Hey all, I again apologize for another Indie RPG Awards thread. Every time I sit here for like 5 minutes poring over the forum descriptions, and none of them seem appropriate enough for this sort of chat so I end up "dumping" these questions here.

Anyway, I'm looking for some help. The indie awards site, www.rpg-awards.com is about 4 days from going live, after which the long, drawn-out process of registration, voting, etc goes down.

I'm trying to stay ahead of the ball by coming up with a list of all the RPGs that came out this last year, 2002 (Jan 1st-Dec 31st). This way, the process of contacting the designers and informing them of the awards will go along much smoother.

If you know of (or think you know of) any Indie RPGs (for Sale OR Free) or game supplements that came out in 2002, please reply to this thread and also list who designed it, if you know.

ALSO, I am looking for the name of anyone who has designed/published an Indie RPG since January 1998 (five years ago), and games they've published. Please keep the two categories seperate. I'll be contacting these folks to ask them to participate in voting on the RPG awards.

Oh, BTW, in case you were wondering, here's the pre-final list of sub-awards that will accompany the Indie RPG award:

The Indie Award: GAME OF THE YEAR for 2002

Recognition Awards:
Best Indie RPG Supplement
Best Free Game
Best Use of the d20 License
Best Design (Layout, Art, Use of PDF)
Best Support (Free Materials, Website)
Best Synergy of Game and Rules
Indie RPG Human of the Year

.....

OK, so here's my list of games and supplements that I'm pretty sure came out in 2002. Please add to it (note, if I didn't list you it's not a dis, I'm just working on a bunch of projects and am just writing a "start us off" list):

INDIE GAMES from 2002
Donjon by Clinton Nixon
Dread by Rafael Chandler
Paladin by Clinton Nixon
octaNe by Jared Sorensen
Riddle of Steel by Driftwood (Jake Norwood?)
Cartoon Action Hour by Cynthia Celeste Miller
Heartquest by Michael Hopcroft
Universalis by Valamir (hunting for real name now :)

SUPPLEMENTS from 2002
Sorcerer and Sword by Ron Edwards
The Sorcerer's Soul by Ron
All of those nifty Sorcerer Mini-Settings

INDIE Designers/RPGS since 1998
All the folks who released in 2002 (above)
Ron Edwards (Sorcerer)
S. John Ross (Pokethulhu)
Jason Blair (Little Fears)

I'll leave it there for now. Please help add to my three lists above.
Thanks! Your help means more time I can spend working on the site.

-Andy

EDIT: I'm a polite chap, the kinf that often takes the time to thank people in the post for their comments. If I do that with every post, though, it will really inflate this thread. Also, if I make mistakes (which I just did, ala Little Fears), I'll redit this post to correct them).

Little Fears came out in 2001, so alas it is ineligible.

Universalis was released GenCon 2002

InSpectres came out in April 2002.

Andy Kitkowski wrote: I am looking for the name of anyone who has designed/published an Indie RPG since January 1998 (five years ago), and games they've published. Please keep the two categories seperate. I'll be contacting these folks to ask them to participate in voting on the RPG awards.

I released Eldritch Ass Kicking in 2002, although I am gearing up for a rerelease next month. Cool.

A quick look at my hard drive reveals:

For-Pay full games:
Cartoon Action Hour by Cynthia Celeste Miller
Dust Devils by Matt Snyder
Kayfabe by Matt Gwin
Knights of the Road, Knights of the Rail by Aaron Houx
Violence Future by Dav Harnish (I bought this at GenCon, but don't know if it is generally available.)
FVLMINATA 2nd edition came out 8/02, by Jason E. Roberts & Michael S. Miller
Pocket Universe by Jeff Dee? (unicom@io.com is the e-mail in the game)
Trollbabe by some dude named Ron Edwards -- never heard of him

Supplements:
Against the Reich! (for octaNe) by Paul Elliot
In-Speckers (for InSpectres) by Tim Boser
Unspeakable (for InSpectres) by Jared Sorenson -- never heard of him, either

Free full games:
Wraiths by Ian Millington

As for indies in the last 5 years, don't forget John Wick's Orkworld and Gareth-Michael Skarka's Underworld

Aurora, by Stephen Mulholland (AuroraGames.com).

Andy, I strongly recommend you email John Kim (the old advocacy dude) about this. He keeps lists of this stuff as a hobby, and I think he has a longer list than this just of Sci-Fi games, which he posted when people said there weren't any sci-fi games. I don't know if he's following the Forge at the moment, so you might try his home website and email from there.

Hey,

Seems to be some confusions about Adept Press stuff. Sorcerer was first available in electronic form in 1996; Elfs was available in 1999. In book form, it's:

Sorcerer (June 2001)
Sorcerer & Sword (October 2001)
The Sorcerer's Soul (February 2002)

And Trollbabe (electronic) (August 2002)

Best,
Ron

M. J. Young wrote: There's a beta version of Alyria floating around; it's not officially published, but there's enough of it out there that you might include Seth Ben-Ezra on the list. He began publishing bits of it as part of an article series in 2001, but I don't know whether there's a date on what's available currently.

Thanks for the mention, Seth, but I have a similar response to yours regarding Legends of Alyria - the current Torchbearer is beta (and the current beta release is from January 16th, no less).

So, while I have a fairly detailed sketch of the game publicly available, I like to call it a preview sort of release. Hopefully I'll have the first print release for some time this year.

Here's what I found on my harddisk and shelf and on the net that hasn't been mentioned yet... (don't know if they all count as indies by the forge definition though). I also included the 12 Games of Christmas stuff...


