and the first official translations of well-known systems also came to Germany. The company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) was successful with the pen & paper system Dungeons & Dragons and was looking for a German publisher. They offered the system to the Droemer Knaur publishing house , where Werner Fuchs was working at the time, and shortly afterwards to the Schmidt Spiele game publisher ; the negotiations were stopped due to the high license requirements. Schmidt Spiele and Droemer Knaur decided, however, to jointly develop their own system and bring it to market. They opted for the Aventuria system developed by Kiesow and Fuchs , which was reworked into the new game Das Schwarze Auge (DSA). Instead, TSR came to an agreement with Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik (ASS), which brought Dungeons & Dragons to the German market. TSR commissioned the Fantastic Shop team to translate Dungeons & Dragons , and at the same time Schmidt Spiele commissioned them to develop Das Schwarze Auge and to develop the fantasy world Aventurien . For the basic game of Das Schwarze Auge , the Aventuria system was greatly reduced and only rebuilt with the expansion set. At the same time, Droemer Knaur took over the entire book publishing work for the game and Schmidt Spiele took over the “tool box” with the “tools of the master” consisting of a mask, characters and writing materials.

The trigger for founding the publishing house was ultimately the loss of a bitting of the German-language license rights for the novel Die Nebel von Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley , for which the publishing house Droemer Knaur Fuchs had provided too little capital. Alpers and Fuchs decided to found Fantasy Productions and put the first title on the novel The Black Sisterhood, also written by Zimmer Bradley . Their own project, the translation of the game system Tunnels & Trolls under the German title Swords and Demons , was postponed several times and after Dungeons & Dragons and Das Schwarze Auge established themselves on the market, they were no longer able to successfully place their system.

As early as 1985, the publisher stopped producing novels. The publisher took over several role-playing systems that were translated for the German market under license by American publishers. The cooperation with the American company FASA was particularly close , whose three systems Classic Battletech (1988), Shadowrun (1990) and Earthdawn (1993) brought FanPro onto the German market. In addition, FanPro published additional modules, additions, novels and the like to already published game systems and worlds. In 1989 the publisher's own magazine Wunderwelten was founded and published for the first time, which contained additional material for the role-playing scene and which quickly became financially independent thanks to advertising income.

This made the publishing house one of the largest publishers for games of the fantastic genre in Germany. After Schmidt went bankrupt, DSA was completely managed by FanPro from 1997 onwards. After the American company FASA was dissolved in 2001, the English-language licenses for the Classic Battletech and Shadowrun systems were also taken over from there.

In 2007 the distribution of the publishing house products was outsourced to Ulisses games . The license for the role-playing game DSA later switched to this publisher, and the responsible editors also moved there. FanPro's other role-playing licenses were also given up within a short period of time. Since then, the publisher has limited itself to its book division. In 2012 the company was dissolved. To continue the German-language collector's edition of George RR Martin's "Ice and Fire" cycle , Werner Fuchs founded Fanpro GbR together with his daughter Corinna in the same year.

Products

FanPro operated the company-owned publisher FanPro Books (previously "Phoenix"). Numerous novels on Shadowrun , Battletech and Das Schwarze Auge , as well as some independent publications, have appeared there, such as the Schattenland novels of the Mythor series (see also: List of Aventuria novels , BattleTech (book series) and List of Shadowrun novels ) .

Previous products

FanPro published between 1983 and 2007 u. a. the following games under license for Germany:

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b Karl-Heinz Koch: Fantastic success. In: spielbox 4, August / September 1985; Pp. 20-21.
  2. ↑ a b c d Stephan Gedenk: Fantasy Productions. A fox in the game scene. Season 2/94, May 1994; Pp. 31-37.
  3. ^ Der Fanpro-Verlag , http://www.fanpro.de (accessed on July 31, 2014).

Web links