ENnies To Ban Generative AI From 2025

The ENnie Awards has announced that from 2025, products including content made by generative AI will not be eligible for the awards.

Established in 2001, the ENnies are the premier tabletop roleplaying game awards ceremony, and are held every year in a ceremony at Gen Con. They were created right here on EN World, and remained affiliated with EN World until 2018.

The decision on generative AI follows a wave of public reaction criticising the policy announced in 2023 that while products containing generative AI were eligible, the generative AI content itself was not--so an artist whose art was on the cover of a book could still win an award for their work even if there was AI art inside the book (or vice versa). The new policy makes the entire product ineligible if it contains any generative AI content.

Generative AI as a whole has received widespread criticism in the tabletop industry over the last couple of years, with many companies--including D&D's owner Wizards of the Coast--publicly announcing their opposition to its use on ethical grounds.

The new policy takes effect from 2025.

The ENNIE Awards have long been dedicated to serving the fans, publishers, and broader community of the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) industry. The ENNIES are a volunteer-driven organization who generously dedicate their time and talents to celebrate and reward excellence within the TTRPG industry. Reflecting changes in the industry and technological advancements, the ENNIE Awards continuously review their policies to ensure alignment with community values.

In 2023, the ENNIE Awards introduced their initial policy on generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). The policy recognized the growing presence of these technologies in modern society and their nuanced applications, from generating visual and written content to supporting background tasks such as PDF creation and word processing. The intent was to encourage honesty and transparency from creators while maintaining a commitment to human-driven creativity. Under this policy, creators self-reported AI involvement, and submissions with AI contributions were deemed ineligible for certain categories. For example, products featuring AI-generated art were excluded from art categories but remained eligible for writing categories if the text was entirely human-generated, and vice versa. The organizers faced challenges in crafting a policy that balanced inclusivity with the need to uphold the values of creativity and originality. Recognizing that smaller publishers and self-published creators often lack the resources of larger companies, the ENNIE Awards sought to avoid policies that might disproportionately impact those with limited budgets.

However, feedback from the TTRPG community has made it clear that this policy does not go far enough. Generative AI remains a divisive issue, with many in the community viewing it as a threat to the creativity and originality that define the TTRPG industry. The prevailing sentiment is that AI-generated content, in any form, detracts from a product rather than enhancing it.

In response to this feedback, the ENNIE Awards are amending their policy regarding generative AI. Beginning with the 2025-2026 submission cycle, the ENNIE Awards will no longer accept any products containing generative AI or created with the assistance of Large Language Models or similar technologies for visual, written, or edited content. Creators wishing to submit products must ensure that no AI-generated elements are included in their works. While it is not feasible to retroactively alter the rules for the 2024-2025 season, this revised policy reflects the ENNIE Awards commitment to celebrating the human creativity at the heart of the TTRPG community. The ENNIES remain a small, volunteer-run organization that values the ability to adapt quickly, when necessary, despite the challenges inherent in their mission.

The ENNIE Awards thank the TTRPG community for their feedback, passion, and understanding. As an organization dedicated to celebrating the creators, publishers, and fans who shape this vibrant industry, the ENNIES hope that this policy change aligns with the values of the community and fosters continued growth and innovation.

 

[Art Waring]

Think technologies not specific products. Yes Beta-Max tapes went away, but the PCM technology that was developed as part of them is still widely in use today. NFT's are a product, block-chains are a technology and still widely used in appropriate (i.e. banking) products. Products go away all the time. Though since the computer age, technologies really don't. Machine learning, large language models, and artificial neural networks are the technologies behind Gen AI, they pre-date what is now called Gen AI and will remain. Sure, maybe near-free quick text based image generation will go away. I know artists are hoping for such. But I don't see why. The technology will certainly remain.

I agree that machine learning won't be going away, but that pre-existed gen-ai, and actually has different applications for practical use than something that was made using an LLM. My point is that the "free" model of ai image generstion has already peaked (IMHO), they are burning billions every year and have yet to achieve any kind of profitability. Either they end the free use models, replaced by a paid subscription (which was always the plan for folks like Midjourney), or make them completely unuseable for the public by putting in heavy guardrails to try and prevent copyright infringements (look at the new SD).

First, I said Gen and No-Gen AI. And you seem to acknowledge that their are many AI products other than specific tools that are used to create images that compete with your work. Since you asked for specific examples; At your local police department in products such as facial recognition and age progression. As part of your favorite web search tool. In the satellites that are going into space. On the battlefields in Ukraine. On Wall Street and the Canary Wharf in London. At your doctor's office or hospital for monitoring patient medications and symptom analysis.

