Hey all,

I've just been going through the list of submissions for this year's Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the ENnies), and am noticing a distinct lack of Forge participation.  Maybe we were spoiled last year with Capes and Burning Wheel, I don't know, but it seems that the 2nd and 3rd tier publishers are really dominating in submissions. 

I PM'ed Ron here for suggestions, so now I'm coming to you.  The deadline for entering submissions is June 3rd, so it's not too late to send in your stuff.  So long as it was published between June 1st 2005 and April 30th 2006, an RPG (or aid/accessory, or fan site) can be submitted.

So why haven't you entered?  What can we do to make it more appealing?  Maybe Luke and Tony can pipe in and share some of their experiences with the process...

(For a list of publishers who have entered thus far, check out http://www.dreadgazebo.com/ennies06)

Where can you see the list of publishers who entered, I could not locate it.

On another tidbit, it's unclear from the archives who won what, considering the names without a medal next to them, and the fact the medal location switches every so often..

Hi, Denise.

The main reason that I have not entered any contests (I didn't enter the origins, either) is because the cost of providing books for judging is prohibitively expensive for me.  I hope that helps answer your question.

yrs--
--Ben

Yeah, Luke and Tony, tell me more.  I'm really proud of my beautiful little game, but here's what I see:

Giving the judges free copies is a $120 entry fee for me to a contest that, last year, saw pretty much every winner being a big D20 or D20 variant company.  Unless I saw the wrong list - again, explain to me why I should take part. 

It's nice to be nominated, but don't expect to win. It's a pure popularity contest.

As for "prohibitively expensive" awards, thinking about direct cost for these things is self-defeating. You must consider the potential benefit. If you think your participation in an awards ceremony is going to sell at least the equivalent cost of participation, then it's worth it. Those sales are often to a whole new audience who would not have otherwise found your game.

I have no clue if my participation in the ENnies helped my sales directly, but I do know that BW is selling better than ever. So it definitely didn't cost me anything in the long run.

-L

Denise wrote: So why haven't you entered?

The previous post brings up a clarification I'd like from Denise. For electronic products, is the fee $5 per -title-, of which you have to submit 6 CD's ($5 total), or $5 per -CD-, regardless of the number of titles on it, a total again of 6 CD's (but $30 total). It's unclear from the reading of the form.

Greg Porter
BTRC

Thunder_God wrote:
Where can you see the list of publishers who entered, I could not locate it.

On another tidbit, it's unclear from the archives who won what, considering the names without a medal next to them, and the fact the medal location switches every so often..

Ben wrote:
Hi, Denise.

The main reason that I have not entered any contests (I didn't enter the origins, either) is because the cost of providing books for judging is prohibitively expensive for me.  I hope that helps answer your question.

yrs--
--Ben

Alrighty, to try and clarify (sorry about the confusion)...

-If you ship your product to the individual judges, there is no entry/S&H fee. 

-If you ship all of your product to the submissions coordinator, then you pay a $5/title entry/S&H fee.  If you are submitting multiple titles on a single CD, you still need to ship 6 copies of that CD to the submissions coordinator, but only need to pay $5.  If you send a bunch of PDFs on one CD, and a soundtrack on another, then you would need to pay $10.  Does that help?  Clear as mud now?

btrc wrote:
The previous post brings up a clarification I'd like from Denise. For electronic products, is the fee $5 per -title-, of which you have to submit 6 CD's ($5 total), or $5 per -CD-, regardless of the number of titles on it, a total again of 6 CD's (but $30 total). It's unclear from the reading of the form.

Greg Porter
BTRC

I'm going to speak here not only as the Business Manager, but as a former winner of an ENnie to try and answer why anyone -particularly small press- should enter. 

A few years back, a book I produced was nominated and was the only entry that year to beat Wizards of the Coast in a category in which they were nominated.  It was a wonderful feeling to know that my beautiful little book took on the big boys and won.

