Congratulations to the 2017 Gen Con EN World RPG Award Winners!

Tonight, at Gen Con in Indianapolis, the 17th Annual Gen Con EN World Awards (ENnies) ceremony took place. Congratulations go to all the nominees, and to this year's award winners! The ENnies are an annual award program celebrating the best that tabletop roleplaying games have to offer, created in 2001.

​

2018 Judges Brian Nowak Denise Robinson Kurt Weigel Reece Carter Sean McCoy Best Adventure Gold: Blood in the Chocolate (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Silver: Doors to Darkness (Chaosium) Best Aid/Accessory Gold: Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen Pack (Chaosium) Silver: Kobold Guide to Plots Campaigns (Kobold Press) Best Cover Art Gold: Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook (Chaosium) Silver: Torment Tides of Numenera The Explorers Guide (Monte Cook Games) Best Interior Art Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: S Petersens Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (Chaosium) Best Blog Gold: Gnome Stew The Gaming Blog Silver: Age of Ravens Best Cartography Gold: Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen Pack (Chaosium) Silver: 7th Sea Map of Thah (John Wick Presents) Best Electronic Book Gold: The Things We Leave Behind (Stygian Fox Publishing) Silver: Hubris A World of Visceral Adventure (DIY RPG Productions) Best Family Game Gold: Bubblegumshoe (Evil Hat) Silver: Masks A New Generation (Magpie Games) Best Free Product Gold: 7th Sea Basic Rules (John Wick Presents) Silver: City of Mist Free PDF Starter Set (Son of Oak Game Studio) Best Game Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents)

Best Miniatures Product Gold: Achtung Cthulhu Skirmish Servitors of Nyarlathotep (Modiphius Entertainment) Silver: Dungeons Dragons: Molzurs Marvelous Miniatures (WizKids) Best Monster/Adversary Gold: S Petersens Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (Chaosium) Silver: Veins of the Earth (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Best Podcast Gold: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Silver: Spellburn Best Production Values Gold: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Slipcase Set (Chaosium) Silver: Unknown Armies Deluxe Set (Atlas Games) Best RPG Related Product Gold: Call of Cthulhu The Coloring Book (Chaosium) Silver: The ABCs of RPGs (Hunter Books) Best Rules Gold: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents) Silver: Adventures in Middle Earth Players Guide (Cubicle 7 Entertainment) Best Setting Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: The Dark Eye Aventuria Almanac (Ulisses North America) Best Supplement Gold: Pulp Cthulhu (Chaosium) Silver: 7th Sea Pirate Nations (John Wick Presents) Best Website Gold: Tabletop Audio Silver: Elven Tower RPG articles and cartography website Best Writing Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: Veins of the Earth (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Fan's Choice for Best Publisher Gold: Wizards of the Coast Silver: Chaosium Product Of The Year Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents)

 

[Zak S]

Let's talk how about the how one guy flipped everyone off as his acceptance speech, and the boos when WOTC won.. Classy

Mike rules.

 

[Ghal Maraz]

Mike rules.

Evans?

 

[Zak S]

Evans?

Yeah, Mike Evans, author of the Ennie-award-winning Hubris.

He flipped everyone off. It was great.

Raggi was like "Man, how are we gonna top that?"

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

Yeah, Mike Evans, author of the Ennie-award-winning Hubris.

He flipped everyone off. It was great.

Raggi was like "Man, how are we gonna top that?"

IDK, how about getting 4 floors of people to complain about noise....

;-)

 

[Zak S]

IDK, how about getting 4 floors of people to complain about noise....

;-)

Well it was only because Mike was there causing trouble--I personally told everyone "inside voices". There's recorded video evidence!

Datapoint:

The big winners outside the OSR this year were:

-Tales from the Loop (mostly Swedish people who didn't show up)--which was only one guy.

-Chaosium with Cthulhu--and when I invited Greg Stafford to our party he smiled and said he was going to bed.

-Ken Hite as always (who came to our party)

and

-John Wick presents (who came to our party)

plus the ABCs of RPGs crew came and the guys from Monte Cook Productions came

....so it's pretty safe to say that even though we only won 5 ennies, OSR definitely threw the best party.

Somebody outdo us next year--and invite us. Party planning is hard.

 

[Shasarak]

WotC could clearly care less, they've been to busy attending much better conventions of late

What other better attended RPG conventions are there?

 

[Zak S]

What other better attended RPG conventions are there?

According to Mearls at the bar on Saturday night, the thing is:

Cons are about wandering past the booth and going "Hey what's that!?!" and there's nobody at Gen Con who goes "Hey, what's this? Dungeons and......Dra...gons?" and so WOTC just doesn't get as much out of doing cons as other companies do.

People from WOTC still hang out (he was there running games) but just not "officially".

 

[Cam Banks]

What I'm seeing here is a lot of small-to-medium press and indie publishers, quite a lot of non-US games and/or publishers (and this particular thing I really love) and the continual impact of crowfunding on the industry.

Exactly. Folks would be shocked (shocked!) to find out that without successful crowdfunding campaigns and the hard work of lots of freelancers, 90% of game publishers in the RPG business wouldn't be producing games at all. The gap between "dude who does it all by himself and publishes PDFs on DriveThru" and "people who publish that big glossy game book the kids are talking about" is tiny, for all that it may appear sometimes that it's much wider.

Or, as the saying goes, if you want to make a million bucks in the RPG business, start with two million bucks.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Zak S]

The gap between "dude who does it all by himself and publishes PDFs on DriveThru" and "people who publish that big glossy game book the kids are talking about" is tiny, for all that it may appear sometimes that it's much wider.

There are significant differences between the established presses and Mike Evans at DIY RPG or Raggi at LotFP. The differences in cashflow are huge:

Green Ronin had the DC Comics license and a link to Critical Role.

Margaret Weis had the Marvel Comics license (it costs at least 6 figures) and the Smallville license.

Atlas Games has established IP like Unknown Armies, Feng Shui, etc

Evil Hat had, of course, the Dresden Files and Atomic Robo IP.

And the list of personnel working on these books is huge, Unknown Armies had like more than 10 authors.

The fact that genuinely tiny publishers like LotFP are more winning awards than these folks and selling out print runs from the smallest booths you can get at Gen Con is a big deal--they have the deck completely stacked against them.

And, yeah, you could say they're relying on D&Ds ip, but they're also out-competing the other 3rd party publishers doing that plus Paizo and actual WOTC's D&D supplements.

 

[Cam Banks]

Setting aside for the moment that you don't appear to know as much about this business as you think, it really doesn't matter to the fans if one person puts food on their family's table from publishing a book or fifty. Awards are a recognition of a book's popularity and awareness among the fan community. There's never any guarantee that a new edition of a game or a group effort is going to appeal to folks as much as a small press solo effort. I'm sorry if you think I'm trying to steal any of James' thunder, but it's weird to keep seeing people try to claim mainstream publishers are The Man, raking in the dough. I've been doing this for 15 years, I am not well off. The only reason I'm even able to go to Gen Con is because it's work and they cover the travel and rooms.

Good news though! I have a small press solo creator indie game coming out next year so who knows.

Cheers,
Cam