|
About FanaticusFanaticus is an on-line community promoting ancient and medieval wargaming using the De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) and the DBx-family of rules. Fanaticus is intended to promote DBA and provide resources for DBA players. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Phil Barker, Sue Laflin Barker, Richard Bodley Scott or any of the folks at Wargames Research Group associated with the publication of this rules set. I hope, however, that it meets with their approval. Fanaticus encompasses a variety of on-line resources, including the Fanaticus Forum discussion board, the De Bellis Bookstore (in affiliation with Amazon.Com), and the De Bellis Bazaar. You can join Fanaticus (and become a "Fanatici") simply by participating. There is no membership list and no fees or membership requirements. To post in the Fanaticus Forum you are required to register a profile, whic helps keeps out the spammers. Fanatici are encouraged to submit materials, to share information and historical resources, to help newbies master the rules, and to help promote the DBA gaming system.
Fanaticus operates as an open, self-regulating community, where everyone is welcome to share their views and defend their opinions in an environment of mutual respect and civility. Like a democratic Greek polis, perhaps, but without the hemlock. Your feedback, as always, is much appreciated. Fanaticus: A Bit of HistoryFanaticus evolved out of the DBA Resource Page, which was launched on May 17, 1998 as an aide to DBA newbies because of my own frustration learning the game without a more experienced gamer to show me how to decipher the rule's rather terse prose. As the DBA Resource Page grew into an archive of files and information, I had the opportunity to interact with dozens of gamers around the world and began to look for other ways that we could collaborate. In a search for a free on-line support, I stumbled across Yahoo! Clubs, which seemed like just the solution. The result was De Bellis Fanaticus, the first true iteration of the Fanaticus community, which was launched on 7 December 1998. It offered a bulletin board, a chat room, and places where members could post links and pictures. It was not the best software in the world, and was relegated to inactive status and eventually shut down in Spring 2001. I then experimented with a FrontPage bulletin board extension and finally licensed bulletin board software, launching the Fanticus Forum on 29 June 1999. During the same period, I was working to expand the DBA Resource Page into a virtual community, dubbed Fanaticus, which was organized into four sections. In addition to the Resource Page and the Fanaticus Forum, I added the De Bellis Bazaar (a directory of miniatures, supplies and resources for the wargamers added on 28 July 2000) and the De Bellis Bookstore (historical and wargaming references available for purchase through an arrangement with Amazon.Com, which opened for business on 7 March 1999). Then I registered the Fanaticus.org URL and created a page to tie them altogether. This is the current configuration of Fanaticus. Looking to the future, my hope is to continue to emphasis the Fanaticus identity and improve integration of the four components of Fanaticus to enhance navigation and the perception of community. About Your ImperatorThe Fanaticus "Imperator" is Chris Brantley of Silver Spring, Maryland (USA). I am a middle-aged lawyer, adjunct law lecturer, and managing director of the Washington office for a major professional engineering association. That's how I make my living anyway. My interest in miniature war-gaming can be traced to my childhood playing war in the back yard or spent indoors knocking down plastic army men with Lincoln Log catapults. That interest was given a new outlet during high school when I came across a copy of Charles Grant's Miniature Wargaming in my school library. During college at Mercer University in Atlanta, I discovered the Atlanta Historical Miniatures Gaming Society and dived into the world of Airfix, Grenadier, Hinchcliff and Minifigs on the weekends. My favorite period was American Civil War and my first wargames unit was John Brown Gordon's Confederate Brigade done with Airfix figures on plastic bases using Testors paint. After law school and marriage, I lost track of the hobby for nearly 15 years until the World Wide Web came along, and I discovered a whole world of gamers out there in the rec.games.miniatures.historical newsgroup. I realized I had some time and disposable income again, and was able to get back into the hobby through contacts made via the web. Although ACW is still a favorite, Ancients/Medievals had always intrigued me. I bought the WRG 7th and Tactica rules for review, but was not enthused with either. I kept hearing rave reviews about two games called DBM and DBA, but didn't have a clue. I discovered a copy of DBA in a local game store and thumbed through it, but I have to admit, it scared me. The prose was terse and implied a familiarity with WRG conventions, the army lists (which I now love) looked like so-much algebra, and there were no pictures. My desire to start up an on-line fantasy role-playing game with my old college D&D group (who were now all on-line) prompted me to renew the search for a fast-play, easy set of rules to deal with campaign battles in a Dark Ages setting. The praise for DBA was still glowing and after actually viewing a pick-up game at Historicon, I made the plunge. Now ancients/medievals and DBA is the focal point of my hobby obsession. Pre-Feudal Scots were my first army (tracing back to my own Scots ancestry), but Early Imperial Romans were right behind. It is that interest in the Roman empire which prompted me to coin the pseudo-latin "Fanaticus" and take the Fanaticus designation "Imperator." The choice of title was not out of any desire to guide the Fanaticus Community with a heavy hand, but merely because "Imperator" sounds so much cooler than bulletin board "administrator." Last Updated: 03 November 2007 Comments, suggested additions, and/or critiques welcome. |
You can identify yourself as a "Fanatici" by putting the Fanaticus
graphic on your own web page, either by copying the image at right, or by
cutting and pasting the following HTML code into your website: