First Turn
The Polish designer of Nemesis and Lords of Hellas looks back at his first tabletop epic, 2012’s Theomachy
ADAM KWAPINSKY
Interview by Dan Jolin
“After a couple of designs, after a couple of years in the industry, you come to understand that you’re creating games for others, not for yourself”
BACKGROUND
“I’m a guy who will play everything that can be played, from board games to tabletop RPGs, card games, Poker, everything. So it didn’t take long before I was trying to create my own board games. For my first game, when I was seven or eight, I tried to translate Desert Strike, a computer game about flying helicopters, onto the board. It was awful, too complex. Only I played it [laughs]. After that I made lots of tabletop RPGs, then after college, where I studied history, I returned to board games. I started to design with my two colleagues Tomasz Bylina and Jakub Wasilewski, and about nine years ago we designed Theomachy. It’s actually the second game published with my name on the box, but the first was never translated into any language other than Polish.”