Ropecon 2025 Guest of HonorFrancesco Nepitello
Interview with Francesco was conducted by Ropecon GoH team / Jukka Seppänen over a video call.
Ropecon 2025 is honored to welcome game designer Francesco Nepitello as a Guest of Honor. Here is our interview with Francesco,for you to find out more about him!
Ropecon Welcome to Ropecon Francesco! In this context, how would you introduce yourself in 30 seconds?
Francesco I am a game designer from Venice, Italy. I have been working on board and roleplaying games since the early nineties, together with my codesigner Marco Maggi. I am mainly known for my games based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, like the War of the Ring strategy game and The One Ring, the official roleplaying games based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (published by Free League publishing). Recently, I collaborated with CMON on many projects, including the Trudvang Legends board game and Dune: War for Arrakis.
Ropecon What inspired you to become a game designer, and how did you get started in practice?
Francesco I have two brothers, an older brother and a younger one, and we always played games together. We started very early to apply specific rules on all the games we played, we were not satisfied with simple make-believe. And so we had games with Lego pieces, with modelling clay, little animals, and toy soldiers. And so it was easy for us to move on to play board games, because also in the late 70s, early 80s in Italy, we had, as in the States, for example, we had a huge wave of war games and more involved types of games. And that created a spark in us, me and my associate Marco, for example, because I have known him more than 40 years now.
Those games gave us the spark, the idea of actually designing them, because we were already doing that in our free time. We were inventing games. By coincidence, in Venice, there was a gaming club very close to my house. They were mainly playing chess and backgammon. But one of the regulars there was Alex Randolph, a famous game designer from the United States who lived in Venice for more than 30 years.
And he was one of the first ones to invent the concept of a “game designer”. So someone who was actually a game author, somebody who was designing games and putting their names on the cover. And so that was a very lucky meeting for me and other designers in Venice.
Ropecon Ropecon’s theme for this year is New Worlds. Are there any favorite New Frontiers or worlds that you have been using or being inspired by?
Francesco Well, of course, though it’s not a new world. It’s a very old one because, as you may know, one of the main themes I’ve been using in my games are the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. So The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, specifically. And since 2004, I’ve been designing games based on that world. So that’s certainly an inspiration and one of my favorite worlds. But as far as my interests also, I think I find science fiction in general to be very interesting and very challenging.Also because it’s not easy to make games based on science fiction themes, even if lately there have been more interesting games based on that. So yeah, that’s one of the things I would like to explore in new games in the future.
Ropecon Related to this, have there been some games or game worlds that you have found to be particularly inspiring or may have been influencing your work, perhaps your early work, especially?
Francesco Oh yes, definitely Dungeons & Dragons was the milestone that changed my life. It was interesting as I was already playing other games from the US, like war games. And so Dungeons and Dragons started being popular in those areas with war gamers first. But for me, it was like being struck by lightning because I used to work a similar game with my brothers.With my brothers, we played a game where one player, one of us, was doing the game master. We called it ”the guy who is in charge of unexpected events”. And so the other players were playing like a community, for example, of cavemen, I remember, or in the Middle Ages.
And one, usually my older brother, was coming up with ”unexpected events”. And so when we found Dungeons & Dragons, it was like, okay, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing in a more primitive way, let’s say. And so we embraced it. And I think it was absolutely the biggest influence. I love thematic games because I love role-playing games.
Ropecon I’m sure you attend many different gaming conventions. What do you enjoy most about attending them? And are there some expectations regarding Ropecon?
Francesco The main thing about conventions is meeting the fans and players. Because one of the things about game designers is that we live a rather secluded life. You stay in your studio and you work on games and you imagine how those games will have an impact. Of course, we playtest the games, but now more than in the past, a lot of playtests are done online. And also blind playtest requires that you’re not involved with the playtest, you give the game to somebody else to play it. So you don’t have a very first-hand account of the effect of the games.
Again, online life makes your perception of how a game is being received much easier than in the past, because you can read forums, you can read threads, you can go on BoardGameGeek, and you will see how your game is being received. But meeting people at conventions is a completely different thing. An online presence sometimes betrays the actual perception of the game. And so when you go there and you have people coming to you, explaining how the game really affected their lives, maybe in a small way or in a bigger way, sometimes in a way that you don’t even imagine. And I’ve been blessed with at least a couple of games that have been very well received by people. And so sometimes I was surprised to see how much they love those games, like War of the Ring and The One Ring. People really love those two games. And so it’s always exciting for me to hear why.
Ropecon So there’s a lot of aspiring game creators at Ropecon. Is there any advice that you would give to these aspiring game creators who are only just starting out or perhaps just thinking about whether they should give it a go?
Francesco Well, there are very different kinds of game creators. And for example, I sometimes think that I’m not exactly a typical one, because I really can work only on thematic games. I love a deep theme. My advice is that you should try to work on something you really love. Either it’s the mechanic or the theme, because it’s very hard to go against your aspirations. And since you’re a game designer, you’re inventing things, you’re creating stuff. Inspiration is going to not come for you, because if you don’t like something, it’s going to be really, really hard. So yeah, my advice is to try and do what you really like. And if you are lucky and if you are good, you will probably find other people to love what you love, because you will be able to transmit it through your game design. And other people will recognize it.
Ropecon Thank you for the advice. Talking about creating something that you love and you’re being inspired about, are there any upcoming projects that you’re able to talk about that you are currently working on?
Francesco Well, in the last four or five years I couldn’t talk much about the projects I was working on. And I still can’t – for some of them. But now I’m just recently back being a full freelancer, and am able to talk more openly. I have been able to go back to some of my favorite games, like War of the Ring. So I’m currently working with Marco, my associate, and Roberto Di Meglio, the other game designer for the game line, on new stuff for that. In the past, we published a game about the battles for Rohan and Gondor as an expansion to the original War of the Ring. We’re going to revisit those. And so we are currently working on a battle for Rohan strategy game, which will come out eventually. And I am also working, again, on more The One Ring supplements, together with other writers like Gareth Hanrahan for example.
Ropecon All right. In addition to games, do you have other interests or hobbies? And do they influence your creative work somehow?
Francesco Yeah, doing what you love as a job has a downside. The downside is that you don’t have much free time. Because any time you have at your disposal, you want to spend on your job. For example, last night I was playing Army of the Dead with friends. And so in my free time, I play games. Like we all do, yeah. One big hobby that I had in the last 20 years was Aikido. I actually reached the black belt a few years ago. I find it to be really good for your health, for your concentration. And it taught me a lot of things about life in general.
Ropecon Thank you. Last question! Do you have any piece of advice for all the visitors and gamers of Ropecon?
Francesco That’s a tricky one. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is that we are all gamers for one reason that sometimes we forget. And it’s that our games are social games. We like to play with other people. The thing that probably let us survive the onslaught of computer games and stuff like that is the fact that (and maybe we don’t want to confess it) we like people. We like to meet other people and we really have to keep that in mind. So be kind to people, be kind to people online. Don’t start wars about the edition of games or different tastes in gaming. We are in gaming for the same reason.We like to spend time with other people, with other living beings and enjoy each other’s company. Thank you.
Ropecon Thank you. That was the most excellent piece of advice to gamers everywhere.