You see d20 winners last year, and I grant you, there are a lot- 25 out of 36 of the prizes went to d20 publishers or 20-variants.  But when you consider the D&D d20 market share is around 70%, it's hardly surprising. 

Once we open the voting booth, it can become a popularity contest.  People vote for what they know.  I publicize the voting booth opening here, on Gaming Report and on RPG.NET and encourage publishers to drive their fans to the booth.  Larger companies will have an advantage because of their deeper market penetration, but smaller companies with a rabid fanbase can rock the vote.

Years ago EN World was primarily d20, but has expanded over past years.  You'd be a fool to think that the gamers over there only play a single system.  Our judges this year have a great amount of experience in a variety of systems.  Heck, one has an openly-stated hate-on for all things d20. 

When you look at the nominations, you get a different picture.  Out of 75 nominees last year, 33 were not d20.  That's pretty darned respectable.

It's a tough call as a small press publisher.  If you factor in the cost of producing those 6 books plus shipping, it can be daunting.  But it's also a great way to get exposure for your product that you'll probably never see without considerably greater outlay.  We're listing all the publishers participating on the links page, which exposes your name to a large audience.  A nomination is worth even more.  Heck, I had dozens of people stopping by the ENnies booth to pick up the list of nominees to use as a shopping list.  I had Tony do  PODCast interview (and also seated him next to the Atlast Games krewe so he could impress some friends).  Thousands od people stopped by the booth to check out the nominated products, and it was always the smaller press guys who got the most comments.

I don't want to give you a big song and dance about using the ENnies as a marketing tool though, because I don't like to think of them that way.  In my heart, they are a chance to have your hard work recognized.  It's a party of geeks hanging out together and sharing jokes and drinks, and some of them get to go home with trophies or medals.

Jason wrote:
Yeah, Luke and Tony, tell me more.  I'm really proud of my beautiful little game, but here's what I see:

Giving the judges free copies is a $120 entry fee for me to a contest that, last year, saw pretty much every winner being a big D20 or D20 variant company.  Unless I saw the wrong list - again, explain to me why I should take part. 

Once again, thanks everyone for piping in.  I'll do my best to answer your questions!

I think I already answered the electronic product question, but there's no harm in repeating meself, right?
-No entry fee if you send everything to the judges directly.  As a matter of fact, considering the late date, it might be a good idea to ship the stuff directly to the judges.  This is the same with electronic as well as print or other products. 
-$5 for a CD of product otherwise, no matter how many titles you have on each CD.  In other words, if you put your entire catalogue on a compilation CD for submission, you send $5.  You send in 6 copies of said CD, but only pay $5.  This helps defray our shipping and handling costs (we are a fan award afterall!)

As for sending differing versions of the CD for the archival/display copy vs. judges' copy, I wouldn't.  First of all, the judges should be evaluating the product that is available to the public.  If you send out CDs without lables on a regular basis with just the title written in marker, than by all means, send such a beast along.  But judges consider all aspects of the product, and you'd be amazed at how a nice cover in a jewel case can make an impression.

As an electronic publisher meself, I understand and respect your concerns about protecting your product, but you just have to treat the copies as review copies, or copies that went out to customers, and trust in our professionalism.  Last year we had an auction of our library of electronic products on the CDs.  No copies were made.  You'll never see those copies on a file server.

BTW, I actually mentionned the opening of the submission period in this very forum in February, actually. Sorry you missed it!

greyorm wrote:

Denise wrote: So why haven't you entered?

Hi Denise,

I am concerned about two things:

The exact instructions on submitting electronic product(s) for consideration. Is it the same as submitting a single print product (regardless of the number of titles on the CD), or does it cost $5 per CD to enter whether or not you send it to the judges directly? Can I label the archival and display copy differently than the ones I send to the judges? (Say label the former with a nice CD label, and the latter just with a permanent marker?)

