This is something I've been tossing around for a bit: What do you all think of a chance to run an "award ceremony" for Indies game designers and publishers? I mean, there's the RPGA awards, the RPGNet "people's choice" awards, the Ennies for d20/D&D-based products... What about us?

I've got a rough game plan etched out, tell me what you think*:

1) DEFINITELY seperate it from The Forge. For no other reason than to keep it relatively unbiased from the discussion that goes down here. Plus, there's always Forge naysayers talking about "the Cult of Ron" and "the Cult of GNS". If it's run by a seperate entity, namely ME, then that connection isn't there.

2) Already nailed a domain. www.rpg-awards.com (just bought it, haven't attached it to my existing domain yet). How easy is that to remember? Yeah.

3) Awards go down late winter/early spring. The games considered will be the ones released from Jan 1st to Dec 31st the year before.

4) Awards will focus on Published, FOR PURCHASE RPGs. At this time, I'm not planning on making a distinction between hardcopy books and PDFs. I could divide them into "best hardcopy" and "best PDF", but I think instead I'm going to divide the awards into "RPGs for Purchase" and "Free RPGs", with a definite emphasis on the RPGs for Purchase.

5) Nominations: Was thinking- I'll post messages EARLY on every RPG website and gaming press release site that I can find. Additional emails will be sent directly to recognized indie game designers and companies asking them to participate (basically anyone I can find who releases their own games). Here's how it works:
* Every known indies RPG publisher/designer (anyone who's released something in the past five years) will get 2-3 votes for games they'd like to see nominated in different categories. Basically "fill in" ballots. They aren't allowed to nominate their own games (I'd include here, like ROn voting for Jared Sorensen's Schism, and vice versa, ad that'd be a conflict of interest. Simple, right?).

6) Actual Voting: When all the nominations are in, the final ballot of 4-5 choices per category is made. This is posted on my site. Registration to vote, etc, is all electronic, using email-reply registration, and probably IP recording to prevent one guy from voting multiple times.
* Anyone who stops by and votes gets a "one point vote".
* All of the above designers that nominated games will have a "three point vote". I may change this to "five point vote" depending on the number of nominations. Again, you're not allowed to vote for your own game.

7) The Forge/Ron's place in all this: None, really. I mean, I'm sure I'll throw a banner link here, but other than that, nothing. No extra votes for Forge members or anything like that. Here's Ron's take on this issue from another thread:

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm not too interested in #3, myself. The Forge is a site, not an organization, and its policies walk a tricky line between Ron's Stuff and everyone-at-the-Forge stuff. (I didn't ask for things to be like that, but that's how it's played out over time.) Who'd give the award? Me? Or would it be a big vote-y thing? If anyone can suggest a painless solution to these issues, I'd like to hear it.

Yeah cool idea (sorry for the lack of actual input)

Andy wrote: An engraved "Indies RPG Shot Glass?"

Andy Kitkowski wrote: 10) The actual... uh... award. Yeah. Um... Good question. An engraved "Indies RPG Shot Glass?" An actual award? This will depend on a number of things. I'm probably going to get the site up and host VERY SMALL REVENUE banner ads just to get enough money to pay for, say, half the price of some nice awards for everyone (I'd pitch in the money for the rest, as well as actual web hosting costs).

Well? What do you think?

Here's a critical thing to consider.

What constitues an "Indie RPG"? If we use Ron's narrow definition then we run the risk of the Forge association again. But if we use a broader definition, most games realeased will probably make it in.

What's your definition, Andy?

Mike

Hi Andy,

You mean that I don't have to do anything or held responsible for anything? Fan-tastic. I like the idea a lot (now).

Mike's right, though - you'll need to define "indie," and (if I may), I suggest saying "Self-published" or something similar instead, which follows the lexicon of comics. It also avoids something that Ed Healy and I did not anticipate when we started the Forge, which is that a kind of backlash has become fashionable regarding the word "indie," such that people angle for being hip by rejecting it.

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: Here's a critical thing to consider.
What's your definition, Andy?

I think the simplest definition is this.

RPGs have costs.

The art costs, the layout costs, and the printing (if printed) costs. Web hosting can cost, layout and PDF software costs...it costs.

If the person who foots the bill for these costs is the same as the person who wrote it...its indie...if its not...its not.

IIRC when doing Orkworld JW got a financial backer to help front the money but my understanding is that that backer was then reimbursed.

So follow the money...person pays the costs, and pockets the profits (such as they may be) must be the same as the author. Throw a few caveats in there about things if necessary...but I think that should be your core concept.

I like both of these definitions (although it'd be harder to "trace the money", as it were).

