Ennies free RPG nominees

[Dyson Logos]

I have a few modules that were given away as free products by their publishers over the years. Not parts of games, but full adventures with new art and everything, in print. That's a free in-print RPG product that is not a quick-start. By making them jump through different hoops than the other free products, we would be penalizing the publisher for making the effort and investment to give away a free print product instead of just having it available for download on their website. Penalizing that kind of stuff seems like a very bad idea for the game industry to me, at least.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

While I said early on that I don't like rewarding advertising, this may not entirely be the fault of the EN people.

I don't think most designers come forward with their work.

At least in my case, a work is never really finished. In my personal collection - Gangland is expecting its second-add on, Dead & Back needs a third version of the rules and its setting books, even the seemingly complete 24 hour game I just did could use expanding. Mr. Lang is on the 3rd or 4th redux of ICAR, Returner's Final Fantasy went into 3rd edition a while back, and Dominion version 3.1.

Quite frankly, we often feel like we have all the time in the world to work on these things, and if you're not on a deadline, and its purely for fun, then why share before its ready? Indeed, much of the point behind the 24 hour challenge is to shake us out of this mindset.

Furthermore most games don't have enough of a fan community on their own to have someone stand up and nominate them. A few of the retro-clones and the aforementioned ReFF have some active forums, but generally speaking they're just lone ships floating on the electronic ocean.

All that said, perhaps its not a matter of changing the ENies. I could think of worse jobs than having to stalk the plains of the internet looking for wild new games - but I'm sure these people have real jobs and other things to be doing.

Before we got busy with the contest, we were discussing means of rejuvenating 1km1kt.net and where we wanted it to go. Perhaps that direction should be towards being the sort of community that has quarterly/yearly recognition of its contributors, checks up on authors to see if they're keeping a schedule (or behoove them to adopt one) and generally be their advocates. Why complain about other's rewards when we have the power to create our own?

Though we might need better names than the "golden typewriter" and "gilded monkey".

[kumakami]

Thank you CA! I think a yearly award is the right idea. I would also like to suggest the idea of doing a monthly or quarterly e-zine, sort of a insiders for Free RPG's. Even allowing adventurers and Fan supplements for them. The more we support the Free-bee's the better!

[Starglim]

[Dyson Logos]

Quarterly at most.

Volunteer work is hard to coordinate.

That said, I LOVE the idea.

[kumakami]

the more I think about it the more I like Quarterly. We could theme it towards the seasons.

[Corone]

[Dyson Logos]

[Rob Lang]

Dyson, it will be broken until they have a system that has the best games released that year. It's moot to say that "best" is subjective but if you have enough people raising eyebrows at the entries then that counts. Enough experts (I've read more than 100 free games in the last nine months alone, I think I count) should be able to say whether the category is filled with good examples or not. And it's not.

To be honest, it doesn't seem that the ENnies are going to change, so the only solution is to campaign for this year and then set the stage for next. Having people like us on the back of free RPG publishers and throw them into the fray.

As for 1KM1KT awards, we'll have to deal with that elsewhere.

[Dyson Logos]

ok. The impasse I see now is the difference between juried awards and non-juried awards.

In a juried award, the nominee field requires some amount of participation by the nominees in order to avoid running the jurors ragged. If the jurors had to judge every single product released that year, they would find themselves having to buy and download every product released during the submission period at their own expense and then review it. Since the ENnies went to a juried system they have never been about the best of all, but the best of what has been submitted. A couple of years ago they even made the concession that it didn't have to be submitted by the publisher - it just had to be submitted and the publisher had to agree to the nomination.

If I'm correct, what you want is for the judges of the ENnies to consider ALL products released, not just the submitted products, right?