The phrase "The Judges reserve the right to dispose of all products entered (upon completion of the judging) as they deem appropriate" which, given that it is an electronic product, makes me cringe. It does so because "I'll give this away to friends and family" is a kind of disposal, and with an electronic product, one that is potentially endless. (I realize that may seem a bit anal or suspiscious of me, but I've learned that when it comes to rights, legalities and business, you don't even trust your own parents -- not because you don't trust them, but because it is business.)

Finally, I wish I had known about this sooner -- I do not read or hang out at ENWorld anymore, so stuff like this just blows right by me sight unseen. Thus, unfortunately and depending on the costs, I don't know if I have $30+ spare dollars right now to blow on submission (at least not before the deadline). There's not a great deal that can be done about that on your end, however.

I'd also like to hear from any other small press folks who have submitted to the ENnies and NOT won or who don't have a huge following or tons of discussion of their product (such as Luke with Burning Wheel): was it worth it? Did it increase interest/help sales?

Thanks for answering my questions, Luke and Denise.  I appreciate it. 

Thanks for the answers on the electronic/CD costs, Denise!

Denise wrote: As for sending differing versions of the CD for the archival/display copy vs. judges' copy, I wouldn't.  First of all, the judges should be evaluating the product that is available to the public.  If you send out CDs without labels on a regular basis with just the title written in marker, than by all means, send such a beast along.  But judges consider all aspects of the product, and you'd be amazed at how a nice cover in a jewel case can make an impression.

As an electronic publisher meself, I understand and respect your concerns about protecting your product, but you just have to treat the copies as review copies, or copies that went out to customers, and trust in our professionalism.

I'm mildly curious as to the nature of a contest wherein one nominates one's self.  This always seems slightly bizarre to me.  This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only contest where this occurs, and I don't mean to single this one out, it just happens to be handy and the coordinator is obviously here so I can ask the quick question of "huh?".

Are the reasons simply to save the effort of wading through piles of, err, crap, and make certain that each applicant (through the restriction of 6 gratis copies) is serious, or is it something else? 

Dav

I don't consider this a self-nominated contest, actually, though I can see from whence you are coming. 

Submissions get sent in to a panel of judges, the judges sift through them, then nominate five products.  What the publishers are doing is making sure that the judges are exposed to their product.  It'd be too much of a financial burden and logistical nightmare to expect five judges to be familiar with every single RPG product released in the year, so we ask the publishers to send in copies of their stuff for evaluation.

On the subject of nominations, I just thought I'd also give everyone the head's up that June 26th to July 9th I'll be soliciting nominations for Best Publisher.  We'll announce the judges' nominations at the same time as the Fan's Choice nominations results on July10th.  Voting begins July 17th and ends July 30th.

Dav wrote:
I'm mildly curious as to the nature of a contest wherein one nominates one's self.  This always seems slightly bizarre to me.  This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only contest where this occurs, and I don't mean to single this one out, it just happens to be handy and the coordinator is obviously here so I can ask the quick question of "huh?".

Are the reasons simply to save the effort of wading through piles of, err, crap, and make certain that each applicant (through the restriction of 6 gratis copies) is serious, or is it something else? 

Dav

This raises the question regarding unsent games.

I don't remember if it was with Origins or Ennies last year, but considering no one nominated some of the deeper penetration games that weren't copy-sent to the judges... I mean, you say one thing and do another?

So, if the reviewers are familiar with the games, they should be able to vote for them, even if I send no copies, correct?

First of all, you're making the assumption that all five judges are familiar with every single game released the entire year.  If one judge doesn't follow anything d20, he would miss out on the deepest penetrating materials.  As would the judge who can't stand dark future products or comic book hero products.  It is simply unreasonable and unfeasible to expect five individuals from varying backgrounds from around the world to own all the products necessary to make an informed decision.

Secondly, the product sent in by the publishers is the ballast that keeps the ENnies afloat.  As a consolation prize of having to read through hundreds of books (and evaluate other products) over the year- with a big crunchtime in June, the judges get free product.  These guys often take time off work and neglect their families and (gasp!) personal gaming time to read everything that comes in, so the swag helps salve their wounds.  Also, the 6th copy we ask for acts as display material for nominated products, and we auction it off to help cover the costs of running the awards. 