The Self-Published definition is probably the cleanest. While I dig sites like Monty Cooke's that offer a one-stop shop for purchasing RPGs online (basically "You stick to writing, WE'LL publish your RPG"), Making the definition come down to Writing RPGs (which admittedly is an ideal, mad props to all those writers out there) would include a MONSTEROUS amount of products and people as well (my proposition is: That's too Damn Much).

Keeping the working definition to the comics/music def of independant sounds like the best idea.

I'll probably have to limit the number of writers for a given product as an addendum. Otherwise, we'd have Green Ronin or other medium-sized companies competing with small one-man operations. After all, even many of the "big boys" come down often to one dude organizing and publishing stuff.
(not to pick on Green Ronin, in the past two years they've gone from Nothing to One of the Biggest, Best Producers in the Biz. I can't emphasize enough my respect and admiration for them)

More thoughts? Bring em on!

Costs is one thing, profits another. Woody gets a cut of Ron's sales, so does that make Ron non-self published? If you go by costs alone, that seems to make more sense.

One problem, The Self-Published Game Awards does not sound as cool as the Indie game awards.

How does Robert Redford handle it?

Mike

It sounds like a good idea. I think you need to be quite clear on what you are rewarding and who is doing the awarding.

Is it an annual thing, or more a Hall of Fame award? Can you win it if you've won other awards (such as Origins)? How stricly defined is the term game? I mean, could Critical Miss' Pimp! game win, does Monkeywrench, fun as it is, constitute a published game or do you need hardcopy?

The free vote whilst allowing a wider spread of votes is nice but email voting is notoriously skewed. Even if you register IPs you still get the problem of somebody getting all theri mates to vote, not because they play, or even have heard of the game, but just because it's their mate. This is just a popularity contest at best and a ballot stuffing contest at worst.

For example, La Gazetta de la Sporta, Italy's prime sports newspaper had a poll to see hwo readers thought would win the Euro2000 football tournament. England won the vote, even though the page was in Italian. Word of mouth spread the news and then the papers got wind of it. Italy never stood a chance.

So I think public nominations are fine but I'd seriously consider having a panel do the voting. You do need to be careful with this too. The Diana Jones award, although obviously merited by its winner, suffers from having a secret cabal of voters which attracts some bad press.

That's a whole lot of things to think about.

Finally, Places To Go, People To Be would be very likely to support such an award. Go for it Andy!

Cheers,
GB Steve

H'm,

What do people think of the award simply being chosen by Andy? His award, his choosing; no panel, no votes, no nothing. Maybe nominations would be open, but considering that any game that fits the criteria (whatever they are) is automatically nominated, even that's irrelevant.

Works for Ken Hite and the Outie Awards. Granted, Ken is all "Out of the Box" and "respected RPG writer" and all that jazz, but ultimately, what it comes down to is that people see the awards, they look at the games, and they say, "Good call."

If Andy wants to follow that model, it seems like a sensible one to me.

Best,
Ron

I think an Andy would be a good name for an award. It ends in 'y' like most good awards.

I'm cool with Andy making the decision too although he'd need to make sure he got all the right sponsors to add weight to the award - being the designer of our logo probably isn't enough, powerful force that we are in some roleplaying circles (very small ones).

That's a lot of reading for Andy though.

GB Steve wrote: I'm cool with Andy making the decision too although he'd need to make sure he got all the right sponsors to add weight to the award - being the designer of our logo probably isn't enough, powerful force that we are in some roleplaying circles (very small ones).

Heh. Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. Now I'll head out and order the domain www.someguycalledandysindierpgawards.com (^.^)

To answer Steve's first questions:
*Annual
*You can win other awards
*Game, for this award, means "Published for Cash". (I will probably get flak for this, but then again, I don't want a storm of 2-page free PDF publishers asking for "their vote")
*Hardcopy or PDF, you still have to actually sell it. Or Barter.

Yeah, I'm wary of the popularity contest bit (I think RPGA standards have "gone down" since they opened up voting to everyone), so I wanted to heavily weigh in the actual publishers (again, anyone who has self-published their own RPG or supplement int he past 5 years).

I'm wary of being called "a cabal of like-mindeds who only choose their friends" if I go the No Public Vote route, but I'd rather go this route than to have a million skewed votes because of friends voting for friends.

And thanks for that note of sponsorship! (*turns back to his PC* *sigh* *ashamedly starts hammering the keys on his article for the next PTGPTB*)

If it were My vote, that means the following:

1) I'll have to read EVERY Indies RPG over the past year.

2) Reading them means aquiring them. I'd have to buy a copy of each one. I'm sure that they'd supply me with one if I asked, but the reason that I've been buying stuff from folks like Clint and Jared rather than saying "Hey, man, c'mon- it's ME" is because I want to support them. Put my cash where my mouth is.

