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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PatrickLawinger" data-source="post: 1736927" data-attributes="member: 2735">Okay, my lag time yesterday made it almost impossible for me to post and respond to other’s posts. My post would go up after several people had already said the same things. I am going to try to split responses into two posts (both will be long).ByronD, I think you should comment and be part of the discussion. I think everyone that is part of ENWorld should. Publishers have been asked for input and we are trying to comply. My response time was very slow yesterday, because connecting to ENWorld (for me at least) is very, very slow in the afternoon (Central time, US).First, I think you should stick to DnD/d20/OGL that is what the site is known for, that is what the judges and fans at the site know best. I honestly think that expanding beyond that is not going to help the awards any. I am very much of the “do one thing, do it well” philosophy. Second, these awards were started as “fan” awards. There should be some sort of fan voting, whether it is entirely fan based, or fans vote on choices made by Judges. I think a “judge’s choice” award would be welcome, but this should primarily be a fan award because that is the way you have advertised and promoted it.Third, I believe you want to maximize the number of publishers participating. Most of my comments in posts above are related to this point.Problem: the major problem I see right now is funding for the Ennies, and a major point that has been discussed is the shipping of products to judges. There are also general funding problems (as I understand) with other parts of the presentation.Several solutions have been discussed. Alternative: Monte’s suggestion of several rounds of voting. Sounds like a logistical nightmare, but if you have guys that can handle the web and statistic end, it might be a good idea. Asking for “donations” to defray the costs of the ceremony and awards is cool here because those donations should remain anonymous and shouldn’t alter public (fan) voting.Alternative: Have publishers ship to one location but pay an “entry fee” to help defray costs of shipping to the individual judges. This solves the “time and hassle” issue of shipping to individual locations for the publisher. Personally, I don’t have problems with this, or with a general entry fee, but I think some publishers would. It might be your only real alternative, I just don’t know what that is going to do to the number of publishers entering. I believe an entry fee can be written off as a business expense for those companies that actually have a positive balance.Alternative: Fund raising: this is a pain, someone has to run it, organize it, etc. I don’t think this is a good plan for long-term viability. As an additional source of funding, great, as a primary source I just don’t think this is going to work. Authors are not there to sign books to auction off, we are there to sign whatever books are handed to us (that we have written anyway) and to talk with people about them. I don’t see many game designers (other than, maybe, Monte- who is always busy enough at the convention) that are really going to draw people to buy seats at a fund raising dinner.Alternative: ask Wizards of the Coast to help fund the awards, use it as an advertising venue for them. They can’t compete (as they fund it) but the d20 system helps support their core rule books and other releases and we can claim that their support of the d20 and OGL products can only enhance their reputation and help them sell more books. If successful, WotC’s name would be behind the awards giving added credibility and weight. You would certainly have to allow them to advertise though. If this worked you could also ask them to supply two judges. This would help with a lot of things, respect, getting other companies to submit, etc. This is my favorite alternative, but I honestly don’t know how easy this would be. If you try this I would suggest asking them to provide say, 2 of the 5 judges. This should also help with the “weight” of the award. This is probably going to be a hard sell.Alternative: ask GenCon to pay the full cost of the awards. Not high on my list, because I am under the impression that you’ll feel forced to include a full range of gaming systems in the contest and I simply don’t believe that is good for the award.Alternative: same as the previous 2, essentially, but some other source, popular DnD-based computer game, large game publisher looking for advertising. coming out or something similar. This would cause problems because you’d probably be looking for a new sponsor every year. Searching for sponsors is a lot of work.For the last 3 alternatives you need to write up a “business plan” detailing your projected expenses and costs, and you’ll need to discuss the number of people that might be attending the award ceremony, number of people interested in who wins (individual people, not page hits), etc. None of these alternatives is a walk in the park.</blockquote>

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