Project Redcap:About
Project: Redcap is is an online reference for fans of the Ars Magica roleplaying game. It is named after the fictitious messengers of the Order of Hermes, the redcaps of House Mercere. Our slogan is "the crossroads of the Order."
Site Goals
Project: Redcap has two related goals.
- 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 link to everything related to Ars Magica, without passing judgment on the importance or quality of the site. The Main Page provides an entry point for the major topics in the game. You can also browse by category.
- 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. Again, the Main Page and categories provide the starting points (and this site also has a search function).
As the Web is constantly changing, the first task will never really be complete, but will require continuing effort and maintenance. We also hope the second task will never be complete, as the game continues to evolve through the current and (hopefully) future editions and as the fan community continues to produce new and interesting material.
We invite users to contribute to Project:Redcap by adding links to any Ars Magica-related sites they are aware of, regardless of their content or perceived quality, by advancing any of the other sub-projects we have identified, or by posting anything else that will further our goals.
This Site is Unofficial
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. All trademarks used will be attributed where possible, but are used without permission. Their use here should not be construed as a challenge to their ownership.
The source for official information about Ars Magica is the Atlas Games [| Web site].
Important Policies
Project: Redcap respects the copyrights of other people's work. It is very important that contributors not post material without permission. This is discussed further on our copyright page.
In particular, do not post excerpts from Ars Magica books on this site. Doing so would get the maintainers in trouble, and could also undermine sales of Ars Magica Products, which would harm the fan community in the long run. Note that this rule applies even to ArM4, which is available for free (but still protected by copyright).
How This Site is Organized
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 Special:Categories categories that collect related pages together and allow visitors to browse the topics. Note that a single page may belong to several categories.
There are three ways to find what you're looking for:
- The Main Page is designed to contain starting points for many of the important topics.
- Use the Search function to find pages containing specific words.
- Browse the categories
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-present
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://www.redcap.org/index-old.html, 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: The First Redcap Wiki
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 with the goal of eventually merging with Project: Redcap and providing a modern, wiki-like community hub. This was using Wiki software called PageWork, which offered advanced features and was easier to install than competing Wikis at the time.
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 contents. 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.
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.
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.
Current Status
As of August 2012, more than 99% of the content of the PageWork wiki has been imported. The new MediaWiki site you are reading is a usable resource in its own right and is being actively developed and maintained.
Today, in 2012, the Ars Magica community is still strong and vibrant. The official forums are more active than ever. Ars Magica conventions have been annual events since 2007. I am sure we'll have a lot of growth in the months ahead, and the new Wiki will be a great resource for many years.
Legacy Page
The content of this page was originally based on the following pages from the PageWork version of Project: Redcap: