Huh. No D&D Miniatures Game nomination anywhere, not even in Miniatures Games, Fantasy. Can you say “oversight”? And what’s with the Best Roleplaying Supplement category being *entirely* d20? I enjoy and play d20, but I believe a few other game systems still exist and had supplements in 2003. “Chief Herman’s Next Big Thing” is nominated for Best Abstract Board Game? It’s a collection of games, some not even board games. Well, actually, I can forgive that one, ‘cuz where else would it go. Seems like there’s some issues here.
I am surprised at how conservative the selection of nominees is. In particular, the list for Best Roelplaying Game.
Why has D&D made the nominations once again? It is just another edition and not that much of a change anyway… Surely D&D 3e and its re-iterations could be shoved into the Hall of Fame and disqualified from further nomination?
Somehow I am not surprised that White Wolf’s Orpheus was ignored despite it being a very good game. I am very disappointed though, that the superb My Life With Master was not included. This is hands down the best RPG of last year and deserved a nomination at least, if not the win.
AFAIK, there is no limitation as to how many times you can nominate the same product despite the different versions. Oh, and while WotC tries to say that the changes aren’t all that significant, the fanbase disagree with that assessment. Even I am tempted to pick up 3.5e by next year, after I’m pretty much done with the bland Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document. Personally, my hangup is the nomination for Best Periodical. In my biased view, I don’t think DUNGEON should be nominated, but that’s because they chose to reduce the page count alloted and the number of mini-games per year for POLYHEDRON. As for the Best Roleplaying Supplement category, I can think of better d20 products that should have gotten the top nominations.
I’m underwhelmed.
Now you know how I felt about the Academy Awards (the “Oscar”), when they snubbed THE LORD OF THE RINGS first two films, and the cast (particularly Sean Astin as “Samwise”) in the last event. I’d rather have a version of the People’s Choice Awards but for gamers.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Origins Awards process is exactly backwards; instead, nominees should be chosen by public vote and winners chosen by industry folks or the Academy. This would likely be better at preventing nonsensical nominations as well as online ballot-box stuffing, but there may be problems with it that I haven’t thought of.
I prefer the gaming public nominate and vote. If Origins Award is meant for the industry peers (which is like the Oscar), then another award should be meant for the gaming community.
D.O., the Ennies already do that, don’t they? And if the Origins Awards were all industry from beginning to end, I think we’d see the same distortion in the final vote that we currently see in the nominations. I’d be interested to see a panel of industry experts pick from choices provided by popular vote – it hasn’t been tried, and I think it would better achieve the balance that the Origins Awards are currently going for.
AFAIK, the ENnies are for d20 & OGL (using the d20 SRD) products. I guess I need to know what is GAMA’s process for choosing the nominees and picking the winners for the Origin Awards.
Well, theoretically, the problem with pure fan nominations/voting is that it all comes down to just a popularity contest, where the most popular games win instead of the “best”.
Well, I wouldn’t dismiss popular votes. If more people are playing the same game, then they must like the game and want to shout out to the world. To me, the best games are the ones that are liked by the consumers.
So how many Oscars should Van Helsing get? Besides which, you can’t even count on the most popular game winning the “popular vote,” especially when the vote is happening on the Internet. It’s a better test of which companies have the most Internet-aware fan bases.
They can always distribute the ballot in several magazines as they have done so before the internet became mainstream.
In an impoverished industry like this, no one’s going to spend money on printing up ballots when the net is there for the taking. Anyway, motivating people to actually mail the things would likely still rely on Internet promotion strategies.
Huh. No D&D Miniatures Game nomination anywhere, not even in Miniatures Games, Fantasy. Can you say “oversight”? And what’s with the Best Roleplaying Supplement category being *entirely* d20? I enjoy and play d20, but I believe a few other game systems still exist and had supplements in 2003. “Chief Herman’s Next Big Thing” is nominated for Best Abstract Board Game? It’s a collection of games, some not even board games. Well, actually, I can forgive that one, ‘cuz where else would it go. Seems like there’s some issues here.
I am surprised at how conservative the selection of nominees is. In particular, the list for Best Roelplaying Game.
Why has D&D made the nominations once again? It is just another edition and not that much of a change anyway… Surely D&D 3e and its re-iterations could be shoved into the Hall of Fame and disqualified from further nomination?
Somehow I am not surprised that White Wolf’s Orpheus was ignored despite it being a very good game. I am very disappointed though, that the superb My Life With Master was not included. This is hands down the best RPG of last year and deserved a nomination at least, if not the win.
AFAIK, there is no limitation as to how many times you can nominate the same product despite the different versions. Oh, and while WotC tries to say that the changes aren’t all that significant, the fanbase disagree with that assessment. Even I am tempted to pick up 3.5e by next year, after I’m pretty much done with the bland Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document. Personally, my hangup is the nomination for Best Periodical. In my biased view, I don’t think DUNGEON should be nominated, but that’s because they chose to reduce the page count alloted and the number of mini-games per year for POLYHEDRON. As for the Best Roleplaying Supplement category, I can think of better d20 products that should have gotten the top nominations.
I’m underwhelmed.
Now you know how I felt about the Academy Awards (the “Oscar”), when they snubbed THE LORD OF THE RINGS first two films, and the cast (particularly Sean Astin as “Samwise”) in the last event. I’d rather have a version of the People’s Choice Awards but for gamers.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Origins Awards process is exactly backwards; instead, nominees should be chosen by public vote and winners chosen by industry folks or the Academy. This would likely be better at preventing nonsensical nominations as well as online ballot-box stuffing, but there may be problems with it that I haven’t thought of.
I prefer the gaming public nominate and vote. If Origins Award is meant for the industry peers (which is like the Oscar), then another award should be meant for the gaming community.
D.O., the Ennies already do that, don’t they? And if the Origins Awards were all industry from beginning to end, I think we’d see the same distortion in the final vote that we currently see in the nominations. I’d be interested to see a panel of industry experts pick from choices provided by popular vote – it hasn’t been tried, and I think it would better achieve the balance that the Origins Awards are currently going for.
AFAIK, the ENnies are for d20 & OGL (using the d20 SRD) products. I guess I need to know what is GAMA’s process for choosing the nominees and picking the winners for the Origin Awards.
Well, theoretically, the problem with pure fan nominations/voting is that it all comes down to just a popularity contest, where the most popular games win instead of the “best”.
But there are the Pen&Paper Fan Awards http://www.pen-paper.net/awards.php
And of course the Indie RPG Awards http://rpg-awards.com
Well, I wouldn’t dismiss popular votes. If more people are playing the same game, then they must like the game and want to shout out to the world. To me, the best games are the ones that are liked by the consumers.
So how many Oscars should Van Helsing get? Besides which, you can’t even count on the most popular game winning the “popular vote,” especially when the vote is happening on the Internet. It’s a better test of which companies have the most Internet-aware fan bases.
They can always distribute the ballot in several magazines as they have done so before the internet became mainstream.
In an impoverished industry like this, no one’s going to spend money on printing up ballots when the net is there for the taking. Anyway, motivating people to actually mail the things would likely still rely on Internet promotion strategies.