Origins Awards 2010 Nominations - Discuss!

[Jolly_Blackburn]

Yeah, this is what I'm thinking too.

However, as a consumer, I must admit that the Origin awards really haven't been relevent to me, well, ever.

I have to say I've always found the winners to be worthy of the title. They may not always be the very BEST of their category but they are at the very least among the best for that year.

Like all awards that recognize excellence opinions vary and the process is never perfect. But I think the Origins Award overall do a very good job recognizing excellence in our hobby.

 

[Jolly_Blackburn]

Here is a link to the actual ballot that was handed to retailers at GTS.

http://paultevis.com/storage/Ballot GTS 2010.pdf

Thanks for the link Steve.

BTW there was a rumor that 'retailers' were the jurors this year.

That doesn't quite ring true to me. Was that the case or were the awards handled as they were in the past?

Just curious.

 

[Ghostwind]

Thanks for the link Steve.

BTW there was a rumor that 'retailers' were the jurors this year.

That doesn't quite ring true to me. Was that the case or were the awards handled as they were in the past?

Just curious.

Just a rumor, Jolly. I served on the RPG jury this year along with other industry vets. Everything was handled just as they were last year.

 

[DaveMage]

That's what I used to think, but I have to say you're missing out on some really great gems if you ignore the awards. Doctor Who, FantasyCraft, and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies are all really great rpgs.

Psion has been raving about Fantasy Craft. I suppose I should check it out one of these days....

I have to say I've always found the winners to be worthy of the title. They may not always be the very BEST of their category but they are at the very least among the best for that year.

Like all awards that recognize excellence opinions vary and the process is never perfect. But I think the Origins Award overall do a very good job recognizing excellence in our hobby.

I think my issue is old bias. There were a number of years that my favorites were either ignored completely or nominated but lost to what I viewed as a lesser product.

 

[Ghostwind]

Psion has been raving about Fantasy Craft. I suppose I should check it out one of these days....

It was my #2 pick on the nominations with Doctor Who taking the #1 slot.


If Fantasy Flight had chosen to submit Warhammer 3e, I have no doubt it would have wound up in the top 5 and be among the nominees. We jurors were disappointed not to see it.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Psion has been raving about Fantasy Craft. I suppose I should check it out one of these days....

I love it. I keep finding interesting bits with each time I look through it. It is a very thoroughly well thought through rule system. A variant of D20, clearly, it has come it to its own.

 

[JLowder]

There are all kinds of byzantine industry and personal politics that play into what companies participate in the Origins Awards. Some publishers have gotten annoyed at rules changes over the years--usually the ones having to do with how much control publishers have over submissions or the vote process--and so they refuse to submit anything. Others have issues with GAMA or the Origins convention, so they boycott. Some get offended when a beloved product loses in a particular year, so they no longer send anything in. (Since the ENnies have, essentially, the same submission process as the OAs, they will eventually run into many of the same problems; the Origins Awards have just had 26 more years to build up resentments.) And if you want a sense of how pervasive this gamesmanship is between some companies and GAMA, type in www.originsconvention.com and see where you land...

In any case, I'm happy to see The Best of All Flesh, which I edited, make the final ballot. It has received very good reviews so far; I hope the nomination will prompt a few more people to give the book a look.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder

 

[MerricB]

A few notes from someone who has played some of these games...

Board Game
Castle Panic - Fireside Games
Endeavor - Z-Man Games
Small World - Days of Wonder
Space Hulk - Games Workshop
Steam - Mayfair Games

Incredibly - or perhaps not so incredibly, given my current state - I've played all of the boardgames on this list. Castle Panic is the least of them by a fair way. It's okay (perhaps) for young children, but not much more than that.

Interestingly, three of these games are rereleases or rethemes: Small World was originally published as Vinci, but the job Days of Wonder has done with it is astonishing. It'd be a worthy winner. Steam is a redone Age of Steam and has a fair bit of controversy about it, due to the ongoing legal issues between Martin Wallace and Winsome Games. It's a very impressive game, though. Space Hulk is now very old-school, but the components are brilliant and the game is still solid.

