Origins Awards' 2026 TTRPG Finalists

The Origins Awards, which is an award program which covers all manner of tabletop gaming, from board games, to war games, through to tabletop roleplaying games, is run by the Game Manufacturer's Association and presented at the annual Origins Game Fair--which this year runs from June 17-21.

Amongst the various categories, there are two for tabletop RPGs: Roleplaying Game of the Year and Roleplaying Supplement of the Year. The shortlist includes Daggerheart, Cosmere, Starfinder, and Warhammer, amongst others. These are the nominees in each of the roleplaying categories:

Roleplaying Game of the Year

• Age of Vikings (Chaosium
• CHEW: The Roleplaying Game (Imagining Games)
• Coriolis: The Great Dark (Free League)
• Cthulhu Bay (MS Edizioni and Ares Games)
• Daggerheart Core Set (Darrington Press)
• Land of Eem Deluxe Box Set (Exalted Funeral)
• Cosmere RPG Stormlight Starter Set (Brotherwise Games)
• Starfinder Second Edition (Paizo Publishing)
• The Bonsai Diary (Gene Koo)
• Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide (Cubicle 7)

Roleplaying Supplement of the Year

• Advent-ure Calendar 19: Kitty Clacks Christmas (Black Oak Workshop
• ALIEN RPG: Rapture Protocol (Free League)
• Call of Cthulhu: The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising (Chaosium)
• Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keeper’s Guide – (Chaosium)
• Full Art Dice Set: Porcelain (Q Workshop)
• Green Oaks (MS Edizioni and Ares Games)
• Pendragon: Gamemaster’s Handbook (Chaosium)
• The Field Guide to Floral Dragons: Explorer’s Box Set (Hit Point Press)
• The Vault of Mini Things (Tinkerhouse Games)
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: High Elf Player’s Guide (Cubicle 7)

The winners will be announced at Origins Game Fair in June.

 

[Zander]

View attachment 432176

The Origins Awards, which is an award program which covers all manner of tabletop gaming, from board games, to war games, through to tabletop roleplaying games, is run by the Game Manufacturer's Association and presented at the annual Origins Game Fair--which this year runs from June 17-21.

Amongst the various categories, there are two for tabletop RPGs: Roleplaying Game of the Year and Roleplaying Supplement of the Year. The shortlist includes Daggerheart, Cosmere, Starfinder, and Warhammer, amongst others. These are the nominees in each of the roleplaying categories:

Roleplaying Game of the Year

• Age of Vikings (Chaosium
• CHEW: The Roleplaying Game (Imagining Games)
• Coriolis: The Great Dark (Free League)
• Cthulhu Bay (MS Edizioni and Ares Games)
• Daggerheart Core Set (Darrington Press)
• Land of Eem Deluxe Box Set (Exalted Funeral)
• Cosmere RPG Stormlight Starter Set (Brotherwise Games)
• Starfinder Second Edition (Paizo Publishing)
• The Bonsai Diary (Gene Koo)
• Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide (Cubicle 7)

Roleplaying Supplement of the Year

• Advent-ure Calendar 19: Kitty Clacks Christmas (Black Oak Workshop
• ALIEN RPG: Rapture Protocol (Free League)
• Call of Cthulhu: The Sutra of Pale Leaves – Twin Suns Rising (Chaosium)
• Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keeper’s Guide – (Chaosium)
• Full Art Dice Set: Porcelain (Q Workshop)
• Green Oaks (MS Edizioni and Ares Games)
• Pendragon: Gamemaster’s Handbook (Chaosium)
• The Field Guide to Floral Dragons: Explorer’s Box Set (Hit Point Press)
• The Vault of Mini Things (Tinkerhouse Games)
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: High Elf Player’s Guide (Cubicle 7)

The winners will be announced at Origins Game Fair in June.

From a former Origins Award winner, let me wish all the current contestants the best of luck!

 

[Zaruthustran]

Lots of great stuff! Very happy to see Vault of Mini Things there. It deserves more attention.

