ENnie Awards Blog

Greetings all and well met!

It’s that time of the year again. The time where the ENnies staff and judges begin the countdown to GenCon and start getting all of our dire ducks in a row. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to let y’all know where we’re at and where we’re headed.

1. This year’s ceremony will be our 10th Annual affair and will be held on Friday, August 6th. The wheels are in motion to make this the best. ENnies. ever. More details to come!

2. One of the projects we’re working on is to create a photo retrospective. If you have photos you would like to include in this retrospective, please e-mail them to photos@ennieawards.com. It will be a fun trip down memory lane for all.

3. Going forward, electronic submissions will work differently than they have in the past. For our new electronic entry guidelines, please visit http://www.ennie-awards.com/publishers/e-submissions.asp. For podcasts and blogs/online magazines, there are some additional guidelines:

- You must send a link to your site and specify one “must-hear” episode or one “must-read” article/issue.
- The judges will select another “must-hear” episode or one “must-read” article/issue that they all listen to/read.
- Each judge will then select another episode/article/issue.

This will mean that each judge will listen to/read three episodes/articles/issues, one of which is chosen by the podcaster/publisher, in order to get a sense of the entire line.

4. If you haven’t seen the ENnies blog, it’s high-time you take a look at it by visiting http://www.ennie-awards.com/ennies/blog!

5. On the blog, we are keeping a running list of all submissions we have received. At the top of the blog is a link to a page labeled Submissions. This page will let you see exactly which publishers have submitted, what products said publishers have submitted, and a link for each product to give you a chance to get to know them better.

If you’re an RPG fan, I highly recommend you go and see who’s submitted and prod your favorite publisher to submit the products you want to see win an ENnie.

If you’re an RPG publisher, this page will allow you to easily check what you have or have not submitted.

6. Speaking of publishers: This year, we are going to be more stringent with our deadlines. In the last few years, we have had publishers who have sent products that were postmarked after the submission deadline. Depending on circumstances, we have been lenient and allowed these items to still be judged. We have decided that it is in everyone’s best interest to stick to the guidelines and only allow products to be judged that are postmarked before the deadline. This means that is in the best interest of the publisher to get a tracking number on their packages and keep an eye on it to verify delivery. It would be a shame if an excellent product was left out simply because it wasn’t postmarked on time or because a publisher didn’t check to make sure the product was delivered on time. This year, the postmark deadline is on, or before, May 8, 2010. This also applies to electronic submissions.

With this in mind, publishers need to remember that one of our judges, Megan Robertson, lives in the United Kingdom. This means that, for items shipped from outside of the UK, the transit time will be longer than normal. Please make sure to ship your items as early as possible to make sure that they arrive in a timely fashion and give her, and other judges, ample time to review them.

7. With of a completely packed personal schedule, Gertie Barden has decided to step back from her role as Assistant Business Manager and focus on more important things like getting married and going back to college to complete a second Bachelor’s degree (crazy, I know!). She will stay on as a staff member, but in a less taxing role. Because of this, I have been asked to step into the Assistant Business Manager role and I have accepted. I will now be pulling double-duty and stay on as the PR Coordinator. Denise Robinson, the current Business Manager, has previously announced her retirement from the position after this year, so I will move up into that role next year. I want to thank both Gertie and Denise for recommending me to step into the new position and I promise to keep the ENnies as fun, exciting, and important as they are currently.

Well that’s all for now. I will make sure to keep everyone updated on the latest happenings of the ENnies and, as I’ve stated before, I highly recommend you read the ENnies Blog to keep up on ENnies news and discussions by the judges. As always, you may respond to me here or e-mail me at pr@ennieawards.com if you have any questions.

Tony Law
ENnies Asst. Business Manager/PR Coordinator

This is just a quick update to let folks know that the Submissions page has been updated as on today. We have had our first submission using our new Electronic Submission rules!  These new rules will make it easier for publishers to submit their electronic only products.

Usually, the time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas is relatively slow for me.  This year is an exception.  With an impending product launch shortly after the New Year and still a metric ton of work to finish, I’ve been put on notice that the holiday season is crunch time.

But that’s good!  With a stable job, a healthy family, and a happy gaming group, I have much to be thankful for this season.  I’m also thankful for the opportunity I’ve been given to serve the gaming community as an ENnies Judge.  Aside from reading, reviewing, and playing with all the products that get submitted for myself, I find it interesting to scour the interwebs for other reviews and comments on some of these fine products.  Not to mention discussing them with my fellow judges.  Once you’ve formed an opinion of your own, it’s quite interesting to see what others have to say about the subject at hand.  Sometimes you may agree and you might disagree at other times, but you almost always learn something you might not have caught the first time through.

As we dive into the holidays and the work piles up, I’m still taking time to look over products submitted to the ENnies for consideration.  Three of the products I’m currently reading and playing with are Fantasycraft by Crafty Games, Earthdawn (3rd ed.) Player’s Guide by Red Brick, and Nobis – The City-States by Pantheon Press.

-Mark

PS: Happy Holidays!

Since the Colonial Gothic test-drive filled up nice and quick I figured I would schedule the second ENnies Test Drive. The next game up is going to be Mutant City Blues by Pelgrane Press. Mutant City Blues is a contemporary supers game using the GUMSHOE system (also found in Esoterrorists, Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu).

Here’s a quick blurb:

———-

———-

Location/date/time:

Muse Comics
November 22nd
Noon – 4-5pm

Characters will be pregenerated to save on time and I will be running one of the “Hard Helix” published adventures. The game will be run rules as written and I would really appreciate some time after the game to get feedback from everyone. I would like to get three to six players for this game.

For the Missoulians following along, leave a comment if you’d like a spot in this test-drive!

