Congrats To 2025's ENnie Nominees!

Tomas Free League · Jul 7, 2025

Jahydin said:
Agree, but could be that they didn't put much out late last year, early this year? Nothing is coming to my mind at least.

We did have a little fewer releases last season, but beyond Moria we also submitted The Electric State RPG, Black Powder & Brimstone, Hostile Waters for Twilight: 2000, and Path of Glory for Dragonbane for this year's Ennies.

Celebrim · Jul 7, 2025

Metroido said:
I'm glad I don't have that problem. I'm probably as old as you, but I still get excited by new stuff all the time. I look at things like Land of Eem and Mythic Bastionland and think they look fun. I'm also the guy that listens to classical, jazz, and "rock" music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s. And all on the same day. Never lose your sense of wonder. If I only consumed the same thing over and over I'd be bored to tears.

I get it, but I don't think it's my sense of wonder that is the issue. It's that in an RPG I am used to buying game systems and not games. The problem isn't that I'm out of imagination. The problem is that I want to play "my game" and not "your game".

Somewhere a generational gap happened and we seem to have moved from "playing at the world" were the game designers were giving you a toolbox and some broad guidelines and saying, "Here is a bunch of building blocks, now make your own fun." to game designers giving you a game that is tightly designed to produce a single game experience, in a single setting, with sometimes single story and even sometimes a single group of characters to play. And I'm not saying that it's wrong to produce a game with a built in campaign or a built in one thing that it just does (like Blades in the Dark and its "heists" or Gumshoe and its "investigation") but its just not what I'm looking for if I'm going to invest in running a game as a GM.

RPG time is precious. I don't get enough of it, least of all with those people I'm closest to. And if I run, I want to run something that is particularly resonant with me, and often that's very much my own setting and story. And it feels like we've gone from games that allow for broad genre emulation to games that are tightly focused on producing this one example in the genre where the thing that they are going for isn't as iconic to me as Tolkien's legerdemain or Dune or Star Wars some other consensus nerd culture wide touchstone. (Or maybe those touchstones have changed?) People are publishing "their game" - say the default BitD setting or Land of Eem and offering to let me run "their game" and that's fine, but that's nothing I've ever looked for.

And kind of the funny thing is, is that I would drop $200 (at least) on kickstarter for Pendragon rules with a Tortall setting and just be ecstatic "Take my money!" So there are niche things that I would drop a ton of money on and get really excited about even though they are someone else's world. But I also recognize that that is "my game" and the demand for that is probably not huge. So it's not like I don't get that someone out there is excited about these niche games, but from my "old man on the porch" perspective I'm like, "Is that really what the kids are excited about these days?" Or, is there really a huge upswelling of GMs who want to run some other GMs homebrew?

Whizbang Dustyboots · Jul 7, 2025

Celebrim said:
Or, is there really a huge upswelling of GMs who want to run some other GMs homebrew?

I don't think that's it, so much as these tightly focused games have rulesets and options all tuned for a precise experience.

So instead of, say, having a D&D game -- which is a big toolkit full of lots of things -- where you tell your players that you're going to be playing a surreal Arthurian experience, and on game day, you still have someone show up with a tiefling swashbuckler, a goblin artificer and someone playing a character named Colonblow the Barbarian, you get Mystic Bastionland, where everything in the game -- from characters, to monsters to every mechanic -- are designed around delivering a surreal Arthurian adventure, and nothing else.

It's the difference between going to a nice buffet and everyone getting a pretty good meal of whatever sort that they might want, versus going to a very specific type of restaurant where everyone is going to be getting much more limited choices (northern Italian food only, and no chicken fingers for the kids), but it's going to be excellent, if that's the kind of food that you like.

Neither approach is wrong. It's just different.

Sometimes I want to play D&D and let everyone do their own thing and play a wide variety of adventures that mostly feel like D&D with various flavors laid atop that. Sometimes I want to play Monster of the Week, which really only does episodic monster hunting adventures in the style of X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural, or Pirate Borg, which can really only do Pirates of the Caribbean as interpreted by Sam Raimi in full Evil Dead mode. Nothing in those games is extraneous -- you can't go off and play a wizard lurking in the Tower of London in Pirate Borg, even though the Tower of London presumably exists in the world of Pirate Borg and magic definitely does -- but it excels in its narrow range.

kronovan · Jul 7, 2025

I prefer -or should probably say become interested when- a round of Ennies has some Best Game and Best Rules nominees that solidly support homebrewing. But I'm not getting a sense that's much of a focus of any of this years nominees. Well...maybe with the exception of the Momento Memori Corebook, which does sound like a very cool premise and TTRPG.