Thanks, Mike. It's been a labor of love for sure and I'm proud of the outcome. No joke, the project started when my players went in an unexpected direction and I had to find my Sahuagin minis. I looked through my big Costco-sized bin of hundrers of prepainted plastic minis--which I'd even helpfully grouped in sandwich baggies--and just couldn't find them. After 15 minutes of rooting around I sighed and just put some d6s on the table. If I own a thing, but can't quickly access and use the thing when I need it, then what's the point of owning the thing? And devoting such a huge amount of space to storing it?

Thus: the Vault of Mini Things. Flat-pack standees with gorgeous front-and-back art hand-drawn by Marshall Short (of Printable Heroes fame). Over 800 of them, in all of D&D's wide varieties of diverse heroes and monsters and NPCs (and props and animals and familiars and persistent spells), sleeved and organized with color-coded divider tabs and alphanumeric codes on the bottom of each mini so you can quickly find (and put away) whatever it is you need. Large and Huge things, too: All colors of chromatic Dragons. Every type of giant. All the elementals. Golems. Even a purple worm. It's in the Vault.

Plus starter terrain for town, wilderness, and dungeon.

We made it for new players looking for a "one and done" tabletop solution, but really I think the person who'd appreciate it the most is the lifelong dungeon master. The person with a mishmash collection of prepainted plastics alongside hand-painted minis stretching from old Ral Partha and Grenadiers they slopped Testers paint onto when they were 10 years old to modern high-def models they expertly painted by airbrush and fine-point brush as an adult. All of that stuff is precious, but it takes up a ton of room and it's a pain in the ass to find and quickly deploy whatever it is you need at the moment. For such a gamer, the Vault presents a clean and consistent tabletop experience where everything fits in one board-game-sized box.

Still use hand-painted or Heroforged minis for your PCs, of course. It makes sense; player characters have more depth after all.

Anyway: glad to see folks are liking the Vault. Everyone at Tinkerhouse is grateful for the nomination and kind words, and looking forward to Origins.

 

[Giantrollorc]

Thanks, Mike. It's been a labor of love for sure and I'm proud of the outcome. No joke, the project started when my players went in an unexpected direction and I had to find my Sahuagin minis. I looked through my big Costco-sized bin of hundrers of prepainted plastic minis--which I'd even helpfully grouped in sandwich baggies--and just couldn't find them. After 15 minutes of rooting around I sighed and just put some d6s on the table. If I own a thing, but can't quickly access and use the thing when I need it, then what's the point of owning the thing? And devoting such a huge amount of space to storing it?

Thus: the Vault of Mini Things. Flat-pack standees with gorgeous front-and-back art hand-drawn by Marshall Short (of Printable Heroes fame). Over 800 of them, in all of D&D's wide varieties of diverse heroes and monsters and NPCs (and props and animals and familiars and persistent spells), sleeved and organized with color-coded divider tabs and alphanumeric codes on the bottom of each mini so you can quickly find (and put away) whatever it is you need. Large and Huge things, too: All colors of chromatic Dragons. Every type of giant. All the elementals. Golems. Even a purple worm. It's in the Vault.

Plus starter terrain for town, wilderness, and dungeon.

We made it for new players looking for a "one and done" tabletop solution, but really I think the person who'd appreciate it the most is the lifelong dungeon master. The person with a mishmash collection of prepainted plastics alongside hand-painted minis stretching from old Ral Partha and Grenadiers they slopped Testers paint onto when they were 10 years old to modern high-def models they expertly painted by airbrush and fine-point brush as an adult. All of that stuff is precious, but it takes up a ton of room and it's a pain in the ass to find and quickly deploy whatever it is you need at the moment. For such a gamer, the Vault presents a clean and consistent tabletop experience where everything fits in one board-game-sized box.

Still use hand-painted or Heroforged minis for your PCs, of course. It makes sense; player characters have more depth after all.

Anyway: glad to see folks are liking the Vault. Everyone at Tinkerhouse is grateful for the nomination and kind words, and looking forward to Origins.

As a forever GM with a ton of mini's and Dwarven Forge terrain, your product was an insta-purchase for me. Such excellent products!! Everything is so useful with all of my other miniatures and terrain.
Thank you for making all of it!!

