Congratulations to the 2017 Gen Con EN World RPG Award Winners!

Tonight, at Gen Con in Indianapolis, the 17th Annual Gen Con EN World Awards (ENnies) ceremony took place. Congratulations go to all the nominees, and to this year's award winners! The ENnies are an annual award program celebrating the best that tabletop roleplaying games have to offer, created in 2001.

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2018 Judges Brian Nowak Denise Robinson Kurt Weigel Reece Carter Sean McCoy Best Adventure Gold: Blood in the Chocolate (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Silver: Doors to Darkness (Chaosium) Best Aid/Accessory Gold: Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen Pack (Chaosium) Silver: Kobold Guide to Plots Campaigns (Kobold Press) Best Cover Art Gold: Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook (Chaosium) Silver: Torment Tides of Numenera The Explorers Guide (Monte Cook Games) Best Interior Art Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: S Petersens Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (Chaosium) Best Blog Gold: Gnome Stew The Gaming Blog Silver: Age of Ravens Best Cartography Gold: Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen Pack (Chaosium) Silver: 7th Sea Map of Thah (John Wick Presents) Best Electronic Book Gold: The Things We Leave Behind (Stygian Fox Publishing) Silver: Hubris A World of Visceral Adventure (DIY RPG Productions) Best Family Game Gold: Bubblegumshoe (Evil Hat) Silver: Masks A New Generation (Magpie Games) Best Free Product Gold: 7th Sea Basic Rules (John Wick Presents) Silver: City of Mist Free PDF Starter Set (Son of Oak Game Studio) Best Game Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents)

Best Miniatures Product Gold: Achtung Cthulhu Skirmish Servitors of Nyarlathotep (Modiphius Entertainment) Silver: Dungeons Dragons: Molzurs Marvelous Miniatures (WizKids) Best Monster/Adversary Gold: S Petersens Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors (Chaosium) Silver: Veins of the Earth (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Best Podcast Gold: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Silver: Spellburn Best Production Values Gold: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Slipcase Set (Chaosium) Silver: Unknown Armies Deluxe Set (Atlas Games) Best RPG Related Product Gold: Call of Cthulhu The Coloring Book (Chaosium) Silver: The ABCs of RPGs (Hunter Books) Best Rules Gold: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents) Silver: Adventures in Middle Earth Players Guide (Cubicle 7 Entertainment) Best Setting Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: The Dark Eye Aventuria Almanac (Ulisses North America) Best Supplement Gold: Pulp Cthulhu (Chaosium) Silver: 7th Sea Pirate Nations (John Wick Presents) Best Website Gold: Tabletop Audio Silver: Elven Tower RPG articles and cartography website Best Writing Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: Veins of the Earth (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) Fan's Choice for Best Publisher Gold: Wizards of the Coast Silver: Chaosium Product Of The Year Gold: Tales from the Loop Roleplaying in the 80s That Never Was (Free League Publishing) Silver: 7th Sea Core Rulebook (John Wick Presents)

 

[Thunder_Cats_HO!]

Let's talk how about the how one guy flipped everyone off as his acceptance speech, and the boos when WOTC won.. Classy

 

[Morrus]

Let's talk how about the how one guy flipped everyone off as his acceptance speech

That's his company logo.

 

[Queer Venger]

If anyone deserves best publisher its definitely WotC, look at their current track record with 5e ;-)

 

[Queer Venger]

Let's talk how about the how one guy flipped everyone off as his acceptance speech, and the boos when WOTC won.. Classy

WotC could clearly care less, they've been to busy attending much better conventions of late

 

[Brodie]

My assumption is that with the judges placing virtually no Paizo products in the voting categories that a majority of Pathfinder-centric players simply didn't vote. I might be wrong, but that was my immediate take.

To me this sounds like a possibility. And to reiterate what someone else said, Wizards didn't even bother making their presence really felt while Paizo did at Gencon this year. And I'm not going to buy the crap line that Wizards - being owned by Hasbro - is going to be more concerned with HasbroCon than Gencon. Gencon is the biggest gaming convention and Wizards has the granddaddy of all RPGs; they should be dominating the con floor by sheer force of will. Instead they go 'screw it, we can get more exposure at Pax and HasbroCon because we won't have competition there.'

Paizo took the OGL rules for D&D 3.5 and essentially made it their own and a massively better and more popular product than what Wizards ever accomplished with it. I doubt we'll see a Pathfinder 2nd Edition in the next decade (if ever) with new, proprietary rules that Paizo owns fully. If they did, I'm sure it would blow up the convention floor.

That said... I hate to admit it, but I don't care to vote. When Shadow of the Demon Lord came out, I instantly fell in love with the rules. I was more than a little disappointed to not see it nominated for any awards. This led to me finding out (from Robert Schwalb via the Google+ group) that stuff has to be submitted by the company for consideration. I don't know how true that is now and I don't know the particular details of how things are chosen, but it colored my opinion.

