[ENnies] Categories

[mearls]

Writer's Award: Interesting idea, but now, how do you choose which freelancers will be the committee? A system that doesn't feel liek a popularity contest would have to be devised.

Writers who are active on EN World (defined as having an account and 10 or more posts) can nominate themselves. We then throw everyone's name into a hat and pick out the an arbitrary percentage of them. I'm thinking of weighing in favor of people with more experience. Each randomly chosen writer than lists his top 5 choices for each category and submits them to the vote collector. The book in each category that gets the most mentions is the winner. Once voting is done, writers who selected the winners will be asked to write short essays on what made a book important or noteworthy. These essays would be stored in a virtual museum of d20 design. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years, we can see exactly how d20 evolved through the eyes of those working in the trenches.

 

[jmucchiello]

Once voting is done, writers who selected the winners will be asked to write short essays on what made a book important or noteworthy. These essays would be stored in a virtual museum of d20 design. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years, we can see exactly how d20 evolved through the eyes of those working in the trenches.

Man, Mike, you mean not only would we have to prove ourselves worthy of voting, we'd also have to write about the experience? What's the pay rate?

Can't wait to see the museum though.....

 

[Monte At Home]

For me, the WotC issue has nothing to do with them getting a lot of awards last year. For 15 years I've been dissatisfied with industry awards (mostly the Origins Awards) because of the inequities of the "playing field" as it were. And I've both seen it from the perspective of both the big guy and the little guy and no matter how you do it it's unsatisfying.

Imagine, for example, you have an acting award. The contestants are Harrison Ford and two great actors who appear in local plays. Harrison Ford wins. Everyone rolls their eyes and says, "of course Harrison Ford won, he's Harrison Ford for goodness sake. What a silly award." If one of the other actors wins, everyone rolls their eyes and says, "yeah, right. Like that nobody should beat Harrison Ford. What a silly award."

I've seen it happen, over and over again, every year, on every award. The role playing game industry is weird in that there's always been one huge company and lots of tiny companies. In the d20 "industry" the size differences are even greater.

 

[tensen]

Here's my two cents worth on this...

Only one representative from a company could vote but all publishers should be given the opportunity. You could set the prerequisite of publishing at least 3 products during 2002 in order to be eligible to vote. This would disqualify brand new publishers and those who have only ever made a single pdf from voting. If you've done 3 or more in 2002, you're showing a commitment to publishing.

Why three? Is 3 better than 2?
This in theory also gives an advantage towards PDF publishers. I personally can afford to release 1 PDF a month. Some can release more than 1 in a month. I personally couldn't at this point afford to even do 1 print product in 6 months, let alone every 4 months. Or does a print publisher automatically get in if they printed a single product?

 

[jmucchiello]

Publisher's Choice -- You could set the prerequisite of publishing at least 3 products during 2002 in order to be eligible to vote. This would disqualify brand new publishers and those who have only ever made a single pdf from voting. If you've done 3 or more in 2002, you're showing a commitment to publishing.

So do I count? I have one published "for sale" item in 2002 (and one coming soon) and a bunch of biweekly material which has hit issue 10 now. I've been participating here and on OGL-L and OGL-d20-L forever and was around when this was Eric's place.

 

[HellHound]

I am in the process of being swayed by Monte...

I see the appeal of a Dungeons And Dragons award seperate from the d20 awards.

But I still feel that NOT providing second place awards is a GOOD THING. I like it that all four who don't win walk away with the silver medal of nomination.

I REALLY do.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I think there should also be a distinct, clear understanding of what qualifies a product for a particular category. A lot of discussion occurred last year regarding Oriental Adventure's placement in the Setting category, and a similar (potential) confusion should be avoided again.

To be honest, I'd just as soon leave that to the judges. There was a lot of talk last year about OA *before* the nominations (among the judges), and they had to put it somewhere.

