1KM1KT Free RPG Community

Another good CA idea - the 1KM1KT should put together its own awards each year.

What awards would they be?
Would there be prizes?
If so, where would the money come from? (sponsorship?)
Would we have a virtual award ceremony?
How would the judging be done?
How would the nominations be done?

Let the dicussion begin!

One of my friends runs a Team Fortress 2 community for level design. They have actual recognition from Valve - the company has acquiesced to some of their requested changes in editing interface and item design. The recently released official map "Hoodoo" was produced by one of their members. He has run a few contests - even gotten sponsors to donate a video card for one, and this time around, Valve is providing some shirts, and a few other companies have chipped in as well.

However, this isn't quite all fun and games. They have enough advertising on their forum (to offset the cost of game servers) that the community has a net worth of a bit over $11,000 - which in turn means that the group is going to be treated as a business soon, possibly even pay taxes. My friend was boasting about how banner add "real-estate" on their front page is worth at least $45

Learning from his example, we have two problems. First, we don't really have connections to any publishers, and we're not quite as valuable a demographic as the tf2mappers (Young adult males with enough disposable income to buy high-end gaming computers) so far as pulling in advertisers goes. Secondly, I presume we don't want the financial headaches of turning 1km1kt into an actual business. (Actually, a 1km1kt.net publishing label would be kind of cool, but given the relative locations of the people in charge of this place, somewhat impractical)

OK, now that I've mentioned some of the pitfalls, a few ideas for actual prizes.

First would be to have a "winner's circle" on 1km1kt.net. Each game gets its own page outside the archive, display some of its art, an interview with the author, and its reviews (or links to them). Unlike most other contests, we won't just have a list of victors, but include information about why they are on the page. (Its also educational for other designers...) Furthermore, this is probably fairly easy to do and has no cost other than server-space.

A second idea would follow our prior discussions about having a yearly compilation/dead tree format document. Our top 5-10 games (how do we mange length here?) get sent to an actual printer to appear in game stores, or at least as a fancy tchockie. Once again, the process of submission can then be used as an example to others.

If we do start an E-zine, then obviously there would be recognition in there somehow.

Another prize idea - original artwork to help illustrate their document. Either one of us learns to draw, or we contact some sort of artist community (deviantART?) to do so. After all, that is an element missing from many independent games, and would also be a fairly minimal outlay for the community, and expands our base of interest.

Voting should probably be by polling the entire community. It wouldn't really be fair, or representative of the broad experience of writers to have only three or four of us chose. I may have read hundreds of free games, but I'm still not the voice of the people.

Theoretically, we could do something with cafe-press or a similar service to either produce a prize (All good desktop publishers need a mouse pad and coffee mug) or as a means of revenue. Then again, game design is a little esoteric, so I don't really see people wearing 1km1kt.net shirts, in turn rendering this a questionable option.

Oh and while I introduced the names purely as a joke, Golden typewriter and Gilded Monkey apparently did come off as a good idea to some.

Golden Typewriter ans Gilded Monkey ARE good ideas, CA!

As for sponsorship, I think we can go a lot more low-fi. Chgowiz and The Chatty DM had with the One Page Dungeon contest. We could offer coverage on my blog and/or on 1KM1KT's banners in return for some complimentary PDF products. It doesn't cost them much but has us going on about it, on twitter and so on. It's good karma. I might be able to speak sweetly to some of the small press people. Our publishers aren't entering a competition, they just get given an award!

Artwork might be a good idea. I can draw-ish. Again, we might be able to find an artist to donate a cover. I am not sure that some of the authors will be too keen on that. Definitely worth a thought.

Voting should definitely be everyone. Even perhaps outside of 1KM1KT, using a more generic voting system.

I like the dead tree idea. It links with Kuma's anthology idea. We should definitely look at that - perhaps not for the compo because some of the games are rather large and I wouldn't want to put them all in one HUGE book!

Shall we do these in the new year covering all of 2009?

by all that is Geeky and Holy.....YES!

None of the "big" awards offer prizes beyond recognition. Adding a "real" prize beyond that is going to put the awards under some pretty heavy scrutiny, but I think it might be a good idea to push the awards into visibility.

That said, are you going to accept free RPGs from the major players, like Paizo for instance? Or Wizards of the Coast?

# Best Truly Free RPG Product
# Best Published Free RPG Product

What are the differences between these two categories?

Or is the first one supposed to read "Best Truly Free RPG"

I was using product in the soft sense so as not to disclude a RPG setting or general resource. If you say just Best Truly Free RPG then you get people expecting a full game - which I think it would be wrong to assume.