A multi-way conversation between roleplaying game authors and developers. Occasionally useful.

 
The 2003 Origins Awards
posted by Bruce at 9:01 PM

It's that time of year again. Ogre Cave is on top of things with an on-the-spot report. For those who need a refresher, the list of nominees remains on Gaming Report.

Once again, it's a travesty, though there's nothing quite as egregious as either HackMaster's win last year or the omission of Nobilis from the ballot this year. I'm not competent to discuss a lot of the categories, and the last thing we need is more holding forth in ignorance. I'll confine myself to the material I do have personal and professional opinions about.

Best Roleplaying Game: Lord of the Rings beats out Buffy, d20 Call of Cthulhu, Mutants & Masterminds, and Silver Age Sentinels. Now, none of these strikes me as a bad game. They were all done by people who like what they're doing, are aware of what's going on around them, and take pride in crafting intelligent and useful work. So that's an improvement. But honestly, of these five, LOTR is the last I'd have picked. Buffy and Mutants & Masterminds are significantly more innovative in mechanics, d20 CoC is a beautiful update of a now-past-its-prime classic and has some of the best GMing advice ever, and Silver Age Sentinels pushed on the Tri-Stat system with glorious design and a profoundly knowledgeable love of the Silver Age. It sounds like LOTR works - friends of mine are having fun with it - but it does least that makes me sit up and drool. And it remains grotesque that by far the most innovative game of last year - playable and beautiful and altogether neat - wasn't on the list. I must make sure there's something out this year to get Nobilis considered via a supplement.

Best Roleplaying Adventure: City of the Spider Queen beats out Barsaive In Chaos, Orbital Decay, a humorous piece from Dork Tower, and two Avalanche adventures. Now, in the first place, the presence of two Avalanche adventures is pretty pathetic. City of the Spider Queen earns its win, as far as I'm concerned - the advance on the practical issues confronting the GM is really outstanding, down to primary and contingency tactics, fallbacks, ways of responding to unforeseen developments, and a lot else. And, y'know, it's got hot dark chicks and their spiders, so what's to complain about, he said, sounding not at all like the fanboy he is. There were just so many deserving candidates that should have gotten consideration, from the campaign seed/adventures in All Flesh Must Be Eaten supplements to d20 work from Sword & Sorcery Studios, Green Ronin, Atlas, and countless others. City is great work, and deserved better circumstances.

Best Roleplaying Supplement: Celtic Age from Avalanche beats out the big Freeport book from Green Ronin, the Kingdom of Kalamar Player's Guide, Nyambe, and another bit of dry-as-dust historical drek from Avalanche. This one's really pathetic. Nyambe is one of the really ground-breaking supplements of recent memory, and is not just a good idea but wonderfully executed. Even the Kalamar book, while tedious to my taste, is done with care and intelligence - if what you're looking for is the ambience of an atlas and encyclopedia mixed in with detached tone and game mechanics, it's a great pick. The Freeport book is darned cool, and would be higher on my list in any year without Nyambe. Any of those three would have been worthy winners. But yeesh. Exalted deserved some attention here, just for starters. There was first-rate work in the World of Darkness, for Unknown Armies, for d20 lines like Spycraft and Legend of Five Rings...for a lot. I could stock this list over and over again without feeling the need to start nominating Avalanche books, let alone letting them win.

So it's another year of awards which sometimes make sense but are overall just too unreliable and indulgent to their administrators to be worth the attention of the public at large.