OK, how about this as a compromise solution:

At the ceremony, the nominees are "counted down" from #5 to #1. Only #1 actually gets an award, but everyone finds out what order they are are all in. That way, a company could choose to say "Hey, cool, we came second!" or not, as they see fit.

With that in mind, we could also disclose the %ages at the same time -- "In 5th place with 6% of the vote was XXXX; in 4th place with 12% of the vote was YYYYYY; ..... and the winner, with 40% of the vote is ZZZZZ".

(I'm stepping on eggshells here.)

I really don't like that idea. Since WotC is in the running (as I think they should be), I expect they'll often take a large majority -- announcing that would make it worse for them, I suspect.

While I'm not 100% sure, I think I have to lean toward being in favor a separate PDF category though - simply on grounds of being a vastly different medium.

Eh, I don't really think so. If the auto-calculating character sheet is that great,why shouldn't it beat the paper product?

EDIT: 6.) I would also like to see an award for "best OGC" or somesuch. Show us who is doing the most to "grow the pie."

I think this would be nice as a single award given by the judges -- like last year's award to RD.

But I still feel that NOT providing second place awards is a GOOD THING. I like it that all four who don't win walk away with the silver medal of nomination.

I REALLY do.

I agree 100%. Being nominated should be enough. What's more, I'm not sure if "ENnie Bronze 2003" sounds any better than "ENnie Nominated 2003"; it certainly takes away from the last 2, and at little gain.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I've seen it happen, over and over again, every year, on every award. The role playing game industry is weird in that there's always been one huge company and lots of tiny companies. In the d20 "industry" the size differences are even greater.

Awe, come on Monte, 'fess up. We all know the real reason you want a PDF category, an OGL category, and a D&D category... so that you personally can sweep all three categories! It won't be called the WotC problem anymore, it'll be called the Monte problem.

OK, I am jesting, and not trying to pick a fight with someone I cannot possibly hope to win against. Actually I think that he's hit the nail on the head with his suggestions and critiques of the industry's awards. While I think WoC should be included at some level, we all know what the problems are. And besides, who would argue that some WotC D&D products have been better than others?

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

In earlier threads on the topic, I was in favor of adding some categories this year, but OGL would definitely NOT be one of them, for the simple reason that there are not enough products published in the category.

My suggestion for including more .pdf nominations was to add a "best product under $10 USD retail " category. This idea may merit some further refinement...

Prediction: WotC will win LESS ENnies this time around ( looking at the ENnie categories and the WotC products from the last year leads me to beleive this), so I think the "WotC Issue" will become less of a problem. Having the "Don't Know" voting option will help a bit too.

Ooooh - as I'm typing, a light bulb started shining above my noggin. Here's the good stuff:

Inspired by Aaron's idea - Why not have voters rank EVERY nomination on a 1-5 scale in the standard market research survey manner?

Winners would be selected by the highest score per vote - an AVERAGE - NOT the "popular" vote. (The popular vote could still be captured/tabulated of course...).

If the voter is not familiar with a product in a given category, A "don't know" vote would not hurt the nominees chances of winning, as the "don't know" votes would not be included in determining the average score.

Obviously this adds a lot of complexity to the survey creation, and it will probably need to be hosted off the messageboards... No resgistration required, but cookies would dissalow repeat voters.

... light bulb off now...

I also agree that a "Judges Choice" is WAAAY redundant. The responsibility they have in agreeing on the nominees is enough representation of their favorites.

The BFG jury is still out on the "publishers award" idea. Sounds like it would be difficult to arrange.

 

[HellHound]

Awe, come on Monte, 'fess up. We all know the real reason you want a PDF category, an OGL category, and a D&D category... so that you personally can sweep all three categories! It won't be called the WotC problem anymore, it'll be called the Monte problem.

OK, I am jesting

He did also immediately remove himself from the PDF category that he proposed (not eligible for products that are set to go to print, like all Malhavoc Press products).