ICE and the ENnies

[BSF]

BSF - you might not be interested in that appearance of bias, but then again you don't have to be. Publishers do have to be concerned about it (and for d20 publishers, that appearance works for them), and I have had one fan foaming at the mouth at Treebore over being required to come to a d20 fan site to vote for what is supposedly an industry-wide award, that I have to be concerned about it as well. I received comments last year also.

Pardon my indignation Rasyr. Because really I enjoy reading your posts. I also appreciate that you have concerns pover the ENnies.

Allow me to clarify that. I appreciate your concerns as a fellow board member and as a gamer. I have been a long time fan of ICE. I, however, do not speak in any meaningful way for how the ENnies are managed or conducted. I am a gamer that can vote and that is the extent of my input.

But I have a certain amount of indignation simply because anybody else could begin the same way that the ENnies began. It was through hard work that the ENnies have become what they are. Morrus owns the ENnies, pure and simple. I believe it would appear to be disingenuous to try to completely seperare them. How many people would truly believe it? How many people would complain that the ENnies are now trying to pretend that they aren't associated with EN World. The collective we of the boards helped build this award by offering the weight of this community to drive it forward. Now to proclaim that this community is what keeps it from being a fan award, that we are only capable of being a d20 fan award, is somewhat disappointing. Because without this community where would the ENnies be?

I'm sorry you have upset fans. But I do have to wonder if they are upset because the voting is at EN World, or if it is just because the voting isn't at their venue of choice. EN World has thousands of silent members. Heck, a single post on the forums puts you into at least the top 50% of posters. Asking somebody to sign up and participate once a year really isn't all that much to ask.

For those that really don't like it, fix the problem. Create your own awards. Build the community and borrow the momentum and surpass the ENnies. That's what Morrus did.

I'm not debating your concerns on how the judging is administered. Frankly I don't have the background. But I do want you to understand why it sticks in my craw just a little to see an insistence that the ENnies be wholely seperate from EN World.

 

[Umbran]

All meaningful discussion regarding the selection of judges is happening here on EN World, the world's largest d20 fan site. White Wolf fans, ICE fans, Palladium fans, etc.. are not going to want to come here to discuss what you want folks to consider as an industry-wide fan-based award.

Rasyr, unfortunately, you miss the target on a major practical matter - discussion of anything has to happen in theplace where people would normally discuss things. It isnt' that they don't want to go to the website of "a competetor" (not the EN world is a competetor of any major publisher), but they don't want to go out of their way at all.

Here at EN Wolrd, we only create a new forum for a topic when there's a whole lot of discussion traffic on the subject. There's a simple reason - putting such discussion in its ownlittle space segregates it from people's normal paths, and they have to go explicitly out of their way to see it. That tends to reduce discussion. The awards are not so important a part of most gamer's lives for them to go out of their way to get into it.

If White Wolf, ICE, or other fans want to discuss the awards, they ought to do it wherever they discuss gaming. There is nobody here stopping them. What little discussion that's happening here is being driven by the judge candidates and a small number of interested parties - it isn't driven by the board.

If the ENnies had a codified set of rules and perhaps a set of guidelines that dictated how those rules can be changed.

You're supposed to know gaming, right? What happens when you have a rule set in stone? People start to try to "game the system". You'll start getting "ENnies munchkinisms", workarounds and edge cases that play the rules like a fiddle.

You have just stated the #1 way to make the ENnies bog down in red tape. The gamign world is not particularly static - publishers come up wiht new products that don't fit well in old pidgeonholes. We need an award system that flexes with the times and with the gaming world, and does so quickly - the process of dealing with the awards is already a great deal of work, adding more work to unpaid personnel is a good way to kill the thing entirely.

 

[Crothian]

And that is exactly one of the points I was trying to make. There NEEDS to be one. There needs to be codification, not "rule by whim".

No, there doesn't.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm seriously at a loss to figure out why the ENNIES shouldn't be hosted at EN World.

It seems like a lot of bellyaching that (a) the awards are growing in relevance and (b) you can't control it.

ENWorld has one of the largest and most active fan communities. They talk about what they want to talk about.

You act as if it is someone's fault that the ENNIES have evolved the way they have. It's purely a fan-based award. In my opinion, that's why they are relevant.

You don't like the ENNIES, go grow your own community and start your own awards.

For crying out loud. This is a stupid argument.