3) Then guilt (or my pursuit of "quality") would make me actually play at least one session of all those games. That, my friends, is a LOT of gaming. Even if I quit my job here at Cisco, or just did some brain-dead job that gives me lots of free time and no outside-work-headaches, I'd still not have enough time.

Say I decide only publishers get a vote in a Secret Cabal meeting (like the Diana): So when the votes come in and the finalists are chosen, I'm POSITIVE that not everyone will have read or played all the games. However, there'll be enough people on the list that it will even out in the end.

And I was also thinking that, for some categories, say there's 5 published games: I'd ask the panelists to skip voting on that particular category if they haven't read three or more of those games.

Maybe in the end I can have a "Pimp Daddy Andy's Award of Excellence", some sort of gag gift for my personal pick, but I'd like to get others in on it, too.

I figure that would be easy to do, if I gave each publisher who participates a vote to cast as they saw fit (admittedly, not for their own stuff, but there you go).

More thoughts? I'm digging this. The idea's coming together.

Defining independent?

This guy had an idea for a game; but he didn't really have the skills to write it, no matter how good he was at running it. He worked with a bunch of friends, playing and running it, trying to refine it, but couldn't get it to paper. In many ways, the idea was nebulous.

He met another guy who was a decent writer and a whiz at mechanics, and they collaborated on the text. The guy with the original idea wrote some of it, the mechanics whiz rewrote, made things work, added ideas to fill holes, and ultimately completed the text.

Neither guy had any money; but the mechanics whiz new a little about business stuff, and they agreed to create a company to publish the game. They found backers, people willing to invest, and so incorporated. Between them they kept more than 50% of the stock, so they have control of the company; but they also have obligations to stockholders, legally binding by-laws, and a director structure that prevents them from running things however they want. One of them is very active in helping to run the company, but has never felt comfortable being "the boss" and so has always let someone who is not one of the game creators but has some business sense take that job; the other prefers not to be involved at all. They own the copyright on the rules; it is licensed to the corporation. The corporation is allowed to create and publish supplemental material, with two stipulations: 1) no material may be published without the approval of one of the two game creators and 2) if the license is breached, all rights in all supplements go to the game creators.a

Now, is that an indie game, or not? Legally, ownership and control of the game is with the creators. Yet there are a lot of people who have an interest in the game. The company (yes, this is a real company) has about twenty-five stockholders, most of whom are family or friends of the creators and all of whom put up either time or money (or both) to make it a reality. We could not have brought it to press without their help; and we would not have felt comfortable trying to involve them without the protection against liability afforded by the corporate structure.

You're going to have to make these decisions; it's best if you make them up front with a clearly stated and reasonably acceptable definition.

What about the judges?

I had an odd thought about this. I'm inclined to think of the way the electoral college was supposed to work.

People could still nominate games; the nominations process would, in a way, reduce the work--you wouldn't have to read every published independent game, just those which someone thought worth nominating.

But you would have to get a list of volunteers, people who would be willing to judge the games, names who were recognized at least from forums and similar interaction on the Internet. Then let the voters pick which people they trust to judge.

Maybe it's not workable; maybe you can't get enough qualified judges. But it avoids the twin horns of popularity contest voting on the one hand and Secret Cabal conspiracy theory on the other.

--M. J. Young

Hey!

Wassamatter with free RPG's!? JAGS (about which I have no illusions about ever winning such an award) will go toe-to-toe with anyone in terms of work put into it. Our decision to be free was based on removing barriers to entry to the system--not on our feelings about its quality or viability as a for-sale RPG.

How about this: set the entry standards based on page count (judges can rule against filler pages pretty easily). Set the minumum point at, oh, say 800+ pages of material (backgrounds, rules, etc.). That'll solve your "2-page RPG's wanting a vote" problem real quick.

That makes about as much sense as neglecting free RPG's.

-Marco

As for Mr. Young's definition, I think that we need not go that far. I mean, I'm sure that such moral conundrums will hit us in the future, but most folks I see publishing their games end up writing it and publishing it themselves, or writing it themselves and publishing through someone else. The idea of "I've got a great idea- I need someone else to write it, though, cause I can't write" is precisely how companies like WOTC and other freelancer-using companies operate. In other words, I think that the limit of "self-published" will easily divide 95% of the games- that last 5% will be divided on a case-by-case basis. It's not gonna be easy, but it WILL be much easier than writing a 15 page definition of Indie Game with multiple exclusions and definitions for the purpose of just awarding a sh*tty shot glass.

Marco wrote: Wassamatter with free RPG's!?

Marco wrote: Our decision to be free was based on removing barriers to entry to the system--not on our feelings about its quality or viability as a for-sale RPG.

Hi there,

Andy, I want to add one more notion for your stew ... which probably won't be desirable in its most extreme form, but might end up as an influence.

