Here is my Interview to Paolo Mori, published on BoardGame News, a new Italian game designer and web master of Inventori di Giochi.
[Liga] Hi Paolo. So we are able to arrange this interview just before Essen. The first great event you will attend as designer! Please, tell us something about yourslef.
[Paolo] I am 29 years old and I live in Parma. After a ‘prelude’ some years ago, made of RPG (mostly D&D) and some Games Workshop games (until I realized I didn’t have enough money to waste to stay in the miniatures
hobby), I got back to gaming 3 years ago, when I met a group of gamers of my town (GMI: please don’t ask me what it means!) and I discovered the world of eurogames. The approach wasn’t soft, actually: while most
of the people get into eurogames through Ticket to Ride or Catan, I first sat around the table for a game of Euphrat and Tigris. I was totally stunned!. A couple of friends of this gaming group are also amateurish game designers, so I immediately got in this other way of ‘playing’ through designing games. Now together with some friends and talented authors (let me thank Luca Bianchi and Walter Obert) that helped me in developing the idea, I am now “admin” of IDG - Inventori di giochi, a website the gathers the community of italian game authors. We’ve got something like 500 users and a growing list of published authors among us. I am really happy about it.
[Liga] I think your work on IDG is really a great things for Italian designers and gamers. And now, Cosa Bolle in Pentola ?
[Paolo] No doubt, at the top of the pot (ready to go in the dishes) there is UR, my game that is going to be presented by “What’s Your Game?” in Essen 2006. It is a civilization game that I usually define ‘minimalist’, because it is an attempt to recall the main fields of a civ game (agriculture, trade, politics, culture, war) just through a ‘sketch’ of them. That’s my personal idea of the game. I’m quite proud of the finished product, but I know it is a game that can be hard to understand and manage in the first plays. As I already told, the learning curve of the game is steep! This is why I am not sure the game will be warmly welcomed at the Essen Fair. Many people are used to judge a game for how cool it looks, or how it plays at the first game. Well, if you expect a civ game with a lot of stuff in it, and all you get when you open the box is a bunch of tiles (but with an amazing design!) and coloured cubes, maybe it won’be love at first glance! Nonetheless, it is a deep game that allows to discover a lot of different strategies, game after game.
In the pot there is also the “Cimentum for game designers” that we are running with IDG: it’s a kind of symbolic contest, where authors challenge themselves in inventing games that use the same components, keeping a diary of their ideas and playtests on the net (for italian speaking: www.inventoridigiochi.it/blog). There are almost 30 designers partecipating, and my sincere hope is that at the end we will get almost 30 published games out of it.
[Liga] I was lucky enough to have the possibility to try your UR before Essen and, as you can read from my first impression here I would like to play it again. And your projects for the future ?
[Paolo] I always have too many open projects, but I already know the most of them will never reach the prototyipe stage. UR has been a great designing experience, and if gamers will like it, maybe I will put some more efforts in a small ‘plug in’ for it. But I like to think and design a lot of - cough! - different games. On one hand, I am working with a friend (Luca Chiapponi) on a game dealing with the building of the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, and with another one about mercantile companies in the Eastern Indies. On the other, I’m having fun in designing a game about greedy dogs escaping with a balloon after a robbery at the Bones Bank, and another one about the throwing of the flower bouquets at the weddings… What will see the light first? I really don’t know at the moment: maybe none of them..
[Liga] Really a lot of things. I hope you got luck with all this your projects. And finally, since you are a gamer, I want to see you passing the most diffisult test: the 10 games you like to play most ?
[Paolo] Since my game sessions are not as frequent as I would like, the games I like to play most aren’t on the table more than 1 a month, or less. I will name just 9 games, the first one being is the new one, better if it’s still a prototype. But among the published one, I either love or play A Game of Thrones, Princes of Florence, Meuterer, Vinci, Lost Cities, Ticket to Ride, Bohnanza, Coloretto, Maniki.
[Liga] Thank you Paolo for your kindness. Good luck and good play! See you in Essen
Good play to all!Liga
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