Best Original Game

So, I'll admit it. I'm vain enough to go back through and look at sites that link to my blog. Today that exploration led me through one forum and over to another, one that I used to frequent before I stopped surfing the web at work all night.

There I found an extremely interesting thread asking the question, "Are the ENnies Broken?" What I found interesting however wasn't the actual question (though I'd be glad to discuss the points raised if anyone really wants to), but the discussion that lead from it. Specifically on the appropriateness of a Best NEW Game or Best ORIGINAL Game category.

Bias up front: I'm a new category junkie. Seriously; I'd argue for a 'Best Book Apparently Written by 12th Century Monks' category provided enough entries of quality to justify nominating a stand-out product from amidst the pack.

I like categories. I like adding more slots to fill up with games that deserve a nomination for something they do better than anyone else. I like being able to judge products on specific merits and common features rather than nebulous overarching monster categories. Every year I argue for the inclusion of a new category or the reworking of an old one, and every once in a while, they stick.

That out of the way, I actually kind of like this idea. When I first read it my instinct was that it was unnecessary like maybe people feel that the products we nominate somehow aren't capable of standing up against the big name products. As a judge you look at the games you've put on those lists and think "I've read all these, compared them side by side, why would someone think one isn't just as good as the other?"

But that's coming at it from the wrong angle of course, and that's where the misunderstanding lies. I'm thinking like a judge;. I look at Best Rules or whatever, and in my opinion Hero deserves its place every bit as much as Wild Talents or Atomic Highway does. But I'm not thinking like a fan, or like someone who is looking at a list of winners for that matter.

You see, Hero is fantastic. It's really the best iteration of that game I've ever seen, and it deserves recognition for that. I stand firmly behind my vote to call it one of the best games of last year. Then again, I get to pick five, don't I? Not only that, I get to pick five I like for Best rules, Best Setting... Would I say the rules for Hero are absolutely better than BASH if I only got one choice? If they are, why?

From this perspective a Best Original award makes sense. Not because the games can't stand on their own, but to celebrate a different kind of common ground: The designer came up with something from scratch. Innovation should always be recognized, maybe above all else.

Now, new categories are at the discretion of ENnies management, and I wouldn't campaign on the promise that I'd add one, but I find the idea intriguing, and I'd definitely like to discuss it. As seen over the last few years, they've been trying hard to find the right categories to fit the right products, and I think that Tony, the new manager will be open to anything that would help to continue this improvement. To see proof of that you only have to look at this year's categories, a mixture of proven favorites, reworked existing awards, and yet another new one - Best Blog, to show their difference in focus and technology from traditional websites.

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That out of the way, let me go ahead and say that I'm going to post at least a couple more of these updates soon. I'd like to touch on some of the additional issues in that thread and general questions I've seen floating around, so I'll do a Q&A style post (probably tomorrow). I'd also like to touch on the article I had planned for today: "(What I used to call) The other 80%".

If you have anything you want to talk about please let me know. I stopped updating regularly because I flat out ran out of content. Three years of telling how I do this and why makes me feel like I've covered it all, like I have nothing left worth sharing. If I'm wrong, let me know.

As always, you can leave comments here, or I'll do my best to keep up my forum lurking, but the absolute best way to talk to me or see my thoughts is always on Twitter. I'm @motg.

Why your product doesn't suck

This year, perhaps more than any other that I've been a part of, I've seen a great many publisher comments and questions. They're always polite, always good natured, and always reasonable. As someone who is sent a great many products at publisher expense every year, I can tell you they are always understandable as well.

Still, they usually come down to the same thing: "Why wasn't my product nominated." Publishers go through a lot of hassle to enter the awards, and with that hassle comes a not inconsiderable expense as well. This makes the question fairly natural.

So, here's my general answer:

If my little spreadsheet (see how we've come full circle? That's talent baby.) is to be believed, I received 301 entries for the awards this year. There are 20 award categories (now - the number has expanded as the awards have expended), each with six slots for recognition (counting Honorable Mentions); except for Product of the Year, which has 12. This year we also added five more slots to recognize great games, but we'll come back to that.