I'd have no categories.

One award, one criterion, one set of (probably flexible standards), one winner. Probably a whole lotta runners-up that can each get a promo paragraph ... but one winner.

As I say, this probably isn't going to fly, based on what you've posted so far. My hope is that it will cut down on the number of categories and ensure that the ones you keep are very, very well defined.

Best,
Ron

Hmmm, just because it's so far from what I was intending to do, I'll have to give that some thought.

However, I'm probably going to stick with a limited number of categories. Basically, I'm interested in things like Layout/Design, Concept, etc, and I'd love to see people get props for those categories. I'm certainly not going to aim at creating enough categories so that "everyone gets a shot" ("Uh oh. Donjon hasn't won a prize yet. Quick, new category: 'Best Indie RPG based off of old-school fantasy concepts'"), but I would like to see some other parts of the creation process, rather than just The Final Product, get honored.

Y'know, just like the Academy Awards honor Best Soundtrack, Best Costume Design, Best Gaffer (?), that sort of thing.

And I think the metaphor works, because just like the above categories, only people "in the business" will be interested in the above. The main category, the one that'll be going in with 24-point-font at the top of the page, and the one that will (Hopefully, Eench Allah) be attracting the most attention will be "Best Game" (and, possibly, "Best Free Game").

-Andy

When having an internet voting system, is it easy is it to abuse? I saw there was a low-rating TV show a while back, and it was later revealed that one women and a half dozen friends logged around 1/2 the total votes. She of course won in a landslide. If I want a little extra publicity, could I drown out the experts and public opinion? I hope so, I might need all the hype I can get.

Also, how about seperating popular and critical awards? Maybe you could have 'Most Popular', voted for by the common people, and 'Most Innovative', voted for by people who would know.


Jeremy

Hi Andy--the links should be working today (looks like we were down for a few hours).

1. I'd be happy to write about "Why Free RPG's are Real RPG's too." But um, the fact that you think this needs to be written is telling in and of itself. Especially for someone giving an award.

2. I'm going to ask (don't take this the wrong way) if your definition of "indie" means "alternative?" I was struck by someone's suggestion of a vote "by the masses" and a vote by "people who would know if something was innovative." If RPG.net is any relation to "the masses" I'd say that bunch is as good as *anyone* at determining if something is innovative. Maybe better since they don't have the meme that says innovative==better.

I don't think any of the voting body you'd pick would consider games like JAGS, Age of Heroes, Runebearer, Quest, Vanguard, or some other traditional style RPG's to be "innovative." But I assure you as a creator of one, *we* do--or if not "innovative" at least "of excellent quality."

I think that the reason that a lot of rules-heavy sim games are free is that even with no cost-barreir there's a substantial investment of time to learn them--and to figure out if what the creator though was right was actually executed/implemented correctly.

So whether you mean it or not (and I assume not--but to a lot of people "indie" *does* mean *alternative*) your cut will happen to exclude the class of indie RPG's that *doesn't* get that "alternative" buzz.

Think about it.

-Marco

Ron Edwards wrote: I'd have no categories.

One award, one criterion, one set of (probably flexible standards), one winner. Probably a whole lotta runners-up that can each get a promo paragraph ... but one winner.

Marco wrote: Hi Andy--the links should be working today (looks like we were down for a few hours).

Marco wrote: 1. I'd be happy to write about "Why Free RPG's are Real RPG's too." But um, the fact that you think this needs to be written is telling in and of itself. Especially for someone giving an award.

Marco wrote:
2. I'm going to ask (don't take this the wrong way) if your definition of "indie" means "alternative?"

Marco wrote: I don't think any of the voting body you'd pick would consider games like JAGS, Age of Heroes, Runebearer, Quest, Vanguard, or some other traditional style RPG's to be "innovative."

I was struck by someone's suggestion of a vote "by the masses" and a vote by "people who would know if something was innovative." If RPG.net is any relation to "the masses" I'd say that bunch is as good as *anyone* at determining if something is innovative. Maybe better since they don't have the meme that says innovative==better.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to chime in with the others about having a single award. Or, if you really want to give more, NO MORE THAN THREE main categories.

The problem with starting a new award is that nobody is going to have heard of it. If there's suddenly an award called the "Andy" and every other indie game seems to have recieved an "Andy" of some kind, people will start to discount them as meaningless or not very valuble as a mark of quality. However, if you only give out 1 or 2 "Andys" a year, if I go and pick up those games, I'm pretty much guaranteed to be impressed by them and will likely take the time to look at "Andy-winning" games in the future.

This may be a more bare-bones practical reason, but still one that has merit, I believe.

Later.
Jonathan

I think I have one last thought on this topic.

