Awards and Prizes

Magnifico Awards

Following in the footsteps of Goblin Magnifico, an award established by La Tana dei Goblin in 2016 and hosted by our Festival since its very first edition, over the years Play - Festival del Gioco has introduced three more "Magnifico" awards: Librogame Magnifico in 2021, RPG Magnifico in 2023, and Play Magnifico in 2024.

Play Magnifico

Play Magnifico is an award created to highlight and give visibility to the work and passion behind each edition of the Festival del Gioco. Work and passion, two words that perfectly capture what makes our field truly special and unique.

Play Magnifico is not intended as a lifetime achievement award, nor as a ranking of merit, but rather as a gesture of gratitude to the entire gaming community. Each year, one or more individuals are selected who, for various reasons, have impressed us with their passion, expertise, and originality, expressed through both small and significant contributions.

Play Magnifico is our way of saying thank you and wishing everyone happy gaming!

Established in 2024

• 2024 - Francesca Baerald
• 2025 - Francesco Lancia

Goblin Magnifico

The Goblin Magnifico Award is presented by La Tana dei Goblin, the largest Italian gaming community. It was created with experienced players in mind, while remaining engaging for anyone interested in the world of board games. It is traditionally awarded during Play, and each year La Tana dei Goblin and Play - Festival del Gioco invite and host the previous year’s winner.

Established in 2016

• 2024 - Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory
• 2025 - Dune: War for Arrakis

Librogame Magnifico

Ludo Labo, in collaboration with Play – Festival del Gioco and Librogame’s Land, the largest Italian community of gamebook enthusiasts and authors,organizes the Librogame Magnifico award.

Established in 2021, this award recognizes the best gamebook published in the previous year. The Librogame’s Land community votes among a shortlist selected by the organizers to determine the finalists; the winning title is then announced and awarded at Play – Festival del Gioco.

• 2024 - Una notte da Cana
• 2025 - Hellwinter Vol. 1 – The Moon Gate

RPG Magnifico

The "RPG Magnifico" award is inspired by Goblin Magnifico in both structure and purpose, and aims to become an international benchmark for those who write, publish, and play tabletop role-playing games. Its goal is to identify, recognize, and promote the most outstanding works in the field.

Created by Ludo Labo in collaboration with Play - Festival del Gioco in 2023 and hosted at the Festival.

• 2024 – DIE: The Roleplaying Game
• 2025 – Oceania 2024

Other Awards and Recognitions

Our Festival is proud to host many additional awards, either directly involving Play or organized by publishers, associations, and institutions that have chosen Play – Festival del Gioco as the ideal occasion to present or confer their prizes.

Lone Wolf Award - Gamebook of the Year

The Lone Wolf Award takes its name from Joe Dever’s famous bestseller, which shaped the imagination of the gamebook world. It is the first official recognition dedicated to the best gamebooks published in Italy, both original and translated editions, promoted by Raven Distribution with the patronage of Holmgard Press.

The award was created to give visibility to a flourishing yet still niche literary genre, and aims to become a reference point for passionate readers, highlighting quality productions and contributing to the establishment of a recognizable canon for the wider public.

First edition (2025):

1. MagiKal Crimes – Valeria Cavasin, Aristea (2024)
2. Alba – H. L. Trustlove, Vincent Books (2024)
3. The Spellbreaker – Simon Tudhope (illus. Tom Knight), Il Castoro (2024)

Play4Change

Play4Change is an award designed to encourage and recognize research, development, and the use of games for social change.

Organized by GiX, the Research Center on Games for Social Change at the University of Florence, and promoted by the GAME Science Research Center in collaboration with Play - Festival del Gioco, the PlayRes Cultural Association, and Game in Lab. It includes three categories:

• Original game for social change
• Game-based project as a driver of social change
• Scientific research on games as tools for social change

Award for Game Culture

Established in 2019 as the “Giampaolo Dossena” Award, the Game Culture Award recognizes individuals who have shown particular dedication to game culture, either through research and study of games in their many forms or by making playfulness a defining aspect of their professional work.

