se a qualcuno interessasse posto l'intervista in "straniero"
-What was your motivation to continue his adventure?
Like many fans I was disappointed not to be able to read the end of the cycle of Prester John. About fifteen years ago I had started to read the classics of esotericism as the” Morning of the Magicians”, “ Isis unveiled”, “Meetings with remarkable men”, and others who dealt with the myth of Agartha and the Hollow Earth, so I wanted to immerse myself in this fascinating adventure.
The idea of continuing the series came to me when I had already started my path to “initiation” with the readings above, so I already had some ideas and I had marked several notes that could be coming back to me useful to the story.
As I read through essays of authors such as H. P. Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, Pouwels and Bergier, Nicholas Roerich, René Guenon, Raymond Bernard I imagined our Prester John wander the ancient tibetan lamaserie, to meet the ascetics and dervishes, to penetrate in the Hollow Earth until he reached the mysterious Agartha, and from there to reach Shangri-La.
- Make 3 gamebooks 2009 to 2015, was it a challenge that you set yourself?
For the first draft of the books I worked about two months, it was 2007. Over the years I have worked a lot with betatester of LGL to correct it, control it, fix it and then illustrate it and paginate it. This occupied all the eight years which have seen the publication of three books in pdf format. Even after the first publication we have made new corrections and changes to the text thanks to the reports of our readers.
For the new edition revised and enlarged, I explored different aspects and introduced new stages of the journey of the Prester John, being able to draw from ten years of reading mystery seasoned by the study of eastern martial arts (which I dedicated seven years, and the wuxiapian movies (the hood and the sword of Hong Kong ) of the years ’70 by director Chang Cheh.
-What are differences between your first “Nel Paese dei Dragoni “ and the new one ? How much additional paragraphs (sections)?
The difference in the number of paragraphs of the three volumes is the following:
N° Title Original Deluxe
6 Nel paese dei dragoni (In the land of the Dragons) 240 520
7 Il Deserto della morte (The Desert of Death) 230 385
8 Shangri-La ! 270 350
+ La swastica sul Tibet (The Swastika above Tibet) + 85 (bonus adventure)
At the beginning I thought to a single concluding volume of about 600 paragraphs, but once finished, discussing it on Librogame’s Land (LGL)’s forum, several told me I should divide it into three parts, as it was in the original plan of the series, and so I did.
This, however, left me in a sense of “unfinished” because, unlike the five original volumes, the adventures were rather short. For this reason, at the distance of ten years I have written a revised and expanded edition that we have called “deluxe”.
-Are you in contact with Doug Headline?
Not directly. I'm working on the revision of the new italian edition for the MS Editioni but I have not had contact with Doug Headline for the moment, I hope to meet him in the event "Modena Play 2020", which will be held at the beginning of April, I know that he has been invited.
I know that Headline gave to MS Editioni the availability to write the concluding trilogy, if this will happen I will be happy to collaborate with him, as I am already doing with MS.
Thanks for the interview
Piango perché una volta ero un fratello, ed ora non lo sono più (K.Von Erich)