INDIE RPG AWARDS 2003 (Year 2004): FEEDBACK?

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey all, this is one of two threads I'm creating on the subject of my awards.  The other thread (on Volunteering) is in the Connections forum.

After a long hiatus (the 2002 awards were actually given last April), and a loose plan to start this year's Awards registration in the Spring and declare winners in the Fall, I've come again to my little Indie RPG Awards. ( www.rpg-awards.com ). Feel free to go there and look through the FAQs, etc to see how things were done last year.

This thread is to make some suggestions for the awards.  In the end, I will be the Emporer giving the thumbs up or thumbs down, and once I decide on something it's pretty much set.  But I'm more than willing (and wanting) to hear new suggestions, new points of view, etc.

1: "INDIE RPG", for the purposes of the award, will be similar to but different than the Forge definition (Note: These aren't the Forge Awards, although many folks participating on them come from here). Here's this year's definition. Changed are Italicized:

* A game where the creator is the person who has written at least 50% of the actual game content.
* A game where the creator has full control of content and publishing.
* A game where the creator is the publisher: They alone are responsible for paying all the costs of printing, art, advertising, etc.
* A game where the creator of the game has full executive receipt and disbursement of profits.

In the above, team effort-made games are kosher, too. But you have to be able to point to one team member who has Final Say in the matter of Publishing, as well as who has written 50% or more of the content themselves.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

2: Prizes: Last year there were money prizes (Total was somewhere around $400). This year, however, I want to buy a house. So I'm not putting an emphasis on money prizes (it was thought of as an "advancement" for the author's future work). Instead, prizes will pretty much consist of a pat on the back and a pretty handmade postcard. I'd also like to work with some of the folks who Judge or Register for the awards, perhaps to get copies of their game (be it hardcopy or downloads) to give to winners of various categories. If others want to donate money to winners, bless 'em.

3: Processes: Length is going to be quite different than last year. I mean, no award will be able to impartially and fairly judge EVERY RPG work made in an entire year without putting all the voters away in a resort for a few weeks to test each and every one, but I'm going to go as close as I can to that. To that end,

* I'm starting the award registration process at the end of April or beginning of May. This gives more time for games that came out at the end of 2003 to make their rounds.
* The voting will take place in the early Fall. This gives the publishers more time to drum up support for their goods at the awards. It also gives us a little breathing room to find as many indie publishers as we possibly can and ask them to get involved.

4. No d20 or "OGL" Games: This was the hardest move for me. I do believe that games based on an existing system, especially d20, still qualify as "Indie", as long as it meets my criteria above.

However, you don't have to be the most acute person to see that there's a fucking derth of d20 stuff on the market. An endless slew of stuff that's just too numerous to track, order, or even comprehend.

There's two major reasons that I'm doing this. In face, these are the only two reasons for the move:
1) There's just too much fucking product for such a small awards committee to keep track of. Just. Too. Much. Stuff. Seriously. Keeping an "open" for d20 and OGL games, while saying "I want to try to get as many designers involved as possible", will be like trying to attach 15 linked freight train carts to the back of a small sports car. I simply don't have the time or resources to manage that.
2) Alone, the above still wouldn't have stopped me. However, as part of the Ennies Suite of Awards, there is an award created by Mike Mearls called the "Peer Awards". This "Peer Awards" is only open to d20 and OGL games, and does EXACTLY what I intended to do with my awards anyway. This was a great relief for me, as I can simply direct the creators of worth d20 material to the Ennie Peer Awards and know that they'll be on even ground there.

Again, I have no hates for the d20. The above two reasons alone are why I can't take d20 or OGL games.

Note: There are some generic game systems coming out recently that fit under the OGL that aren't d20: IIRC, "Action! System", among others (perhaps FUDGE under the new license management). Since no one has actually developed them into a game, though, the issue of "OGL games that aren't based on d20" is a moot point until next year.

