Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola ? #28 - Giacomo Sottocasa

Hi gamers

back from Essen and survived to the move in my new house (at least now I have enough space for all my games!) I start again with my interviews. Today I’m gone to catch Giacomo Sottocasa, one of the man running Rose & Poison. The company is more active in producing RPGs but they are moving also in the BG area, so I hope what Giacomo told me could be also interesting for you.

[Liga] Hi Giacomo. Here we are. It takes me almost one year to get this interview since we first meet in Essen 2005. Please, give us a short introduction about yourslef

[Giacomo] Lawyer (even if here it doesn’t really matters) and Game designer, Giacomo Sottocasa was born in 1971. After years trying to become some kind of rockstar he realized that, despite of the important role played by music in his life that rock was not his way. He always loved role playing games and boardgames and in 1991 started his first project of developing a new RPG, but it was a project so great that even today he doesn’t want to talk about it. In the late ‘90s he founded Rose & Poison as a game designers group and worked out its transformation in a publishing firm.He’s co-designer for Angeli e Demoni Rpg, designer of Free Fantasy (open source RPG), Crash! the bankrupt game (card game) and Deus Vult! (boardgame) and he’s been translator and responsible for publishing of Italian version of The Extraordinary adventures of Baron Munchausen. He’s always divided between the game designer and the editor (he’s responsible for product selection for Rose & Poison) and someone thinks this is the reason he’s going mad… and that’s the reason he’s talking about himself in third person…

[Liga]I was wondering why you was talking me in that way. And now, Cosa Bolle in Pentola in Giacomo brain and at Rose & Poison ?

[Giacomo] A load of things ... but, I will not talk here of the R&P projects because I think Sergio Giovannini already did it, let me tell you just that we have two boardgames to be released in the next weeks: Canossa by Walt Castagno and Faerie tales by Christoph Boelinger. Talking about my personal projects I have 3 games almost ready to be published… but only one I’m sure it will be… being more precise “Delenda Carthago” a card game will be published by R&P in Italy next year and Crack Pack (a real fun penguin race) is now under observation for a big big company. More: I finally rebuilt my personal website.

[Liga]Really a lot of hard stuff boiling in the pot! And for the future ?

[Giacomo] I’m now working on 5 different titles, but the one I love most (for rules and theme) is “Age of the God kings” a game of prehistorical civilization. Here’s what I wrote for the introduction: “This game takes place in the times between 18.000 and 7.000 years ago, when, during the ending phase of ice age, according to someone, the dissolution of great icecaps and consequent release, sometimes unexpected and devastating, of immense quantities of water, would have destroyed some civilizations relatively advanced giving origin to the myth of the Universal Deluge in all its manifestations (Plato Atlantis, Noah’s Ark in the Bible, Matsya in Purana, Utnapishtim in the epic of Gilgamesh, etc.)”.

[Liga]So these together with all the projects boiling in the pot let me think that Rose & Poisono will soon attract the attention of the gamers community! Finally let we know the 10 games you like to play most

[Giacomo] I change my mind too often, but nowadays, in alphabetical order (excluding titles from my company):

Age of Steam (because it’s perfect)
Axis and Allies (even if in recent times I’m only playing it on my computer)
Blood Bowl (long time I do not play this one)
Cash’n’Guns
Coyote
Diplomacy (if one game a year counts)
Dungeon Twister
Munchkin (really not a big game but real fun)
Oltremare
Puerto Rico (because it’s even better than Age of Steam)

and that’s all!

[Liga] Thank you for your time Giacomo and I hope you get luck with all your projects. Good play!

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