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

Cool! A star studied panel of judges indeed. I'm guessing that the prize is kudos?

Steve and Graham are firmly part of the indie crowd, and Simon has strong interests in that area.

Angus promotes indie games heavily via his shop, something I applaud him in actually.

Anyway, that means of four judges we have basically four indie fans.  That suggests to me this is basically a British indie rpg award, and as such it's a bit less interesting to me.

I expect Creative Endeavours to do well.

Quote from: Balbinus;222848Steve and Graham are firmly part of the indie crowd, and Simon has strong interests in that area.

Angus promotes indie games heavily via his shop, something I applaud him in actually.

Anyway, that means of four judges we have basically four indie fans.  That suggests to me this is basically a British indie rpg award, and as such it's a bit less interesting to me.

I expect Creative Endeavours to do well.

Angus also sells my games. He's interested in promoting small press games, which are inclusive of indie games. He contacted me directly when they ran out of Cold Space copies after my distributor folded, and he picked up FTL Now and the IHW games as well.

-clash

When you say Angus sells your games, is that over at the mighty Leisure Games? Good lord! Check out the site! It's there plain as day. I worked at Leisure Games for a summer and it is the single reason I got into gaming in the first place.

Small world/hobby, eh?

Quote from: Rob Lang;223091When you say Angus sells your games, is that over at the mighty Leisure Games? Good lord! Check out the site! It's there plain as day. I worked at Leisure Games for a summer and it is the single reason I got into gaming in the first place.

Small world/hobby, eh?

Angus is an awesome guy, and Leisure Games is Mecca.

-clash

Good correction by Clash actually, Angus has a broad church definition of Indie and Flyingmice games and other small press stuff is definitely part of it.

Leisuregames is indeed teh awesome, to use a storygamesism.

Steve is actually a thoroughly nice chap, I consider him a mate, but he is one of those filthy dirty hippy indie gamers and as such should be dunked in a pond to see if he floats.  It's the only sensible response.

I still suspect this will tend to be a Brit indie award, but then there's no harm in another award so why not?

Ah hell, I'll nominate some stuff, if I'm going to be a curmudgeon I may as well join in and be a helpful curmudgeon.

Rob, yes, the prize is kudos.

Balbinus, we're definitely open to any nominations, not just indie games. In a sense, I'd prefer nominations that aren't indie games: I know which indie games have been released in 2008, so I'd like to hear about other things.

Also, note that you can nominate things that aren't games: a convention, a group of people, a publisher, a trader at a convention.

Anyway, do send nominations in. submissions [at] britishgameawards [dot] com.

Cheers

Graham

Quote from: Balbinus;222848Steve and Graham are firmly part of the indie crowd, and Simon has strong interests in that area.

I love, love, love, love AD&D 1st Edition. It's still the game I most enjoy running. I really enjoy Amber, too. I've just playtested an adventure for 4e which I really enjoyed running (some of the more indie players weren't as keen). I've enjoy many other mainstream games, too, so it's worth submitting stuff that isn't indie.

Please submit non-indie games and things, too. Hell, someone (anyone) could nominate 4e if they wanted, or the rgpsite.

I'm trying to understand what the categories, if any, are. Or are people supposed to just nominate things they think are generally deserving?

Also the idea of a category for "overlooked" just strikes me as rather silly. The qualification is just begging for manipulation; either any game that hasn't won a major award qualifies, or it becomes a tool for handing an award only to pet products. A more objective qualification should set the stage for what will necessarily be a subjective judging process. I would suggest "first publication by a new designer", or "indie" by whatever definition, or "small press", if you're trying to give recognition to the "little guy" who doesn't benefit from promotion.

Also, if Pelgrane's publications are any indication of Simon's interests, I'd say that more than anything, he's a fan of Robin Laws, who doesn't really fit into any particular category.