Branstorming for ENnies 2003 -- improvements, changes, etc

[Ghostwind]

I can't speak for the other judges, but I think that it would've been cool to set up the ENnies as a sort of "dual-award" - "Critic's Choice" (for lack of a better term) and "People's Choice" (again, for lack of a better term).

The concept of both awards has merits. The People's Choice version could be the current incarnation of the award with the votes from the general public used to tabulate the final results. The Critic's Choice, however, would have to have a carefully crafted set of guidelines used to judge the winner. The number of members on the panel should be around 10 and all should work from a baseline set of guidelines when judging a product. The guidelines would help stabilize the subjective nature of choosing the winners. This would give more awards in general and get away from the first and second place award proposals currently being fielded.

 

[EricNoah]

I have a feeling that the fans here will be watching carefully to see what WotC "does" with its awards. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm thinking that if my company won an award, I'd use it to help with PR/advertising (either by using the ENnies logo on a product or on a website, or by saying now that the product is "award winning", something like that), to justify further development of a particular product line (if I needed to convince someone higher up in my company, for instance), that sort of thing.

What other ways would a company use an award? Would they use it to justify keeping a particular person hired or contracted (or conversely, would they use a loss as an excuse to fire someone)? Would they use it as an internal morale boost? Just tossing out thoughts here...

 

[Khan the Warlord]

This probably isn't the best method to resolving the "People's Choice" vs. "Critic's Choice" issue, but it may build a foundation that others can expand upon.

What if we created a voting page and it was "invite only"? Now, before you say that this then makes the awards truly "Critic's Choice", then know that I propose that those invited to vote for the ENnies must be selected from reviewers that possess at least 5 different reviews from five different companies at EN World or another reviews site. This way, we can safely assume that the person voting for the "Best Campaign Setting" actually has the right to do so, instead of just making their decisions based on advertisements they have seen, as opposed to owning and reading the product.

These people don't have to be industry professionals, they just have to be known for at least making the attempt at actually knowing the hobby and the products that will or will not be "the Best of the Best".

 

[Jovah]

The only way to vote for the Ennies is on this website as far as I know and I like to think that the people who hang out here are a bit more educated about the game than the average gamer.

I agree- Which makes me dislike the People/Critics choice split. That sort of implies that the judges have a "better" viewpoint/opinion than me.
I own lots of D20 stuff. I did not vote in categories that I did not own at least most of the products.
No offense to the judges, whom I respect.

I did think it was cool that several booths at GenCon had stuff labeled "Nominated for ENnie"
I would add- do not have a runner Up. That would detact form the award. Getting nominated should continue to be a big deal.

Have a few PDF-only categories.

How about a "Best Value" category. ?

 

[jmucchiello]

OGL

I wouldn't exclude entries based on OGL content. I would just make additional categories for OGC works:

Best Accessory
Best OGC Accessory

Of course, this will start the 'how much OGC is required" argument. So it's probably simpler to just let WotC dominate. At the rate they are laying people off, the 2003 ENies could see them only dominating the art categories.

Joe

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think the best thing to do is put me in charge and I'll tell everyone what's good. Yeah, that's the ticket. Tehn I'll take over the world. Yeah, yeah... that's the ticket..

 

[Rune]

I really like the idea of having a "people's choice" and a "judges' choice" award for each category-- as long as it's possible for the same entry to win both awards.

Also, I have to say that I do disagree with one (and, really, only one) entry, but not the campaign setting one.

As much as I love Bruce Cordell's work, I still think that Keven (Piratecat) Kulp's "Of Sound Mind" is a much better adventure than "If Thoughts Could Kill" and I feel that the lack of familiarity may have hurt it (unless I miss my guess, their are a lot more people who read the news site, than who read the message boards regularly).

Even so, I don't think that the Ennies should start excluding companies based on resources-- that's just silly. The point is to raise the bar, not to make everybody equal.

If WotC (or former WotC people) have the better products, as was certainly the case in many categories this year, they should win.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

[This was posted by Morrus - tht's what happens when you share a PC in a hotel room and forget to log the previous user off! - Morrus]

I haven't thought too deeply about this yet (we have months to work this out), but I have briefly spoken to Monte and Clark Peterson, amongst others, and have read through this thread.