I am sorry but that is not actually specific, I mean actual links to actual tech in use today, and how exactly they are using gen-ai and not just being lumped under the "ai" buzzword to get more funding based on hype. The point is that these are all disctintly different things, and lumping them all together doesn't actually allow for a detailed analysis.

Not yet. Maybe never. For your sake I hope not. But I don't see any technological roadblock for it to gain that capability. It will just take vast amounts of data and human teaching.

Dude, this is exactly what they were saying in the 2010's about "big data," which was the hyped up thing that big tech was evangelizing before they moved onto gen-ai. "We just need more and more data, eventually it will solve something."

Go look at the MIT research institute and their vast body of knowledge regarding gen-ai, they are saying that companies will run out of training data by 2026, where exactly are they going to find this "vast data" when they have already stolen everything on the internet??? After stealing everything they can, they still can't get GPT to tell you exactly how many "R's" are in the word strawberry.

IMO ENnies has done this in a half-assed and amateur method. Implementing a rule before they really even understand the implications and have no plausible means of evaluating it. Sure, they are coming up with ways now, but even those are horrible flawed. As you point out in your second paragraph here.

Well, how is this any different than Wotc or Paizo banning gen-ai content from their publications? Does wotc have some fool-proof method of detecting gen-ai or evaluating artists? NO, nobody does, this is the best they can do given their limited time and resources. If the biggest multi-billion dollar corporation in the industry doesn't have the answers, then how do you expect Enworld to?

The mob failed once. That doesn't mean they are going to keep failing. Besides, what harm was done even with just this failed example? How much pain and anguish did this one artist go through? how many hours of productive work or family time did this take away from the artist? And do you think this isn't going to show up when folks search out that artist in the future? And half of those people won't get the details, only that Artist X was accused of using AI. And they will shy away from that artist.

I agree, social media tends to treat people as guilty until proven innocent without any evidence, but that is social media in a nutshell (especially now that they are removing fact-cheching). However, can you show me any fallout on social media for that particular artist now that their name has been cleared? Becuase from what i can see, the accuser is the one that recieved backlash for the false accusations, while the artist still has their job.

 

[Lanefan]

This is actually one of the reasons that I quit doing freelance commissions, as I don't like being asked to do 1:1 copies of other pieces of art (and thankfully, I have never had the displeasure of personally being asked to redo an ai-generated image).

The primary purpose of hiring any particular artist, is that you like their work and their particular style.

Not for me, it wouldn't be. For me, I'd hire an artist to take the vision in my head - not theirs - and turn it into reality; I'd be hiring the artist not for their imagination or creativity but instead for their ability and talent at producing to specifications.

Directly analagous to providing a musician with sheet music and style notes and asking it be played exactly as written, vs leaving it up to the musician to interpret and maybe on-the-fly modify what's on the sheets.

If I hand over a visual reference to a freelancer, I would never expect a 1:1 replica, I would expect that they use their own insight and talents to create a piece of art based on their interpretation of the reference, and any written details I provide.

Ideally, the visual reference I provide would already be within rounding error of the final image I want. Problem is, the only means open to me of getting that visual reference is AI, as I'm the only person who can see what's in my head and thus (unless I want to frustrate an artist to insanity) I have to be the one producing that visual reference.

Ideally the AI-generated visual reference would already be good enough that I could just use that for the final image, but that's verboten it seems.

As for "does this count as human generated?" question. Well, due to the fact that a lot of these details are still being fought over in court, we will have to wait and see what happens. As it currently stands, only a human can register their work with the US copyright office, machines, no matter how many prompts and revisions you got through, will not be eligible for copyright (an ai-bro has tried numerous times to copyright an ai-generated image with the explanation that he went through thousands of prompts, the US copyright office does not care how much time you spent typing words into gen-ai to get results, as it still has to be made by a person to get a copyright certificate).

So if I'm reading this right, a hand-made duplicate could be copyrighted but the AI-generated original version could not.

And then there's the even fuzzier question of an artist taking an AI-made image and hand-altering it to a greater or lesser extent, but without re-doing the whole image from scratch (if memory serves, this is what got that WotC artist in trouble) - what happens then?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Not for me, it wouldn't be. For me, I'd hire an artist to take the vision in my head - not theirs - and turn it into reality; I'd be hiring the artist not for their imagination or creativity but instead for their ability and talent at producing to specifications

So you're doing most of the creative work in your head. You just need someone, possibly lacking any creativity, to convert the image from the electric signals in your head to a canvas (or more realistically, a jpg file).