Indies 2002

killing puppies for satan (by Vincent Baker - not sure about the year)
Starchildren (by Richard Ranallo and Scott Leaton, XIG Games)
Children of the Sun (by Ross, Grenfeld, Gray & Pollack, Misguided Games)
The Seventh Seal (by ?)
The Eleventh Hour (by Dav Harnish)


Indies 2002 - for free

Amazing Monkey Adventures (Jared A. Sorensen)
Insects of God (Jason L Blair)
OtherKind (by Vincent Baker - not sure about the year)


Indie 2002 - supplements

Ronin (Jason L Blair, for Dust Devils)
Blood and Steel (Jared A. Sorensen, for octaNe)
Christmas in Cartoon Land (Cynthia Celeste Miller and others, for Cartoon Action Hour)
Dragon Hunting (by Seth Ben-Ezra, for Little Fears)
Death Wish (Matt Snyder, for Dust Devils)
Radiancers (Jürgen Mayer, for UnderWorld)
Santa Claws (Jason L Blair, for Little Fears)
The Boston Irregulars (Jason L Blair, for Paladin)
Tombs of Terror (Paul Elliot & Jared A. Sorensen, for octaNe)
Against The Reich (Jared A. Sorensen, for octaNe)
Charnel Gods (Scott Knipe, for Sorcerer)


Indies before 2002

HöL (by Todd Shaughnessy, Daniel Thron and Chris Elliot, Dirt Merchant Games/White Wolf)
Obsidian (by Micah Skaritka, Dav Harnish and Frank Nolan)
The Last Exodus (by Sean Jaffe)
The Everlasting (by Steven C. Brown)
Suzerain Mortal Realms (by Damian Miller and others)
Continuum (by Chris Adams, David Fooden and Barbara Manni)
Rapture the Second Coming (by William Spencer-Hale)
Whispering Vault (by Mike Nystul)


And Universalis is by Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes. Oh and since I published the German Der Letzte Exodus in 2002, I may automatically win in the yet to be announced category of Best Foreign Edition of an Indie Game 2002. Yay!

edit: added some more games

Puppies was 2001.

-Vincent

EPICS, by J. Scott Pittman, is copyright 2000. It is a for pay game.

Nicotine Girls, by Paul Czege, came out in 2002. It is a free game.

Le Mon Mouri, by Sean Demory, is copyright 2002. It is a for pay game.

Paul

Jürgen Mayer wrote: Against The Reich (Jared A. Sorensen, for octaNe)

Hey, don't forget those indie games published by larger game companies.

Both Nobilis and Unknown Armies had 2nd Editions published in 2002. Nobilis also saw the supplement A Game of Powers.

If White Wolf hadn't gutted the original card-based, player-empowering system from the English version of Engel, I might have fought to get that included, but as it is... :(

Later.
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

By the Forge definition, neither Unknown Armies nor Nobilis is an independent RPG.

That definition:

1) Creator has full executive control over the property.

2) Creator is the publisher - responsible for printing costs, art costs, etc. (Note that this does not preclude organizing venture capital or startup stocks.)

3) Profits are received and managed by the creator.

Nuance: small teams of creators are possible rather than a single person.

The gray areas concern distinct degrees of work-for-hire (e.g. Robin Laws on Hero Wars).

What is not a grey area: having a company publish your game, meaning paying for printing and other production costs, with the understanding or contract that the creator retains the IP and will share in the profits once the publishing company has recouped its costs. That is what Atlas does with Unknown Armies and what Hogshead did with Nobilis.

When Godlike was published by Hobgoblynn Press, it was not an independent game. It only became so when the game was dissociated entirely from Hobgoblynn and became the property of Dennis Detwiller's new company, Arc Dream Publishing.

Any debate on this issue needs to go to Site Discussion.

Best,
Ron

Ron, while I have no idea about the ownership status of Nobilis and Unknown Armies, Andy has stated in the rpg.net version of this thread that he is not necessarily using the Forge definition:

Yeah, the award is for Indie games, and while I'm pulling a lot of sources and inspiration from The Forge, I'm trying to distance myself a bit from them (just because I don't want to deal with the inevitable "Only Ron Edwards' buddies/The Forge Cult will win" remarks).

As for a definition of Indie, yeah, that's a hard one. I'm going to have to go for creator-owned (Open up the book and see that the game is copyright to One Person rather than a company. And if it is a company, finding out that that company is essentially run by one person, the person who wrote the game).

And yes, a number of "big company" games fall into this category. Ex: Godlike, depending on how you squint at it, would be included.

I'm still hammering out the details of the definition in relation to these awards (I'm not going for empirical definition, and I'm saddended that I won't be able to please everyone), which I should have by this weekend when everything goes live.

What Ron said-

Plus, for the purpose of these awards, Second Editions don't count :)

Andy Kitkowski wrote: What Ron said-

Plus, for the purpose of these awards, Second Editions don't count :)

quozl wrote: I just wanted to mention this so that others won't be dissuaded from mentioning games that may not fall under the Forge defintion but may fall under Andy's definition.

Jonathan Walton wrote: If White Wolf hadn't gutted the original card-based, player-empowering system from the English version of Engel, I might have fought to get that included, but as it is...

I'm going through all my Indie RPG Awards-related threads and letting everyone know who subscribed to them that we're live!

http://www.rpg-awards.com

If you released a game last year, REGISTER IT!

If you released a game in the last two years, REGISTER TO VOTE!

If you haven't released any games, PLEASE HELP GET THE WORD OUT at other RPG forums, newsgroups, etc.

Thanks for helping me start this up, guys. I really appreciate it.

-Andy

Legends Walk! was published in August 2002. It's currently shareware.

EABA from BTRC was published in 2002. BTRC is pretty much just Greg Porter...

Lou