Project Redcap:About

Goals of Project Redcap

Project: Redcap is a fan site for the tabletop roleplaying game Ars Magica. It has has two related goals:

1. Provide a centralized place to where visitors can browse and find links to as much Ars Magica material as possible, in as many languages as possible. We want to be, as the site's creator put it, "the crossroads of the Order." We want to link to everything related to Ars Magica, without passing judgment on the importance or quality of the material.
2. Be a guide and companion for the rules and game world of Ars Magica, providing useful rules summaries, examples, and commentaries on topics from across the game's extensive product line.

For more information about the project itself, please see Project Redcap:About.

Welcome New Users

Please see Project Redcap:Getting Started for a quick orientation.

Important Policies

Project: Redcap is a fan-created site. Atlas Games, the publisher of Ars Magica, is not responsible for its content. Original material posted here is not official.

The source for official information about Ars Magica is the Atlas Games Web site.

• We strictly enforce our copyright policy.
• We also enforce our Code of Conduct.
• Project: Redcap respects your privacy, and we have a Project Redcap:Privacy Policy.

How This Site is Organized

The Main Page provides an entry point for the major topics in the game. You can also browse by category.

Project: Redcap is made up of pages on individual subjects, such as stress die or the Grand Tribunal. Each page contains lots of links to other, related pages within Project: Redcap and elsewhere on the Web. For instance, the page on the Grand Tribunal might have links to topics like Durenmar or the Code of Hermes. The result is a web of topics where (if we've done our jobs right) topics are inter-connected according to semantic relationships.

This is in contrast to a hierarchy or "tree" structure where pages would be organized by topic and sub-topic. There is no hierarchy in Project: Redcap; there are only relationships. We have no comprehensive "index" or "site map" because the web of inter-related topics is growing and changing; it would be impractical to try to keep a site map up to date.

We do, however, have categories that collect related pages together and allow visitors to browse the topics. Note that a single page may belong to several categories.

Navigation and Searching

There are three ways to find what you're looking for:

1. The Main Page, Encyclopedia index, and sidebar are designed to contain starting points for many of the important topics.
2. Use the Search function to find pages containing specific words.
3. Browse the categories

Site Administrators

We invite you to contact us if you have any questions or feedback.

Project: Redcap is maintained by Walter Croft. Andrew Gronosky is the technical administrator but no longer has much to do with the content. Since November 2012, Andrew has been the registered owner of the Redcap.org domain.

Funding

The costs of Project: Redcap are minimal and are entirely borne by the maintainer. We don't receive money from Atlas Games. Neither do we advertise, sell merchandise, or solicit donations.

History of Project: Redcap

Geoff Grabowski: 1994-1996

Project: Redcap was started by Geoff Grabowski on September 9, 1994.

The site was originally written in plain old HTML. Updates were managed by people sending e-mail to Geoff to give him the location of a new Ars Magica site. It grew to about 25 entries in the first two years.

David Chart: 1996-2005

David Chart took over Project: Redcap on March 23, 1996. Under his editorship, the site expanded to gain a U.S. mirror. It grew to:

• 50 links in August of 1996
• 100 links in November 1997
• 141 links in January 1998
• 200 links in June 2000

Andrew Gronosky: 2005-2016

Andrew Gronosky took over on September 15, 2005 when David's time commitment as Line Editor started to make it difficult for him to regularly update the site.

For the first two and a half years, Andrew maintained the original, static HTML pages by the traditional method of receiving e-mail from contributors and manually editing and uploading the HTML files. The last version of those files are still online at http://classic.redcap.org, preserved for posterity.

During this period, spammers started regularly using the contact address for Project: Redcap as a fake return address, starting around 2006. This led to the redcap.org domain getting added to e-mail black lists, making it impossible to notify the maintainer of new or changed links. Updates became rare due to lack of contributions from the community.

2008: HermesWeb

In March 2008, Andrew and Pitt Murmann began working on an online Ars Magica Encyclopedia index with eventual plans to integrate it into Project: Redcap. This started out as an independent site called Hermesweb, with the goal of eventually merging with Project: Redcap and providing a modern, wiki-like community hub. We built it using Wiki software called PageWork, which offered advanced features and was easier to install than competing Wikis at the time.

2009: GeoCities Went Dark

On October 27, 2009, the free Web hosting service GeoCities closed down. Many excellent Ars Magica pages from the early 1990's through early 2000's disappeared from the Web. A great number of links on Project:Redcap went dead. This was a major setback for the project and completely beyond the maintainers' control.

2010: Hermesweb Assimilated

The encyclopedia proved to be a much bigger job than it seemed at first. Work continued in the background for over two years to develop the encyclopedia and migrate the Project: Redcap pages to the Wiki. All the old, static HTML content was finally merged and the integrated site (consisting of both the Wiki encyclopedia and the index of links) was completed around July 2010. This new, combined site was simply named Project: Redcap and the Hermesweb name was retired.

2012: Migration to MediaWiki

In January 2012, Andrew Gronosky and his co-maintainers, Pitt Murmann and Yair Rezek, decided to convert the site to use the MediaWiki software to provide a more familiar user experience for both readers and contributors. By that time, MediaWiki had caught up to PageWork's ease of installation and shared several of its advanced features.

As of December 2012, all the content of the PageWork wiki has been imported and a considerable amount of new material has been added. Project: Redcap has several active contributors who are steadily expanding its depth and breadth.

Walter Croft 2016-present

On November 1, 2016, Walter Croft took the helm as the fourth Head Redcap in the project's history.

Current Status

Today, in 2024, the Ars Magica community is still strong and vibrant. The official forums are as active as ever. Ars Magica conventions have been annual events since 2007. There's an Ars Magica Discord server and the official forums are active on the Atlas Games website. Online discussion and interest in Ars Magica is also active on RPG.net, Reddit and other sites. There are infrequent fanzines devoted to the game and a podcast.

Summary of changes can be read in the Project Redcap:Current events page.

The edit history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at Legacy:About.