Thirdly, we need to have the same copy evaluated by all the judges.  If one owned a Deluxe version of a game, complete with gold leaf and crack-impregnated pages, her score would greatly differ from the one who downloaded an earlier, buggy PDF.  We need to see what is commonly used by the public, and be working from the same frame of reference.

If a company chooses not to submit their product, that's fine.  Should we reward them with a nomination even though they didn't choose to play by the rules of the game?  I don't think so.  Whether they don't think it can stand the scrutiny, or their cost/benefit ratio calculations come out too heavy in the investment side of things, it's not for me to decide or judge.  Considering the Origins Awards asks for far more copies than the ENnies and only has 2 RPG categories, I don't think we're being unreasonable. Your tone(" you say one thing and do another") is. 

Thunder_God wrote:
This raises the question regarding unsent games.

I don't remember if it was with Origins or Ennies last year, but considering no one nominated some of the deeper penetration games that weren't copy-sent to the judges... I mean, you say one thing and do another?

So, if the reviewers are familiar with the games, they should be able to vote for them, even if I send no copies, correct?

As an on-topic aside, I went to the Ennies with Tony last year.  It was pretty cool.  I saw several products there that I subsequently checked out simply because they were nominated along side of some games I knew I liked.  I have nothing to submit this year but if you, as a publisher, can front the cost of the books then it certainly doesn't hurt to have you product mentioned as good competitors to games and publishers that large groups of people know and like.

Thunder_God wrote:
I don't remember if it was with Origins or Ennies last year, but considering no one nominated some of the deeper penetration games that weren't copy-sent to the judges... I mean, you say one thing and do another?

Hey.

Guy, and others, back off. Denise is extending the culture of the ENnies to the culture of the Forge, strictly out of courtesy and her desire to see good games get considered for awards, and she isn't trying to get away with anything.

Your proper role is (a) "thank you" and (b) to ask questions that help the interaction. Most of the questions until the last couple were perfectly fine. Now it's verging on a dogpile for no good reason.

So again, back off, and take a moderator whack, too. This is not a Roman coliseum and Denise is not a gladiator.

Best, Ron

Well, I think I've answered most of everybody's questions, and the submission period is almost over. 
I've got the go-ahead from the judges to accept anything post-marked from today from you guys in an attempt to raise the Indy level of participation.

Thanks everyone for bringing up your concerns, I hope I was able to shed some light and clarify some misconceptions.  I especially appreciated the private (and public) messages of support, because seriously- I'm not the enemy!

Don't forget:
-Nominations from fandom for the Best Publisher Award will be accepted from June 26th to July 9th.  This is the ENnies' one purely fan award, ie. the judges have no role.  Also, this is the only award where a publisher needn't have participated in the ENnies.  So long as the publisher has released a pen and paper RPG or RPG accessory between June 1st 2005 and April 30 2006 they can be nominated. Fans nominate their favourite publishers, then we tally the list of those publishers nominated and seconded, and put them on a ballot.  If it's alright with Ron, I'll start a nomination thread here to accept the Forge's input.  BTW, you cannot nominate yourself.
-Nominations for all of the categories, including Best Publisher, will be announced July 10th on the ENnies site and EN World.  I'm sure other gaming media will pick it up as well- Game Report is pretty quick on such things.
-Voting for all categories begins July 17th.  The voting booth will be at EN World.  You needn't be a member to vote.  IP addresses will be tracked in order to reduce ballot stuffing.  Please be advised that suspicious votes will be discounted, so do not use IP spoofing software to cast consecutive, identical votes.  By the way, for any electoral reform or statistic geeks, there's an excellent description of how we use the Alternative Vote/Instant Runoff Vote on the site (http://www.dreadgazebo.com/ennies06/fusangite.html)  I hope that everyone here will vote, whether there's an Indy nomination or not. 
-Voting ends July 30th.
-The Awards Ceremony will take place Friday, August 11th at Gen Con Indy.  Location and exact timing TBA.  I'm working on getting us in the hall a little earlier so we can do cocktails, and staying a little later with a DJ and other entertainment so we can celebrate.