 

[Monte At Home]

Since White Wolf's name is getting thrown around a lot by a lot of people here, I thought I'd just mention that everyone I've spoken to at White Wolf about the awards loves the ENnies.

 

[Khairn]

I love these boards, this community and in the past have followed the ENnies with both my time and my $. Its a shame that internet forums are such poor vehicles for having honest and open discussions.

I've read this thread from top to bottom (yeah a masochist ... what can I say?) and I'm really disappointed in what I'm seeing.

As an active member of this forum (and many others), a game designer and a publisher, Rasyr has honestly and without rancor started a thread to explain the reason's why ICE will no longer be participating in the ENnies. He has brought up an example from last year where ambiguous rules and a lack of any direction caused what he (and ICE) believe is a problem with the integrity of the awards, and may be an indicator of future problems.

He has also stated his concerns that the ENnies desire to be an industry-wide award, is compromised by its very active link with this site and D20 systems. He's acknowledged that some actions have been taken to seperate the ENnies from being just a EN World & D20 award, but believes that more needs to be done before he (and ICE) return.

Whether you agree with him or not, he has honestly and openly shared his views and explained the reasons why. And he has done this on the only site where ENnies have active participation from voters and judges.

For his candor and honesty he has been called a troll, told to hold the discussion in private, told to just suck it up and deal with, and told to encourage those gamers who don't like the D20 system to get involved on a D20 board in order to express their opinion.

Has Rasyr's history on these and other boards been so bad that his opinion is tossed away like a copy of Synnibar?

Wow. So much for open minded discussion. You might want to shut down this thread before other publishers see it.

 

[HellHound]

He also stated that no matter what changes are made, ICE won't participate.

Thus, why should a lot of effort be given to this?

"I hate this system, change it now because I refuse to be involved if it remains the same or if it changes!"

Honestly, I keep reading a call for "clear and precise rules" for everything - when I know that in my experience providing a set of concise rules like that instead of goals and a statement of intent allows for people to twist those rules to get results the opposite of the intent.

In my opinion, intent is WAY more effective than clear and precise rules.

 

[CaptainChaos]

Honestly, I keep reading a call for "clear and precise rules" for everything - when I know that in my experience providing a set of concise rules like that instead of goals and a statement of intent allows for people to twist those rules to get results the opposite of the intent.

In my opinion, intent is WAY more effective than clear and precise rules.

I think it became a bigger issue after the Shackled City nominations. Many people seem to think those guidelines were used to make a poor judgment.

 

[Khairn]

He also stated that no matter what changes are made, ICE won't participate.

I think it was more that, with the way things are now, he couldn't see coming back. But if things changed he would be happy to take another look.

Those 2 things he was talking about were greater independance for ENnies outside of any system or site (something that has already begun) and a clearer understanding of the rules and procedures for judges.

Since the ENnies had already begun to "seperate" ... is all this discussion and hard feelings because he prefers to support an award system that has clearly defined rules??

 

[Morrus]

For his candor and honesty he has been called a troll,

He was, I agree.

told to hold the discussion in private,

I don't think he was.

told to just suck it up and deal with,

Again, I don't see that.

and told to encourage those gamers who don't like the D20 system to get involved on a D20 board in order to express their opinion.

And yet again... no he wasn't.

Has Rasyr's history on these and other boards been so bad that his opinion is tossed away like a copy of Synnibar?

No - it's that he was responded to, and just wouldn't accept the answers. My first response was, simply, "fair enough - sorry to hear it." That should have been it; agree to disagree; it's not like I'm who he needs to convince of anything. He decided to continue to argue - so people who disagreed with him argued back.

Open minded discussion, and all that. Nobody with policy-chaning power has posted in this thread. Nobody has been elected yet. We're just a bunch of posters at the moment.

Or were we not allowed to do anything but agree with him? An odd stance given your next comment:

Wow. So much for open minded discussion.

Unless "open minded discussion" in your mind means "Rasyr's point of view".

In addition, he continued to say stuff that just wasn't true, and that needed to be corrected.

Eh, this is just getting silly now.

The whole beauty of the ENnies is that they ARE transparent. Most things like this, you'd just get a canned coorporate response. Here, we do it publically. You know what people are thinking, planning, etc. And you know when we disagree, too.

All redundant anyway, because Denise and I aren't making the policy, we're merely organising things. The judges will make the policy once elected as they have every year. I'm sure potential judges are reading this, and maybe some of them will agree and build a platform based on that. Cool, innit?