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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dextra" data-source="post: 3637945" data-attributes="member: 5705">I voted yes.I'd like to submit that in 2002, the ENnies were still basically a d20 Award.  Over the years, they've moved further away from being d20 or D&D awards and are now simply RPG Awards.The judges are selected from online gamers, not just from EN World.  Even then, EN World is not exclusively d20.  The judges may have played d20, but are not necessarily primarily d20 players.  They are familiar with and are fans of many different systems.  Those voting for the judges are online gamers, not just from EN World.So the first hurdle WotC would have to surmount would be getting nominated.  I'm not making assumptions on the quality of their future product.  I'm willing to bet that they should be able to turn out some tremendous work.  That's the great thing about having a good budget- being able to afford great talent.  And I suspect one of the reasons they have the money is that they sold lots of product.  And the reason that lots of product was sold probably has a lot to do with it being good stuff.  I don't really see how punishing the big gaming company who helped resussitate RPGing, brought RPG books into mainstream bookstores and is enjoying some success is really helpful.  We all know that the ENnies, once it comes down to the fan vote, are a popularity contest.  But to say that larger companies shouldn't compete because they have a larger market share and thus an advantage (and no, it's not an unfair advantage- they earned it) seems wrong to me.  Should we say that Paizo with its huge circulation shouldn't be allowed to compete in this year's awards because it isn't fair to "smaller" publishers?  Chances are, if WotC gets nominated in a category, it'll probably win so long as they drive the voters to the polls.  In which case, I thank in advance the marketing machine of Hasbro for the additional traffic and visibility of the ENnies!  But even then it's not a locked victory: with the new counting methods in place, even then "encumbents" aren't guaranteed victory.I'm not concerned about the legitimacy of the awards based on which company or companies participate.  We've already got legitimacy through a lot of hard work and support from a variety of publishers over the years.  I'm also not about to start changing the rules to prevent a company from entering.  We've never discriminated or promoted based on size of company or release, and I'm proud of it.  Quite frankly, I've felt sorry for the Wizards employees and freelancers who did so much work, not getting a shot at recognition from the fans because they couldn't enter.  And I love Scott's comment about how if WotC did get beaten it could stir greater effort on their team.  Maybe I've got a unique perspective, having been the only product to beat WotC in a -however "minor" some may call it  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> -category.  But it really does feel good to compete (and win) against the big boys.  Victory is so much the sweeter when the competition is made of truly opponents.But finally, I love that people care so much about the Awards that they'll get fired up about them.  We may not see eye to eye on some issues, but I respect the passion that you all feel on the subject.</blockquote>

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