That's 126 slots available (131 if you'd rather count the Judges' Awards, which haven't been announced). By my count that means 60% - give or take a tad - will not see an award no matter how good they are. But of course there's far more to it.

Each category has 5 slots to fill with nominations. Your product isn't competing for 126 openings. You're competing 20 times for 5.

That's less than a 2% chance that you'll be recognized for anything.

So, if you don't get a nomination, does it mean that we didn't like your product, or that we think you need to change anything? No, it just means that 2% is a really small number, and there's not room for everything, no matter how much we like it.

I'm going to use Penny for My Thoughts as an example. I choose it because I'm familiar with the publisher and the author, and based on dealing with them in the past I trust them not to take my words the wrong way or find offense. The reason I have this trust is because it's come up with them in the past. Not that they questioned a nomination, but because my love of Don't Rest Your Head helped cost Spirit of the Century a much deserved nomination back in 2007. I've learned a lot since that first year, and it's a mistake I wouldn't make again, but their response to my admission was far more understanding than I deserved :)

So, Penny for My Thoughts was one of my favorite entries this year. I know it is because of those Judges' Awards. Each judge had to pick one game to give it to, and found myself torn between three, one of which was Penny. Its a fantastic game. It's well-written, fun, interesting, and different. Exactly the sort of thing I look for first in a nomination, and I couldn't recommend it more. Yet it didn't get a single nomination.

So, why is that?

Well, it's because it never quite seemed to make it. There's no doubting it's a good game, and worthy of recognition, but it always seemed to fall just short. Something always seemed to just edge it out. When it failed to make the final cut in Best Writing, the place I felt it best belonged, it became clear that the game, no matter how much I wanted it to, wasn't going to quite make it.

The fact disappoints me quite a lot, but I don't really think its the wrong choice. Finding a place to put it on the list means knocking out another game that deserves its place just as much.

Judges decide on nominations (at least in my experience) by mutual assent, not through arbitrary voting. If we don't all believe it needs to be on the list, it isn't, and by doing this we've created the most diverse list of nominations that I've seen in my time with the awards.

126 slots, 96 unique nominations. That's amazing to me, and I think it's a real testament to the work of the judges I worked with this year and the system we used. It's easy for one favorite product to completely dominate the awards, or for a handful to see nomination over and over again in a dozen categories. It's harder, and in my opinion better, for the judges to look at every product and honestly recognized their individual strengths in each category, rather than see a single much-loved product and nominate it over and over again until something sticks.

The downside of this, of course, is than many products that were really exceptional only received one - or a small handful - of nominations. That doesn't mean that the dominating products from previous years were better with their larger number of nominations, but is rather a reflection of the judges' dedication to putting the right product in the right place, and of the exceptional number of truly outstanding products that we received this year.

I want to thank everyone who gave me the opportunity to do this again this year, it's been quite an honor, and it's something I enjoy more than I can say. I hope this does something to explain why good games don't make the list. Choosing these games - making sure the right games make it into the right place - is harder than it seems. It's disappointing to see good games go without the recognition they deserve, as much to us as to the fans of the games that don't make it. As often as not, we're fans ourselves.

I think great strides are being made toward spreading the love around, and have absolute confidence that the awards' new leadership and new judges will be able to make use of all these new tools we've begun using to continue that trend. The Judges' Awards themselves are a great representation of this; a chance for each judge to pick just one thing that didn't quite make it, that they wish had.

I can't wait until they're announced so I can talk about them more.

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Just to head off the questions, no - Penny wasn't my Judges' Award. I'm not allowed to say what that is until the ceremony. For that I was forced into a tie breaker, and I chose the game I had the most fun with in actual play. Sadly I didn't get a chance to playtest Penny, but the guys who taught me [my Judges' Pick] made it one of the best times I've had playing a game the entire year. Maybe it was the group, maybe it was the game facilitating the fun, but I had a blast, and I had to put my award where I found the fun first-hand.

