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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 730762" data-attributes="member: 697">Some scattershot thoughts:I can sympathize with those who are worried that WotC will sweep the awards due to their market dominance, but I don't really see that as a problem. I find the idea of expressly designing a process to handicap WotC repellant. Let's say we eliminate WotC, but then Kenzer sweeps the awards. Do we eliminate them from the process since they obviously have an advantage? I think the nomination round eliminates this process. If WotC's products are good enough to stand up against the rest of the industry in the nomination phase, then they should be allowed to compete in the general voting.I do like the idea of restricting voting to EN World members. It seems to me that if these are to be the EN World awards, that's a good move. It helps Morrus by potentially driving traffic to the site and it prevents ballot stuffing. It also ameliorates the WotC issue, since people active on these forums probably have a higher awareness of d20 and PDF products.As for the 1st to 3rd place awards, I don't really see the need. Adding more nominees cheapens that aspect of the process and cause further problems with market share. What if WotC wins all three awards? What if the same few companies keep winning? On a practical side, it triples the budget necessary to buy awards and diminishes the honor of winning a nomination. The Ennies process of nominations yields much more valuable nominees IMO because the judges' choices are based on directly comparing the books they receive. If you score a nomination, you know that your stuff was judged against the other submitted materials. Adding 2nd and 3rd place just muddles the process to no real benefit.OGL Material: I'd push these into the same category as d20 games, perhaps renaming it Best OGL/d20 Game. It strikes me that the d20 game category is a bit thin, anyway, so it makes sense to increase the number of potential competitors in that category.A Designer's Choice Award: Again, I'm willing to do this if people are concerned about the popular vote aspect of the ENnies. This award track would be a method for professional designers to acknowledge each others' work and put forth what we see as the best designs of the year. Currently, there really isn't any mechanism in place for d20 writers to play a role in the ENnies. It would form a nice counterbalance to the fan's choice/popular vote of the Ennies and would give a good chance for smaller companies to shine. Once more, I'm willing to do all the work to make this happen.</blockquote>

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