Endeavour is a nice eurogame with a lot of good gameplay; it also has a superb box; the components are good but on a level below those of Small World and Space Hulk.

Honestly, of the remaining four games, I can't really guess which would win.

Roleplaying Game
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space – Cubicle 7 Entertainment
Eclipse Phase – Catalyst Game Labs
FantasyCraft – Crafty Games
A Song of Ice And Fire – Green Ronin Publishing
Supernatural Roleplaying Game – Margaret Weis Productions

The only one of these I've even looked at is Doctor Who. It needs to win.


Miniatures Rules
BattleTech: Strategic Operations – Catalyst Game Labs
HAVOC: Tactical Miniatures Warfare – Voodoo Ink Publishing
Larger Than Life – Two Hour Wargames
Warhammer 40K: Planetstrike – Games Workshop
Warmachine Prime Mk II – Privateer Press

Warmachine has been getting a lot of very enthusiastic fans at my FLGS; although I'm unlikely to investigate it due to my love of BattleTech, it's done some very, very good things.

Game-Related Book
BattleTech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction – Catalyst Game Labs
The Best of All Flesh – Elder Signs Press
Cthulhu 101 – Atomic Overmind Press
Deluge – Pinacle Entertainment Group
Legend of the Five Rings: Death at Koten – Alderac Entertainment Group

That BattleTech books is very, very nice. I hope it wins.

Historical Board Game or Expansion
The Hell of Stalingrad – Clash of Arms Games
Richard III: War of the Roses – Columbia Games
Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel – Academy Games
D-Day at Omaha Beach – Decision Games
Unhappy King Charles – GMT Games

The only game here I don't know anything about is The Hell of Stalingrad. (Research says it's made by a small game publisher, has excellent reports of the game play, less so of the components).

Richard III is the latest in Columbia Games' set of block games; if you've played Hammer of the Scots, Richard III is similar in tone: good fun, not especially groundbreaking.

The same could be said of Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel, the follow-up to the previous year's Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. It doesn't quite work for me, but it has gorgeous components and good game play.

D-Day at Omaha Beach is unusual: a solo wargame (two players can play it, both taking the same side - that of the invading forces). Nice concept, and good game play.

Unhappy King Charles is the latest in a range of Card-Driven Games from GMT Games. It's another excellent game that is sitting on my shelf demanding to be played. (Unfortunately, there are several wargames sitting next to it *also* demanding to be played).

Once again, very hard to decide between these ones; I'd be happy to see any one of them win it.

Cheers!

 

[jaerdaph]

Yep. They elected not to participate this year.

Apparently, not everyone in the industry knows that:

In the Mind of a Mad Man!!!: 36th Annual Origins Awards - Rigged against big companies?

 

[Erik Mona]

I can't speak for the other companies (not) involved, but I'm willing to bet that their reasoning is similar to ours.

1) The awards have historically been brazenly political, mired by corruption, and result in no noticeable lift in sales.

2) Attendance and sales at the Origins convention have been decreasing annually for years, especially for RPG companies. I hear that folks like Mayfair make a killing selling board games there, but we just kept getting killed over and over and over again.

3) A couple of years ago, GAMA held the Origins Awards in the hallway outside the exhibit hall. Awards were handed out by fat stormtroopers and someone's poor bellydancer-dressed daughter. It was absolutely pitiful, and utterly destroyed my faith in the awards.

These days Origins is more of a regional convention than the national show it once was. Instead of attending, we're taking the (considerable) money it took to get our booth and staff there and funneling it into our own local convention, Paizo Con, which looks like it will double in size this year from its launch in 2009.

I have an Origins Award, and I'm really glad to have received it. I really do hope that things improve and the show regains its position as a must-attend event for publishers. But the fact is the show doesn't have the value it used to have for RPG publishers, so fewer and fewer publishers are making it a part of their overall efforts.

I hope that this year and the ones that follow convince me that the show is worth attending and that the awards are worth supporting again, but it's going to be an uphill battle to convince me that that is the case.

--Erik