I love spread sheets

No, seriously, I do. This is going to be all over the place, but bear with me please.

My first year as an ENnies judge I wrote down all on my thoughts about books on post-it notes and littered my books with them. I created stacks of "yes", "no", and "maybe". I printed up sheets with the names of every book and every category and used different colored highlighters to show which ones I had read, liked, and needed to revisit. Finally I broke down and used lined paper with a category name at the top and went through each book one by one and wrote its name on the paper with the category I thought it belonged in.

Somehow it actually worked, and it worked well. I'm proud of the lists we produced that year, and I'm proud of the work I did to make it happen. I'm a closer you see. I listen and I discuss, but in the end, as time winds down the part of me that was a small business owner, the part that handled sales, marketing, and operations all by myself for 12 years kicks in. At that point I organize, gather everyone's opinion, then push through to consensus.

In 2007 we used a message board for that. Each award had its own thread, and each judge published their lists for what would be in the category. I then went through an organized them into a single list, ranked in order of what games had appeared the most on various lists. From that point discussion resumed with a focus on explaining our choices and wheeling and dealing our way to consensus.

In 2009 I updated my personal process to the use of a spreadsheet and everything got better. It was faster, easier to read, and I didn't have to look through the same books over and over again to compare my thoughts. I listed each book in one column, then created columns for every award category. As I read each book I scored it with a number in every column, followed by commentary on why it got that score. If the book didn't qualify I highlighted it red and ranked it "0". Books that had no chance got orange and a "1". A "2" was yellow and indicated a good quality submission that was lees than likely to make the final cut. "3" was green, and often the hardest category; these are books that deserved recognition in the area, but not instant winners. Finally there was "4"; I tried to be very stingy with these, 2 or three at most in every category. They were the books I read, and knew had to make the short list.

When time came to discuss what was getting the award I simply sorted each column by score, then compared the notes that followed until I had narrowed my choices to a reasonable number. this worked extremely well, and I still use it to help me narrow down my own thoughts. Then again, I still have my highlighters and paper too, so maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

The point of this whole thing is that this year we moved EVERYTHING to spreadsheets. Thanks to the easy and ubiquity of Google Docs we were able to make a spreadsheet with a column listing every category, and another for each judge. If a judge wanted to discuss a product for possible nomination he or she would add it under the appropriate category and then start an email (through Google Groups of course) discussing the product, what he/she liked about it, and asking for thoughts of the others. At the end this turned into emails about each category, and each judge went in and put an "X" in their column next to any products they supported.

These weren't votes precisely, more an idea of where each judge stood - a starting point for discussion. From there we talked at length in each category's email, while adding and taking away "X"'s on the spreadsheet.

I think that this system is the best we've ever used. There was no last minute scramble, no going-along to get-along; we came up with a solid list determined by mutual assent.

Did everything that deserved an award make it on to the list? No. That'll never happen. But I am firmly of the mind that everything that is on the list deserves to be there.

This method gave us the most diverse group of nominations I've ever seen in the awards, and I'm proud of it.

So, why waste so much of your time going over a long list of the "hows" of judging? I know it doesn't much effect anyone who is not a judge, but it lays the groundwork for my next post: "Why your product doesn't suck."

Do me a favor. Go vote for me before you read that one, okay?

Climbing back on the stump

As many of you know, for the last several years I have participated as a judge for the Ennie Awards. The ENnies – an annual award seeking to recognize the best in games and gaming – are held in August each year, and I have once again been nominated to serve as a judge.


This is an elected position however, and the judges are chosen from among the nominees in an online vote between August 16th and 25th. I'd appreciate it a great deal if you would go to the awards' web site (http://www.ennie-awards.com/voting/judgesballot.asp), and cast a vote for me and a couple of my friends! The election uses a Single Transferable Vote system, which means you must numerically rank the candidates, and margins tend to be in the tens, rather than hundreds, so every vote counts.