Just seems like most TTRPGs these days feature settings tightly tied to the rules, with the idea that you'll run the Publisher's concept of what an adventure is. That doesn't work for me, but I know I'm mostly alone -and getting lonelier- with my preference to brew. I own 2 handfulls worth of quality TTRPGs that support me brewing up just about anything I can imagine (2 of which got updates this past year), so it's not like I'm lacking. But when I read the descriptions for recent Ennie nominees, I do start to feel a wee bit old.

Celebrim · Jul 8, 2025

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I don't think that's it, so much as these tightly focused games have rulesets and options all tuned for a precise experience.

Which is saying the same thing ultimately. And you make that clear even once you get far enough in your explanation.

you get Mystic Bastionland, where everything in the game -- from characters, to monsters to every mechanic -- are designed around delivering a surreal Arthurian adventure, and nothing else.

It's the difference between going to a nice buffet (to the extent that there are nice buffets -- a rant for another time) and everyone getting a pretty good meal of whatever sort that they might want, versus going to a very specific type of restaurant where everyone is going to be getting much more limited choices (northern Italian food only, and no chicken fingers for the kids), but it's going to be excellent, if that's the kind of food that you like.

Yes, so in other words rather than buying a cookbook I'm buying a prepared meal, possibly even one that has been cooked for me and not just arriving in one of those subscription meal services. Or to put it another way, you aren't serving your own meal, you are serving their meal whether their meal is more buffet style or chef prepared or a subscription meal service, it's not a cookbook you bought.

And that's not entirely unique to me. I'd point at Paranoia or Chill or maybe even Gamma World as being games like that, albeit not as extreme as seems to have become common. Maybe everyone is looking for some distinct schtick because all the obvious ones are taken.

Neither approach is wrong. It's just different.

Oh, I definitely agree with that. But the difference and the fact that the difference is not even a preference anymore, it's where the market seems to be, makes me feel old.

Maybe I don't want my Arthurian adventure to be surreal. I can with a ton of work get Pendragon to work for "Protector of the Small" by writing up new non-Arthurian cultures, but I can't get Mystic Bastion land to work for "Protector of the Small" without throwing out the game because surreal isn't what I'm going for there. Maybe I could borrow a little bit of it as a travel subsystem or something, but it's not really geared to be anything other than "Mystic Bastion".

Whizbang Dustyboots · Jul 8, 2025

Celebrim said:
Yes, so in other words rather than buying a cookbook I'm buying a prepared meal, possibly even one that has been cooked for me and not just arriving in one of those subscription meal services. Or to put it another way, you aren't serving your own meal, you are serving their meal whether there meal is more buffet style or chef prepared or a subscription meal service, it's not a cookbook you bought.

I think that's probably overstating things.

Most of these more focused games still have plenty of room for groups to do their own thing. Some people will play Deathmatch Island as a gritty Squid Game style experience. Others will lean into the reality show craziness of it and it'll feel more like Arnold Schwarzenegger's Running Man. Others will lean into the Prisoner/Lost style mystery.

To continue with the food metaphor, it's the difference between the old checkered Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook that everyone was issued in the 1960s through the 1980s that nominally covers every type of food, but mostly tastes like a Midwestern lady's take on all of it, versus a specialized cookbook that does one thing only.

You still get to decide what to make and what the meal consists of -- and still prepare it yourself, for better or worse -- but one gives you wider-but-shallower choices, and one gives you narrower-but-deeper choices.

I've played a bunch of these more specialized games, and they've always felt like me running a game, not me just being the vessel for some RPG writer to work through.

Celebrim said:
Maybe I don't want my Arthurian adventure to be surreal. I can with a ton of work get Pendragon to work for "Protector of the Small" by writing up new non-Arthurian cultures, but I can't get Mystic Bastion land to work for "Protector of the Small" without throwing out the game because surreal isn't what I'm going for there. Maybe I could borrow a little bit of it as a travel subsystem or something, but it's not really geared to be anything other than "Mystic Bastion".