Directly analagous to providing a musician with sheet music and style notes and asking it be played exactly as written, vs leaving it up to the musician to interpret and maybe on-the-fly modify what's on the sheets.

In this example, why would you hire a musician? If you have the sheet, you can put it into a mechanical organ to get the sound you want.

Ideally, the visual reference I provide would already be within rounding error of the final image I want. Problem is, the only means open to me of getting that visual reference is AI, as I'm the only person who can see what's in my head and thus (unless I want to frustrate an artist to insanity) I have to be the one producing that visual reference.

We might be lacking a technology that can read a mind an display the picture. I don't expect artists to welcome this future tech...

 

[Faolyn]

Not for me, it wouldn't be. For me, I'd hire an artist to take the vision in my head - not theirs - and turn it into reality; I'd be hiring the artist not for their imagination or creativity but instead for their ability and talent at producing to specifications.

Unfortunately, that's literally impossible without telepathy or the ability to project illusions.

If you hire an artist, you hire that artist's style. Now, a lot of artists are good at multiple styles so you can probably find one that's pretty much what you want, but the only way to get exactly what's in your head is for you to learn to do art on your own.

Edit: In my experience, most people who say they know exactly what they want and can visualize it even don't actually know exactly what they want, so your head-vision is quite likely incomplete.

Directly analagous to providing a musician with sheet music and style notes and asking it be played exactly as written, vs leaving it up to the musician to interpret and maybe on-the-fly modify what's on the sheets.

That's actually very different, because sheet music is written down (the vision in your head is not) and music actually has a mathematical language behind it, whereas visual art does not.

Ideally the AI-generated visual reference would already be good enough that I could just use that for the final image, but that's verboten it seems.

Yes, because it's basically cheating. There's no skill involved in its creation beyond your ability to type and verbalize your desires.

And then there's the even fuzzier question of an artist taking an AI-made image and hand-altering it to a greater or lesser extent, but without re-doing the whole image from scratch (if memory serves, this is what got that WotC artist in trouble) - what happens then?

Well, if I take another artist's piece of work and alter it and try to pass it off as my own rather than as an homage or parody or reinterpretation, that would probably be a bad thing, right?

Edit: You can, of course, be inspired by other people's works, but that's not the same as "taking an image and hand-altering it."

 

[stonehead]

Ban overall is good in my opinion. We ban steroids in the Olympics because they're a contest of human athletic ability. In a contest of human artistic ability, the same standards should apply.

Steroids are still a useful medicine for people with certain health conditions. But they're not allowed in a competition.
Maybe this is pushing the metaphor too far, but if you're on a Basketball team, and one of your teammates uses steroids, the whole team loses its medal.

---

On the thread-crapping tangent topic: a few people wrote something to the effect of "photography counts as art, so ai 'artists' should too". I think that's a bad comparison for two reasons. First, I think is a misunderstanding of how photography works. A lot of work goes into professional photography from simple stuff like lighting and framing to more advanced topics like exposure time and color grading. Professional photography is not "Step 1: find something that looks good. Step 2: take a picture of it. Step 3: done."

To make a more philosophical point, The Grand Canyon isn't eligible to win a photography contest. Photographs (taken by humans) are.

The second point I would make is that ai image generation isn't even like the simple process of pointing your phone at something cool and pressing a button. It's like telling someone else to do that. A good rule of thumb is to imagine a different human being doing all the work the ai does and then ask yourself if you would still be considered an artist.

Great bestselling authors still have editors to catch typos and propose grammar fixes, but we still call the author an artist. So things like spellcheck probably don't stop you from being an artist. Lots of famous traditional artists have assistants to help with filling in flat colors, or inking over sketches. So simple tools like image editing software had ~5 years ago probably shouldn't stop you from being considered an artist.

If someone describes a painting really well using short phrases, separated by commas, and then hands that off to their assistant who does everything else, we probably wouldn't call the first person the "artist" who created the painting.

If someone uses ai to create a base, and copies that image on their own, it's an edge case in a gray area. But tracing has been a frowned upon gray area for artists long before generative ai came around.

This doesn't have that much to do with the Ennies though, who are well within their right to define their own rules. Speed painting contests didn't let their contestants use assistants either way.

 

[Art Waring]

Not for me, it wouldn't be. For me, I'd hire an artist to take the vision in my head - not theirs - and turn it into reality; I'd be hiring the artist not for their imagination or creativity but instead for their ability and talent at producing to specifications.