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Aside from the above, I'm thinking of changing the rules for "RPG Zine", instead of just random voting, the Zine submits 1-2 articles that they think are representative for the quality of that publication: The votes are cast, and the winner will be the Zine, but we also congratulate the author of the article. There were some questions last year as to how many of the votes actually got out to read the zines- This way, one article from each zine will be emailed to the voters to read.  Just a thought.


So, any other suggestions or feedback?

[Mike Holmes]

What sort of feedback are you looking for, Andy? What you've got posted looks pretty tight. What sort of discussion needs to take place?

Mike

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey man- Well, I'm not sure that feedback IS needed. It may be a well-oiled, imperfect but acceptable machine.

But, as always, I want people who saw/participated (or didn't) in the awards from last year to have a chance to critique or make suggestions for this years' awards.

If no one has anything to say, that's totally cool.  But, as always, I'm gonna ask and make sure. Feedback helps me sharpen that saw.

-Andy

[daMoose_Neo]

I'm not participating and I may be a minority, but your 'indie' definition just feels a little...odd.
I mention myself being a minority because the company I'm working with, Neo Productions, consists of us three founding members. My cohorts are more interested in the programming field, where as I write gaming material (and thanks to this,we have some cross-projects; RPs based on our MMORPG or game based on Card/RPG.).
Under our own agreements, whatever money we see from a given project goes to take care of its own costs first, then organizational costs, and the remainder (for the time being) is put in a pool to help fund the other projects or expansion.
Two, while I write a lot of the material for all of our projects, what I do is a small chunck (aside from Twilight). Several isntances, some things we'll be putting out (even in the RP gaming area) are a pure collaboration- we can't point it out and say "He did this much".

The other two provide a good definition. I suppose a good definition, in my mind, is the Creator(s) have complete control of the development, marketing, publishing and funding. If you're looking at it from a corperate aspect (because Wizards does have just that over d20 and D&D), maybe have a restriction on the number of developers?
Or maybe I'm just reading into it differently~ Just some thoughts~

[Andy Kitkowski]

Thanks for the comments!

Unfortunately, many of these points are moot until we get participants who want in and have written/produced a project.  I can't count the number of times last year that I got the following comments?
SOMEONE: "What about a situation where X, Y and Z?"
ME: "Hmmm. I might be able to work something out. Who produced such a game?"
SOMEONE: "Oh, well, no game like that ACTUALLY EXISTS yet, but I was just seeing what would happen IF IT DID."
ME: "..."

In other words, as soon as someone points me to some project that came out last year, and says "Hey, X seems to almost fit your model, except for this slight wording problem here. They also seem to want to participate in your awards", then I'd be happy to rethink the model and see what I can do. But until then I have to stick to what actually came out.

In the end, what I want to do is tie the "brains" of the operation to the project itself: The visceral act of someone writing (designing, coding, etc) most or all of a product, making the design plan, publishing, etc. I want to reward the thinkers that get off their keysters, and get their hands dirty in the raw mess of stuff to forge a game.

So, say Designer X decides that he wants a Game to be Made.  Normally he gets in there in designs, writes, etc himself.  This time, he decides to hire a buddy to write the game, maybe another buddy to design the system.  When it's done, he takes the final product, sends it to the printers, and distributes it on RPGNow.  The game Came Into Being only because of the will of Designer X... but Designer X really didn't put anything into the actual hands-on creation of the game. I mean, it's great that there's a new interesting, fun game.  But Origins will award the efforts of Designer X and his Lead Writer.  I'm interested only in the designer who pours his own blood into the word processor.  I want to lick pages from my hard-copy of octaNe and taste the sweat of Jared's pen-hand*.

Hope that shows where I'm coming from.  And again, thanks for the feedback!  If someone has a product to show me from last year that falls half in-half out of my awards, and the designer is interested in being involved, I can always see what I can do.

-Andy

*Metaphorically, of course. :-)