For nearly every other category, your winner is either FATE, Numenera or the occasional Pathfinder release. Well, a few others did slip through, and Gnomestew did win for best blog (huge congrats to +Martin Ralya and the rest of the gnomes) and Roll20 for Best Software.
I do find it interesting that the judge list for 2015 will be nearly identical to the 2014 list:
I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict "Risen From The Sands" (PF's FreeRPGDay adventure this year) as next year's "Best Free Product", because apparently only those matter. Yay ENnies! Congratulations to the winners - there are some great products in there, and those products are not diminished by the bizarre ENnies process.
ReplyDeleteActually our ENnie was for Heart of the Razor, which is the adventure book attached to the Razor Coast campaign area. You don't need to have the expensive campaign book to use these; they are pirate adventures that work in any sort of Caribbean type of campaign. I don't want to knock the campaign book, but it's not what won the award.
ReplyDeleteHooray, the same crew, so they can lock out Fantasy Flight and their evil weird dice again, while awarding best roleplaying aid to Evil Hat's weird non-standard dice. My head hurts.
ReplyDeleteI understand that FATE is the flavor of the month in the RPG world, even if I don't get it, but what did Numenera do to deserve anything? I ask this seriously, as I haven't seen the game.
ReplyDeleteOf course they have the same judges as last year, different judges might have different tastes and award the prizes to different games, which would be far too different for most people to safely experience.
ReplyDeleteLast year's choice of Rocket Age is also highly debatable. I just don't like it.
ReplyDelete@faoladh - You may dislike FATE, but it's hardly the "flavor of the month". It was originally written in 2003 (based on FUDGE which was written in the 1990's), Spirit of the Century came out in 2006 and Dresden Files came out in 2010 and FATE v4 this past year.
ReplyDeleteThe system has had legs enough to sell well in several different incarnations and revisions, and has been around longer than many (most) OSR games. So... just because it's not your taste, does not mean it has no value.
I wrote something a little more forceful, but I'll just say that 4 editions in a decade is not what I want out of my games. My arguments with the game mechanics are about my own taste, and my taste says what has value to me. Therefore, from my perspective, FATE has no value.
DeleteNow, do you have an answer about the actual question I asked, instead of white-knighting a game that I expressly have no interest in? If not, why are you addressing me? Do you think that I'll suddenly come around and join the FATE cult? I've got my own Kool Aid to drink, thanks.
I could barely care less about what you play. I don't even play FATE, so it's not like I'm a fan-boy, But calling it the "flavor of the month" is bull as it has clearly carved out an important spot in the history of RPGs.
DeleteReally? That's what you're going with?
Delete