2007 ENnies Nominees - announced!

[wandmlaw]

I would like to urge you to e-mail us with your specific concerns rather than vague condemnations. We would be happy to deal with any specific concern you might have.

I suspect that what you "heard about what was done" probably differs from what actually happened, and I would be glad to address your concerns but this is not the place. I can be reached at denise@ennieawards.com.

Hi Denise,

Where is the proper place to discuss this situation on the boards? While I appreciate the opportunity to discuss it with you privately, I also think the controversy would benefit from a public discussion.

 

[Dextra]

Hi Denise,

Where is the proper place to discuss this situation on the boards? While I appreciate the opportunity to discuss it with you privately, I also think the controversy would benefit from a public discussion.

Hi everybody!

Honestly? I don't think there is place here for that discussion. The only discussion should be between the Board and the producers/hosts of Fear the Boot. Unfortunately, parts of those discussions spilled into the public and onto other forums. I even tried to explain things on the Fear the Boot forums, and the ENnies were trashed for it. And EN World does not tolerate inter-board drama.

I will talk with the Board about the possibility of setting up an ENnies forum on ennieawards.com for discussions of this sort so they won't clutter up ENW, though.

But to get the facts straight:

1. We are not disqualifying them for joking around. We are not disqualifying them for disrepecting the Awards. We are not disqualifying them for "poor taste". As a matter of fact, we really didn't want to have to officially disqualify them at all. We asked them to withdraw because they admitted to having voted from work and home. They apologized. That was not a joke. That is a fact.
2. Voting more than once violates the democratic principle of one person, one vote. They blatantly broke that principle, forcing the Board's hand. We could not condone such behaviour through inaction.
3. We will codify it in the future that cheating is grounds for disqualification.
4. We will adopt methods of reducing the possibility of ballot-stuffing for future years.

Finally, I'd like to say that the ENnie Awards staff, Board, and judges are all volunteers who put in hundreds of hours every year into the Awards. And while none of us expect a pat on the back, it would be nice to not be rewarded with a kick to the teeth as it were.

We strive to maintain a high standard at all times in all aspects, but sometimes an individual staffer may snap when attacked, or make statements that do not bear out the Board's policies. I apologize if anyone associated with the ENnies has stepped over the line of professionalism and offended or misled anyone in this (or any other matter), and assure you that actions are being taken to discipline offenders and prevent re-occurrences.

Thank you for your understanding. I welcome emails at denise@ennieawards.com if you wish to continue this.

 

[booboo]

Post removed by admin. See below.

 

[fusangite]

Ok, this just doesn't make any sense.
Ptolus is only HM for d20/OGL, while accordlands is nominated surely means that the judges think that accordlands is better.
However, Ptolus is nominated for best product while accordlands is not, surely means the opposite?

Anyone cares to explain?

Here is the response I posted to the same question on another messageboard

All I can personally say on this front is that my decision to rank Ptolus 6th in Best D20 had very little to do with Ptolus and a great deal to do with the quality of the other products on the list.

I considered Helios Rising to be a better setting book that Ptolus because I felt it was more creative and innovative and also because it asked and answered questions about the setting it described that I was more interested in than the questions Ptolus answered.

Similarly, I found that Warlords of the Accordlands gave me a sharper and more complete picture of a setting than Ptolus did. Instead of the cosmology/mythology having one cool/interesting aspect, as did Ptolus did, I found that Warlords offered many. I also found that the adventures and adventure hooks provided in Warlords were less railroady than Ptolus was. (Not that I consider Ptolus to be a big offender in that area; it's just that Warlords was even less so). Also, and this is a matter of personal taste, a lot off Ptolus's schtick is the routinization of magic and the way that people have adapted it into their everyday consciousness. I find such a world less exciting than a place like the Accordlands where it seems like people are most interested in striving for magic that is beyond their reach. The insufficiency of magic seems like a more engaging (for me) theme for making magic commonplace.

Five Fingers, interestingly, was there, at least in part, because of its brevity. It wasn't just that people felt like they had a feel for the setting when they closed the book. They had it immediately, within the first few pages. When I was reading the book, I was reminded of Italo Calvino's great book Invisible Cities in which the author is able to convey the whole idea of a fantastic city in the space of a page and a half. I think, also that the idea of a place's history being essentially written into the physical landscape itself was a powerful one.

Ultimate Power, on the other hand, was a completely different kettle of fish. As one judge put it, the book "completes" Mutants and Masterminds, giving GMs and players much-needed flexibility to design almost any set of powers. Instead of souping-up hero powers, this book had the courage to offer nothing to those seeking to get more powerful by buying more books and, instead, focused their volume on empowering GMs and players to convert basically any super-powered character from film, novels or comic books into M&M terms.

Etberpunk: Upload was very close, in the running to the other Scope book for this setting that Goodman released. It was almost a toss of a coin as to whether Etherpunk or Mysteries of the Occult was the better of the two. I loved both books and felt that they, together, filled-out the Etherscope universe in terms both of fluff and crunch.

I felt that all five of our selections were, in one way or another, more innovative than Ptolus, more important in completing their product line than Ptolus or were simply better settings than Ptolus was.

