Fantasy Productions Medienvertriebsgesellschaft GmbH (a.k.a. FanPro) is a German publishing company based in Erkrath. History The company was founded in 1983 by Ulrich Kiesow, Werner Fuchs and Hans Joachim Alpers to produce small metal miniature figures. When the Droemer Knaur Verlag and the Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH published Kiesow's role playing game "Das Schwarze Auge", Kiesow organised the editorial work at FanPro. After the bankruptcy of the Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH in 1997, FanPro published Das Schwarze Auge by itself. FanPro LLC Fantasy Productions translated FASA products into German for years. When FASA closed in 2001, WizKids licensed some of FASA's old tabletop rights went to the principals of Fantasy Productions. Rob Boyle considered making a bid to license Shadowrun, but before he could, Fantasy Productions expressed interest in Shadowrun themselves. Fantasy Productions founder Werner Fuchs invited Boyle to visit him in Germany, and Boyle was soon setting up and running FanPro LLC, a new corporation created by two of the principals of the Fantasy Productions and Boyle himself. They created the new USA subsidiary FanPro LLC to hold the rights to FASA's game lines. FanPro licensed Shadowrun in early 2001, and Boyle took over as Line Editor, and six months later, FanPro licensed Battletech as well and hired Randall Bills to continue with his job as Battletech Line Editor; that made Bills FanPro LLC's second and only other employee. FanPro LLC also began expanding into translations of German RPGs, their first being The Dark Eye (2003), a translation of Germany's top fantasy RPG, Das Schwarze Auge (1984) – which had recently been released in a fourth edition (2002) by the German Fantasy Productions. The Dark Eye, like FanPro's FASA lines, depended on a metaplot, this one advanced through adventures and Fantasy Productions' Aventurische Bote magazine. However, The Dark Eye did not sell well, and was not further supported by FanPro LLC as a result. Degenesis, originally scheduled for late 2006, would have been a second German RPG, but once more FanPro LLC was not able to follow through. From 2001 to 2005, FanPro LLC released over a dozen original Shadowrun titles and reprinted core titles that FASA had originally released. In 2005, FanPro LLC released Shadowrun, Fourth Edition. Likewise, FanPro LLC continued to release new Classic BattleTech books in English, and in 2006 released Total Warfare, the first in a series of revised full-color books for Classic