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.

 

[Blue]

Good. Awards should be for people, not plagiarism engines.

How to show you didn't actually understand what was posted without actually saying you didn't understand what was posted.

Works of generative AI were already disallowed. This now disallows everything in the product. Say an artist is commissioned for cover art and delivers. Before, if generative AI was used elsewhere in the product, that part was unable to win but the cover art still could.

This now says that the artist, who had nothing to do with generative AI nor any indication they even knew it was going to be used, has their own art disqualified.

 

[chuckdee]

It’s a tool. It will only every be as good or bad as the people that use it.

Wish I could upvote this several times. I use it to give artists a better mock up of what I want them to create (something that I was doing, but it sucked, so there was a lot of wasted time), to edit images I already have the rights to (something I was doing manually, but it took more time), to search through and summarize and cross-reference my own work so I don't have to worry as much about consistency and can find my work in my world corpus easily. None of this is doing any plagiarism. But if I publish a work- does that use AI?

 

[Blue]

View attachment 394654Hugh Mann, artist for the cover of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? nominated for Best Art, Cover in 2026.

I don't envy judges in the future. Like others have said, there have been artists falsely accused of AI recently and its going to get more difficult to tell it apart from human produced art in the future. I do wonder what affect AI art might have in the coming years. Will we see fewer works of a surreal or fantastic nature? I can just picture someone looking at an MC Escher sketch saying, "Obviously AI, those stairs only lead to itself!"

Oh gods, does this mean that if an artist uses some generative AI tools on some interior illustrations, like Ilya Shkipin did for WotC with Glory of the Giants, and it doesn't get flagged, just like WotC didn't notice that AI had enhanced the aura on the weapons until fans pointed it out, that whole products can be banned from the ENnies? Regardless of no-AI policies (like WotC had) and honest attempts to make sure everything was done by humans?

Sorry, this is even more unfair than I thought.

 

[Blue]

"But I typed the prompts, and then typed them again and again until it looked just the way I wanted it to look. That's basically the same as painting it myself, right? So I'm pretty much an artist. Right?"

Is your child's crayon drawings that you hang on your fridge art? Yes. So we know art doesn't have to have a specific level of quality.
If Jackson Pollock's art considered art, even though much of the mechanics of paint on canvas were about physics as he splashed and dropped paint? Yes. So we know that different methods of creating it are still art.
Are Ansel Adams photographs of nature art? Yes. So we know the subject doesn't need to be created by the artist, and can be done via technological means.
Are those who use digital tools, like Adobe's digit brushes, still art? Yes. Plenty of examples out there.

So, if someone composes an image and realize it using tools even if they, like Ansel Adams and Jackson Pollock, are not directly creating the image, are they an artist? If you agreed yes to all of the above, what's the difference that you would answer no to this?

(This is all separate from the horrible issue we have with ethical sourcing of material. That [REDACTED] has to stop.)

 

[Blue]

To the bolded: I'm curious as to how one can do this.

I'm not Morrus or even his devilishly handsome evil twin, so he may be thinking of other things. There are programs that analyze the digital image looking for specific types of artifacts found in digital art and rating how likely they think it its. Now, some of these artifacts I believe can be introduced just in digitizing physical media, and things like digital brushes and other tools that are common among digital artists I know can create these, and therefore show false positives.

My guess is that if there are no/minimal amounts of these tell-tails something could be said not to be AI, but a positive result could be AI or could be just using common programs like Adobe that introduce them into honest artist-made images. So we can prove "This definitely isn't AI" but not "This definitely is AI".

 

[Helena Real]

Glad about this decision. The AI bubble is hopefully about to burst any time soon, and then we can finally put this grift behind us, just as we did with VR, NFTs, crypto, and all the other techbro bs I can't even remember.

 

[MGibster]

Oh gods, does this mean that if an artist uses some generative AI tools on some interior illustrations, like Ilya Shkipin did for WotC with Glory of the Giants, and it doesn't get flagged, just like WotC didn't notice that AI had enhanced the aura on the weapons until fans pointed it out, that whole products can be banned from the ENnies? Regardless of no-AI policies (like WotC had) and honest attempts to make sure everything was done by humans?

Sorry, this is even more unfair than I thought.

I don't want to be overly cynical here, but like the Oscars, the Ennies are, at the very least in part, about advertisement. I know I can't be the only one who has sometimes only heard of a game after it was announced as a final nominee. To ensure companies don't use any AI, the only practical way to enforce that is to disqualify a product entirely for its use anywhere within its pages.

 

[Someone2345]

I was happy to give AI a fair run... But seeing the output over this year - yeah - I am happy with a full ban.
I mean I don't think it can be enforced, but, good luck to those who get into the inevitable bun fights about it!

 

[TheSword]

To the bolded: I'm curious as to how one can do this.

I think the easiest way is to show work in progress steps. If taken right it can demonstrate that you are personally making the image.

 

[TheSword]

I know that we are all focused on how AI creates garbage images and prose in this thread, but I am compelled to remind folks that this isn't actually the best or even intended use case of these tools. They are here to stay and they are going to reshape the world no less than the mechanical loom did. Buckle up.

Absolutely, it will be a personal assistant/editor. Which will enhance our own work by saving us time.