• Metamorphosis Alpha Roleplaying Game by Signal Fire Studios. Though we originally heard MA would return as a D&D4E setting, the new plan is to release a standalone 160-page RPG to relaunch the classic property. With 17 days left, this project is almost 50% of the way toward its $10k goal, so if you’re interested, check it out.
• Got It! by Tom Jolly: a fun, sometimes frantic math game he’s trying to get back in print. We reviewed it here a while back. Got It! is nearly 30% funded with 24 days left, and with a modest goal of $3k, we’re hoping it succeeds.
• Zpocalypse: An Epic Zombie Survival Board Game by Greenbrier Games. This detailed board game will have plastic figures, an interchangeable board, and is already nearly 400% funded! Jump in if you want to lend a hand (or get some backer rewards).
• Dwimmermount: An Old School Fantasy RPG Megadungeon by James Maliszewski. Already 350% funded, backers of this epic dungeon crawl are continuing to unlock designer notes, an additional level to explore, and more. The challenging dungeon, long hinted at on Grognardia, will be available in versions compatible with Labyrinth Lord or the Adventurer Conqueror King System, both descended from the original fantasy RPG. This drive ends this weekend, so if you want in, climb aboard now.

The 38th Annual Origins Awards Nominees

Best Roleplaying Game
Abney Park’s Airship Pirates – Cubicle 7 Entertainment – “Captain” Robert Brown, Peter Cakebread, Andrew Peregrine, Ian Sturrock, Ken Walton
Arcanis – Paradigm Concepts – Eric Wiener, Pedro Barrenechea, and Henry Lopez
Ashen Stars – Pelgrane Press – Robin D. Laws
Leverage: The RPG – Margaret Weis Productions – Cam Banks, Rob Donoghue, and Clark Valentine
The One Ring – Cubicle 7 Entertainment – Amado Angulo, Marco Maggi, Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Francesco Nepitello

Best Roleplaying Supplement or Adventure
Bookhounds of London (Trail of Cthulhu) – Pelgrane Press – Kenneth H. Hite
Dragon Age, Set 2 (Dragon Age) – Green Ronin Publishing – Steve Kenson, T.S. Luikart, Chris Pramas, and Jeff Tidball
The Great Clans (L5R 4th Edition) – AEG – Shawn Carman, Rob Hobart, Brian Yoon
Monster Vault (D&D 4E) – Wizards of the Coast – Rodney Thompson, Logan Bonner, & Matthew Sernett
Shadows over Scotland (Call of Cthulhu) – Cubicle 7 Entertainment – Stuart Boon

Best Board Game
Conquest of Nerath – Wizards of the Coast – Richard Baker, Mons Johnson, & Peter Lee
Automobile – Mayfair Games – Martin Wallace
Hibernia – Closet Nerd – Eric Vogel
High Noon Saloon – Slugfest Games – Cliff Bohm & Geoff Bottone
Pastiche – Gryphon Games – Sean D. MacDonald

Best Traditional Card Game
Cthulhu Gloom – Atlas Games – Keith Baker
NUTS! – Wildfire LLC – Matthew Grau
Red Dragon Inn 3 – Slugfest Games – Geoff Bottone, Jeff Morrow, and Cliff Bohm
Star Trek Deck Building Game – BANDAI – Alex Bykov
Struggle for Catan – Mayfair Games – Klaus Teuber

Best Family, Party or Children’s Game
BEARS! – Fireside Games – Anne-Marie De Witt
Faux-Cabulary – Out of the Box Publishing – Matthew Nuccio
Get Bit! – Mayday Games – Dave Chalker
Scavengers – Zombie State Games – John Werner
Space Mission – Schmidt Spiele – Matthew Worden

Best Miniatures Figure or Line
Forge Father Huscarl – Mantic
Giant Sized X-Men Heroclix – Wizkids/NECA
St. Luke – Dark Age
Storm Strider – Privateer Press
Zombie Wedding Party – Studio Miniatures

Best Miniatures Rules or Expansion
Battletech: The Wars of Reaving – Catalyst Game Labs – Ben H. Rome, Herbert A. Beas, Paul Sjardijn
Carnevale: The Miniatures Game – Vesper-on Games – David Esbri
Light Bikes – Glory Games – J. P. Trostle
Street Fighter Starter Set – Wizkids/NECA – Wizkids/NECA
Tomorrow’s War – Osprey Publishing/Ambush Alley Games – Shawn Carpenter, Robby Carpenter
Warmachine: Wrath – Privateer Press – David Carl, Bryan Cutler, Doug Seacat, Jason Soles, Matt Wilson

Best Collectible Card Game or Expansion
Legend of the Five Rings: Second City – AEG
Magic the Gathering : Innistrad – Wizards of the Coast
Pokemon Black & White: Emerging Powers – Nintendo
World of Warcraft: Dungeon Decks – Cryptozoic Entertainment
World of Warcraft: The Throne of Tides – Cryptozoic Entertainment