Directly analagous to providing a musician with sheet music and style notes and asking it be played exactly as written, vs leaving it up to the musician to interpret and maybe on-the-fly modify what's on the sheets.

@Faolyn actually summed up some really good responses to your questions, so I feel like a lot of my replies would be redundant, but I will try to add some of my own experience on the subject if that helps.

Part of the challenge of commissioning artists is that they cannot read minds, they will do their best with whatever resources you provide for them (visual references or written descriptions), and you can of course specify that you want "exactly this," even dictating a particular style, but that is not what I would personally want when I hire an artist.

There are plenty of artists that specialize in matching or maintaining styles for continuity (just take a look at the amazing work of star wars concept artists), especially if they are working for a large studio, but I don't think that is what you are talking about here.

Also, I don't think that sheet music is a fair analogy at all, as some of the most talented musicians in the world can't or don't read sheet music, and instead use their natural talents to make incredible music that would look absolutely insane on a sheet of music (Aphex Twin anyone?).

Ideally, the visual reference I provide would already be within rounding error of the final image I want. Problem is, the only means open to me of getting that visual reference is AI, as I'm the only person who can see what's in my head and thus (unless I want to frustrate an artist to insanity) I have to be the one producing that visual reference.

Again, unless gen-ai has somehow developed the powers of telepathy, I think that is a problem that you are creating that is quite unrealistic in regards to working with another person in a creative endeavor.

Also, I disagree with your "only means available is ai" comment, as publishers have been working with artists for over 50 years on dnd without using gen-ai as a crutch. You would be surprised at how good some artists are at creating a piece of art that not only meets your expectations, but soundly exceeds them in all respects.

Furthermore, I see this problem crop a lot with folks who do not regularly work with other artists, and demanding they make something that is trying to compete with the big dogs in the industry, which is completely unrealistic, as wotc's art budget for a single book can easily go over 100,000$ (its just a ball park estimated amount since we don't have any data on budgets).

Little people like you and me will likely never get to the point where we are working with budgets like that, so I think that its a good idea to temper what expectations you are putting on an artist. Unless you can afford the very best, maybe try to see that your expectations (from using gen-ai) do not match the reality of the industry.

So if I'm reading this right, a hand-made duplicate could be copyrighted but the AI-generated original version could not.

And then there's the even fuzzier question of an artist taking an AI-made image and hand-altering it to a greater or lesser extent, but without re-doing the whole image from scratch (if memory serves, this is what got that WotC artist in trouble) - what happens then?

I cannot honestly answer this question without getting into the legal stuff, and currently it is still being sorted out in court. I am not a lawyer, nor am I an authority on the subject of copyright law, I honestly don't know who is qualified to answer, as even copyright lawyers are still working on this subject two years later.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm taking the liberty of resequencing your post in order to batch some like pieces together, to avoid repetition in my response.

Also, I don't think that sheet music is a fair analogy at all, as some of the most talented musicians in the world can't or don't read sheet music, and instead use their natural talents to make incredible music that would look absolutely insane on a sheet of music (Aphex Twin anyone?).

Now here I can speak from experience. I'll spoiler-block it so as not to bore everyone else...

Spoiler

While I would never claim to be among "the most talented musicians in the world" (I'm a bloody long way from it, in fact!), sometimes on my own and sometimes with others in a band I've recorded hundreds of original songs and yet I can't read a lick of sheet music and know virtually nothing about music theory. Most of those songs are ones I've "written" (I do the lyrics on paper, the tune's in my head) and I do it by the same principle as I'd want the art done: I take the song that's in my head and try to record it, mostly by trial and error.

Sometimes I only have a vague idea for any specifics going in, jsut a basic tune and some words, and whatever ends up getting recorded will be close enough. Other times I have an exact note-for-note sound-idea-style-beat-bassline-solo-etc. in mind and I/we then either succeed in replicating that or we don't.

What I'm looking for in the art realm is the exact opposite of your can't-read-sheet-music example, and would be more analagous to a couple of people I knew at different times many years ago who, when given the sheet music and a piano, could play the most complicated concertos perfectly, every time...and yet if you took away the sheet music they couldn't play a note. They were more processors than creators.

@Faolyn actually summed up some really good responses to your questions, so I feel like a lot of my replies would be redundant, but I will try to add some of my own experience on the subject if that helps.