If you have any more questions or comments, though feel free to keep 'em coming- I'll be around!  I don't have much time to spend on message boards (3 part-time jobs, 2 kids with lots of extra-curriculars), but I'll keep popping by on a weekly basis to make sure I'm not missing anything.  I don't want to use this as an announcement forum, so I hope those interesed in tracking the Awards will do so at www.dreadgazebo.com/ennies06. 

Since the Ennie nominations are up, I'm going to breathe a little life back into the thread by asking if anyone here got nominated. I managed a "best electronic book" nomination for the Stuff! supplement for EABA. Did any other indie get a nomination? Did anyone else here submit anything for nomination? A tip of the hat to Denise for coming over here and deliberately looking for indie submissions, otherwise I would have just assumed it was just a "d20 thing". Thanks for making the effort!

Greg Porter
BTRC

Not from here, but still Indie, look at all the nominations Artesia received.

I don't think there were a lot of submissions from The Forge, unfortunately.  There were a handful of indie titles (almost exclusively electronic entries), but it was still fairly disappointing.  What's particularly frustrating is when people start to complain about the awards being primarily d20 when I'd say at least 3/4 of the entries are d20.  Excluding the Best d20 category, out of 15 categories with 80 nominations (not counting the d20 category), 41 were d20.  Not bad, I say.

Dread (The Impossible Dream) really wowed the judges this year, as did Artesia.  Stuff! almost made the cut for nomination or honourable mention in more than one category, too.

Anyhow I was thinking that some publishers here may be interested in discussing is, "Now What?"  Once nominated, how do you compete with the big boys?  Or what good does an award do, anyhow? 

Greg, I'm very interested to hear if there's been any backlash with regards to your Origins Award win, or your ENnie nomination over the next while.  And of course if the good folks from Burning Wheel and

Hi Denise,

As one of the Burning Wheel crew, I'd like to say that I think the ENnie awards are great. We were honored to be nominated last year, and I would recommend giving it a go to others. I can't give any hard data on whether the nomination affected us one way or the other, but I'd be surprised if we didn't benefit a fair bit from the exposure that being nominated gave us.

However, I will say that I was looking at the ENWorld page Why Alternative Vote/Instant Runoff Vote? and was really dismayed at the way it read. I'm sure that it was not written maliciously, but early on you have a sentence that reads, "Let's suppose that the voter, in this example, is a fan of mainstream D&D and actually dislikes products that make it and its designers look bad."

The example of a product that 'makes D&D and its designers look bad' is a fictional text--Postmodernist Sociology and Gaming--written by Ron Edwards. And the rest of the text goes on to explain how to use the ENnies AV/IRV ballot in an effort to ensure that D&D wins and Ron Edwards loses.     

Now Ron Edwards is not the sum of indie games and gaming, but most of us here look to him as a respected member and one of the leaders of our community. To see this as an example of how the ENnie balloting system works was disappointing.

It didn't lead me to believe that the ENnies are biased. However, I can see how some designers in our community would be wondering whether they'd get a fair shake.

Regardless, I'm sure it won't stop us from giving it a go next year with Burning Empires!

Greg, I'm very interested to hear if there's been any backlash with regards to your Origins Award win, or your ENnie nomination over the next while.

Most of the hypothetical titles in the IRV article were facetious.  I got the joke, although Thor's right - you'll save yourself a headache if you just change your examples to something innocuous.  It won't alter their usefulness. 

I have a feeling Burning Empires will do very well next year! 

Denise, I'll reiterate that it is cool of you to reach out to this community. 