The JAGS site (the web page) was designed by our Editor In Chief. We're very proud of the look and feel, of the operational standards, and of the back-end custom designed content management system. If there were awards for Indie RPG web-sites we'd be proud to enter ours.

It runs on Linux, possibly the world's best server-side operating system. Linux is free.

It uses a technology called Java. Java is currently considered one of the finest choices for server-side code. It was created by Sun Microsystems. Java is free.

The JAGS site runs the Jakarta Tomcat as the JSP engine, an award wining server that is used extensively world-wide. Tomcat is licensed under the open-source agreement. Tomcat is free.

It is driven off the PostgreSQL database--using triggers, referential integretity, and other aspects of data-driven design whcih require a fully featured well designed database. PostgreSQL is free.

The JIVE forums use the JIVE Engine. The Chat system runs the NFS applet--one that has the capability to massively cluster across a JMS implementaiton should we ever need to. Both of these are well featured (we need to get the HTML filter for the messsage boards working ... but still). Both of them are free.

The HTML (Web-Server) is Apache--one of, if not *the* most widely used web-server in the world. Apache is free.

We have many gigabytes of downloads in the year and change we've been available. We are able to track our European distribution using the excellent tool suite Webalizer. Webalizer is free.

Feel free to to give your award to pay-only games. It's your award after all. But take a moment to consider if you're really doing a service to indie-designers in doing so.

-Marco

Jonathan Walton wrote: If there's suddenly an award called the "Andy" and every other indie game seems to have recieved an "Andy" of some kind, people will start to discount them as meaningless or not very valuble as a mark of quality.

Marco wrote: I think I have one last thought on this topic.

The JAGS site (the web page) was designed by our Editor In Chief. We're very proud of the look and feel, of the operational standards, and of the back-end custom designed content management system. If there were awards for Indie RPG web-sites we'd be proud to enter ours.

It runs on Linux, possibly the world's best server-side operating system. Linux is free.

It uses a technology called Java. Java is currently considered one of the finest choices for server-side code. It was created by Sun Microsystems. Java is free.

The JAGS site runs the Jakarta Tomcat as the JSP engine, an award wining server that is used extensively world-wide. Tomcat is licensed under the open-source agreement. Tomcat is free.

It is driven off the PostgreSQL database--using triggers, referential integretity, and other aspects of data-driven design whcih require a fully featured well designed database. PostgreSQL is free.

The JIVE forums use the JIVE Engine. The Chat system runs the NFS applet--one that has the capability to massively cluster across a JMS implementaiton should we ever need to. Both of these are well featured (we need to get the HTML filter for the messsage boards working ... but still). Both of them are free.

The HTML (Web-Server) is Apache--one of, if not *the* most widely used web-server in the world. Apache is free.

We have many gigabytes of downloads in the year and change we've been available. We are able to track our European distribution using the excellent tool suite Webalizer. Webalizer is free.

Feel free to to give your award to pay-only games. It's your award after all. But take a moment to consider if you're really doing a service to indie-designers in doing so.

-Marco

Why is this being limited only to games that require an exchange of payment? Would Sorcerer be of less quality if Ron won the lottery and decided to let everyone download Sorcerer for free? What does the cost of the game have to do with quality? I really don't understand the reasoning here.

I think the requirement for payment is a good one.

If one were to put a list of every indie game available for payment on the web in list, and every indie game available for free in the other...I think you would find that the ratio of quality to crap is much higher on the payment list. This is for the simple reason that requiring payment acts as a kind of built in reverse filter.

That's not to say by any means that all free games are crap or that all for pay games are quality (hardly). Rather it is to say, that for 1 person who has to familiarize themselves with all of the games that qualify for the award before handing the award out, we need to recognize that the list of qualifiers has to be kept to a practical level.

There are literally tremendous hordes of free stuff available on the internet. There is no possible way for anyone to be familiar with all of it. The simplest and least subjective filter I can think of is to simply eliminate that horde of material from contention all together.

Anyone who REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to qualify for the judgeing, has merely to slap a paypal link on their site and make a for pay version of their game. The way I figure it, if one is not willing to make that little effort, how can one expect Andy (or anyone) to make the effort required to judge everything that's out there. As it is the task seems pretty daunting.

I agree that filtering is necessary. I disagree that this is the right way to do it. Here's a suggestion for an alternative: in order to be considered for the award, a game must have 10 (or some other arbitrary number) nominees. Now you've filtered out all games that don't have at least 10 fans, which measures quality better than the decision to charge money for your game or offer it for free.

quozl wrote: Why is this being limited only to games that require an exchange of payment? Would Sorcerer be of less quality if Ron won the lottery and decided to let everyone download Sorcerer for free? What does the cost of the game have to do with quality? I really don't understand the reasoning here.