-J.

Just had an e-mail from my husband at home… the Big Box of Goodies has just arrived.

As I mentioned before, I get a lot of offers from people that want to give these games a shot.  I wanted to include the “new group experience” in my judging process and now it’s time to give it a shot.

I will be running “The Defeated Dead” for Colonial Gothic at Muse Comics.  I have spots available for three to six players and will be running this on November 8th, starting at noon and going until 4-5pm.  Characters will be pre-generated to save on startup time.  The game will be run with rules as written, no houseruling anything, and I would like to have some time after the game to collect feedback from the players.

I have to say that I’m looking forward to this.  I think it will be a good time and an excellent chance to get people involved in the ENnies.

I’ll post a summary of the game when we’re done so check back!

-J.

Much like the other judges, I’ve been slowly working my way through the materials I received post-Gencon.  Now that over a month has passed, I’ve had an opportunity to look over a number of products and give them some initial playtime.  Since I don’t do published reviews or have a blog outside of the ENnies, I wanted to take a few minutes to update the community on what products I’ve used so far as I work my way through the Big Box.  Here’s a subset of submissions I’ve read and played with (you can find a full list of the entries so far by clicking here):

• Ultimate Toolbox, AEG
• Gaming Paper
• Role Playing Girl Magazine – August 2009, Pirate Jenny
• Colonial Gothic, Rogue Games
• Escape From Tentacle City, Willow Palecek
• Cluster of Wooden Barrels, Acheson Creations
• 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars Insignias (Sergeant & Brigadier), Box Ninja
• Army Brat, CMON miniatures
• Outcast Manhunter, Dark Age Miniatures
• Mythos Chips, Dagon Industries

There’s still a great deal of material to read through, play with and digest.  Please understand that I’m not finished with the items listed above; I still want to revisit them as more products arrive and I’ve crafted ways to use them in my home game.

Remember, if you don’t see your favorite products or publishers represented in our submissions list, be sure to contact them and encourage them to enter.  After all, we can’t review and nominate products that aren’t submitted.

-Mark

Hello all,

I know I am a little slow in getting my first post on the blog but it has been a busy couple of months for me.  Ever since the submissions started arriving I have been devouring the products I have received, even making it through several of the entries so far.  And I’ve been making a lot of characters.  While I haven’t had a chance to actually playtest the games we’ve received I plan on setting up a game day at my FLGS to get some local gamers involved in this whole process.  After all, what could be a better test for a game than sitting down with a group of people who have never tried it and giving things a go?

One thing I should really comment on is the amount of support I’ve gotten from the local gaming community.  People both in and around Missoula have been sending me messages on the forums I visit or shooting me comments through Facebook, letting me know that if I ever find myself needing people to playtest something that they are more than willing.  I wanted to let everyone know that I appreciate the offers very much and will be taking as many of you up on that as possible.

I’ll keep everyone posted on what systems I’m going to be trying first and when/where I’ll be running the games.  Until then, back to work!

Feel free to use the embedded survey before or, if you prefer, click here to open the survey in a new window.

They always say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” but this does not apply when looking at contenders for the ‘Best Cover Art’ ENnie!

What makes a good cover? If you listen to a media studies person, there are a whole bunch of rules about how to lay one out to have the greatest effect – but that kind of analysis can be a bit cold, and while it is useful if you have a cover to design, it’s not so useful when you have a line-up of covers to judge.

One thing a good cover needs to be is eye-catching. If it doesn’t grab your attention and make you want to open the book, it’s failed in its job. The cover more than virtually anything else has to sell that book. Take for example the cover of White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade. Plain, just the title and a single rose.

Vampire: The Masquerade 1e

In some ways, it is quite a hard cover design to understand. The text says ‘Vampire’ but there is none of the typical iconography that would suggest vampires – no fangs, blood, pale yet stylish people hanging around at night – you know the sort of thing that adorns movie posters and vampire novels.

Yet it typifies the game, once you know what it is. The lone rose on something that might just be a tombstone… feelings of lonely elegance, death, abandonment and romance. But would it make you pick the book up if you didn’t already know what it was about?

It did when I first saw it in a game store. And that was a store which shrink-wrapped all its books and required customers to ask a member of staff if you wanted to have a look inside before you decided if you wanted to purchase the book! I got curious, partly because it was different, intriguing – why had they chosen this way to illustrate what on the face of it is a common gaming and fictional theme?

So what will I be looking for when assessing books for ‘Best Cover Art’? I certainly want them to be eye-catching. I also want something which is relevant to the contents… doesn’t matter how beautiful or funny or artistic a cover is if it makes no sense at all when compared to what the book it adorns is about. So a game which is a licenced adaptation of a film or TV show might have a typical scene from that show… or more likely the faces of some of the principal characters. A fantasy book might have a wizard chucking fireballs around, or a dragon. A science-fiction game might have spacecraft or exotic aliens…

Dungeon Master's Guide 3e

One of my all-time favourite covers is the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Dungeons & Dragons 3e from Wizards of the Coast. Basically it is a mediaeval book cover, the sort of thing you might pick up in a monastery library… no fantasy icons, no dragons, no horrible monsters and brave heroes battling them.

Spycraft Espionage Game

Another is the whole ’silver’ series of Spycraft 1e from Alderac Entertainment Group, despite some of the actual illustrations being a bit cartoonish for my taste. The idea of cinematic, action-packed espionage came over well.

In judging, though, I need to step back from personal preference and look at what works as a cover even if I don’t really like it as pure artwork or if I don’t care for the game that cover adorns. It’s going to be fun looking at all those covers and trying to justify WHY a particular cover works so well, and why another one does not.

What do you think?