Branstorming for ENnies 2003 -- improvements, changes, etc

[EricNoah]

What about a ranking system by the voter.Asking him/her to rank the 5 nominees from 1 through 5 with 1 being the best and 5 the worst and the product with the lowest score overall then wins.If he's not familiar enough with all of the product to do this he could opt out. Anyway just a suggestion that might make close races more interesting by taking into account close second or third choices and overall averages, especially since it sounds like in the case of OA for example you either loved it or hated it.If it had got enough 5 scores it could have pulled it down a bit and a book with a lot of 1's and 2's could have won instead.

Interesting thought...

 

[Lady Dragon]

Although Ryan Dancey's suggestion on reversing the process is interesting The problem I see is if you think a lot of people wern't familiar with 5 products try asking them to be familiar with 30 of them. Obsurce or niche products wouldn't have a chance and WoTC could have all of the products get nominated intead of just a few.

Another thing I would like to point out is that except for may and june of next year we now have a list of all of WoTC's potential entrants and I don't think they will dominate as much next year especially if a few new catagories are added such as mega adventure and Periodical.They have mostly rulebooks and monster supplements with a few others thrown in.

One new catagory I would like to see would be Best magic supplement as a break away from rules supplement. I think there are enough of these books being published to qualify for their own catagory.

 

[EricNoah]

I agree with this. The problem is, though, that many of the submissions had as much campaign setting info in them as OA, proportionately. That was a tough category.

Looking back at the info for Best Setting, there were 9 submissions. OA was, in most of our minds, better than 4 of those, which put it in the top 5.

We are going to see more and more products that seem to cross multiple categories. As the battle for "crunch" continues, you can hardly see a product that doesn't qualify in some way as a rulebook.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Looking back at the info for Best Setting, there were 9 submissions, OA was, in most of our minds, better than 4 of those, which put it in the top 5.

True. And those 4 had about as much setting info as OA, proportionately. [EDIT]: Well, it depends on how you look at it, but I do think this is true for the most part.[/EDIT] OA was better than them overall. Again, it was a tough category.

 

[EricNoah]

Although Ryan Dancey's suggestion on reversing the process is interesting The problem I see is if you think a lot of people wern't familiar with 5 products try asking them to be familiar with 30 of them. Obsurce or niche products wouldn't have a chance and WoTC could have all of the products get nominated intead of just a few.

Excellent point. The judges, in essence, would be asked to judge the five most popular products.

Another thing I would like to point out is that except for may and june of next year we now have a list of all of WoTC's potential entrants and I don't think they will dominate as much next year especially if a few new catagories are added such as mega adventure and Periodical.They have mostly rulebooks and monster supplements with a few others thrown in.

I don't think we have enough periodicals to have a category, frankly, but if we combined periodical with ezine (like d20weekly.com if it's still going by then), then maybe. Or we may just decide that as much as we'd love to honor Dungeon/Polyhedron, they're in a category by themselves and are the only ones truly doing what they do. (This is if we decide to remove periodicals from the definition of Accessory).

One new catagory I would like to see would be Best magic supplement as a break away from rules supplement. I think there are enough of these books being published to qualify for their own catagory.

It's hard to say what "themes" will be dominant by next year. I was joking that this year you could have had Best Dwarf Book or Best Naval Rulebook. Figuring out each year's themes could be kind of a fun little twist.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Looking back at the info for Best Setting, there were 9 submissions. OA was, in most of our minds, better than 4 of those, which put it in the top 5.

We are going to see more and more products that seem to cross multiple categories. As the battle for "crunch" continues, you can hardly see a product that doesn't qualify in some way as a rulebook.

This is also true. OA could be a harbinger of the future as far as this is concerned. If most campaign setting books are like OA, then it'll make the category an easier one to judge. As it was, the difference between campaign setting versus rules supplement was rather hazy in a few cases. It was a tough ca- oh, you know...

 

[Leopold]

I would also like to have a award for "Best Roleplaying Software" or "Best Support Software for Gaming".


This would allow for a more bredth of entries not including just Character generators but have for applications that can also be used in table top games. You could have entries ranging from DMFamilar to PCGen to Jamis Bucks' DungeonGen to TableTop Armies for Warhammer even have a Planet and system generator based on the Traveller20 system.

Any application or program that aids in gaming regardless of genre. Perhaps even break it apart for "Best Fantasy Software aid" and "Best Future software aid".

An idea I had but I think including software products is a must for this day and age regardless of the use or system it supports.

 

[kingpaul]

One new catagory I would like to see would be Best magic supplement as a break away from rules supplement. I think there are enough of these books being published to qualify for their own catagory.

Another might be "Best d20 Modern Accessory". Or break it down a bit more if there are more entrants.

 

[Psion]

Re: Hehehee

What about a ranking system by the voter.Asking him/her to rank the 5 nominees from 1 through 5 with 1 being the best and 5 the worst and the product with the lowest score overall then wins.If he's not familiar enough with all of the product to do this he could opt out. Anyway just a suggestion that might make close races more interesting by taking into account close second or third choices and overall averages, especially since it sounds like in the case of OA for example you either loved it or hated it.If it had got enough 5 scores it could have pulled it down a bit and a book with a lot of 1's and 2's could have won instead.

There is quite a bit of study of "voting techniques" (perhaps I could dig up the article I was reading recently, but I don't remember if it was in Discover or and IEEE spectrum). There is a name for this technique (which escapes me), and the consensus is that this is a good technique if the voter has enough familiarity with all the choices to make a fair distinction. I think that would be a great technique for the judges, but don't think it would be a good technique for the popular vote*.

What MIGHT work along these lines is the technique where you may vote for any or all of the candidates. That way, you don't have to be worried about "wasting your vote on a dark horse" or somesuch. (I only wish we did political elections this way... but it would shake up the 2 party system, so it's not likely to ever happen.)

* - Eric sort of did something like this in that if there was a tie in the nominees, he weighted our "top 5" votes higher than our "also ran" votes.

 

[Leopold]

just having a place to say "I am not going to vote for any of them" or the Opt Out choice is a great one. Vote for whom you want to and for whom you don't. This way you are not forced into voting for anyone.

simple, democratic, and easy.