Every one of the issues presented occured to us even before the publishers started sending in their stuff. Peter Adkison and I talked it over, and we both came to the conclusion that banning a company is not a good option- so WotC were allowed to enter this year. It is exceedingly unlikely that that will change.

However, I firmly agree with those who feel that a company's sales should not influence the results. In other words, we ideally want the awards to recognise what is the best, not what has sold the most copies. That'll take some thinking to figure out. Right now, there is no way way to measure what effect sales volumes had as opposed to quality - there were no wins there that I'd say "No way!" to.

Anyway, we have plenty of time to think about this. Lasy year I asked for opinions from publishers etc. and the awards were changed largely based on the feedback I got. This year I'll do the same.

All in all, I was pretty darn happy with the whole thing - and the publishers I spoke to seemed to be pretty pleased too.

-Morrus

 

[EarthsShadow]

just my two cents...

Personally, I voted for WotC in two categories which I felt they deserved my vote...one for Wheel of Time, the other for Dragon/Dungeon magazine...

In each other category the product that won didn't deserve to win because the other products within that category were much better by comparison, especially Oriental Adventures. I say this because I own half of the books in each category, and I do know a lot of people who feel the same.

But, as others have said, WotC has such pull right now and their products are so widespread that by sheer numbers they have a serious advantage and even though other books within the categories are better in quality, and I beleive quality should win over quantity, reality does not work that way.

Dispite this, taking WotC out of the competition would be a very bad idea. This year might have been scewed in their favor, but next year it won't be. I say keep the same system, but next year we will see Everquest cleaning WotC clock as far as awards go, d20 Modern might win also in a category or two.

I also agree that we should have OGL/OGC only awards for those products that are like that, and we should have all the categories that we had this year also. No company should be shafted just because.

Add in a few more categories, keep it to five nominees and have only fan votes count. Also, when the Ennies are over, show us the total votes in each category so we can see for ourselves what the margin is, and perhaps if we saw that this year we wouldn't be complaining as much...(well, we would because there are so many products up for awards than what WotC published but they won because of their name as far as I see it).

This is the same kind of argument that I see and hear people talk about the Oscars. Public opinion should matter and we should see how the votes tallied. Without that knowledge, we will only speculate. We as people, we deserve to know what the vote tallies are because this is a public opinion contest, or so I interpreted. If we just voted and then judges decided out the winners amongst themselves and our votes didn't count at all, well, that is just wrong.

My two cents worth.

 

[Grraf]

To be blunt:

I think its apparent from any kind of serious look that smaller publishers benift greatly from the current way the award is structured.
The small segment of the gaming population which has heard of the awards, visited the site and went through the process of voting is more familiar with and more passionate about smaller publishers than your average D&D player.

Its hard to perceive complains about the process in any other fashion than either "My favorite product didn't win!" or "I hate WotC!"

I know I'm feeling some sour grapes that SLCS: Ghelspad didn't win. The book is fantastic. On the other hand OA was written brilliantly by James W. using the toolbox method that WotC has been building on with 3rd edition. Allowing people to develope their own worlds makes for great gaming, plus he gets all the Rokugan votes too.
I also would have liked Hollowfaust to win, but not because of the cover art (which I would never have nominated for a prize though I do like it). I would have liked it to win for the quality of material. On the other hand Freeport was several times the size..... do I wish that there had been a longer/shorter segement? Yes. Because I wanted Hollowfaust to win an award. I don't think it had anything to do with fairness. If WotC had won the award for Silver Marches I wouldn't have been any more irriated than I am that Freeport won.

The more awards that are made the less important the awards themselves become.

Two other comments
1. PLEASE PUT AN "OPT OUT BUTTON". I know I voted in several catagories because I couldn't cast the votes for the catagories I liked without voting in every catagory. some very random places got my votes in the game acessory catagory.

2. This contradicts the above but I think that the free online products could be increased in number. Since the creators are providing free products for anyone inthe community I think a few awards to recognize their contributions more speicifically would be great.
(If for no other reason than to encourage people to download good products and enrich the game as a whole).