Veni, Vidi, Ludo

Until around 20 years ago Italy was never usually considered a major player in the tabletop gaming scene, but that all began to change with the global success of Emiliano Sciarra’s spaghetti western card game Bang!, released in 2003 and soon followed by the likes of Wings of War, War of the Ring and many others that found an eager international audience.

Since then there’s been an explosion of new boardgames, a new generation of publishers and more and more titles produced in multilingual versions and available overseas, firmly putting Italy on the board game map. 

Sadly this was not the case with RPGs, where the rulebook is the game itself and not just one component that can be easily adapted for international editions. Apart from pioneers such as Asterion Press with their Quintessential series for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 it was rare for even the best Italian RPGs to be translated into any foreign language, let alone English.  

Over the past five years though, thanks to Kickstarter and the crowdfunding phenomenon, this situation has finally begun to change. This evolution has completely changed the equation and at long last many Italian publishers and designers groups are producing Italian and English language versions of both new RPGs and their D&D 5e campaign settings. Whilst the focus is still primarily on the not so big but familiar Italian market, Italian RPGs are starting to appear more frequently on people’s shelves and tables worldwide. But how did RPGs come to Italy?

As elsewhere in Italy there was an interest in wargames (or as we called them ‘simulation games’) and especially the new generation of these games that were being published in America in the 1960s and 1970s by companies like SPI and Avalon Hill. Imported by Italian companies you could find these games in toy and hobby stores and even occasionally big department stores.

These games were popular enough that many clubs devoted to military models and miniature wargames sprung up and they were often featured and reviewed in Pergioco, the very first Italian tabletop games magazine. But these wargames weren’t the only American imports and roleplaying games soon made their appearance too, and often in the same circles, a 1978 Italian military model magazine featuring an announcement from a group playing RuneQuest just a few months after the game had been first published in America.

Interest in these roleplaying games grew and grew and Pergioco soon started a D&D column whilst unofficial translations of books like the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition Player's Handbook and Tom Moldvay's D&D Basic Rulebook began to appear. Whilst these translations were not of the highest quality, for example some spells received absurd names, Cure Light Wounds becoming The Light That Heals The Wounds, they nonetheless opened up these games to non-English speakers.

At the same time there were more and more student exchanges taking place and many an Italian student sent to the UK or US found themselves being dragooned into D&D sessions, only to return home as converts, keen to show off these amazing games to their friends and further spread the word.

The very first Italian company to produce wargames, and not just historical ones but games with fantasy and science fiction themes too, was International Team. Founded in 1979 they were truly ahead of the curve producing their games in multilingual versions and successfully exporting their titles back to countries such as the US and Japan.