ENnies Nominations for 2004

[BrooklynKnight]

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.

Very very true. It would take someone willing to research the local area and find a way to stamp all the plates overnight or within 2 days.

Theoretically placing the Ennies on Sunday (if it gets big enough) gives more incentive for people to stay at Gencon for the 4th day, and makes a great capping off of the convention.

I'm getting far to ahead of everything now though.

off to class with me!

 

[Crothian]

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?

The reasons are many why not but really the only one that matters is Gen Con wants us to only be RPGs. They were kind enough to make us their official awards, and all they asked (that I know of) is that we stick to RPGs. And that we open up the awards to non d20 as well.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Theoretically placing the Ennies on Sunday (if it gets big enough) gives more incentive for people to stay at Gencon for the 4th day, and makes a great capping off of the convention.

If you look at any awards ceremony that takes place at a convention, I think you will find few, if any, that occur on the last day of the convention. Why? People leave early. Sunday night most people are wll on their way home. When people leave, you have no audience. I doubt people will stick around just to see the awards presented. Having the awards the night before the biggest day of the convention (Saturday) allows for the winners to take advantage of the publicity. What good would it do to win the award on Sunday night? No promotion at the convention, no discussion by fans the next day, no way to capitalize on the win. Just for comparison, the Hugo Awards are the centerpiece of the World Science Fiction Convention. they are handed out on Friday night, and have always been handed out on the Friday of the convention. Friday is the biggest night, and Sturday is the biggest day. Thats when the people are there, thats when you give out the awards if you want to have any draw for an audience.

 

[Umbran]

As I understand it, most large conventions attach a membership number to each attendee. If GenCon does, that number can be used in on-site voting, to ensure each person only votes once.

This does not solve the problem of finishing the awards before the ceremony. If one wants on-site voting, one might have to accept that the physical awards get sent out after the convention.

There is another reason to question spreading the awards out too much, though. It is a question of mandate.

Perhaps one of the bigwigs could tell me - how many people participated in the Ennies voting last year. If I recall correctly, it was an embarassingly small number. Down in the three digits for a site that claims to have 20,000+ registered members.

So, now, the largest gaming convention around has awards given out by a few hundred folks, most of whom probably don't even attend the convention? Well, if you keep the scope of the awards down to something that the voting group really claims to know and care about - d20 games, then it's okay. Spreading out the mandate to cover other rpgs is weak, but perhaps supportable. Spreading out to cover other sorts of games where are rarely even discussed on these boards is downright presumptuous and shabby.

EN World has a solid claim as top D&D fans. A good claim as top d20 fans. We can even reasonably say that we're collectively RPG fans in general, though discussion of other systems here is relatively minor by comparison to other sites. We've got no real claim to collectively being afficionadoes of anything else, though.

Honestly, if GenCon wants braoder awards covering every sort of game seen there, it needs to institute it's own awards. It would need something like the World Science Fiction Convention's Hugo Awards, voted upon by the people who attend the convention.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Honestly, if GenCon wants braoder awards covering every sort of game seen there, it needs to institute it's own awards. It would need something like the World Science Fiction Convention's Hugo Awards, voted upon by the people who attend the convention.

The Hugo awards are a huge, multilayered award system, and have various levels of voters. As far as I can remember from the WorldCons I have attended, voting does not take place onsite, it is accomplished by ballot prior to the convention. To quote from the Hugo page itself:

Nominations for the Hugos to be awarded at Noreascon Four were open to people who were Noreascon 4 members by January 31, 2004, and to members of Torcon 3. The final Hugo ballot is open only to members of Noreascon 4. You do not have to attend the Worldcon in order to vote (but we'd love to see you in Boston!). A special category of Supporting Membership is available for people who wish to vote but cannot attend the convention. Supporting Membership also entitles you to all of the official Worldcon publications for that year, and entitles you to participate in the vote to select the site for the 2007 Worldcon.

So, it is not as simple as all attending members of the convention get to vote on the awards. It is a long, involved system that requires long advance planning to take into account nominations and voting. Memberships to the convention can be purchased far in advance, and in ordser ot nominate and vote, you need to have a membership. GenCon currently is set up on a short lead time for memberships, so while the Hugo voting system might be a good aspiration for the GenCon awards, it's not likely to occur any time soon.

 

[Arnwyn]

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...

Agreed. I found it very strange when I started to see non-d20 games on the ENnies list... especially considering the fact that ENWorld has been unabashedly "all about d20" (until now?). And you do have to be a registered ENWorld member to vote, no? W3rd.

 

[Crothian]

And you do have to be a registered ENWorld member to vote, no?

No, people do not have to register to vote.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

never mind...

 

[Psion]

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.

There's two variables to that equation.

 

[Psion]

Agreed. I found it very strange when I started to see non-d20 games on the ENnies list... especially considering the fact that ENWorld has been unabashedly "all about d20" (until now?).

This is why we have had to separate the categories between d20 and non-d20. But I still think that there is a fair percentage of ENWorld voters who play non-d20 games. Judging by the fact I have actually got in GURPS, Rolemaster, and Hero arguments here...