Best Game Accessory
Dungeon Tiles: The Witchlight Fens – Wizards of the Coast – Peter Lee & Jason Engle
Dice Earrings – GameScience – GameScience
Dungeon Masters Keep – Gale Force Nine – Gale Force Nine
Munchkin Zombies 2: Armed & Dangerous – Steve Jackson Games – Steve Jackson
Shadowrun Runner’s Toolkit – Catalyst Game Labs – Elissa Carey, Rusty Childers, Cole Davidson, Mark Dynna, Adam Jury, Robyn King-Nitschke, Adam Large, Drew Littell, Elizabeth Nold, Brandie Tarvin, Peter Taylor, Malik Toms, Michael Wich, Russell Zimmerman

Best Game-Related Publication
Cliffourd the Big Red God – Atlas Games – Kenneth H. Hite & Andy Hopp
The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design – Open Design LLC – Mike Selinker with Rob Daviau, James Ernest, Matt Forbeck, Richard Garfield, Dave Howell, Steve Jackson, John Kovalic, Richard C. Levy, Andrew Looney, Michelle Nephew, Paul Peterson, Lisa Steenson, Jeff Tidball, Teeuwynn Woodruff, and Dale Yu
Designers & Dragons – Mongoose Publishing – Shannon Appelcline
Untold Adventures – Wizards of the Coast – Alan Dean Foster, Mike Resnick, Kevin J. Anderson, John Shirley, Jay Lake, Sarah Zettel, and many more.
Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons – Wizards of the Coast – Shelley Mazzanoble

Best Historical Board Game
Strike of the Eagle – Academy Games -Brian Bennett, Uwe Eickert, Robert Zak
Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861 – Mayfair Games – Martin Wallace
Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles – Worthington Games – Jim Krohn
Lost Battles – Fifth Column Games – Philip Sabin
No Retreat! The Russian Front – GMT – Carl Paradis
World War II Barbarossa 1941 – Zvesda – Konstantin Krivenko

Best Historical Miniatures Rules or Expansion
SAGA – Gripping Beast – Studio Tomahawk
Waterloo – Warhammer Historical – Mark Latham
Flames of War: Cassino – Battlefront Miniatures Ltd. – Battlefront Miniatures Ltd.
Command Combat: Civil War 1861 – Bandwagon Books – Jeff McArthur
Force on Force, 2nd Edition – Osprey Publishing/Ambush Alley Games – Shawn Carpenter, Robby Carpenter
Hail Caesar! – Warlord Games – Rick Priestley

Best Historical Miniatures Figure or Line
Bolt Action WW2 – Warlord Games
Italian Wars – Wargames Foundry
Sudan 1881-1885 – Perry Miniatures
Napoleon at War – Man at War
Tropic Lightning Vietnam War – Battlefront Miniatures Ltd.
Anglo Zulu War – Empress Miniatures

Best Play by Mail or Correspondance Game
Continental Rails – Production R Danard – John Van De Graaf
Hyborian War – Reality Simulations Inc -Edward Schoonover
Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire – KJC Games
Cruenti Dei – Sardarthion Press – Thom Ryng
Heroic Fantasy – Flying Buffalo Inc – Rick Loomis and Steve MacGregor

(As an aside, when I ask my 12-year-old daughter what she knows about Cthulhu, she tells me he’s “like an octopus guy, who’s really big, and lives underwater, and eats people, and there’s only one of him.” H.P. Lovecraft? Never heard of him. Yes, I know – I’ve failed to teach her. I know. You’re missing the point.)

Is the “cute-ifying” of all-powerful Cthulhu the makings of controversy, or just clever marketing? These days, there’s cute/plush/Bratz/LEGO/Hot Wheels versions of nearly every popular theme, including zombies, vampires, and demons. An untapped market is hard to resist, especially when the burden of screening and/or explaining the eldritch content is so easily passed to the parents. A Mini Plush Cthulhu (from Toy Vault) was the hot item to send to new gamer parents for a time (Matt Forbeck received four at once a while back), and that (innocent?) trend has broadened considerably since those days. Now Lovecraft fans can select everything from children’s book parodies and dice games to fuzzy Cthulhu slippers and My Little Cthulhu (complete with victims).

Ultimately, selling cute Cthulhu isn’t a bad thing at all. If companies can support Lovecraft fans with products they (or their children) enjoy, more power to them. Just because my daugther grew up around a large plush Cthulhu (which she pronounced “Toolu” until she was 5 or so), it doesn’t automatically mean she’ll be playing through Mansions of Madness anytime soon, if ever. That’s okay. She’s aware of Cthulhu (a startling notion, if you think about it…), and has a vague notion of a larger storyline that she can investigate at her leisure.

If she ever does, though, I’d better teach her more about Lovecraft, or the guys at Chaosium will sic the gugs on me again.

And yet another different D&D freelancer friend said:

“This is why D&D 4E is called an indie game. It tells you how to play. Many of us know that the rules are better than they have ever been design wise but that’s not the point. Look at Iron Heroes designed by Mike Mearls. The same people who loved that game, a game which was similar to 4E in many ways, hated 4E. Why? They actually like the rules in many cases. But they don’t want to be told this is the way to play. These games are about people. They are about friends. And you don’t know my friends better than I do.”

