In December, at Dragonmeet, we’ll present six awards to RPG-related things we think deserve more recognition. The winners will (depending on what they are) have happened, been active or been published in 2008.

We're (rather self-importantly) calling these awards the British Game Awards.

We’re keen to hear ideas of what deserves an award. For example, you could nominate:

* An overlooked game, released in 2008.
* A games designer who was active in 2008.
* A convention that happened in 2008.
* A games forum that was active in 2008.
* Or, in fact, anything RPG-related that happened, was active or was published during the year.

You can nominate your own product, if you like, or even yourself.

Do feel free to nominate things or people from outside Britain for British Game Awards. We’re called the British Game Awards because the judges are British and we’re judging from a British perspective. However, many of the games we play are from abroad, so we won’t limit ourselves purely to British games and events.

To nominate something, send an email to submissions [at] britishgameawards [dot] com. In the subject line of the email, put the name of whatever you’re nominating. In the body of the email, tell us why you think it deserves more recognition.

Only nominate one thing per email. Don’t send more than two nominations per person.

When you nominate, tell us how we can find out more about whatever you’re nominating. For example, point us towards the webpage of the publisher. Don’t nominate things that we can’t find out more about: for example, don’t nominate a GM who we’ll never meet or a convention we can’t attend before December. We’ll do our best to find out more about anything that’s nominated.

If you are a publisher, then to ensure we see your product, you can send it to us. You can:

* Attach an electronic copy to your email.
* Send a physical copy to British Game Awards, c/o Pelgrane Press Ltd, Spectrum House, 9 Bromell’s Road, Clapham Common, London SW4 0BN, United Kingdom.
* Give a physical copy to one of the judges: Simon, Steve, Graham and Angus will all be at GenCon US in August. We will also be at all the major UK conventions.

Any physical products sent to us will be sold, for charity, at the Dragonmeet auction. Please sign it, or get the author to sign it, before you send it! It’ll fetch more money that way.

There is no formal closing date for nominations, but the sooner you nominate, the more time we have to find out about whatever you nominate.

Note that we won’t give a game an award without playing it first. We can’t guarantee to play every game that’s nominated, but we’ll have played any game that gets an award.

The judging panel are:

Angus Abranson

Angus runs Leisure Games in London and is the director of Cubicle 7 Entertainment, the publishers of the upcoming Doctor Who RPG.

Steve Dempsey

Steve Dempsey is the editor of Places to Go, People to Be, the respected gaming fanzine. He runs tabletop and LARPS at UK and American conventions and is a strong advocate of the indie gaming scene.

Simon Rogers

Simon Rogers runs Pelgrane Press, publishers of the Dying Earth RPG and the GUMSHOE system, including Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists. He co-owns ProFantasy Software Ltd, creators of the industry standard Campaign Cartographer map-making software.

Graham Walmsley

Graham is the author of Play Unsafe, a book about improvisation and storytelling techniques in roleplaying games. He is a member of the Collective Endeavour, a collective of British game designers, and regularly runs LARPs at UK Conventions.

Thanks!

Graham

So, can one nominate Leisure Games, being that Angus is judging the awards?

Eero, I think with a moment of thought you would have realized that it was far more polite and unloaded to ask that question this way:

Are games written and/or published by a judge eligible to be nominated?

The unpleasant social nuances of the way you did ask it are too numerous to list here.

Best, Ron

Well, I really do want to know whether I can nominate Leisure Games - as far as I know, they're one of the best parts of the British rpg scene. I'm sorry if I offended anybody.

Actually, I just now noticed that there's some guy from Pelgrane Press doing judging as well. It's going to be difficult to nominate anything if all great British rpg stuff I know of is already present on the panel in some form. Then again, what am I worrying about? I haven't even ever visited Britain, what would I know about good things to nominate over there.

Eero, the nominations are not restricted to British rpg stuff.

Graham wrote:
Do feel free to nominate things or people from outside Britain for British Game Awards. We’re called the British Game Awards because the judges are British and we’re judging from a British perspective. However, many of the games we play are from abroad, so we won’t limit ourselves purely to British games and events.

The question is whether works published by the judges of the contest are eligible for nomination.

Graham, can you help with that question?

Best, Ron

Feel free to nominate anything.

Later on, we'll have to consider whether it would be appropriate to give awards to things we're involved in. For example, my book Play Unsafe won't be getting an award, because it'd look stupid to give myself an award.

But, at this stage, don't hold back from nominating things. We'll worry about recusing ourself from awards later.

Graham