Crothian
First Post
This year for the third straight year I was a judge for the ENnies, or as they are hopefully being coming better known as the Gen Con Awards. I like the nickname but Gen Con Awards really gives us more credit as it is the Best Four Days in Gaming. Least that is what they tell me every year.
Being a Judge sucks. And it is a blast. The responsibility is tremendous and the work load is unreal. This year we got 216 products from 56 different publishers. And that does not count the entries for best Fan Web Site and many of the best free products as many publishers submit web enhancements nad many different things they have released for free. We actually got a few less items to judge but we had more publishers participate. The amount of books doesn't concern me, but the fact that we got more publishers thrills me. That is the number that we need to always increase, we need the widest amount of participation that we can get. Plus, I'm not sure many gamers realize there are 56 publishers out there, and we didn't even get them all to participate.
This year with the ENnies I also served as Submissions Coordinator. And let me be the first to say: Never again. Now for other people it would not be as bad as it was for me. I live in an apartment and packages were not always left for me, I'd get lots of "we missed you notices". The problem with this is that if I'm not there after three attempts the packages get shipped back to the sender. That was not an option so I had to take half days off from work to make sure that I was home for the packages to arrive. And we got lots of packages. White Wolf sent 5 boxes of books and my Fed Ex guy did not look happy about that. I only live on the second floor so its not terrible as it could be. So, receiving books was not easy and frankly not fun. Then there is the storage issue. Each of the other 4 judges got a pile in my spare bedroom. All the boxes and package materials I kept using when I shipped out to the judges. This year we also had an option to let the Publishers ship directly to the judges and it was gods send!! I personally danced a jig and was ever thankful when companies did this, though not enough did. But I'm a bit biased on that, not enough is anything less then everybody.
Shipping to the judges was not a big pain, but not great either. I found that for 30-40 pound boxes shipping in the US was best to use UPS and that was great as there is a UPS store really near me. Shipping to Canada is a pain. They (Customs) require a list of everything in the box. So, I had to write out each and every book title on the forms for each box I shipped up there. It is also not cheap. We had a mapping program submitted to us really early on. Since it was a bit complex I felt that allowing judges time to play with it was needed so I shipped it to all 4 judges. Shipping to Canada was almost twice as much as shipping to the all the other judges. So, from then on out I mailed nothing to Canada that was less then 40 pounds. One of the pains about it was for some reason filling everything out on line is cheaper by quite a bit when shipping things. But the forms for on line are much more confusing then the forms you fill out at the shipping places. One of the packages actually got stopped in Customs and I had a call from them about the shipment. That was odd but things got worked out fast. It is interesting to note though that most of the time the packages got to Canada faster then the ones in the US.
Now, all of this is just a pain in the butt and by itself while not fun is not what made things so bad. It is always the unexpected emergencies that pop up in life. As June started and the ENnies are started to pick up and lots of books are coming my way and I'm preparing lists and doing paperwork and ready to ship packages...my mom got diagnosis with cancer. I'm close to my parents so this was devastating news and frankly, I really didn't want to do the ENnies after hearing it. I wanted to drop everything and be there for Mom and Dad and help them out. Obviously, I didn't do that. I did my responsibilities, and split time between books and my parents. This is the first that even the other ENnie people have heard of it. I didn't want to worry anyone with my problems. I knew what I had to do and I got it all done. It was really not easy and I'm thankful it is over. My mother had surgery to remove the cancer and is now doing really good. She's resting at home and I try to see her about every other day.
The ENnies have been a good thing. I like being able to give awards and recognize the RPGs that are really doing special things. I really like how we are embracing all RPGs and not just the d20 section. There are a lot of really good games being made that no one knows about it seems and the Gen Con Awards will hopefully be a way to shine a light on the best. I go to Origins every year and it’s always great to talk to the publishers there but since most go to Gen Con I'll need to start doing more of the finding the different companies there.
The nominations will be announced on Monday July 18 and when that happens I'd really like to go thorough them all and talk about each book. However, as I'm a judge it might have undue influence because there are books I like more then others. So, I'll be waiting until the votes are in before I really talk about the entries we had and what I liked and was impressed with. Generally speaking the books were of a higher quality then last year and last year I called the submissions the Golden Age of RPGs. However, unlike last year there were less Wow books. Another thing with what we saw is most of the books are going to be hard to use in existing games, unless you happen to be playing that game/setting. I like to see more books that are usable now and not with my next campaign. I know a lot of people have commented on this before in other ways and I am really agreeing with them.
Voting will be open for a few weeks this year so I urge people to read up and look into the books nominated. We poured over these tombs for weeks talking among ourselves and picking the books we felt were best. Some of the categories were killers. How do you narrow down to just five when there are easily a dozen good solid books that you love? That's the toughest part about being a judge, we can't include and say great things about everything we would want to.
It was a really tough June for me and my family and frankly I'm happy to have it behind me. The books are nice and I'll be doing something with them. I've given some away to friends like I do every year and small stack will be donated to the others that make the ENnies happen as well as to EN World. My trade thread will get a nice boost, but its already really big so I might start giving those books away as well. But time will tell on all that.
I'm moving right on to my next project though. I'm recruiting people to help out with PDF reviews. So far we had had a decent response considering I've only been talking to publishers mostly, but this week I'll be looking towards the people of EN World to help me out. But that will be saved for a different entry.
