The Year of the Independents
By The Warden
Sage Kobold Productions accepts their 2013 Gold ENnies Award for Best Rules.
By this time this week’s edition of the Hood goes live, Gen Con will be wrapping up and there will be thousands of worn and exhausted roleplayers, designers, publishers, and die-hard fans straggling to get home and make it back to work by Tuesday (at least). This past weekend was a collection of ongoing projects finally seeing the light of day, a look to the future of the industry, and a reflection of the events that shaped this past year in roleplaying games.
In particular, there was Friday night’s ENnie Awards ceremony, broadcast live via the Internet for the first time ever for fans like myself who cannot make the journey in person. Even if I didn’t have a personal stake in this year’s awards (my first original game received a Judges’ Spotlight award – WOO!!), it was finally a chance to get a glimpse at the world previously available to me only through texts, tweets, and links.
This year’s awards were a banner year for indie publishing, as far as I’m concerned, and the immediate proof of that is the number of winning products made possible by Kickstarter. Projects that may, in theory, never have been possible using the typical funding models of previous years (meaning you had to pay for it yourself and take a huge financial risk, regardless of its size and scope). It was enough that these indie projects were nominated, that’s always a possibility. Receiving these awards is another matter altogether for the sheer reason that the Gold and Silver awards and handed out based on popular votes and these projects (save for the Judges’ Spotlight winners, as they were selected by one judge in particular) held up to the big guns and took home proof of their superiority. For that reason alone, I’d say 2013 is a banner year for indie RPGs.
SHADOWS OF ESTEREN
Tying for third place with Catalyst Game Labs with 3 awards was Agate RPG and their stunning gothic fantasy horror RPG, Shadows of Esteren. Bringing home the Gold for Best Interior Art, Best Production Values, and the Silver for Best Product of the Year, this product began as a Kickstarter back in Summer 2012 to create the English translation of the game, it raked in eighteen times the asking goal and truly earned its awards with such an incredible book as to give Wizards of the Coast a run for their money.
The thing to remember about this project – and many others – was that Kickstarter did not make the artwork possible. It made the publication possible and got their work into the public’s hands. All of the gorgeous and theme-setting artwork was already in existence when the gaming world first discovered this project, leaving little doubt Esteren could have been nominated regardless of their success. Yet, without it, could they have won any – let alone three – awards?
DUNGEON WORLD
Taking home the Gold for Best Rules, Dungeon World took a hack of Apocalypse World and made it their own signature style and guideline for the next generation of old school fantasy and story games. It’s even inspired a new onslaught of hacks modelled after Dungeon World (making them “double hacks?”) and set the stage for a new competitor in third-party publishing supplements by combining their work with the popular Creative Commons license.
Of all the games listed in this year’s nominations for Best Rules, Dungeon World was the game everyone wanted to see win, but never expected it would happen. Especially when competing with heavy hitters like Night’s Black Agents by Pelgrane Press (who did walk away with 2 awards) and Iron Kingdoms by Privateer Press (who captured four awards to take second place in the standings), the odds were not in DW’s favour. And yet, they seized the Gold and walked away the ironic winners. More importantly, they walked away as the most appropriate winners.
Dungeon World is a game focused solely on the rules. There is no intrinsic setting linking the game together, it’s all about the rules and how those rules affect gameplay and the story. All of its attention has been due to the absolute enthusiasm fans have for the rules and when your game attracts that level of fandom, it truly deserves to win the Gold for Best Rules for the same reason why the Marvel Heroic RPG won in the same category last year.
THE JUDGES’ SPOTLIGHT: SCHOOL DAZE & KILLSHOT
One of the biggest delights this year was the early announcement of the Judges’ Spotlight winners, allowing them time to make arrangements and arrive in person to accept this acknowledgement. This year saw two Kickstarter-funded products get a nod, School Daze and Killshot: The Director’s Cut.
Built as a tribute to the high school experience and popular films/TV shows such as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and more, School Daze stood out in ENnies judge Matthew Muth’s mind to warrant one of the five Judges’ Spotlight awards. Compiled by newcomer Tracy Barnett and an impressive team including Brian Patterson and Daniel Solis for production, this game pulled in 200% of its goal and made quite an impact within the RPG community. Once again, had it not been for crowdfunding to bring this game to life, who knows what inception would be available for the gaming world today.
Megan Robertson gave her vote to my own game, Killshot: The Director’s Cut, in spite of her initial impressions about an assassin RPG where violence is the goal, not the means. Yet, here we are. If this game were written by anyone else, I’d be sure to spend time highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, but my opinion is incredibly biased, so I’ll simply lead you to where you need to go to learn more for yourself.
YEAR OF THE INDEPENDENTS
In years past, the Judges’ Spotlight was perhaps the only offering for smaller games like School Daze and Killshot to get an award, let alone a nomination. Without the need for a “popularity contest” at the final stage, this category has been a vital chance for lesser known games to get a moment in the spotlight and now that evolution of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites has allowed these games more than a bigger spotlight. It’s provided them with the means to play on the same level as the big guns and it’s not because of the money – it’s because of the passion these games invoke. The money simply allows these games to rise to the surface as they were always intended, without shortcuts and cutbacks, but it does not reflect the core values of the game itself. Even if these games were brought forward as nothing more than text files, they would be the same feats of awesome design we know today. It’s because of the attention they’ve received that a wider audience has begun to appreciate the hidden corners of the market while the major players have taken the past year (or two) to build up their next batch of releases.
2013 was our year to shine. It became a time for independent RPG design and publishing to have a chance at the spotlight, not because there was no one else to take the stage, but because people noticed the wild and exciting things going on at the far side of the room. While next year’s ENnies are sure to include many more Kickstarter projects, they’ll likely include heavy hitters like FATE Core, Numenera, and many more yet to unfold. This year was our year. This was the Year of the Independents.
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