Now, that’s just the opinion of one alleged freelancer, and even if we took it as truth, it doesn’t pose a large problem… unless you’re interested in the accessibility of D&D. The trouble with not telling people how to play is it limits the game’s growth to the oral tradition. A new group, as in people who don’t know (or don’t know they know) anyone else who plays, must fill in that deliberately larger gap between the rules and the table all on their own, which A) has a lot of known bad side effects, and B) simply fails more often – often enough that I’d guess it doesn’t replace players faster than they drop out.

By returning to not (fully) telling you how to play, Wizards is accepting that D&D is inaccessible from the outside and that the best it can do is reclaim some old players. As we’ve discussed, with D&D Next they’re likely really just aiming to win back recent converts to Pathfinder. That’ll do, corporately speaking; that’ll hold the line. It disappoints those of us who’d rather that D&D were closer to a living part of gaming culture than an archival piece, but it does suit Hasbro’s general M.O. and stated reason for investing in D&D at all: getting value out of a brand through an array of ancillary products. Hell, I kind of don’t know why they don’t just distribute the core RPG books for free. (They haven’t said they won’t, of course; in my view it’d be a smart way to return to the PDF market.)

There are ways, though, that Wizards could make the oral tradition more effective. They’ve announced that they are revamping the D&D website, which is good, but my confidence is a little low that they’ll be able to do what’s really required: utterly changing their online corporate voice. If they did manage it, they could be the oral tradition, the place people go to see and hear what this hobby is and what it looks like when people live it. The right selection of official YouTube videos alone would be a great step towards clearing away the annoyingly persistent confusion about just exactly what it is you do when you play D&D.

That would possibly reopen the door to the world at large. But from what we know right now, that isn’t a goal.

EDIT Mike is a jerk: it makes a certain amount of sense that this is a reprint of the last major edition of D&D that Gary Gygax was personally invested in, since the books are a benefit for the Gygax Memorial Fund. Okay then.

• I don’t envy WotC right now. They can’t possibly do it right for most people, and most people will say so.
• All WotC’s horses and all WotC’s men want to put the fractured play base together again. (4E didn’t start the breaks, but did worsen ‘em.)
• And amazingly, they have something resembling clear messaging about just that! It’s all over this Mearls interview.
• The danger now lies in how that openness comes across. 4E’s strength was you could come in totally cold and actually have a successful game.
• A D&D-for-everyone has a hard job if it wants to be that accessible. (As I’ve written lately, I think Risk Legacy can be a guide here.)

On the “D&D Next” topic: this is significant. Everyone on Twitter, and I’m sure other places as well, is screaming about “5E” but no one at Wizards is saying the number 5. That’s because (turn back now if you fear rampant speculation) Wizards wants “editions” to go away. They create confusion amongst consumers. Wizards doesn’t much care about our nerdfights – there will always be nerdfights – but once it got so bad that Pathfinder actually made a dent in the consciousness of consumers outside the nerd bubble, that got their attention. By and large, the mass of D&D players (the ones who get it at Walmart-or-whatever) don’t even notice independent games, and certainly not fantasy ones; Wizards would like it very much if those folks never notice those games again.

And as far as listening to your fans… it can be done right, and it can be done wrong. For now, I’ll call it a good thing that it’s going to be done at all.

And that’s all leaving aside the sheer joy of playing the thing – which, to be fair, may be due in part to shock value that’ll fade once more games of this nature hit the market. (At the very least, I want to see Monopoly Legacy.) This is the new best practice for doing any kind of campaign play in a board game. Don’t just spell out a campaign in the back half of the rulebook, make it theater. Risk Legacy oozes theatricality starting when you crack the seal on the box, and going forward through just about every step (except the rulebook, which is more straightforward for obvious reasons). This is the essence of what a campaign is for, as role-players know; hell, it’s the reason role-playing was made.

This is just my pick. Allan may have a different one. Also if you don’t own Ascending Empires we can’t be friends, so don’t think you can slack off there.

So yeah, we didn’t do a gift guide. Let’s be real, you didn’t have any money to buy people things with anyway. Pook very kindly put some of his picks up in various categories; I don’t feel super qualified to make a call on RPG of 2011, in part because I seem to be doomed to stay 6 months behind, at least, on actually playing anything. I’m tempted to say that the RPG of the year is Kickstarter – if you get your build right, that’s one hell of a reward cycle.

Give us your picks in the comments. Just keep your damn Skyrim off my lawn.

Of course, if you really need a gift now, you can always resort to an electronic goodie or two. Pathfinder RPG fans might enjoy Hero Labs for the Pathfinder Beginner Box (Lone Wolf Development; Free!); and gamers in general are likely to find something worthwhile in the Super Indie Bundle, offered on Steam for a limited time – 10 games for $19.99 is hard to beat!

Be well, and happy holidays!

In Perigon from Clarendon Games, each player controls four pieces that live in grooves in the board and move by rotating around intersections of the grooves. There is also a neutral flag piece which can only be moved by connecting to it with your own pieces. The object of the game is to capture the flag and move it through your opponent’s side of the board and onto a goal line. Of course, like many simple but deep strategy games, it’s probably easier to play than to describe — you might get a better idea of how it works by watching this video.