Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ColonelHardisson" data-source="post: 1038347" data-attributes="member: 363">The fact that they are recognized by the community in general as being part of that community is an important distinction you're leaving out. The ENnies are, after all, not just the GenCon, awards, but the EN World awards. EN World is a community.Overseas companies like Mongoose have their distributors in the States send the copies to one of the judges (me, in this case). The expense isn't as great as you'd think - except for Morrus. He shoulders the shipping to all the other judges, which amounted to almost $1300 US this year.Again, this is the EN World awards, after all. Much of this was intended to ensure that the EN World community had a large amount of say in the awards.Most d20 publishers are made aware of the awards, if we feel they are unaware of them already.In a sense, yeah. Most movie awards have to be purposely entered by the filmmakers, for example. You can't win if you don't enter. Most movie awards I'm aware of don't have write-ins.No, honestly, I don't. The awards are for products that are entered. EN World is the largest d20 site on the net. Most d20 publsihers are aware of it, and those who aren't we've tried to make aware of it. Just about anything d20 gets mentioned at EN World eventually. I know that the judges did a lot of "beating of the bushes" to ensure that as many d20 publishers as possible were made aware of the awards. That is, when we became aware of a company that had not entered, an e-mail of inquiry was sent to see if they had any interest in entering. Did we contact every single company out there that had a d20 product and presumably was unaware of the ENnies? I doubt it. But we tried. We discussed this very issue from time to time - how to make sure everyone who could enter, and might want to enter, know that the awards existed, and how to enter them.Avalanche, which had a comparatively good showing in last year's ENnies, and which at least two of the judges (myself and Teflon Billy) have shown support for consistently, was contacted about entering. They never replied. Of course not. But what you present is a situation which would result in exactly what most of the d20 publishers don't want to have happen - their being overshadowed by WotC. WotC would, by simple virtue of market penetration, dominate the awards almost completely. This was discussed after last years awards very vigorously. d20 publishers have, in the past, indicated they would be unhappy with such a situation, and presumably would cease to support the awards because of it. Going to a straight popular vote is the surest way to alienate the most d20 publishers. It isn't about the general community not being smart enough to pick nominees; it's about the fact that they can't possibly have seen enough of the smaller publishers' work to even be aware of them - A Magical Medieval Society is a wonderful case in point. At least having a panel of judges ensures that some of these smaller publsihers at least get some deserved attention. The awards are, after all, about supporting the d20 industry more than they are about simply picking the most recognizable product.</blockquote>

Verification