Part of the challenge of commissioning artists is that they cannot read minds, they will do their best with whatever resources you provide for them (visual references or written descriptions), and you can of course specify that you want "exactly this," even dictating a particular style, but that is not what I would personally want when I hire an artist.

There are plenty of artists that specialize in matching or maintaining styles for continuity (just take a look at the amazing work of star wars concept artists), especially if they are working for a large studio, but I don't think that is what you are talking about here.

Again, unless gen-ai has somehow developed the powers of telepathy, I think that is a problem that you are creating that is quite unrealistic in regards to working with another person in a creative endeavor.

When I say "exactly this" I don't just mean a style or look or anything general; I'm talking about the positioning of each branch (maybe even each leaf!) on the trees in a forest scene, the position and amount of trees, the precise pattern of sun and shade in the scene, the angle of view, the colour of the moss on the rocks, the steepness of the nearby bank, and a thousand other small details that add up to the exact image I have in my head.

And yes, this is what makes it difficult to work with another person...and the advantage of AI is that in effect I'm only working with myself. The AI program is endlessly patient and can trial-and-error the image hundreds or even thousands of times while slowly closing in on - and ideally, maybe with some by-hand tweaking* along the way, eventually reaching - what I want the image to be.

* - I'm useless at doing digital images from scratch but seem to be OK when it comes to modifying an existing image.

Also, I disagree with your "only means available is ai" comment, as publishers have been working with artists for over 50 years on dnd without using gen-ai as a crutch. You would be surprised at how good some artists are at creating a piece of art that not only meets your expectations, but soundly exceeds them in all respects.

Furthermore, I see this problem crop a lot with folks who do not regularly work with other artists, and demanding they make something that is trying to compete with the big dogs in the industry, which is completely unrealistic, as wotc's art budget for a single book can easily go over 100,000$ (its just a ball park estimated amount since we don't have any data on budgets).

Little people like you and me will likely never get to the point where we are working with budgets like that, so I think that its a good idea to temper what expectations you are putting on an artist. Unless you can afford the very best, maybe try to see that your expectations (from using gen-ai) do not match the reality of the industry.

Or, flip side, allow the existence of gen-AI to raise my expectations far beyond what they'd otherwise be. I can't afford the very best but I can afford free AI, and it opens the door to a whole wide swath of possibilities that previously would have been out of reach. I'd be an idiot not to take advantage of it while I can.

 

[Faolyn]

When I say "exactly this" I don't just mean a style or look or anything general; I'm talking about the positioning of each branch (maybe even each leaf!) on the trees in a forest scene, the position and amount of trees, the precise pattern of sun and shade in the scene, the angle of view, the colour of the moss on the rocks, the steepness of the nearby bank, and a thousand other small details that add up to the exact image I have in my head.

Or, flip side, allow the existence of gen-AI to raise my expectations far beyond what they'd otherwise be. I can't afford the very best but I can afford free AI, and it opens the door to a whole wide swath of possibilities that previously would have been out of reach. I'd be an idiot not to take advantage of it while I can.

Well, then, you have a decision. You can (a) get a real human artist who may not get your complete-and-total image exactly as it appears in your head (but who may do something that ends up more evocative or interesting in some other way), or you can (b) use AI and get a lot of people to refuse to buy your hypothetical product on principle.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Well, then, you have a decision. You can (a) get a real human artist who may not get your complete-and-total image exactly as it appears in your head (but who may do something that ends up more evocative or interesting in some other way), or you can (b) use AI and get a lot of people to refuse to buy your hypothetical product on principle.

Exactly, well said.

Nobody is stopping anyone from using AI, or even publishing work with AI. But some folks are choosing not to support it, usually due to the fact that it takes work away from humans. So @Lanefan , if you don't want to work with an artist and just use AI, you're right that the revision process will be fast and you can probably get the image you desire. But the consequence is that your product won't be eligible for an ENnie.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If someone describes a painting really well using short phrases, separated by commas, and then hands that off to their assistant who does everything else, we probably wouldn't call the first person the "artist" who created the painting.

That's heavily dependant on jurisdiction. There are places where the creative intent would be recognized to the person doing the very specific description (and they'd get the IP rights), while the executant wouldn't. It would need to be a really precise description, not just "paint me a character", and the executant would generally be paid by the hour and not for an end product. The reasoning behind this is that, if someone dictates a text to a typist, the typist wouldn't be considered the author, and if the description of the illustration needed is precise enough, it should be treated by a book just being typed down. So in some place, Lanefan and his very precise specification would be the artist, not the illustrator.