 

[Planescape]

It is for the previous year...?

The previous HALF year, seemingly

 

[Parmandur]

The previous HALF year, seemingly

These are the awards for stuff that came out in 2025...? Not the first half of 2026...?

 

[Sticky Doodler]

I don’t know, Draw Steel, 13th Age 2e, and Nimble 2e all feel more ‘industry’ to me than at least The Bonsai Diary, a product you can buy on itch.io for $5. In fact that to me pretty much is the definition of hobbyist

Hi, designer of The Bonsai Diary here (which I've put on sale for $2.50 on itch, or grab an ashcan free if you really can't afford it).
It was an incredible surprise to me to be nominated nevermind make it to the finals -- they actually notified Indie Press Revolution, my distributor, because GAMA doesn't even know who I am. So I thought I was being punk'd until it was finally announced, a day late (I'm told they decided to have a fight over their bylaws instead of making the announcement).
It seems every year there's 1-2 indie sacrifices finalists. I think I have the same chance of winning this thing as a high school play of getting a Tony®.
That said, I hope people will at least check out the Bonsai Diary because it's about 180 degrees opposite D&D and Daggerheart. It's a draw-and-journal game where you take care of a small tree over multiple generations; players call it "contemplative" and relaxing. It sounds really out there, but journaling games are having a moment -- Paul Czege, an actual winner of the Origins Award, is really into them right now.
If you do check it out, please go to your friendly local game store, IPR, or Tabletop Bookshelf. I do a lot of work in the DC-MD-VA area to promote local game stores working with local designers and really believe in local game communities.
Happy to share anything else I know, which is very little!

 

[Sticky Doodler]

These are the awards for stuff that came out in 2025...? Not the first half of 2026...?

Here's their criteria and nomination / selection process:

Origins Award Nominations — The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design

www.originsawards.net

As a Finalist, I had to send over 5 copies of the game, presumably for the finalist judges to laugh at peruse in a dark, smoky room.

 

[Parmandur]

Here's their criteria and nomination / selection process:

Origins Award Nominations — The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design

www.originsawards.net

As a Finalist, I had to send over 5 copies of the game, presumably for the finalist judges to laugh at peruse in a dark, smoky room.

Thanks!

"Products must be available for purchase to consumers through retail channels (not crowdfunding fulfillment) between January 1, 2025, AND December 15, 2025."

That could explain some exclusions.

 

[mamba]

Hi, designer of The Bonsai Diary here (which I've put on sale for $2.50 on itch, or grab an ashcan free if you really can't afford it).
It was an incredible surprise to me to be nominated nevermind make it to the finals -- they actually notified Indie Press Revolution, my distributor, because GAMA doesn't even know who I am. So I thought I was being punk'd until it was finally announced, a day late (I'm told they decided to have a fight over their bylaws instead of making the announcement).
It seems every year there's 1-2 indie sacrifices finalists. I think I have the same chance of winning this thing as a high school play of getting a Tony®.

well, congratulations either way, they could have picked from hundreds of similar products (category wise) and chose this one. Chance of winning or not, getting nominated means something too

 

[Sticky Doodler]

well, congratulations either way, they could have picked from hundreds of similar products (category wise) and chose this one. Chance of winning or not, getting nominated means something too

I appreciate it -- it truly is an honor, and way beyond my expectations. It's literally the first thing I ever dropped on Itch (plus a few years of playtesting and iteration, and much coaching from other designers on layout and such). I even shot a video response -- I'll spare you watching it by pasting the transcript:

... Role-playing games have always been about inviting players to co-create with us, imagining worlds, imagining characters, imagining stories. What's really exciting to me about journaling games is we're inviting people to have much more intimate and personal stories -- whether it's about somebody who may have passed or meditating on your own mortality or in the case of my game thinking about the legacy that you leave for others. People are wondering what happens to tabletop games in an AI future. And I think these journaling games are part of the answer. Quirky, intimate experiences curated by human artists. So, thank you GAMA and the Origins Award folks for seeing the Bonsai Diary, for seeing the journaling games movement, and for seeing the solo and small press creators who are pushing innovation in our beloved hobby.