The nominees for this year’s Diana Jones Award have been announced, and there’s some heavy hitters in competition this time. In no particular order (other than that given on the press release), the nominated games are:
- The Catacombs board game (Sands of Time Games)
- The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game (Evil Hat Productions)
- Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space board game (Cranio Creations)
- Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games)
- FreeMarket (Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen)
The winner will be announced the night before Gen Con, as always, and will join the exclusive club of past winners, which includes the roleplaying games Nobilis and My Life With Master, the Ticket to Ride board game, the card game Dominion, and industry figures such as Peter Adkison, among others. (See below for the full press release)
Diana Jones Award press release text follows:
For immediate release
SHORTLIST FOR 2011 DIANA JONES AWARD ANNOUNCED
Three RPGs and two board-games vie for hobby-gaming’s most exclusive trophy
The committee of the Diana Jones Award has announced the shortlist for its 2011 award. Boiled down from a longlist of 22 nominees, this year the list contains five candidates that in the opinion of the committee exemplify the very best that hobby-gaming has produced in the last twelve months. In alphabetical order, they are:
– Catacombs, a board game from Sands of Time Games, by Ryan Amos, Marc Kelsy, and Aron West
– The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game from Evil Hat Productions, by Leonard Balsera, Jim Butcher, Genevieve Cogman, Rob Donaghue, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, and Clark Valentine
– Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, a board game from Santa Ragione and Cranio Creations, by Mario Porpora, Pietro Righi Riva, Luca Francesco Rossi, and Nicolò Tedeschi
– Fiasco, a roleplaying game from Bully Pulpit Games, by Jason Morningstar
– Freemarket, a roleplaying game from Sorencrane MCRZ, by Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen
The winner of the 2011 Award will be announced on Wednesday 3rd August, at the annual Diana Jones Award and Freelancer Party in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con Indy convention.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product, company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the quality of ‘excellence’ in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year. The winner of the Award receives the Diana Jones trophy.
The short-list and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones Committee, a mostly anonymous group of games-industry alumni and illuminati, known to include designers, publishers, cartoonists, and those content to rest on their laurels.
Past winners include industry figures such as Peter Adkison and Jordan Weisman, the role-playing games Nobilis, Sorcerer, and My Life with Master, the board-games Dominion and Ticket to Ride, and the website BoardGameGeek.com. This is the eleventh year of the Award.
More information is available at www.dianajonesaward.org or at the Award’s Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Jones_Award.
CONTACT
For more information you can contact a representative of the DJA committee directly: committee@dianajonesaward.org