As for why Ptolus made Product of the Year and some of these works did not, let me offer a few general comments about the judging process that may be helpful:
(a) sometimes, when a couple of products are neck-and-neck for 5th place in a category and we end up awarding one an honourable mention instead of a finalist, the next time that happens to the very same product, we often favour the one that narrowly lost the last time we were forced to almost toss a coin to see which one won.
(b) late in the selection process, as time for negotiated consensus runs down, we sometimes have to fall to majority voting to see which product wins. Because we couldn't reach consensus on every category, some categories are more characteristic of majority rule and others of a consensus amongst all the judges.
(c) in any voting system, no matter how fair, the length of a list matters a lot. This is even true when negotiating a consensus. Lists of 10/12 products look a lot different than lists of 5/6 products and have very different properties. Being the seventh-best or ninth-best in a judge's mind matters a lot in the Product of the Year category whereas it is irrelevant in the other categories we judge.

I hope that this answers your question.

 

[Piratecat]

BooBoo, please follow the rules, as laid out at the top of every forum and which apply to every forum member. One of those is not being rude or insulting. I've removed your post.

Please drop me an email if you want to discuss this.

 

[Master of the Game]

Here is the response I posted to the same question on another messageboard

Funilly enough, I just posted my thoughts on the d20 category on my blog, but here is the relevant portion:

[bq]The vast majority of complaints that I heard this year revolved around how few nominations Ptolus received, particularly in this category. First I suppose I should point out that Ptolus did actually do very well for itself in every category where its strengths were really allowed to shine. It received nominations in Production Values, Setting, Cartography, and even Product of the Year, though it didn't fair quite as well in this category. Part of the reason for that is that Ptolus is really a setting book, and though it does present its setting very well, it already got a nomination for that. It's huge, and it's pretty, but it got a nomination for that as well. It's full of densely packed information, and among the best products released this year, but it got the nod for that as well. Hopefully everyone can see that it wasn't overlooked, it's just that, in the d20 category, we were looking for different criteria, and at it's heart Ptolus was built to tie existing d20 material together into a cohesive whole, not expand it in any meaningful way. It's a great book, and it deserves the place it got on this list every bit as much as it deserves the actual nominations that it received, but it just couldn't quite make the final list.[/bq]

 

[DaveMage]

Certainly the judges are entitled to their opinions, but none of the arguments I've heard so far have convinced me that Ptolus didn't belong in the best d20 category as more than an honorable mention. My opinion is that it's pretty much the best single d20 product released ever. The art, handouts, and bonus CD have no peer. And, of course, it has THREE RIBBONS!!!! No other d20 product has three ribbons. DID YOU JUDGES EVEN CONSIDER THE RIBBON FACTOR?!?!?!?


However, at this point, it's water under the bridge, and it is what it is.

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Ribbons are a factor to consider in production value, not value as a d20 product.

We did, in fact, consider the ribbons and that's why Ptolus got the nod for best production value.



I do love ribbons.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

Denise, thanks a lot for clarifying what the actual reason for this bruhaha is.
I do have something to say, if only just to get it off my chest:

But to get the facts straight:

1. We asked them to withdraw because they admitted to having voted from work and home. They apologized. That was not a joke. That is a fact.
2. Voting more than once violates the democratic principle of one person, one vote.

Frankly, I feel this is not reason enough and almost irrelevant because, according to the principle of "one person, one vote", the two votes cast by someone voting from work and from home, in the end, account for the two individuals living in the same household (a factual situation for more than half of the FTB staff). The ENnies do not require that a voter be a gamer or even knowledgeable of the nominees to cast a vote, reason enough to simply ask someone with the knowhow (i.e. a gamer spouse) to vote on their behalf, acting as a proxy. If I tell you that I voted twice, but also tell you that there are two individuals in my household, the principle of "one person, one vote" is still upheld.

Was this eventuality considered by the board before making their decision?

Now, if you tell me and it can be proven in some way that from a two-person household 3 votes were cast (or 2 votes from a single-person household), then yeah, absolutely, this is an obvious transgression.

I know that at this point this is a done deal, and I don't honestly expect the decisions of the board to be retracted, lest you then lose credibility for wavering, but as I said in a post over at the FTB boards, this event calls into question not only the entire voting process but also the votes for every other nominee in the awards.

Finally, I'd like to say that the ENnie Awards staff, Board, and judges are all volunteers who put in hundreds of hours every year into the Awards. And while none of us expect a pat on the back, it would be nice to not be rewarded with a kick to the teeth as it were.

I fully agree with this, and as I have said before, even if I feel that the case has been mishandled, at the end of the day I believe that the directors acted on their best intentions, and I do thank them for their largely-thankless work for the ENnies. I realize that as a result of this, the voting procedure will be evaluated and changed for future awards, which is a good step and one I welcome, as I also hope it will lead to further revisions of the rules of operation in order to avoid embarrasing issues like this one, for all involved, in the future.

I would also like to support the idea of setting a forum specifically for the ENnies at the award's website, so that conversations dealing specifically with the ENnies can be conducted in the proper venue, as opossed to spilling it over to EN World or other forums.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

If I tell you that I voted twice, but also tell you that there are two individuals in my household, the principle of "one person, one vote" is still upheld.

But its not.

One person, one vote means...one person, one vote. The second you vote again, its one person, two votes, no matter if you're voting for someone else, etc, you're voting twice.