以下访谈是由回转寿司的设计师Daniele对意大利设计师Piero Cioni的访谈，玩桌游网为了保持访谈的原汁原味所以用英文原文全文发布。
Daniele: Who is Piero Cioni?
Piero: I’m 171cm for 63kg and I’m mostly human… ok, without joking… I’m an old game entushiast, born 47 years ago. I’m italian but I live in Germany at the moment. I work as a scientific researcher, working on cutting edge programming techniques and teaching algorythms, cryptography and programming philosophy at the university. I have worked on computers for my career. Besides that I create games. Games of any kind: videogames, role-playing games, boardgames, card games, tabletop games… I have designed many games in 29 years of game designing and recently some of my games has "crossed the borders" of Italy and are now distributed internationally.
Daniele: Two of your games has been published this year at the Essen game fair, can you tell us something about them?
Piero: This has been a very good year for me. NGI has indeed published two games written by me: Magestorm (as Nexus Games) and Dakota (as Tenki Games). Magestorm is an old game I written many years ago. It’s a fantasy tactical game setted in the background of a RPG I written many years ago: the World of Aleen. In Magestorm the players will lead their fantasy armies in battles, always helped by a powerful (very powerful) wizard. It’s a game with a hexagon map with tons of plastic miniatures and a lot of cards.
Dakota is fake-collaborative game setted in the Conquest of the West era. Players will be a tribe of Native Americans or a village of European Settlers, competing for resources. It show a strange collaborative-competivie playstyle. It’s more a eurostyle game but the interaction between players is the real focus of the game.
Daniele: For Magestorm, at a first glance it may seems a Memoir 44 with a touch of Magic. In reality what it is?
Piero: The idea of Magestorm was born on 2004, when I’ve thought of making a tactical fantasy game where the player – in the role of troops’ commander – would suffer on bench as a soccer coach. The idea was that the player would have a limited control of the troops on the battle field, to give that typical "pathos" of the coach on his bench. In fact, for years the name used for the game was "Mip", acronym of "Maghi In Panchina" (that is "Mages on bench" in Italian).
The other major component of the game is the role of Mages. Every player use a Mage in battle and cast spells to help the army. Mages spells are unbelievebly strong. They can summon creatures, damage the opponents units, increase troops characteristics or even create new features on the terrain like forests, hills or even new rivers.
So in Magestorm the players have to not only play well from a tactical / strategical point of view but they have to combine their play with the magic abilities of the mages. At the end Magestorm is a more complex game than Command&Colors/M44/Battlelore game line. If a player likes this type of games but wants "more", Magestorm can be the correct game for them.
Daniele: Expansions for Magestorm?
Piero: The complete Magestorm game is really huge and in it has to be cutted in a starting basic box and several expansions. The basic box contains 2 Armies (the medieval-like humans called Kragis and the elvish-like Lausjans) and 4 Mages (the Firemage, the Airmage, the Druid and the Fate Guardian). The first expansion will be published soon. It will be called "Fallen Shadow" and it will contain 2 new mages: the Watermage and the Darkmage. It will contain also the rules for nocturnal combat and new terrain tiles.
The correct list of expansions, when they will come out and what they will contains, it’s up to Nexus to decide. At the moment I think the second expansion will contains a new Army (the dwarf-like Utkar) and the Earthmage. Plus probably the rules for sieges.
At the moment the complete game is composed by 6 armies and 11 mages. If the game is a success Nexus will publish several more expansions.
Of course, I’m developing new stuff…
Daniele: Do you have created all the expansions?
Piero: Yes, of course.
Daniele: How much time have you dedicated to the development of these two games?
Piero: Magestorm is very large project. I have worked on it for 6 years. And it is not completed yet. New scenarios requires a lot of balancing playtesting. So after 6 years is not yet completed. I’m now also developing the Roleplaying game based on Aleen story and the grandstrategy game based on Magestorm.
Dakota was a lucky game, because it worked perfectly from the very first versions. I have worked on it for just 2 years (a relatively very short time for a game) and it is not changed so much from the beginning.
Daniele: How has been working with the publisher (Nexus Games International)?
Piero: Excellent! I know all people in NGI from more than 20 years and we are friends. Of course they see the game from the publisher point of view so sometimes we discussed about some changes in the game and some refining but the relationship was always very good. We are both directed to make great games!
Daniele: Are you satisfied about the Essen fair?
Piero: Oh yes! I’m very happy! It was a great satisfaction to see these two games finally in the their production form. The boxes, the final art… wonderful. We was having few copies of the games at the fair, sended with an urgent flight from the factory just in time, and they selled all of them.
It was also very satisfaying to see the players seating at the tables, playing the games and having fun. For a game designer, the satisfaction of the players is the greatest satisfaction!
Daniele: Are you designing new games for the 2011?
Piero: Of course. I’ve always designing games. Night and day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I have several games ready like Africa and Carpentieri and several projects I’m working on: Sequentia (a card game), Texcoco (a development game for hardcore gamers), Twilight (another light card game) and Tandria (a cooperative board game).
The main project is Ash, a huge game about the complete strategical simulation of World War 2. It’s a VERY BIG game and Nexus is already very interested in it. I doubt it will be published in 2011. 2012 is a safest bet. Of course I’m working on several videogames too, but I cannot publicly speaking about them.
Ciao from Italy!!!! Thanks for all.
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