Winners of the Goblin Magnifico 2025 award, they will be at Play
Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello — “MaggiNepitello,” a single name for many players — first met creatively in late-1980s Venice, beginning a collaboration destined to last. Over the years, they have worked together on role-playing games, card games, and board games published both in Italy and internationally.
They began their professional careers collaborating with Studiogiochi. Together with De Toffoli and Leo Colovini, they co-created the role-playing game Lex Arcana, their first major success, published in 1993. They later shifted their focus primarily toward board and card games, gaining widespread recognition with War of the Ring (2004), a strategy game inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, developed in collaboration with Roberto Di Meglio.
Among their greatest successes is The One Ring role-playing game, also inspired by Tolkien’s works, later adapted as a supplement for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons (The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying).
From 2020 to 2025, Maggi and Nepitello served as Senior Game Designers at CMON Limited, working on numerous projects, among which Dune: War for Arrakis, based on Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, stands out. The game won the Goblin Magnifico 2025 award.