Hi there,

Ultimately, everything in this thread boils down to one thing: Whatever Andy wants.

If he wants to give twenty awards, that's fine; if it's a single award, that's fine too. If he wants to consider games-for-money only, that's his prerogative; if he wants to consider any subset of RPGs at all, ditto. All of our input can only be that: input. If he decides not to go with a particular set of reasoning or recommendation, well, that's not ours to criticize.

One last point: I really wish people would grasp the difference between independent as used at the Forge and alternative as bandied about in casual speech. They aren't the same things.

Best,
Ron

In case it wasn't clear from my adamant rants, I agree with Ron about what this boils down to. I'm not saying what has to be done. I'm only offering input which can be considered or ignored.

As his idea was posted here, it is up for debate and even criticism. I don't think Andy's a schmuck for putting an award up for pay-only games, I think he's not creating:

... an "award ceremony" for Indies game designers and publishers?

One last point: I really wish people would grasp the difference between independent as used at the Forge and alternative as bandied about in casual speech. They aren't the same things.

Heh. I've been kind of out of it for the past two days so I haven't replied. I better snap to it! (^.^)

>>>
Ultimately, everything in this thread boils down to one thing: Whatever Andy wants.
>>>

Essentially, yes.

I did come here to run some ideas off of people, though, but in the end I want(ed) to "lay down the law" on certain issues. I will have to be heavy-handed and perhaps even "unfair", but it's the only way to get the process satrted, and it can always change later.

Having said that, though, Marco brought up an excellent, moving point through his Linux/Apache metaphor. Thanks. Some may say "Apples and Oranges", but hey, his metaphor acutally made me really rethink the free/pay distinction. (BTW, Marco, I agree with Andrew Martin that you should at least allow for a "donate" link for all your team's time and effort)

Anyway, since a little bit before that, my ideas have changed a bit. I had hoped to present them after I polished them off a little, but I think I'll reveal a bit about them just so we don't have to tread on old ground.

Here's what I was thinking recently:

* Have One Award, maybe two (no more) "sub awards". After that, other honors will be given, they just won't be called "awards".

* Allow Free RPGs to compete with Sell RPGs, in all of their categories.

* Voting: Voting will be done (hopefully, if they want to, that is) by anyone who's produced an Indie RPG FOR SALE over the past five years (Jan 1st, 1997). Additional voting will be done by producers of free RPGs- But only those people who were nominated (See below).

***********

This will make my work a little tougher, but I think I've come up with a framework for a system that works. Here's a rough guideline:

1) There's no way I'm going to research, by myself, all the Free RPGs out there. Even attempting to go out and look at the ones that were produced this year (and sorting those from the mass of RPGs out there) would be a daunting task.

2) Therefore, I'm going to, near the end of the year, send out Press Releases to every RPG-related site I know of, asking producers of free RPGs from that year to send a brief description and a link to my site.

3) When I send an email out, later, calling on Indie RPG publishers to participate, I'll ask them to visit a link where they can "write in" a Free RPG for nomination. The link ot the "known games fo 2002" will also be supplied, but they can certainly write in anything else as well, as long as it was made that year. That write-in vote process will last approx one week.

4) At the end of the week, the top three to five Free RPGs will be tallied, and the makers will be emailed asking if they wish to participate with the voting process. All those that agree, from this point on, will be given the same consideration (votes, representation, etc) as the "Pay Only" RPG folks.

* It may seem unfair that the RPG Sellers, in effect, "choose" the Free RPGers for voting and representation, but that's about as far as I can go without putting more research time into the award than it's worth.

5) From that point on, the Game is On. All the known "For Sale" RPGs for that year, as well as the 3-5 nominated Free RPGs, will go on an online ballot. All the aforementioned folks get one vote. At the end of the week, votes are tallied, and awards are posted and sent out.

So that's what I'm thinking of so far. Any other ideas?

As for the other kinds of awards and honors, I will be deciding those over the next few weeks. I might come back for some advice on those, but not yet.

-Andy

I like the 1 or 2 awards and a bunch of honorable mentions format.

I think it is important to recognize things like "best layout" or "best website", or "best art", or "best overall production quality" or even "best index" if only as an encouragement that these things matter.

But the "too many awards dilutes the value" point is a good one. I think you can get both by having only 1 or 2 core "awards" and then point out which games scored particularly well in each of these other categories.

This is particularly true if you actually use these categories as part of the criteria by which you judge a game. The winner is the game that scores highest overall, but the honorable mentions are ones that scores highest in an individual category, but not high enough overall to win.

I think your compromise is an excellent idea. I'd endorse such an award.

Thanks for listening.
-Marco

Question regarding the "new this year parameter."

