Greg Costikyan on Origins

[Mixmaster]

SNIP
and winning a backpack full of $100+ worth of cards, minis, and game books at the WotC booth. Most of that ended up being given away, so that I only get Eberron and the actual bag for myself. And the WotC notebook. Ooh, impressive.

How did you win that? The contest with the d20 or judging for the RPGA??

 

[Pendelton]

It was interesting to read that he talked with Tom Wham at Origins as I had convinced myself that Tom had not shown up. This was the only explanation I could think of that made it acceptable for him to blow off the players who had signed up to play Kings and Things with him as part of play with the creator. The 3 unlucky players that had signed up and blocked off time mistakenly convinced ourselves that he must not have come to the Con because of some last minute emergency. Instead it appears that there was some other reason for him not bothering to show up and play in the scheduled game.

 

[Nikchick]

Oof. That's not very fair, Nicole. How do you get from:

...to this:

From what I could see, Costikyan thought the performance was lousy. He had virtually nothing to say about Turnbull (my quote was everything that Costikyan said about him). You're really reaching when you imply that his dislike of the performance was some kind of disrespect to Turnbull.

Are you angry at Costikyan or something?

-Clint

I'm not mad at anybody.

When I say that maybe Greg didn't *care* about Don, that's exactly what I meant. Greg knew who Don Turnbull was (which at least puts him a step up on some folks) but does not seem to fall into the category of people for whom the memorial was personally meaningful or emotionally wrenching. Greg apparently did not need, nor did he welcome, Luke Ski's transition piece but my point was that intermission performance existed for those people who DID need and welcome two or three minutes of light comedy to ease them out of the sadness of the memorial to the continuation of the awards.

 

[Nikchick]

This drives me absolutely nuts, and the same exact lack of attribution occurs on the awards website -- http://www.originsawards.com/ -- where they have all the space in the world to provide actual creator credit. It's bull, and is entirely the wrong way to grow a hobby.

Fast Learner, I agree with you 100%. In fact, I was the main advocate and strong proponent of the changes to the awards a few years ago that explicitly secured the rights of creators to fully participate in the process (including being allowed to submit their own best works without interference from publishers, and getting awards statues for the listed contributors in addition to the statues for the publishers.) Unfortunately, and despite my best efforts to make sure this did not happen, a series of unavoidable circumstances conspired to prevent us from giving the authors credit during this year's ceremony itself, and then the website was updated from the text of the ceremony rather than the master file (which included the names of the contributors, the company names, and the full titles of the awards won, not the short-hand titles that were posted to the site).

Of course, had the GAMA Board of Directors not had a 100% turnover of all seats up for election just two days earlier, there might have been someone with some idea of what was going on and how to sort the problems out onsite or after the fact. Sadly, the new board has chosen not to work with those volunteers who came in under the old board, leaving many issues like this uncorrected either because of confusion over who has the power to make the changes or through the loss of the volunteers who would normally be responsible.

 

[Desdichado]

This drives me absolutely nuts, and the same exact lack of attribution occurs on the awards website -- http://www.originsawards.com/ -- where they have all the space in the world to provide actual creator credit. It's bull, and is entirely the wrong way to grow a hobby.

The German/Designer game world is on the forefront, here: people actually buy games because they were designed by Moon or Knizia or Kramer, just like you'd buy a novel based on the author and not the publisher. The Origins Awards should be ashamed.

I dunno; I have a hard time seeing that RPGs fall under the same analogy as a novel. I don't really look at the authors of a product all that often, whereas I do the publisher.

I just don't see how putting the author's name in the Origin's Awards, while otherwise a quite laudable goal, does anything whatsoever to "grow the hobby."

 

[buzz]

I dunno; I have a hard time seeing that RPGs fall under the same analogy as a novel. I don't really look at the authors of a product all that often, whereas I do the publisher.

I just don't see how putting the author's name in the Origin's Awards, while otherwise a quite laudable goal, does anything whatsoever to "grow the hobby."

I have no idea if mentioning the author's names grows the hobby. I do know that I follow authors that I like, and that credit should be given where it's due. Also, considering how much of this hobby is driven by freelancers and people working for love rather than money, it should be a no-brainer that authors get spotlight time when awards are given out. I'm with Costikyan on this one.

I think the Ennies and the Diana Jones awards are becoming far more relevant, anyway.

 

[Desdichado]

To be clear, I am too. I just don't see how it grows the hobby. I see no causality there.