Nominations are up!!

[Numion]

Type of products by content: Best Adventure | Best Supplement | Best Campaign/Campaign Supplement | Best Adversary/Monster Product

(this is a main category): This is not a best actor, best actress situation, in my opinion. It's a Best Picture, Best Animated Picture (short) Best Animated (long), Best Animated (feature) analogy.

Gaming products aren't as limited in content and format as movies are. Why would we want to ape the Oscars? IMO the analogy doesn't work completely.

Whoop-de-doo if this causes someone to 'miss' a nomination. Not every product is 'entitled' to be nominated (in fact no product is entitled to anything.) If SC works better as a campaign setting than most other products, I think it should get the nomination. If, on top of that, it's a better adventure (path) than most others, it should be nominated as such too.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

Anyone who has yet to read Critical Miss's "Actual Play" column about Cyborg Commando should get over there and read it right now.

I laughed hard

Here is the direct link:

http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue3/worst1.html

Thank you! I'd say I'm very proud; except that I'm not sure one should be proud of roleplaying that bad.

 

[Orcus]

I agree with Steel Wind.

My main gripe about SCAP being in the Best Campaign/Setting Supplement is that it will most likely win and that means our Wilderlands Boxed Set--which in my view is 100% campaign setting unlike SCAP's 15%--wont win.

People will vote for SCAP in any category it is nominated in. Period. Even if it doesnt represent the best of that category.

I understand why SCAP was "nominated" but that doesnt mean it should win the category. IMHO (and I concede clear bias ) Wilderlands Boxed Set is absolutely what Best Campaign Setting Supplement is all about and is the clear winner in that group. Or should be.

I agree that categories need better definition. By the same logic that SCAP goes in that category, then you should put WLD there. And that seems silly.

My hope is that this community is a discriminating community. And that it will say "yes, SCAP is an adventure and it is the best. It wins for that. And it will say yes, SCAP may be the best overall product out this year. It wins for that. But when I really ask: is it the BEST campaign setting, the answer is no. I understand why it was nominated, but the answer is no. Wilderlands Boxed Set is the best campaign setting."

So prove me wrong. Vote for Wilderlands for Campaign Setting.

I am only half joking, by the way. I have mostly resigned myself that Wilderlands will get lost behind SCAP. Because SCAP is a great product. Heck, I am actually running an SCAP campaign right now myself (because I have used the Wilderlands for years and years and years). And I certainly fear that people will simply vote for it no matter what category it is in and no matter whether it is the best fit to win that particular category. You can defend SCAP's nomination, but at least as I define the category, I dont know that it makes sense for it to win that category.

But that is the beauty of the ENNies. It doesnt matter what I think. It matters what the voters think. And they will definately tell us. So I guess instead of posting here I should start my own "Let SCAP Win Everything Else, But Vote Wilderlands for Best Campaign Supplement!" thread.



By the way, many thanks to the judges for their hard work and Dextra and Co for another great round of nominations. It is truly an honor to be nominated so many times. It is really great to be in the company of so many other cool products. We publishers are all a bit competitive and all really passionate about our products and so we all want the best shot at recognition for our products (and having SCAP in the category against your personal favorite definately bites ). But that shouldnt cloud the fact that there really are a great, great set of products in the running this year and we should all step back and soak in the coolness of all these products.

Clark

PS: If not already obvious, I am clearly biased in favor of the Wilderlands.

 

[Orcus]

Wow, did I really just use that many smiley faces?

Sorry about that.

Clark

 

[Numion]

I agree with Steel Wind.

My main gripe about SCAP being in the Best Campaign/Setting Supplement is that it will most likely win and that means our Wilderlands Boxed Set--which in my view is 100% campaign setting unlike SCAP's 15%--wont win.

Maybe they should have a lower limit on word count for something to be considered a campaign setting. Percentages aren't that useful. And, SCAP does include campaign world information in the adventures too. Similarly to Enemy Within campaign for WFRP 1E - probably the first campaign setting and adventure in same covers.

People will vote for SCAP in any category it is nominated in. Period. Even if it doesnt represent the best of that category.

Is your gripe with people voting 'wrong'? :\

 

[Turjan]

Is your gripe with people voting 'wrong'? :\

I suppose it's just the realization that people will vote for what they know . SCAP is simply the product with the widest name recognition in most of the categories where it is nominated.

Edit: It's telling, btw, that only SCAP is considered competition .

 

[Numion]

I suppose it's just the realization that people will vote for what they know . SCAP is simply the product with the widest name recognition in most of the categories where it is nominated.

I still think it would be a strange argument to deny one product competing in a category because "That's what people will vote".

Besides, I wouldn't be sure about SC winning. A lot of people have a grudge against WotC, and that is bound to carry over to Paizo.