1) is there a seperate award for new supplements or only new core rules
2) if a game has a new supplement in a current year but the core rules came out prior to the beginning of the award, will the core rules be made eligible as a result of the new supplement.
3) will the first year of the award reach back into older game material, or is stuff from 2001 just outta luck...

Whew!

I'm relieved about the commerce/free revision. I've been biting my tongue throughout the thread in order not to influence Andy by "what Ron thinks," but hoping that the awards weren't going to be restricted to commercial ones only. Marco's arguments have been extremely cogent in my opinion.

Two points for clarifying things, Marco:

1) Yes, Andy presented his ideas here for critique, and critique he shall get. If anyone was getting the idea that his conclusions were to be reached through any kind of consensus or approval, though, I wanted to scotch that notion up-front.

2) As far as "independent" goes, it's defined in a particular way on the Forge ... but as you say, people use it more widely than that. It bugs me every time - hence my comment.

Best,
Ron

Actually, I was on the fence about the whole Free/Pay thing. But we have a problem. If this is to be an annual award, then the award can only go to games that were released in the last year. This is pretty easy to determine for a Pay game, as there will most likely be a date that it started selling. At that point Pay games tend not to change much. They are "Complete" or at least complete enough to sell.

Free games, however, have no such limitation. One can add a few edits to a document and then call it a "New Edition". Which means it's hard to determine when the game becoame "live" officially, and for purposes of the contest.

That said, PDF publishing for pay has this problem to an extent as well. Can a game only be considered once, regardless of edition?

And, as I think about it, what do you do the first year? Do you disclude Sorcerer because it was published last year? Or do you include every current Indie game in existence as potential candidates?

Just some hurdles to check off before continuing.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: And, as I think about it, what do you do the first year? Do you disclude Sorcerer because it was published last year? Or do you include every current Indie game in existence as potential candidates?

Just some hurdles to check off before continuing.

Mike

Hmmm. This might work. The rule would have to be that an RPG could only be nominated once ever. And that those that won would be retired from the competition as well. Otherwise you'd get the same field over and over again, and possible repeat winners.

Mike

Hi there,

I still like the idea that Andy simply picks the winners as he sees fit, and screw all the voting. (Unlike the commercial/free issue, I'm not shy about blatantly trying to influence his decision, regarding this issue. But as ever, up-to-Andy is the rule.)

Best,
Ron

>>
I still like the idea that Andy simply picks the winners as he sees fit, and screw all the voting.
>>

I love that idea.

Unfortunately:

*I have a job, wife, and other interests.
*This means, unfortunately, that even if I had all the money I simply don't have the time to read everything that's out there every year.
*Much less actually PLAY everything that's out there, which I really should do if I want to even try to be fair.
*The types of games I like others would hate. The kinds of games others like I hate or am not interested in. I couldn't even fake non-bias, even if I tried.
* I like projects that involve other people on some level. Having one vote, the "Andy Vote", would kill that right out.

One thing that I was thinking of was doing, for one of the awards, the "Andy's Pick Award". In other words, tally up the votes, offer a grand prize, and the OTHER prize would go to the game (out of the one's I've seen) that I think is most worthy of the award.

We'll see how this thing festers.

As for games: I'm not about to go back 5 years, or more than one for that matter, and include anything beyond last year. Just don't have the resources, and I don't have the interest. This thing has to start somewhere, so limiting it at this year's gaming products, I think, is the best start.

As for the electronic crew updating stuff every year- I'm only going to count the first year of release. Ex: If Jared keeps updating octaNe in little ways every year and publishing it over, he'd only get credit for that first year.
*I'll eventually make rules for "second editions", next year, which will allow games to rerun if they're significantly updated in some quantifiable way.
*If a game goes from "Free" to "For Purchase", it will be counted as "new" for that year's awards only.
*If someone tries to get their game into the awards by pretending that it was released this year, when in fact it was released earlier, I will fly out to their house and spank them with a yardstick.
*More miniscule rules that I'll decide will be presented later.

Man, this is FUN!

-Andy

Hi all,

Not sure how old this thread is, but I thought I'd chime in with an idea. The term 'Indie-RPG', rightly or wrongly, is a bit tarred these days, and as that endless thread at RPG.net will tell you, it's also vague as hell.

I'd suggest following the suit of literary publishers and give an award for 'small press' instead of Indie. Basically it can still boil down to the same thing in your POV. It just has better PR, as names go.

Otherwise it seems you've got pretty sage advice already. From reading through all this, the way I'd do it:

Only give out 1 Andy a year to keep 'em special.

Allow for several honourable mentions, but don't call these Andies. Call them Something else, like the Kitkwoski award for excellence in... Thus Kitkwoskis still give the layout designer their moment in the sun, but what everyone really wants is an Andy.