Please, take less than 60 seconds to vote, remembering the the number "1" denotes your top choice, going down to "5", the total number of judges that can be elected. If you have no preferred candidates of your own, I suggest the following:
1. Jeramy Ware
2. Tracey Michienzi
3. Kennon Bauman

4. Matthew Maddoux
5. Christopher W. Richeson

Voting has just opened, and I know the site can be hard to connect with right now, but I'd appreciate your persistence, as this is something I really enjoy doing. Thank you for your time.

2010 Nominations

Best Adventure

* The Grinding Gear (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
* Pathfinder AP #31: Stolen Land (Paizo Publishing)
* A Song of Ice and Fire: Peril at King’s Landing (Green Ronin)
* Trail of Cthulhu: The Armitage Files (Pelgrane Press)
* WFRP: The Gathering Storm (Fantasy Flight Games)
* HM: Trail of Cthulhu: Shadows over Filmland (Pelgrane Press)

Best Aid or Accessory

* Battlegraph Dry Erase Boards (Longtooth Studios)
* Campaign Coins (King of the Castle Games & Paizo Publishing)
* Gaming Paper (Gaming Paper)
* Hero Lab v3.6 (Lone Wolf Development)
* Pathfinder GM Screen (Paizo Publishing)
* HM: A Song of Ice and Fire Narrator’s Kit (Green Ronin)

Best Art, Cover

* Eclipse Phase (Catalyst Game Labs & Posthuman Studios)
* Pathfinder Bestiary (Paizo Publishing)
* Rogue Trader Core Rulebook (Fantasy Flight Games)
* Trail of Cthulhu: Rough Magicks (Pelgrane Press)
* WFRP: The Gathering Storm (Fantasy Flight Games)
* HM: Star Wars: The Unknown Regions (Wizards of the Coast)

Best Art, Interior

* Escape from Tentacle City (Willow Palecek)
* Pathfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo Publishing)
* Rogue Trader Core Rulebook (Fantasy Flight Games)
* Shadowrun – 20th Anniversary Ed. (Catalyst Game Labs)
* Warhammer Fantasy RPG (Fantasy Flight Games)
* HM: Hero 6th Edition (Hero Games)

Best Blog

* Critical Hits
* Gnome Stew
* Kobold Quarterly
* NewbieDM.com
* One Geek to Another
* HM: Sarah Darkmagic

Best Cartography

* Aces and Eights: Judas Crossing (Kenzer & Company)
* Dungeon of Terror Virtual Box Set (0one Games)
* Maps of Mastery: Swamp Caves (Maps of Mastery)
* Pathfinder City Map Folio (Paizo Publishing)
* Revenge of the Giants (Wizards of the Coast)
* HM: Death Frost Doom (Lamentation of the Flame Princess)

Best Electronic Book

* The Great City Player’s Guide (0one Games)
* Heroes of the Jade Oath BETA (Rite Publishing)
* To Kill Or Not To Kill (Rite Publishing)
* Pathfinder Society Scenario #29: The Devil We Know Part 1: Shipyard Rats (Paizo Publishing)
* Shambles (A Terrible Idea)
* HM: Fey Folio: The Unseelie Court (Alluria Publishing)

Best Free Product

* Advanced Players Guide Playtest (Paizo Publishing)
* Combat Advantage #15 (Emerald Press)
* Lady Blackbird (one.seven Design)
* Warriors Adventure Game (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
* Wayfinder #1 (Paizo Fans United)
* HM: Hexographer (Inkwell Ideas)

Best Game

* Dragon Age: Set 1 (Green Ronin)
* Hero 6th Edition (Hero Games)
* Pathfinder (Paizo Publishing)
* Shadowrun – 20th Anniversary Ed. (Catalyst Game Labs)
* Wild Talents 2nd Edition (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* HM: Labyrinth Lord (Goblinoid Games)