Wow, Thor,

I had never thought that our little tongue-in-cheek example might raise some ire.  I've asked Ron what he thinks about it, and am taking your comments into serious consideration.

I certainly don't want to discourage indie RPG-ers from participating- as publishers or voters!

Thor wrote:
Hi Denise,

As one of the Burning Wheel crew, I'd like to say that I think the ENnie awards are great. We were honored to be nominated last year, and I would recommend giving it a go to others. I can't give any hard data on whether the nomination affected us one way or the other, but I'd be surprised if we didn't benefit a fair bit from the exposure that being nominated gave us.

However, I will say that I was looking at the ENWorld page Why Alternative Vote/Instant Runoff Vote? and was really dismayed at the way it read. I'm sure that it was not written maliciously, but early on you have a sentence that reads, "Let's suppose that the voter, in this example, is a fan of mainstream D&D and actually dislikes products that make it and its designers look bad."

The example of a product that 'makes D&D and its designers look bad' is a fictional text--Postmodernist Sociology and Gaming--written by Ron Edwards. And the rest of the text goes on to explain how to use the ENnies AV/IRV ballot in an effort to ensure that D&D wins and Ron Edwards loses.     

Now Ron Edwards is not the sum of indie games and gaming, but most of us here look to him as a respected member and one of the leaders of our community. To see this as an example of how the ENnie balloting system works was disappointing.

It didn't lead me to believe that the ENnies are biased. However, I can see how some designers in our community would be wondering whether they'd get a fair shake.

Regardless, I'm sure it won't stop us from giving it a go next year with Burning Empires!

I should speak up here. I think the article was funny and timely, and I don't mind being spoofed at all. However, I requested that the spoof title for me be amended to "Sociobiological roots of gaming," because I think both postmodernism and sociology are significantly, if not wholly, full of ass. Whereas sociobiology is something else and will suit very nicely as a title for a book I'll never write, but might like to.

Best, Ron

Sorry, I should've chosen my nouns better. Rather than backlash, which has negative connotations, I should've asked if there has been any noticeable difference or response.  More hits to the web site?  More downloads?  Sales?

By the way, every book, whether it is electronic format or not gets considered for the other awards as well.  I remember Stuff! getting a lot of great feedback in the Rules category at the least.  Fortunately (for the small press guys), the judges were most impressed with the smaller-name submissions, so the little guys can battle it out.  I can tell you, going up against the likes of Wizards of the Coast with your free PDF is more than a tad daunting (but it was super awesome to beat them).

Oh yeah- and the Best Electronic Product winners get a lovely crystal trophy.  Could be handy on the streets for burning ants and stuff and starting small fires. ;)

btrc wrote:
“What good does an award do, anyhow?”, you ask? I don't know, but it's still nice to win one occasionally. If I win an Ennie? I know that 20 years from now, as I sit shivering in my cardboard box, eating expired cat food heated over the stub of a discarded candle, I'll clutch that statue tightly to my chest, caress it and whisper softly, “yes my precious, you were worth it...”, with the gleaming rheumy eyes of a game-designing madman...

Greg Porter
BTRC

And speaking of the Ennies, voting is up:

http://www.enworld.org/ennies/voting.php

So vote early and vote often (insert gratuitous plug for Stuff! in e-book category).

Greg Porter
BTRC

And whilst you're at it, a vote sent in the direction of Steampower Publishing's Lemurian Candidate in Best Adventure wouldn't go amiss either :-)

btrc wrote:
Since the Ennie nominations are up, I'm going to breathe a little life back into the thread by asking if anyone here got nominated. I managed a "best electronic book" nomination for the Stuff! supplement for EABA. Did any other indie get a nomination? Did anyone else here submit anything for nomination?

Well, in answer to Greg's question, and since the thread seems to have degenerated into plugs, anyway, don't forget Dread, nominated for Best Rules and Best Game. Vote for us to stick it to all those Evil Mainstream RPGs we're up against. ;-)