 

[Turjan]

I still think it would be a strange argument to deny one product competing in a category because "That's what people will vote".

Besides, I wouldn't be sure about SC winning. A lot of people have a grudge against WotC, and that is bound to carry over to Paizo.

I suppose that the number of WotC fans is substantially higher than the number of those people with a grudge against them. But, of course, posts like Clark's would be more frequent if WotC themselves had actually submitted product to the ENnies .

There are a few things in the world where you cannot really change much about. Most people will vote without knowing all candidates; that's a given, I suppose, and I will be no exception. This makes the prediction of likely winners a bit easier. From my side, this is no complaint. It's just a little bit of regret, but in the full knowledge that there is no better way. That's life.

 

[woodelf]

[i had a longer, more in-depth post here, but my webbrowser crashed, so the 2nd time around it's a bit briefer.]

I think the real issue is that this attempt at constructive change is being spearheaded by a major stakeholder in the awards - the companies themselves. You can't just ignore your stakeholders when you run something.

Actually, the only people who should really have a say in the awards are the fans & consumers. The publishers most definitely should not be making any of the decisions. It's precisely those being judged also deciding how the judging should occur that has ruined many other awards, both RPG and otherwise. And by 'ruined', i mean making them irrelevant to the people they're supposed to be informing: the fans/consumers.

So, yes, you *can* just ignore the companies. It's the companies who can't just ignore the awards (or, at least, that's the way it should be). The communication path sholud be the consumers/fans telling the awards ceremony how to do things, and then the awards criteria influencing how the publishers behave. It's perfectly acceptable for the publishers to tailor their products to the awards--in fact, if the awards are doing their job (reflecting fan/consumer priorities), it's a very good thing--but the awards should not be tailoring their criteria to the publisher's demands/desires.

Now, that's in a perfect world. In the actual RPG world, the line between consumer and publisher is mighty slim, and plenty of people outright obliterate that line. So what that means is we just need to consider the motives and impact of criticisms/suggestions, since simply considering the source won't be sufficient. IOW, while my comments as a publisher should be ignored, or at least given minimal weight, my comments as a consumer should be taken seriously. And i'll do my best to be honest in differentiating between the two, and the awards people have to exercise some judgement in determining if i've succeeded. And i think we can trust most other publishers/creators in this industry to do the same--as evidenced by several comments in this thread, already.

 

[woodelf]

I suppose that the number of WotC fans is substantially higher than the number of those people with a grudge against them. But, of course, posts like Clark's would be more frequent if WotC themselves had actually submitted product to the ENnies .

I'm not convinced of that. At least, if people are really nominating and voting based on what they perceive as the best quality. Off the top of my head, i can't think of any 'best' products out of WotC in the last year. 'Good'? Yes, lots. 'Great'? a few. But nothing that just blows me away, or is clearly best-in-class. Now, given that the ENnies, from this stage forward (that is, after the nominations) is basically a popularity contest, i suspect any WotC products that got through the nominations process would win disproportionately. But i'm not sure all that many would have gotten nominated--certainly, if i were one of the judges, none of them would've [by me]. Not that i think my tastes are automatically representative.

There are a few things in the world where you cannot really change much about. Most people will vote without knowing all candidates; that's a given, I suppose, and I will be no exception. This makes the prediction of likely winners a bit easier. From my side, this is no complaint. It's just a little bit of regret, but in the full knowledge that there is no better way. That's life.

There is a better way. IMHO, the same thing applies to the ENnies that i've been espousing for the Origins Awards for around 3 years now: popular voting for the nominations, judge voting for the winners (i.e., the exact opposite of the current ENnies procedure). Popular voting to get things on the ballot assures that obscure games don't get missed--they all have *some* fans, *somewhere*. Empaneled judges determining the winners assures that it isn't just a popularity contest--if we want to know what's the most popular, we already know, more or less--it's the thing that sold the most. But if we want to know what's best, we need a process that tries to weed out the influence of popularity. And, it seems to me, the whole point of awards is precisely to do this--to measure something *other* than popularity.

Now, just to be clear, i'm not wholly upset with the current process. The fact that a select group of judges decides the nominations is almost as good as doing it the other way 'round, IMHO. It still means that the winner will be the most popular, vice the best, of the nominated products, but at least we know all of the nominees will be the best of their class, even if the voting won't necessarily rank them accurately within that best-ness. All of this speaking in the ideal case, of course--i'm speaking to what happens if the model works optimally, which may or may not happen in the real world.

Also, in the interest of clarity, i'm not saying that best and most popular are mutually exclusive. Rather, it's just that neither are they necessarily identical. The most-popular product *can be* the best, but you can't count on it.