I adore both games and glad to see both of them get the praise they deserve.
I adore both games and glad to see both of them get the praise they deserve.
Wild to see how much of a sweep Daggerheart had, and I saw that as someone who has played for a year and liked it, but felt like a couple of these awards might’ve been better placed
At the end of the day it is a popularity contest (judges choose shortlist but public votes on winner) so it's sort of to be expected that a game with the fanbase of Daggerheart would do well. I don't say that to diminish it's success. I genuinely think it's one of the better games in recent years. But its sweep was definitely partly thanks the entire fan ecosystem behind it.
The ennies are a popularity contest so often winners coast more on recognition than merit. (Not saying DH is a bad game! I'm just saying people have heard of it.)
Daggerheart is very overrated. I have GMed about a dozen sessions, and its an RPG that doesn't know what it wants to be. Especially on the GM side of the table.
Full results:
Really good showings for Daggerheart, Crooked Moon and Legend in the Mist!
We just gonna ignore the Dolmenwood wins? But yeah not surprising overall
Ennies are bogus
It’s just a popularity contest in the end. The game with the biggest community, marketing and reach wins.
I don't recall this reaction when Shadowdark sweeped 😂
well thank god you told us
I'm really sad Legend in the Mist took best art, it's absolutely bogus.
Well, at least the Floral Dragons won silver for Best interior art. That was my fav book of last year
Surprised Draw Steel isn’t here or is there some kind of cutoff ? Based on talk here, I’d swear it was broadly popular and their community fairly large?
Whether this is true or not I'm not sure, but I saw claims that they didn't enter as they didn't want to draw attention from indies. Something Daggerheart clearly did not agree with
Draw Steel has a decent and extremely dedicated following. And I think they are content with that, not trying to catch the net over the whole TTRPG community the way Daggerheart does having D&D designers and Critical Role backing. I think Draw Steel!'s creators are playing their own game and therefore they didn't participate.
Congrats to Gavin and Dolmenwood but it's a robbery that it wasn't nominated for best layout. The Old World is certainly an improvement of WFRP 4e (low bar!) but better than Dolmenwood? Not in a million years. This is my hill and you can find me on it by using the hight map in the Dolmenwood Maps book.
Agreed
I can join you in a bit, I got pipeweed
100% agreed. I’ve never seen a better layout than in the Dolmenwood books. It’s a master class.
Gavin was most interested in winning best setting, so I'm glad he won it. Dolmenwood's an amazing setting. I wish Cozy RPG won top place in streaming, but pretty thrilled he at least got second.
I'm surprised Crooked Moon won product of the year. I know why it's popular, given who made it, but I've only heard pretty damning criticisms whenever I've heard people discuss it.
“Product of the Year” is a shitty renaming of what used to be product design category. Also the version of Crooked Moon which won “best product” is the $1400 Kickstarter whale backer crate, not the book on its own merit. In a sane Ennies the kickstarter whale boxes should not be competing with a $60 book and map lol
These wins are all fine to me. Since I haven't read a single thing from the nomination list. I was caught totally off guard by what's popular this year. More than any previous year. I have to admit I'm not in the popular loop. I'm in a niche within a niche. I'm not sure I can or want to do anything about it. Or if I ought. I tried to vote. And tried to quickly get a handle of the entries but quickly realized I just didn't get it. So I barely participated. But I attended the awards in person at Gencon. Union Station was a nice venue. And the vibe was good. I left at intermission.
Nice to see the recognition for the Designing Dungeons Course. I've read about halfway through so far and it's delightfully thorough.
Did Drawsteel /MCDM not even apply ? Their free adventure /tutorial was really good. The Codex is great (maybe it's not on applicable because it's not fully released?) and the adventures they are putting out are definitely more playable than a lot of others I gone through.
Well I'm happy for SPINE
Not particularly surprising or exciting, but it's cool that Dragontown got silver. Berkserkr getting silver for layout is odd to me. Yea, it's not quite as out there as far as borg layout goes, but it's still borgy, which makes it a pain to actually use at the table.