Achieving greatness while staying small – Simone Formicola about Two Little Mice

One of the founders of the small Italian role-playing game publisher told me about their filmmaking history, the memory of dead mice, and their next release. The makers of Household, Outgunend, and several other role-playing games are the Italian publisher Two Little Mice. The company was founded 9 years ago by two good friends. I had the chance to talk to one of the founders, Simone Formicola, at the 2024 Essen SPIEL fair.

Please introduce the company Two Little Mice in a few words.

I am Simone Formicola, one of the founders of Two Little Mice, an Italian-based roleplaying game company. With Riccardo "Rico" Sirignano, we started doing roleplaying games in 2019, just before the pandemic. The first game was the first edition of Household. But then the pandemic struck, we began using crowdfunding to translate our work into English and share it with an international audience.

That was your first joint project ever?

We started in 2015 as a production company. We used to work in video and theater. I am a former actor, and Enrico (Riccardo), my colleague and friend, is a former director and screenwriter. We used to work on theater productions and TV series. Because we came from that background, we have a lot of focus on cinematic-style roleplaying games, like Outgunned or Broken Compass. But the pandemic struck really hard in Italy, so we just changed the direction of our life and job, embracing this roleplaying world. Which, luckily for us, is working very, very well. So we are so happy with our new life.

What is your past with the roleplaying game?

I started with live-action roleplaying games before arriving at the pen-and-paper roleplaying games. I started in my 20s at university with friends. In my part of Italy, Pathfinder was the big thing. Bigger than Dungeons and Dragons, bigger than anything. Everybody was playing Pathfinder there, and then I met with Rico once I had just finished at the acting academy. We had friends in common, and we started playing an Italian RPG called Anime e Sangue (Souls and Blood in English). And the first thing we did together in 2015 was actually a web series inspired by this game. One may see it in the UK and US on Amazon Prime Video. It's a very low-budget style of game... One thing followed another, and we developed a passion for roleplaying games. We found the society, and we started producing it. But we never finished it.

You also had some common projects with another Italian RPG studio, Acheron.

Yes, we created two games together. Basically, we handled the creative part, art direction, and creation of the idea of the system, while they handled the rules, actual writing, and the actual production. These two games are Inferno, which turns Dante's Guide to Hell into an RPG that includes expansions, and Apocalypse, John's Guide to the Armageddon, and its expansion. It was a way for us to put a good use to our Catholic education back in Italy. (laughing)

Do you have future plans with Acheron?

Of course, we are very dear friends with them. Both of them are very busy with our own projects, but we are always searching for ways to cooperate. We like them, they like us, and we really do like doing projects together.

You created the company with Riccardo. Are you still a small company?

We are three people. Then we have a few collaborators like Caterina, who is also here at SPIEL and our only translator. She translated everything we write in Italian, of course, and she translated everything in English. We have a couple of graphic designers who have helped us and one editor from the US, John Marron, who is part of the family right now. That's us.

Is it easy to be a small company?

No, but we prefer this way. We worked with our previous for one year before deciding to take part because we prefer to stay small. It's a lot of work, but it allows us to work at our own speed. What you can see here, all the books are one year of work. Three different games, a total of 12 books, and it's possible only if you are swift. If you don't have a big machine around, what slows things down. We achieve greatness by remaining small and not being part of something else. It's more work for everybody involved, but it's working, we prefer that. Stay small. That's our motto.

The mouse in your logo is also a small animal.

Yes, in our logo, there are two mice. It's a small animal, that's the idea. Even if we are more than two now, this is our logo. Actually, they were real mice. Back then, we used to have Rico's mouses in the studio. They died in real life but lived a long life for a mouse. It's like an homage to them, the two little mouses. They were called Indiana and Montana, and they are appearing in Broken Compass if I remember correctly.

In your game, Outgunned, a huge part of the book works the games through the situations and explains them. What do you think, how hard is it to explain your vision of the game to the readers?

