ENnies Nominations for 2004

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

This could mean attracting more players from other systems to the EN World boards, attracting voters from other systems to the Ennies voting polls, or simply providing "poll booths" at other locations as well.

This exact issue has been discussed among the judges and ENnies staff, and we are working on a solution. While it won't be in place this year, we hope to have a system in place for next year that will address this.

(And I am allowed to use "we" in the official ENnies definition of who "we" are, as I am one of us)

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Maybe one year we (the community) will come to a point were Enworld can hold online voting AND voting at the Ennies Booth at Gencon (which would move the award back a night or two). Obviously this would end up being more work for those involved, I dont see it happening anytime soon.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

This exact issue has been discussed among the judges and ENnies staff, and we are working on a solution. While it won't be in place this year, we hope to have a system in place for next year that will address this.

(And I am allowed to use "we" in the official ENnies definition of who "we" are, as I am one of us)

Or...It could happen next year. I'm not in the know....ya'know?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Maybe one year we (the community) will come to a point were Enworld can hold online voting AND voting at the Ennies Booth at Gencon (which would move the award back a night or two). Obviously this would end up being more work for those involved, I dont see it happening anytime soon.

I seriously doubt that there will ever be any voting at the ENnies booth. Unless you plan on making the awards onsite, which I doubt as well. :\ Like I said before, we are discussing a solution.

 

[Crothian]

Maybe one year we (the community) will come to a point were Enworld can hold online voting AND voting at the Ennies Booth at Gencon (which would move the award back a night or two). Obviously this would end up being more work for those involved, I dont see it happening anytime soon.

As in never happeneing. We need more then a couple days to get the names of the winners on the awards. Also, any idea how long it takes to go through a couple thousand paper votes? Plus we wouldn't have a way to insure that people only vote once. There are way to many problems with on site voting.

 

[jmucchiello]

Do you Disagree with the Dwarf's assertion that one's a hobby game and the other isn't?

Yes. Both PR and M are resource management games. M has a higher level of luck because of the dice. But if you play M by the written rules, there are strategies that work and ones that don't and the player who plays the most strategically soundly will win more often than the person who just thinks its just a dumb game.

If you say I'm wrong, what hobby is PR in that M is not? Just because one is more popular than the other doesn't automatically make one a hobby game.

Munchkin (all versions) is a hobby game. Chez Geek might be a hobby game. Chez Dork definitely is. But I fail to see how a self-contained, resource management game like PR is a hobby game. Is it because the theme is historical? Monopoly bears little resemblence to modern real estate markets, does that make it historic?

I play board games twice a month in a group of 12-15 people. Only 4 of us are RPG players. Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Catan, Apples to Apples, and other games are quite popular. I doubt the non-RPGers would consider themselves party of a hobby movement though.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I seriously doubt that there will ever be any voting at the ENnies booth. Unless you plan on making the awards onsite, which I doubt as well. :\ Like I said before, we are discussing a solution.

I could have sworn someone said the awards were already finished and all that remained was attaching the winners plaques, which they claimed was a simple task....

anywho, like i said. You guys have all the facts, I can only speculate.

Onsite voting would be ideal being that the Ennies are the official awards for Gencon. And yes, understanably it would take a lot of work that makes it implausible (at least anytime soon). I dont think its something that could never happen though. If the Ennies grow every year, at some point it might have to happen, if only to give greater amounts of people the ability to vote(or rather, expose the ennies to a greater amount of people with TIME to vote).

Onsite voting doesnt have to be done on paper. They can still be done here on the boards, or using another electronic pole system. Under those circumstances all you really need is a laptop or two using the conventions wireless connection.

The only problem you run into under those cirumstances is all the votes come from the same IP address. That "might" involve paper work, but can be solved simply by marking the Gencon Badge. You need a Badge to vote on site. Once a person votes they badge is marked. (Yes I know that imposes another problem, with 1 day badges and stuff like that, but thats what thinkthanks are for.)

I'm just ranting ideas and concepts now but you get the point. Where this goes and grows should ultimatly be up to the overall community, IMO. In the end Morrus and Peter will decide how the Ennies will grow. And grow I hope it does for years to come. 20 years from now I'd love to bring my 15 year old to gencon so they can watch the ennies.

 

[Crothian]

Seriously though... EN World seems to be dominated primarily by D&D, d20 and non-d20 OGL games. There are other boards which cover other segments of the RPG spectrum, but EN World has never had a large community from those other systems.

No one is saying EN World is not primarily a d20 site. We have had other discusion of other games here to a varied level of success. Changes are being made. For instance the review section has just been opened to all RPG products, not just d20. Go check out the Hero reviews that have popped up in the past couple of days.

As long as ENnie voting is heavily dominated by the EN World community, I don't think the scope of the awards should stry too far from the effective scope of EN World itself.

We do try to get the word out and allow anyone from across the net to vote. Its a slow process as there just is no one single way to get the RPG community to know about the ENnies.

If we (and that's community-we, not me-and-the-other-guys-in-charge-we ) want the Ennies to cover the entire RPG market, then we *have* to do something about the over-representation of d20 and similar games among the voting audience. This could mean attracting more players from other systems to the EN World boards, attracting voters from other systems to the Ennies voting polls, or simply providing "poll booths" at other locations as well.

I have no idea what it would take to do "Poll Booths". I don't do programing. We are slowly attracting and getting the word out to the non d20 people about the ENniews. I imagine the biggest helper will be the publishers that got nominated telling their fans to vote for them.

I haven't kept track of Ennie organizing, so I don't know if any of those steps have been taking. But from a naive EN World user perspective, it seems nonsensical to me to as the EN World community to vote on non-d20 related games...

THe bottom line is that while the ENnies are open to all RPGs it will take longer for the fans and some of the publishers of non d20 games to realize we exist. There are so many little gaming corners of the net its hard to find and pentrate them with the info. But we are slowly filtering our way through them. THe first step is to do what we did with the categories, we made it so every RPG book had a place to enter. Now we just have to slowly get the word out and with the exposure Gen Con gives us I hope that next year is a lot better.

 

[Crothian]

I could have sworn someone said the awards were already finished and all that remained was attaching the winners plaques, which they claimed was a simple task....

It is simple if we have a week. Statues are made, but the name plates have to be stamped out. That's metal work and might be simple for someone that does metal work but I'm not sure how portible that is to do in a hotel or something in Indy.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

One more note to toss in my two sense. The Ennies quite definatly started as the d20 rpg awards, and this year has grown into non d20 rpgs. Thats great. However, I honestly fail to see why it wouldnt eventually expand into board games and other related type games. (Mini's were mentioned above. take D&D Mini's for example, Its a Game Accesssory and a Self Contained War Game, AND has a d20 system book). Why would that not be eligable?

Gencon is host to ALL types of games, CCG's Board Games, etc. If the Ennies are truly gonna be the Gencon Award show its not fair to simply blanket out all those other games because you dont play them with a book and character sheet.

Granted, none of these games can currently be covered. I'm not saying we (the community) or you (the judges) should jump to cover it next year. But eventually, slowly, it makes sense that the ennies would expand to encompass them all. All you'd need is more judges and to start making judge commities.

You'd have one commitie for RPG Games, one for Board Games and CCG's, etc etc etc.

Above someone said that PC and Console games make sense to expand too. My reason for saying they didnt was because its unrealistic to expect all the judges to run state of the art computer systems which allow accurate testing of those games. Unless someone will provide them with hardware they cant judge them.