CGMagazine has been invited to cover Lucca Comics & Games 2023 from November 1st to 5th in Lucca, Tuscany, and we couldn’t be more excited. But something I’m noticing while I excitedly tell my family and friends in Canada and the US is that many of us in North America have no idea what kind of comics, gaming and general nerd culture is going on in Italy!
I got to sit down with Lucca Comic & Games Director Emanuele Vietina to chat about the event. Often, when you sit down with an event director or CEO of some sort, you expect a certain kind of business-type person. While I can say that Vietina was well-dressed and completely professional, I was truly moved to see how much Lucca Comic & Games means to him and that fans quite literally run this festival—all the way to the top.
When asking him to describe his role, Vietina had this to say, “I am the general director of the company. So, the CEO, I may say, but I would rather refer to myself as a Dungeon Master. Why a Dungeon Master? Because we do not consider ourselves festival directors… we want to create a crossroad between dream makers and participants. We want we don’t want to have visitors. We don’t want to have spectators. We want to have participants.”
You don’t often hear the head of a major event refer to themselves as a Dungeon Master, so I had to ask more about what “nerd-ish” hobbies he had. Emanuele Vietina told me about his love of role-playing games, tabletop, video games, and manga and that he was a huge fan of Tolkien. The Lucca Comics & Games Director went on to tell me about his years volunteering at Lucca, stacking chairs as a “participant.”
“I was in high school, and this show was definitely my show. For me, it’s like I started attending the show with my mother, and I’ve never stopped attending. So, I didn’t feel myself as intellectual. I’m just a fan and want to create the show I would like to attend.”
Because of his love for the world of role-play and games, Vietina prides himself on bringing fantasy art and novels to the show. Lucca Comics & Games has brought the likes of Larry Elmore, “The father of the image of Dungeons & Dragons”—Vietina’s words. He also brought George R. R. Martin to Lucca in 2005. I’ve seen videos of Patrick Stewart in 2019, and this year, we will see huge D&D fan Joe Manganiello there.
Dropping names like that, clearly, this isn’t just a local small Comic Con. With Lucca, Tuscany, only home to about 80,000 people, I thought I was heading into a small affair and was impressed it was a full four-day event. But then I noticed that Vietina was talking about being one of the largest events in the community, so I had to ask, just how big?
It turns out Lucca Comics & Games had 319,000 “participants” last year. To put that into context, San Diego Comic-Con did around 130,000 in 2022 before the actors strike, and gamescom—arguably the biggest event in gaming—did 320,000 this year.
“It turns out Lucca Comics & Games had 319,000 “participants” last year.”
But what makes Lucca Comics & Games so special? Let Vietina tell you, not me, “You can put the Hammer of Thor as an installation wherever—in Tokyo and as far as Los Angeles. But the only place in which you can put the Hammer of Thor in front of a Cathedral from the Middle Ages, you can do that only in Lucca.” That wasn’t his only example, either.
“You can play Dungeons & Dragons, maybe at Gen Con Indy, and you can do a real dungeon. But it’s not a real dungeon. In Lucca, we can play Dungeons & Dragons in a real dungeon— in the dungeon of our city—with Joe Manganiello.” I’m sold. He went on, “Here we can create this unique match. We can bring The Witcher, and with Netflix, we created the Welcome to the Continent Experience, and Lucca was the map. The town of Lucca was drilled into the continent of Geralt of Rivia.”
Something Emanuele Vietina said to me right off the bat stuck with me. He refers to himself as a Dungeon Master and attendees as participants. “So as a geek, my first passion is storytelling,” Vietina is helping create this beautiful world for nerds, geeks and fans of fantasy and more at Lucca Comic & Games, and to him, it’s not just business. It’s a story, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.
Lucca Comics & Games takes place in Lucca, Tuscany, from November 1-5, 2023. Stay tuned to CGMagazine for more coverage from Lucca!