Thanks to everyone out there.
Being a Judge sucks. And it is a blast. The responsibility is tremendous and the work load is unreal. This year we got 216 products from 56 different publishers. And that does not count the entries for best Fan Web Site and many of the best free products as many publishers submit web enhancements nad many different things they have released for free. We actually got a few less items to judge but we had more publishers participate. The amount of books doesn't concern me, but the fact that we got more publishers thrills me. That is the number that we need to always increase, we need the widest amount of participation that we can get. Plus, I'm not sure many gamers realize there are 56 publishers out there, and we didn't even get them all to participate.
This year with the ENnies I also served as Submissions Coordinator. And let me be the first to say: Never again. Now for other people it would not be as bad as it was for me. I live in an apartment and packages were not always left for me, I'd get lots of "we missed you notices". The problem with this is that if I'm not there after three attempts the packages get shipped back to the sender. That was not an option so I had to take half days off from work to make sure that I was home for the packages to arrive. And we got lots of packages. White Wolf sent 5 boxes of books and my Fed Ex guy did not look happy about that. I only live on the second floor so its not terrible as it could be. So, receiving books was not easy and frankly not fun. Then there is the storage issue. Each of the other 4 judges got a pile in my spare bedroom. All the boxes and package materials I kept using when I shipped out to the judges. This year we also had an option to let the Publishers ship directly to the judges and it was gods send!! I personally danced a jig and was ever thankful when companies did this, though not enough did. But I'm a bit biased on that, not enough is anything less then everybody.
Shipping to the judges was not a big pain, but not great either. I found that for 30-40 pound boxes shipping in the US was best to use UPS and that was great as there is a UPS store really near me. Shipping to Canada is a pain. They (Customs) require a list of everything in the box. So, I had to write out each and every book title on the forms for each box I shipped up there. It is also not cheap. We had a mapping program submitted to us really early on. Since it was a bit complex I felt that allowing judges time to play with it was needed so I shipped it to all 4 judges. Shipping to Canada was almost twice as much as shipping to the all the other judges. So, from then on out I mailed nothing to Canada that was less then 40 pounds. One of the pains about it was for some reason filling everything out on line is cheaper by quite a bit when shipping things. But the forms for on line are much more confusing then the forms you fill out at the shipping places. One of the packages actually got stopped in Customs and I had a call from them about the shipment. That was odd but things got worked out fast. It is interesting to note though that most of the time the packages got to Canada faster then the ones in the US.
Now, all of this is just a pain in the butt and by itself while not fun is not what made things so bad. It is always the unexpected emergencies that pop up in life. As June started and the ENnies are started to pick up and lots of books are coming my way and I'm preparing lists and doing paperwork and ready to ship packages...my mom got diagnosis with cancer. I'm close to my parents so this was devastating news and frankly, I really didn't want to do the ENnies after hearing it. I wanted to drop everything and be there for Mom and Dad and help them out. Obviously, I didn't do that. I did my responsibilities, and split time between books and my parents. This is the first that even the other ENnie people have heard of it. I didn't want to worry anyone with my problems. I knew what I had to do and I got it all done. It was really not easy and I'm thankful it is over. My mother had surgery to remove the cancer and is now doing really good. She's resting at home and I try to see her about every other day.
The ENnies have been a good thing. I like being able to give awards and recognize the RPGs that are really doing special things. I really like how we are embracing all RPGs and not just the d20 section. There are a lot of really good games being made that no one knows about it seems and the Gen Con Awards will hopefully be a way to shine a light on the best. I go to Origins every year and it’s always great to talk to the publishers there but since most go to Gen Con I'll need to start doing more of the finding the different companies there.
The nominations will be announced on Monday July 18 and when that happens I'd really like to go thorough them all and talk about each book. However, as I'm a judge it might have undue influence because there are books I like more then others. So, I'll be waiting until the votes are in before I really talk about the entries we had and what I liked and was impressed with. Generally speaking the books were of a higher quality then last year and last year I called the submissions the Golden Age of RPGs. However, unlike last year there were less Wow books. Another thing with what we saw is most of the books are going to be hard to use in existing games, unless you happen to be playing that game/setting. I like to see more books that are usable now and not with my next campaign. I know a lot of people have commented on this before in other ways and I am really agreeing with them.
Voting will be open for a few weeks this year so I urge people to read up and look into the books nominated. We poured over these tombs for weeks talking among ourselves and picking the books we felt were best. Some of the categories were killers. How do you narrow down to just five when there are easily a dozen good solid books that you love? That's the toughest part about being a judge, we can't include and say great things about everything we would want to.
It was a really tough June for me and my family and frankly I'm happy to have it behind me. The books are nice and I'll be doing something with them. I've given some away to friends like I do every year and small stack will be donated to the others that make the ENnies happen as well as to EN World. My trade thread will get a nice boost, but its already really big so I might start giving those books away as well. But time will tell on all that.
I'm moving right on to my next project though. I'm recruiting people to help out with PDF reviews. So far we had had a decent response considering I've only been talking to publishers mostly, but this week I'll be looking towards the people of EN World to help me out. But that will be saved for a different entry.
Thanks to everyone out there.
