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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nikchick" data-source="post: 730923" data-attributes="member: 344">If the ENnies are putting everyone in the same category (WotC being thousands of times bigger than the next largest publisher, *any* print publisher being almost assuredly hundreds of times bigger than the PDF publishers) regardless of wildly differing scales, I don't think having a medal system for judging "muddles" anything.  Let me try another example: I used to compete in Extemporaneous Reading for my high school speech team.  In the category, Poetry and Prose competed against each other, the selections were chosen by the judges and then the kids did the readings.  The kids who read poetry were almost always at a huge disadvantage against the kids who read prose, because the prose selections often allowed the reader to employ accents or voices or tell an entertaining self-contained story, whereas a Carl Sandburg paean to Chicago was a different beast altogether.  The poetry readers could win top honors, but it happened rarely. Still, having the opportunity to be ranked even if you weren't taking the top spot was fulfilling, especially if as a poetry reader you managed to best a few other prose readers in the process.Having a medal system balances the unequal footing of the nominees, especially when we're talking about such a vast range from WotC to the PDF-only market.  Wizards of the Coast's *quality* is not so vastly superior to all the other nominees, but they come into the game with a staggering head-start by virtue of their distribution and market penetration.  I guess it depends on what you're attempting to recognize with your awards.  The best?  The most popular?  A combination?  A medal system allows for a recognition of appreciation for high quality regardless of unavoidable inequities that arise from the format or availability of the product.  My perception of the ENnies when they were first proposed was that they were going to be an independent award, like the Sundance awards for films made outside of Hollywood.  El Mariachi got a lot of attention after winning independent film nominations and awards, but it had as much to do with the fact that the film accomplished as much as it did on its smaller-than-Hollywood budget as the end result. El Mariachi is no Fellowship of the Ring, but it's great for what it is, and it's a far sight better than Dude, Where's My Car?.With the ENnies considering both the "Hollywood-sized" products and the "El Mariachi-sized" products in one pot, there's much less chance of smaller-but-excellent products getting recognized.  I think the ENnies could really do a great service to the D20 community by expanding the awards to include medal system and bestowing some honors that have a chance of bridging the gulf between the tiers of products.  Being able to say "Hey, Book of Awesomness won the Silver ENnie in 2003," is good for the consumer who is looking for quality material where quality isn't already implied through market penetration or company branding.  It's good for the ENnies as it gives the awards more opportunites for exposure and a broader selection of quality titles through which the ENnies prove themselves (avoiding the argument that the ENnies aren't meaningful awards because they fail to recognize an excellent product--another argument I've become familiar with through my association with the Origins Awards).  It's good for the D20 publishers because they are rewarded for their hard work and quality efforts in the uneven marketplace, making them more likely to invest themselves in the EN World Awards and the community that promotes them.I'm completely doped up on cold medicine at the moment, and I fear I'm not making my reasoning clear.  Or maybe people do understand and just disagree no matter what I say.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Anyway, I still hold out hope that folks might come to see it my way.Nicole</blockquote>

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