Games are only elegible if they were released *this year*. I can think of no industry award anywhere that does it any other way. Personally, I think it is a bit ridiculous to suggest it be done any other way. I'm sorry but in the first year of the Oscars they did not allow 'Metropolis' to be considered not matter how groundbreaking and worthy a film it was in its day. By making games 'this year only' you also remove the possibility to appear biased with the first round of awards. It cuts down the likelihood that the award to go to a friend of Andy's. Unless, that is, sheer chance determines that friends of Andy release a damned fine game in 2003. Who knows.

Maybe establish a RPG Academy (free to begin with, a minimal joining fee later if this whole thing takes off), open to those who meet certain published criteria. Membership entitles one to nominate and then vote for a best small press RPG release. Once you've got a record of members you've got a record of members, an e-mailing list, and whatnot. Makes life easier than just spamming everyone every year.

Free vs Pay: You're gonna have a nightmare over this one. Maybe you could just have a Kitkowski for best electronic only game. Pay or otherwise. That way to be in the running for an Andy, you've got to show you've enough faith in the RPG industry to actually invest some real time and momey in it. (Not that I'm saying free or PDF publishers don't have their whole heart and soul in their games. I'm just saying that if some brave soul is willing to risk real money over a game, then lets acknowlegde them for it. I have more respect for the dreamers behind small time press RPG companies than I do for any low risk PDF-only games, mine included.)

Criteria. Give your Academy a short list of criteria they can measure a game against, and make the criteria open to the public. Include such cirteria as: Setting, Originality of Concept, Professionalism of Writing, Professionalism of Layout, and so forth. Define each one, and add more if you like as time goes on. You could even ask that Academy members simply rate each criteria 1-5 for each nominee. Perhaps even e-mail them a PDF form with dots to click, and a box to fill in one's name, and a return e-mail address. A 'I haven't read this' box for those games an Academy members not actually seen. Can't get much simpler than that. You could then add up all the points. In the unlikely event of a tie: Andy chooses.
This way you could also base the Kitkowski's on the individual critea. Although whether or not any RPG out there should be given an 'Honourable Excellence in the field of Professionalism of Writing' award is debatable. *grin*
Make the votes (but not the names of the voters) available for inspection by the general public once its all tallied.

An online award ceremony that can be saved and archived on the website would also be fun. Or even just short e-mail acceptance 'speeches' from the winners over the various years.

Who knows. Maybe Andys will be synonomous with quality in a few years time? Maybe big companies will get desperate enough to win themselves an Andy they start up small subsideraries to release more innovative 'indie' or 'small press' games. Let's hope so.

Hope that was helpful

Chris

Thanks, Chris!

Sorry that I haven't been keeping up on this thread. I'm in the last stages of finalizing everything to post online (rules, qualifications, etc). You'd be surprised how many of your ideas - well, ideas that I had that you also had (^.^) - are being incorporated into the final awards thing.

The award will be yearly only. I don't want to open it up to past awards. I mean, how many awards does Sorcerer really need? ;-)

Yeah, definitely one award. Then a number (looks like close to 10 at this point) of other smaller points of recognition; things like Best Layout/Design, Best Marketing/PR, Best Publisher Support, etc.

I think I'm going to have a recognition award called "Best Free RPG". Free RPGs _WILL_ be able to be nominated for the "big award", and they can win (if they do, then the Best Free RPG will go to the Second Best Free RPG). My whole issue on this wasn't the game itself, but the votes that Free RPG Publishers get to use on the awards. I figure that, for the 3-5 games nominated for Best Free RPG, their designers will each get one vote towards the Big Award. The person who wins the "Best Free RPG" recognition will get to vote in following years, just like publishers of pay games.

>>>>
Who knows. Maybe Andys will be synonomous with quality in a few years time?
>>>>
Yeah, I hope so. Because of the great suggestions by Scott on the other thread, I've decided to make the Big Award basically a certificate and a Buttload of Cash. See, if it was just an "image" or a "figure"... well, that would be nice. But a Buttload of Cash going to the winner... That would not only encourage that winner to write more quality games in the future, but it would get more people to take the award seriously from the beginning.

"A Buttload", right now at this point in time, is a measley $200. But I hope to increase that substantially through contributions and people buying votes.

Oh yeah, I also have an equasion by which people can BUY VOTES (max one vote per person, max 5 bought votes per game, at a SUBSTANTIAL cost, though). That would get the everyman involved if they felt strongly towards a game, and also increase the pot for the winner!

Thanks!

-Andy

Thanks. Look forward to seeing the final outcome.

Buy a vote? So you are going to impose a meta-resource on the awards voting 'mechanic'. If that is not in the spirit of indie RPGs I don't know what is.

*chuckle*

Chris