Granted... I'll still be checking out some of the winners in each year's awards.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Congratulations to the winners.

Interesting to see CoC has a rising star again.

 

[Redthistle]

Who wins or who should win is always grounds for debate with any award ceremony. Thinking positively it strikes me as a great list of products to try out! Let's give a round of applause to everyone who won and was nominated and cheer this wonderfully creative hobby!

I second this.

Griping can be great fun (I'm a past master of the sport!), but it contributes to high blood pressure, and not in a good way.

Celebrate life and the hobby, and be glad so many keep striving to create damn good products!

 

[Ghal Maraz]

Well I'm pretty proud how many tiny tiny tiny OSR things with a fraction of the mileage behind them that mainstream products have managed to win this popularity contest.

To be honest, I'm not seeing that many mainstream publishers in the winners list. Apart from Wizards - which is present only in the publisher category -, what names should we consider mainstream? Cubicle 7? Modiphius? They certainly are growing (and bigger than Lamentations of the Flame Process) companies and they actually do good things, but they aren't on the same league of Wizards (nor Paizo). Not even Chaosium can be considered so much mainstream anymore, as the last ten-fifteen years kept on eroding its precedent good name - the new ownership is doing good things, but they can't do miracles in just a couple of years. What I'm seeing here is a lot of small-to-medium press and indie publishers, quite a lot of non-US games and/or publishers (and this particular thing I really love) and the continual impact of crowfunding on the industry.

As far as OSR goes, I would say that Raggi, while still fundamentally a one-man publisher, has managed to rise enough awareness of LotFP to put his company at the top level of his "niche", alongside perhaps Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games and, as of late, Sine Nomine Publishing, at least in term of visibility. Which is certainly quite an accomplishment unto itself, as those are the few names in the OSR segment that are heard outside of it. As a non-OSR player myself, I can easily say that Vornhein, Red and Pleasant Land, Maze of the Blue Medusa, Carcosa and Qelong are some of the most talked about stuff I've read online, together with Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords and Wizardry or Godbound.

So. .. what am I actually trying to convey? That the RPG industry is composed of a juggernaut that comprises the most of it (in both its 3.X and 5th incarnations) and almost everything else is"tiny". And that this time around the juggernaut wasn't racing, thus leaving the competition free to actually be interesting and unpredictable.

 

[Jester David]

To me this sounds like a possibility. And to reiterate what someone else said, Wizards didn't even bother making their presence really felt while Paizo did at Gencon this year. And I'm not going to buy the crap line that Wizards - being owned by Hasbro - is going to be more concerned with HasbroCon than Gencon. Gencon is the biggest gaming convention and Wizards has the granddaddy of all RPGs; they should be dominating the con floor by sheer force of will. Instead they go 'screw it, we can get more exposure at Pax and HasbroCon because we won't have competition there.'

Weren't both Mearls and Crawford at GenCon?
Yeah, thy didn't have a booth, but WotC doesn't really sell stuff anyone and wouldn't have a new book to get into hands.

Well, that and the hotel, airfare, and boooth costs for a major presence at a GenCon they can hit 2-3 other cons.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

To be honest, I'm not seeing that many mainstream publishers in the winners list. Apart from Wizards - which is present only in the publisher category -, what names should we consider mainstream? Cubicle 7? Modiphius? They certainly are growing (and bigger than Lamentations of the Flame Process) companies and they actually do good things, but they aren't on the same league of Wizards (nor Paizo). Not even Chaosium can be considered so much mainstream anymore, as the last ten-fifteen years kept on eroding its precedent good name - the new ownership is doing good things, but they can't do miracles in just a couple of years. What I'm seeing here is a lot of small-to-medium press and indie publishers, quite a lot of non-US games and/or publishers (and this particular thing I really love) and the continual impact of crowfunding on the industry.

I don't think there is any company on the same league as Wizards anymore. White Wolf once came pretty close, but that was a long time ago.

The only company even competing with Wizards on as many fronts as Wizards participates in is Catalyst; it is leveraging the multimedia aspects of both Shadowrun and Battletech quite well. White Wolf has been trying to get back in the game, and supposedly will be, but we'll see. Other than that... Nada. Paizo, Pinnacle Entertainment, Monte Cook Games, and Chaosium are all struggling to in the multimedia area; yet, they're still miles ahead of everyone else.

That's why I am glad they didn't show up with anything at GenCon. Even though a lot of people hate them, at the end of the day Wizards still is the only big fish in this pond and still the only publisher to effectively leverage their product on a level that most can't even attempt. That's why it doesn't surprise me they won that one category; at the end of the day, no one else can compete