The most important thing in writing a book is to be as inclusive and immersed as possible. The books are full of quotes from movies, and also we try to be very direct in how we speak to the reader. We want to give mechanics to the reader for the reader's needs. Like, if you don't have time, don't use that tool. For us, it's very important to communicate with the readers. We communicate to both directors (Game Masters in Outgunned) and players alike that time management is one of the most important parts of a session because it's useful to bring rhythm into a session. Our aim is to have sessions with our games that are very much like a movie, a movie of rhythm. We try to help the directors and players alike as much as we can to keep this rhythm. For example, this fight is very important, and I have a lot of tools to increase its length because it's a major scene. Another fight is not very important; it's just a minor encounter, so there are rules to have it faster. It's just bothersome, but the real scene is after that. That sort of thing. Other examples are the shots. Every shot, a pre-made adventure for Outgunned, has one page of screen written with what happens, and the page on the right we call Pro Tips. It's just advice we gave to game masters on how to run the game in the most direct possible way. Like, okay, this fight was too easy, don't worry. Let's say that beyond the door, there's a harder enemy. Or the fight is too hard; okay, let's try to do this for your player. We always try to help, not let the director feel alone when he's handling the session. That's the idea.

The game Outgunned won two silver awards in this year's ENNIE Awards. What does this mean to you?

We were overwhelmed with joy! I think one still can see it in the video. Just to let you understand, when we won the first silver, there was a delay of three minutes before we managed to reach the stage because we were in the other part of the room. We were drinking wine and talking. We were not expecting to be among the winners, because there were a lot of great games in the world this year! But we are very humbled and extremely excited because that means that our community exists and supports us, and we try to deliver even more amazing content for them. We are part of a great community!

Another of your games is Household. When I played it, the atmosphere was very interesting. The intrigue, the social conflicts, and the house, as a whole world as the subpremise, caught me. What was the idea behind the game? What started it?

It started a very long time ago, actually, before me and Rico met. Rico had this idea and wrote some short novels by himself about this Household. Then he turned these novels into a room for a play-by-chat, which in the early 2000s were big things. The fun part of the story is that he needed to have a chat room for a play, which he did with a dear friend of his. Who later, after I met him, became my wife. So basically, he and my wife started working on the Household maybe 15 years ago, or something like that. Then I met with Rico, and we turned this idea into a game with Daniela Giubellini, the main artist. What you can read in the books and can play is the outcome of works of many years. We played and worked for years to focus on the thing and get the thematic depth of the game. So, it started a long time ago, but now it's part of the family. It's the reason why we came together, and it's part of our personal and work life.

Do you have plans for the Household, for the new books?

Yes, on the 19th of November, we will launch a campaign to produce Volume 2. (The interview was created in October.) The first sequel of Household will explore the garden and all the folks that live outside, e.g., to play in the theater outside. Also, we'll have the story progress in the Household as an internal chronology. The characters will be able to play another two years, so another two chapters and discover what will happen. Because the end of volume one, we ended in a sort of cliffhanger. The coming out of Vol. 2 is very important for us because Vol. 1 in English was published two years ago, but the Italian audience has been waiting for Vol. 2 since 2020. We should have done it in Italy, but then again, the pandemic struck, so we changed all our plans. We have been working on it since 2020, four years now. We are slowly working to build everything that needs to be done. If you look at the books of Household, it is a lot of work. A lot of art, a lot of books, a lot of pages, a lot of lore. But finally, now we are almost ready.

What is your message for the readers ?

I want to thank every single one who is interested in our game. We are small, but we are trying to make ourselves known to the public. We are working hard to do that, but it's really great to see, since Outgunned Adventure, we have reached incredible heights in the number of backers and funding. Thanks to Outgunned Adventure, we are the most founded Italian roleplaying game ever. We hope we can continue growing by remaining ourselves. Thanks to all the people, who are interested in our games.

 

The company’s webpage: https://twolittlemice.net/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2littlemice/

A Household Volume II Backerkit page:
https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/two-little-mice/household-ii-welcome-to-the-garden

The Anime e Sangue film series on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7555554/

 

 The opening image from Two Little Mice's Facebook page.