Ganesha games is just me and a bunch of friends and other authors who write books based on my existing rules. The name Ganesha Games comes from the fact that I am of
(the elephant-headed god) is a good deity to meditate on when you are starting a business.
I begun publishing games in July 2007, but I have been writing and designing games since I was 12 years old, and I inflicted a home-made boardgame called Pirate Island on my friends.
Note of me (Bernohn): before the answer, Ganesha is famous for his game Songs of Blades and Heroes, a very simple and easy going fantasy skirmish game with a few dice throws and a lot of easyness to play it. Here is a video of it from other guys wich I have seen and help me to understand the sistem.
Many!
Song of Blades and Heroes was my first published one, but I have also written stuff like
Mutants and Death Ray Guns,
Fear and Faith and
BattleSworn, my latest creation. All can be seen on my
site. I have also written two titles for Osprey Publishing:
Of Gods and Mortals, which becomes available these days, and
A Fistful of Kung Fu.
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| Playing Drums and Shakos |
- The system of SoBH is a pretty much innovative, good, simple and playable system, how do you come up with this?
I tried to write a simple game for my local club where fantasy was not popular at all. I just wrote a game that was playable in under one hour on a small table with very few figures. The idea was replying "yes you can play" to all the typical objections: I do not have enough figures, I do not have time/space, etc. I also wanted a simple system that dads could play with their children.
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| Father and son playing? |
- By which other systems have you been inspired?
Difficult to say, I was playing
Warmaster at the time, so maybe the activation system comes a bit from the leadership rolls in Warmaster. The combat system is certainly inspired by
DBA , the only game that my club was playing at the time, so I chose something already familiar to the guys in the club.
- Apart from your page where else may I buy your books?
My pdfs are sold almost anywhere PDFs are sold,
WargameVault,
Wargamedownloads,
SaberSedge,
Paizo... My print books are on
Amazon and
Lulu.
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| A game of Mutants and Death Rays from here |
- What do you think about other skirmish ruleset as Chain Reaction, Point blank or infinity?
I am really familiar only with
Chain Reaction which I love. A very unusual and innovative system. In general, I like systems that try to be innovative.
- What rolegames have influenced you? Have you written role games?
GURPS is a system I have used for many years. I also love
Advanced Fighting Fantasy,
Tunnels and Trolls, and
retroclones of D&D. I have written at least three rolegames, the ones based on Song of Blades is called
Tales of Blades and Heroes. There is another one I wrote circa 2008 called
Familiars in which the players play the role of a witch's familiars. Another one, that i am currently writing in Italian and will come in 2014, is called Kingdom of the Blind and as far as I know is the first rpg that must be played in the dark.
- You are italian as Alessio CAvatore, do you think this might influence you as a game designer? How?
I do not see myself as typically Italian, I do not particularly like my country and I do not feel a strong connection with the mindset of people here. I am a mix of cultures, my mother's mother was
German and my father's father came from what is today
Slovenia. It is true that there is a strong creativity here, not only Alessio Cavatore but also authors like Sergio Laliscia (who is my expert on the horse and musket period), Massimo Torriani and his WW2 game
Operation Squad, and Lorenzo Sartori with
Impetus.
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| Alessio Cavatore |
Alessio is the famous game designer formerly in GW, now in Mantic and in his own company, Sergio Laliscia is the writer of the Drums and Shakos, a Ganesha ruleset to play with Napoleonics, and Torriani as he says is the writer of Operation Squad.
- I always ask the people I interview to recommend me three books they have loved or they want to recommend, three games (of any kind), and three music albums...
I'm not very good at this because I love many different things. and I have other hobbies than wargaming and roleplaying (I watch lots of movies, I am an archer and I grow my own fruit). Most of the gaming I do is on my titles for playtest duties, so it's been years since I played something not written by me. So probably I'm just naming the last good books/games I happened to read. Anyway:
Books:
Games:
Albums:
I do not listen to full albums, I prefer to buy one song here and another there, or to listen to whatever is on youtube in the Celtic/ Goth Metal/Pop genres. I like ballads, and songs that tell a story.
Or I just listen to geek film scores. Conan the Barbarian is a favorite.
I recommend to check out
Lauren O'Connell on youtube/Itunes.
I can't write music but I've written lyrics professionally when I was working on children's television series many years ago.
Thanks for the interview.
Andrea
Links for further knowing
It was a pleasure to interview Andrea, he is an interesting guy among the wargaming comunity because of his game (SoBH) and the other ambientations from Napoleonics to SciFi. I hope this helps to let you, my dear readers, know him and to awake the curiosity to his games. Search in internet the reviews or videos of his games, buy the pdfs and try them. I will be tryng Swordplay in the next weeks, but after that, I will be buying some ruleset to test it for the blog with friends.
B.