Yes, if you don't want an Arthurian adventure that's very specifically in the vibe of, say, The Green Knight, you wouldn't want to use Mythic Bastionland.

But look at how much discussion there is in the RPG space of "how can I hack system X to deliver experience Y?" Instead of trying to retrofit an existing system to do an OK job with something it's not really built to do, sometimes you just want to pick up the precisely right tool to give you the precisely right experience you want.

Again, neither approach is wrong.

And the toolkits haven't gone anywhere: Dungeons & Dragons (and its close relatives) dwarfs the rest of the industry and offers a toolkit style of play. Look at the wide variety of campaigns offered by Paizo including, yes, chivalric knights, but also post-apocalyptic science fantasy, horror-inflected Castlevania-style adventuring, dungeon crawling and, with Starfinder, space travel.

If you prefer toolkit style games, there's tons of them out there and they produce a tremendous amount of stuff for you to buy.

Gradine · Jul 8, 2025

There's a couple of factors, as far as I can see:

First, and I think the most important, is the available design space. When there were a handful or even a few dozen TTRPGs there was plenty of design space for a game system to be a "toolbox and some broad guidelines" and be popular and successful. We are now in a world of hundreds, if not thousands, of TTRPGs, that are easier than ever to make a designer and find as a consumer. The fact is that unless you already have a name out there you are not finding an audience for your brand new open game system. Where you are going to find an audience is in the niches. The way to stand out now is to make a game that does exactly the thing that enough people are looking for. This is a feature, by the way, not a bug.

I think this has gone hand-in-hand with the balkanization of genre. It's not enough to be "fantasy" anymore; now there's "cozy fantasy" and "romantasy" and "YA fantasy" and "dark fantasy" but is it "dark fantasy heist" (Blades in the Dark) or "dark fantasy war" (Band of Blades) or "dark fantasy western" (A Fistful of Darkness) or is it...

You get it.

These two, by the way, I think go hand-in-hand. Over a long enough time scale every medium produces ever more niche content. The entropy of creative endeavors.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Jul 8, 2025

Gradine said:
I think this has gone hand-in-hand with the balkanization of genre. It's not enough to be "fantasy" anymore; now there's "cozy fantasy" and "romantasy" and "YA fantasy" and "dark fantasy" but is it "dark fantasy heist" (Blades in the Dark) or "dark fantasy war" (Band of Blades) or "dark fantasy western" (A Fistful of Darkness) or is it...

Heck, there's both Blades in the Dark (PbtA-powered dark fantasy heist) and Swyvers (OSR-inspired dark fantasy heist). The niches get tiny eventually.

Bomberooski · Jul 9, 2025

Just when I thought I had kept up on the TTRPG world for a year I'm realizing I know very very few of these nominees

Aldarc · Jul 9, 2025

Bomberooski said:
Just when I thought I had kept up on the TTRPG world for a year I'm realizing I know very very few of these nominees

Then this is a great chance to learn about more TTRPGs. Win-win.

Congrats To 2025's ENnie Nominees!

Judges’ Spotlight Winners​

Best Adventure – Long Form​

Best Adventure – Short Form​

Best Aid/Accessory – Digital​

Best Aid/Accessory – Non – Digital​

Best Art, Cover​

Best Art, Interior​

Best Cartography​

Best Community Content​

Best Family Game / Product​

Best Free Game / Product​

Best Game​

Best Layout and Design​

Best Monster/Adversary​

Best Online Content​

Best Production Values​

Best RPG Related Product​

Best Rules​

Best Setting​

Best Streaming Content​

Best Supplement​

Best Writing​

Product of the Year​

Explorer

Legend

Gnometown Hero

Adventurer

Legend

Gnometown Hero

🏳️‍⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸

Gnometown Hero

Explorer

Legend

Similar Threads

Pets & Sidekicks

Related Articles

Pets & Sidekicks

Judges’ Spotlight Winners

Best Adventure – Long Form

Best Adventure – Short Form

Best Aid/Accessory – Digital

Best Aid/Accessory – Non – Digital

Best Art, Cover

Best Art, Interior

Best Cartography

Best Community Content

Best Family Game / Product

Best Free Game / Product

Best Game

Best Layout and Design

Best Monster/Adversary

Best Online Content

Best Production Values

Best RPG Related Product

Best Rules

Best Setting

Best Streaming Content

Best Supplement

Best Writing

Product of the Year