Best Miniature Product

* Alkemy Minis (Kraken Editions)
* D&D Minis (Wizards of the Coast)
* Fortress of Redemption (Games Workshop)
* Gaming Paper (Gaming Paper)
* Maps of Mastery: Swamp Caves (Maps of Mastery)
* HM: Battlegraph Dry Erase Boards (Longtooth Studios)

Best Monster/Adversary

* Aces and Eights: Rustlers & Townsfolk (Kenzer and Company)
* Hellfrost Bestiary (Cubicle 7 & Triple Ace Games)
* Pathfinder Bestiary (Paizo Publishing)
* Pathfinder: Classic Horrors Revisited (Paizo Publishing)
* Supernatural: Guide to the Hunted (Margaret Weis Productions)
* HM: Fey Folio: The Unseelie Court (Alluria Publishing)

Best Podcast

* All Games Considered
* Atomic Array
* NewbieDM.com Minicast
* Open Design
* Power Source
* HM: The Gamer’s Haven Podcast

Best Production Values

* Eclipse Phase (Catalyst Game Labs & Posthuman Studios)
* Pathfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo Publishing)
* Rogue Trader Core Rulebook (Fantasy Flight Games)
* Shadowrun – 20th Anniversary Ed. (Catalyst Game Labs)
* Warhammer Fantasy RPG (Fantasy Flight Games)
* HM: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth (Exile Game Studio)

Best Regalia

* Battletech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction (Catalyst Game Labs)
* Buried Tales of Pine Box, Texas (12 to Midnight)
* Cthulhu 101 (Atomic Overmind Press)
* Grind (Privateer Press)
* Three Dragon Ante: Emperor’s Gambit (Wizards of the Coast)
* HM: Best of All Flesh (Elder Signs Press)

Best Rules

* Atomic Highway (Cubicle 7 & Radioactive Ape Designs)
* BASH Ultimate Edition (Basic Action Games)
* Diaspora (VSCA)
* Hero 6th Edition (Hero Games)
* Wild Talents 2nd Edition (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* HM: Earthdawn 3rd Edition, Player’s Guide (RedBrick LLC)

Best Setting

* Day After Ragnarok (Atomic Overmind Press)
* Goblin Markets (White Wolf Publishing)
* Kerberos Club (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* Judge Dredd (Mongoose Publishing)
* Rome: Life and Death of the Republic (Cubicle 7 & Alephtar Games)
* HM: Shadowrun: Seattle 2072 (Catylst Game Labs)

Best Supplement

* Lucha Libre Hero (Hero Games)
* Mysteries of the Hollow Earth (Exile Game Studio)
* Nobis: The City-States (Pantheon Press)
* Player’s Handbook 3 (Wizards of the Coast)
* Rebellion Era Campaign Guide (Wizards of the Coast)
* HM: Cthulhutech: Damnation View (WildFire)

Best Website

* d20PFSRD.com
* Epic Words
* Obsidian Portal
* Pathfinder Wiki
* Pen & Paper Games
* HM: Hexographer

Best Writing

* Eclipse Phase (Catalyst Game Labs & Posthuman Studios)
* FantasyCraft (Crafty Games)
* How We Came to Live Here (Galileo Games)
* Kerberos Club (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* Victoriana 2nd Edtion (Cubicle 7)
* HM: Colonial Gothic (Rogue Games)

Product of the Year

* Doctor Who (Cubicle 7)
* Dragon Age: Set 1 (Green Ronin)
* Eclipse Phase (Catalyst Game Labs & Posthuman Studios)
* Geist the Sin-Eaters (White Wolf Publishing)
* Kerberos Club (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* Pathfinder (Paizo Publishing)
* Rome: Life and Death of the Republic (Cubicle 7 & Alephtar Games)
* Shadowrun – 20th Anniversary Ed. (Catalyst Game Labs)
* Warhammer Fantasy RPG (Fantasy Flight Games)
* Wild Talents 2nd Edition (Cubicle 7 & Arc Dream Publishing)
* HM: FantasyCraft (Crafty Games)
* HM: Savage Suzerain (Cubicle 7)