Some Thoughts on My Awards

I’m back from Victoria! While away I had the idea to reflect a little bit on my awards. If I was more organized I would have written my thoughts down on their 10th anniversary. That said, writing this two years late feels on brand.

The first time I made an awards post it was in response to the Ennie’s snubbing Jez Gordon’s art in Death Frost Doom: “that this book wasn’t up for a best art Ennie is why I am even writing this post." You can see all the DNA for the awards right there from the start. I picked three books from the proceeding year. I had a short list of honourable mentions. I act like the awards are a bigger deal than they actually are. I make fun of the Teen Choice Awards of the RPG scene.

I don’t think I had any intention at the time of doing another awards blog post, but people on G+ loved the first one, so my gag became a thing. The second awards post keeps the energy of the first. By this point everything about the awards was in place, including the inconsistent categories and Patrick winning again.

The Ennies have a million categories, with distinctions that often seem dubious. The Diana Jones Award—the awards whose pretentious style I’m trying to ape my awards—has a single winner, picked from a small set of nominees. I prefer this model. I have stuck with my three books only rule because I think making a difficult choice is what makes my acknowledging these books meaningful. Some years I find it quite hard to pick, like this past one, but I force myself to do it all the same. For this reason I think my honourable mentions are actually full of some real juice. So many of these books could have been a winner if not for my mood that day.

It’s funny that early on I already understood the biggest issue with the structure of the awards. Once you are on my radar you typically stay there. The best chance of winning an award is likely having already won one. From the third year running the awards:

Wait—what’s the point of this thing? Patrick’s won something 3 years in a row now. (I actually made an off hand remark about this very situation occurring last year.) We’re half way though 2017 and Veins of the Earth has come and gone, which made picking this years awards tougher. I can see into this award’s future: I can’t imagine not Veins not making my short list next year. That made me second guess my picking Maze of the Blue Medusa for awards this year. There is likely something structurally problematic in how I construct my long list. I’m always going to buy Patrick’s new book: I love what he does. So, he’s always guaranteed a spot in my long list. (Well, until he starts writing dreck.) I pick up all of LotFP’s adventures for the same reason, so they are overrepresented in my long list and have a better chance of making it to my short list. Should I penalize people for making good books, though? As I said last year, every scene needs their Daniel Day Lewis. In 2016 I picked up a lot of games from people i’ve never heard of, for systems I would have never played, so it’s not like i’m knee deep in the same people’s work, but this is still something to keep in mind. At the end of the day this award will always simply be a reflection of what I like. I mean, I named them after myself.

This weakness is also a strength. These awards are idiosyncratic and tied to my tastes. If you like the OSR then these awards will likely speak to you in a way the Ennies never will. They are awards decided by a peer, not randoms with random tastes. And my tastes also aren’t set in stone: they have evolved and changed as the scene I enjoy has changed. Several story games have taken the top spot, and in recent years war games as well. I don’t think my picks are always obvious, which probably keeps things a little interesting for people who are following along at home.

As I note every year, these awards exist in contrast to the Ennies. My awards are aggressively niche. My D&D friends get excited whenever I post my picks, but the people behind Trench Crusade are likely unaware they won such a coveted award this year. The Ennies on the other hand looms large in this scene. Everyone pays attention, even when they don’t care for the awards at all. I was thinking of this while listening to Yochai complain about the Ennies on his podcast about the Ennies. No one made him record this particular show! He brings up my awards as a nice alternative, before jumping back into talking about books him, Brad, and Sam have mostly never heard of. There is likely a vicious cycle here, where the Ennie’s importance encourages people to pay extra attention, and because people pay extra attention they remain important. But if they help people sell more books no harm no foul.

What makes my awards interesting to Yochai—they are from a person he knows whose opinion he is interested to hear—is likely what makes them so incredibly uninteresting for most everyone else: who even is this guy and why do I care what he has to say? Mothership will tell people its won an award from Boing Boing or Polygon because someone reading their website will know who that even is. The size of the audience of those sites provides genuine value. Telling people you’ve won The Ramanan Sivaranjan Excellence in Gaming Best God Damn Book Award three times on the other hand is a fun in-joke.

Like everything on this blog, the awards exist first and foremost for me. They are nice time capsule of my favourite books. It’s interesting to look back and see what stuff remains a favourite, what stuff I’ve moved on from. I do love the undeserved exuberance people have for them all the same.

Till next year.