FASA

FASA Corporation

Industry	Wargaming Role-playing games
Founded	1980; 44 years ago (1980)
Defunct	April 30, 2001 (2001-04-30) (active operations only)
Fate	Original business defunct Rights for BattleTech and Shadowrun split between Topps and Microsoft Gaming Returned publishing games through FASA Games in 2012
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Key people	Jordan Weisman L. Ross Babcock
Products	Crimson Skies Renegade Legion VOR: The Maelstrom Earthdawn Battletech Shadowrun Demonworld Star Trek: The Role Playing Game The Doctor Who Role Playing Game
Website	www.fasa.com at the Wayback Machine (archived July 13, 2001)

FASA Corporation was an American publisher of role-playing games, wargames and board games between 1980 and 2001, after which they closed publishing operations for several years, becoming an IP holding company under the name FASA Inc. In 2012, a wholly owned subsidiary called FASA Games Inc. went into operation, using the name and logo under license from the parent company. FASA Games Inc. works alongside Ral Partha Europe, also a subsidiary of FASA Corporation, to bring out new editions of existing properties such as Earthdawn and Demonworld, and to develop new properties within the FASA cosmology.

FASA first appeared as a Traveller licensee, producing supplements for that Game Designers' Workshop role-playing game, especially the work of the Keith Brothers. The company went on to establish itself as a major gaming company with the publication of the Star Trek RPG, then several successful original games. Noteworthy lines included BattleTech and Shadowrun. Their Star Trek role-playing supplements and tactical ship game enjoyed popularity outside the wargaming community since, at the time, official descriptions of the Star Trek universe were not common, and the gaming supplements offered details fans craved.

The highly successful BattleTech line led to a series of video games, some of the first virtual reality gaming suites, called Virtual World (created by a subdivision of the company known at the time of development as ESP, an acronym for "Extremely Secret Project") and a Saturday-morning animated TV series.

Originally, the name FASA was an acronym for "Freedonian Aeronautics and Space Administration", a joking allusion to the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup.^[2] This tongue-in-cheek attitude was carried over in humorous self-references in its games. For example, in Shadowrun, a tactical nuclear device was detonated near FASA's offices at 1026 W. Van Buren St in Chicago, Illinois.