Branstorming for ENnies 2003 -- improvements, changes, etc

[Magestrike]

Hehehee

WotC had a Design Team; a team with the sole purpose to "make the books look pretty". Thunderhead had...well....Hal to do all that part....lol. Nice job Hal.

And yes, I did mean this post in the sincerest way possible.



Warren
"aka Mage"

PS Hey Jim. Good to see you on the boards.

PSS On the topic of the chairs, Ill vote for more, only because my a$$ will be there next year and I want to sit down...lol.

 

[alsih2o]

Feel free to post comments about how things could be improved for next year.

can i see a pic of the actual award? does it look like the graphic? i have made a couple of awards, proffesional curiosity more than anything...

 

[EricNoah]

Hmmm, let me see if I can dig up a good one...

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/Ennies/DSC00550.JPG

Monte's holding it. It's a trophy base with a gold plaque, and a huge d20 on top. These were the prototypes and so were a little fragile. But they held up for the whole ceremony!

 

[XCorvis]

Well, one of the options that I think might be good was this one:

In each category, ask two questions. First, have the voter click on a tab for each of the products in that category that they are familiar enough with that they consider themselves informed. Second, ask them to vote for which one they think is best out of those.

[ SNIP ]

Just a thought. How does it sound?

Simple/stupid counter-example: I vote for Winged Monkeys on Crack. I am the only person who has seen it. I am also the only person who feels qualified to vote for it. I do, and it has a 100% impression. The Crack Monkeys win the award.

Purely hypothetical and very unlikely, of course.

 

[EricNoah]

Peter Adkison weighs in...

I pointed Peter A. and a few others to this thread when it first started. Peter said I could share his thoughts with you...

Here's why I like WotC's involvement:

* If you exclude WotC, why include White Wolf? WW can put as much effort into a product as WotC can. If you exclude WW, why not AEG? The lines are too blurry and will change over time and will become hotly political.

* WotC can be beat. In any category you list, someone can beat WotC by being more creative. Money helps, but a creative, innovative idea will kick ass on someone with more money.

* If, as an independent publisher, you do beat a hot WotC product victory will be that much sweeter. Having WotC in sets the bar very high, and that means everyone who cares about the awards will work even harder because they have to beat WotC. It reduces the chance that some mediocre product will win an award.

* Excluding WotC comes across as cowardly. Make everyone go up against the big guy!

* WotC and its fans made up a big section of the audience. I think if you eliminate WotC you not only reduce the legitimacy of the awards, you reduce interest as well.

The concern brought up by several of the posters is valid, which is that voters often just vote based on what companies they love, not on the actual quality of the product. This is a difficult issue to fix in a fan-based award program. Here are two ideas that may help:

* Appeal to voters good nature and ask them to only vote in categories where they have actually reviewed all the products in that category. At the very least, encourage them to read reviews of all the products.

* Perhaps require voting to go through EN World only. Try and discourage publishers from being able to use their magazines and website to encourage voting, because of course it's that company's fans who read that website or magazine, so that inherently swings the votes. How do you discourage this? Probably by having a narrow enough voting window for voting that publishers don't have time to communicate the voting process through their own media (at least not printed media--web media is too fast to stop).

These are tough topics. You're already ahead of the game in that you're willing to change and you have a discussion board where fans can post and know that their posts are being read by the people in charge.

Back in the game,
Peter Adkison
Owner and CEO, Gen Con LLC
--The Best Four Days in Gaming!

 

[alsih2o]

Hmmm, let me see if I can dig up a good one...

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/Ennies/DSC00550.JPG

Monte's holding it. It's a trophy base with a gold plaque, and a huge d20 on top. These were the prototypes and so were a little fragile. But they held up for the whole ceremony!

well, if a redesign is in order, i volunteer my services...i would be willing to do it just for the chest thrust

 

[Glyfair]

Perhaps the solution is to limit all publishers to entering only their 3 best products.

The problem with this is that a few companies put out a large number of quality products. You'll end up with comments about how the Best Campaign Setting wasn't the best because Eric Noah's publishing company didn't enter "The ENWorld Sourcebook." They felt they had three better products to enter. It somewhat tarnishes the award when it's possible the best product not only doesn't win, but wasn't entered.

Incidently, this is the same reason why I feel WotC not having entries isn't a good idea. If you want smaller publishers to shine, have a small publisher award. If you want it to be an fan award for D&D/d20 product then you want all quality products to be represented.

I do agree with Eric that this shouldn't be a d20/OGL Award. It's focus should be this community. Remember where we started. A website some guy setup to keep track of news on the new Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Not having D&D products in the nominations would somehow make me feel like a shift of focus.

As far as limiting each companies entries. Instead of limiting total entries, how about limiting entries per category (or is that done)? If each publisher is limited to nominating one or two entries per category you'll normally have mostly quality products in the nominations.

David A. Blizzard

 

[alsih2o]

maybe a nice d20 at the base of an open book, cast in bronze, or a resin bonded bronze? maybe with the enworld logo(or the new logo if there comes one?) inscribed in the book?

could be very nice!

 

[Glyfair]

I thought I was done, but I have one more issue to cover, the "Critic's Choice" and "People's Choice" awards.

My point behind having two awards is NOT to suggest that the panel/critics have better taste than the general voting public. The point is the offset the overall availability of the products.

Due to decisions of locals stores, some areas don't ever see a majority of D&D products. They only order WOTC products and maybe a handful of other large publishers (White Wolf's umbrella os companies, likely).

This will give an award where everyone who voted for the award has actually read through all the products. I would wager that a perhaps as many as 95% of the voters for the ENNies voted for a category where there was at least one of the products they had not read through. If everyone only voted for categories where they had read all the products I imagine you would have very, very low turnout.

Of course, if I was choosing the panel I would make sure they had good "credentials." I do feel that almost everyone who even put their name in the hat to be a judge probably has the qualities to be on this panel (even possibly all). It's not a high bar, but I'd want to make sure they had a good breadth of roleplaying experience, and no strong prejudices ("Drow, how stupid.")

Glyfair of Glamis

 

[EarthsShadow]

award logos

For those books that did win, like someone said, for each product that was nominated, you could have one logo printed on all new printings saying it was nominated, and then for those what won, have a award logo saying that they won.

That would be cool. And in this way, if you think about it, each nomination would win and everyone who looks at the product would recognize that it was up for the award.