Organized by the GAME Science Research Center in collaboration with Play - Festival del Gioco and LUnGi - Libera Università del Gioco. It includes alternating categories for the best doctoral thesis and best master’s thesis on games.

• 2024 - Dario De Toffoli
• 2025 - Barbra Bucci and Anna Maria Venera

Ludic Ingenuity (Inventiveness) Award

The Ludic Ingenuity Award is inspired by and dedicated to Piero Santoni (1955–2023), the creative spirit behind Buon Sollazzo. As he wrote of his games:
“Their playfulness is inspired by the idea of bringing together young people, the elderly, adults, and children in a context of positive human relationships. Their creation is a modern reinterpretation of ancient games, using recycled materials.”

This award highlights the most interesting and deserving game ideas developed in Italy that promote and support high-quality, free, and open play.

Strongly supported by ALI per Giocare together with the Santoni family, and backed by Play – Festival del Gioco, the award serves as a tool for spreading contemporary game culture and promoting best practices for public play-accessible, inclusive, transcultural, and transgenerational.

It will be introduced at this edition of the Festival and awarded starting from 2027.

Luca Errani Award - Playing Together

This award honors Luca Errani, an educator and promoter of initiatives aimed at increasing the autonomy of people with disabilities.

Presented at Play - Festival del Gioco, it is awarded to a board game that stands out for its ability to:

• Remove barriers to access to play
• Encourage active participation from people with diverse needs
• Promote a shared, dignified, and non-stigmatizing play experience

The award does not aim to highlight games “about disability,” but rather games that are truly playable together, including in educational, inclusive, and family settings.

One Page Dungeon 4 Play Award

1PD4Play is an award by Master of Masters, supported by Play - Festival del Gioco. A One Page Dungeon is a role-playing adventure designed to fit entirely on a single A4 page-the idea being to condense everything needed to play into an extremely limited space.

Created in 2022 by Andrea Rossi specifically for the Festival, it is one of the most anticipated contests, featuring many playable entries in the “One Page” area of Play.

Awards include:

• OPD4P 2026 Winner (judges + public vote)
• OPD4P 2026 Judges’ Special Mention
• OPD4P 2026 Special Prize
• 2024 – Luca Pavone with Ma questo è un Mimic!
• 2025 – Silvia Ferrari with Let It Snow

One Page Gamebook Award

A contest for gamebooks and branching stories written on a single page, promoted by Librogame’s Land at the Festival del Gioco in Bologna.

During Play, visitors can experience branching stories, solo adventures, interactive narratives, comics, and visual gamebooks—all just one page long, in the One Page area.

Participants can vote for their favorite through a dedicated questionnaire. At the end of the festival, the winning entries are announced and awarded by Ludo Labo, the organization behind Play.

Second edition:

• 2025 – Corinna Illotti, Giada Bertazzo, Giovanni Moreschi, and Giulia Pistoia
  (Honorable mention: Gabriele Luccioni)

One Page Novel Award

One Page Novel is an award dedicated to short stories in a “one-page” format, organized by Andrea Tupac Mollica, a well-known author in the gaming scene and winner of the Librogame Magnifico 2025.

The five best stories selected by the jury, Andrea Tupac Mollica, Mauro Longo, and Veronica Wu, will be announced during Play - Festival del Gioco on May 24, 2026. The winning works will then be published digitally and distributed for free on DriveThruRPG.

Golden Gotthard Painting Trophy

The “Golden Gotthard” is a national miniature painting contest organized by the Mordheim Italia community. Created by Angelo Di Chello and the admins of the Mordheim Italia Facebook group, the competition is dedicated to miniatures used in the tabletop game Mordheim: City of the Damned.

Categories include:

• Single miniature
• Warband (on scenic base)
• Duel between models
• Diorama
• Sculpture
• Open category (Mordheim-themed miniatures beyond heroic 28mm scale)

The Golden Gotthard is completely free to enter, and participants may submit as many miniatures as they wish, within the limits set by the rules.