From the Diana Jones Award Website
Two publishers, a hobby game, a family game, and an RPG
vie for hobby-gaming’s most exclusive trophy
From a long and extremely diverse long-list of nominees, the
secretive committee of the Diana Jones Award has distilled a shortlist
of five items that it believes best exemplified ‘excellence’ in the
field of gaming in 2013.
The Diana Jones committee is proud to announce the shortlist for its annual Award for Excellence in Gaming:
Evil Hat Productions, a publishing company run by Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks
Ever since the release of
FATE as
a free RPG in 2003, Evil Hat Productions has aimed at two usually
difficult goals: skill and elegance in game design, and professionalism
and transparency in publishing. Honesty and openness about business
realities, and excitement and perfectionism about game possibilities,
built the Evil Hat audience from a corner of the Internet to a loyal
horde numbering in the tens of thousands. From
Don't Rest Your Head through
Happy Birthday Robot,
Penny For Your Thoughts,
Diaspora, and
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Evil Hat has combined the key features of a design house and a best-of-breed imprint while nurturing its core
FATE system
through three major editions without forking its player base. By
co-creating Bits and Mortar, Evil Hat pioneered PDF-retailer
cooperation; using the Open Game License and Creative Commons, Evil Hat
built on a tradition of trusting players and designers to build better
games. In 2013 Evil Hat hit both its design goals and its deadlines with
FATE Core: five books Kickstarted, printed, and delivered, and over 60,000 copies sold. And
FATE Core is still a free RPG.
Hillfolk, a roleplaying game written by Robin D. Laws (Pelgrane Press)
The
Hillfolk Kickstarter
asked for $3000 and offered a 96-page softcover; it raised $93,000 and
delivered two full-colour hardbacks filled by some of the brightest
names in story-game design. But it only happened because of the
game-engine at the heart of
Hillfolk:
Robin D. Laws’s DramaSystem, an elegant and clever take on group
storytelling that puts gameplay and competition on an equal footing with
structured narrative and individual creativity.
Hillfolk and its sister-volume
Blood on the Snow showcase a leading ludonarrative designer at the height of his powers, and inviting his friends to come and play.
Paizo Publishing, a publishing company run by Lisa Stevens
One of the hardest things in business is to unseat a market-leader,
particularly when that market-leader created the entire field, but 2013
was the year when word spread that Paizo's
Pathfinder RPG was outselling
Dungeons & Dragons. It’s official: Paizo has used the OGL and a single-minded commitment to talent and quality to create a better
D&D than
D&D. Its
achievement only seems extraordinary to those who don't know CEO Lisa
Stevens’ extraordinary track record in the games industry, from Lion
Rampant through White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast. Paizo's ability to
raise $1m to crowd-fund a
Pathf inder-based MMO in January 2013 was simply the apple at the top of the industry's new tallest tree.
In game design nothing is harder than simplicity, and in no category
is that quality more required than in the family/party game space. With
the brilliant, elegant and delightful dynamic animating
ROFL!,
designer John Kovalic provides a masterstroke of the KISS principle.
Just as amazingly, he does it by finding an original take on the word
game sub-genre.
ROFL!’s phrase
compression conceit rewards both clue-making and guessing, supplying an
essential skill-levelling element many party games lack. And if that
weren’t enough, he somehow inveigles tabletop’s most beloved cartoonist
to lend it the light, joyous visual look that its play style demands.
Though created by someone steeped in the adventure game tradition, it
could and should appear on shelves at mass-market retailers wherever
they are found. GRTGMJK!
In the land of Terra Mystica dwell 14 different races in seven
landscapes, each bound to its home environment. Each race must terraform
neighboring landscapes into their home environments in competition with
the others. It's a brilliant piece of state-of-the-art design: there
are no stunning new mechanics here but the game takes a number of
clever, intriguing systems and combines them in a bravura piece of
game-creation to build a sublimely engaging experience.The game
emphasizes strategy over luck, rewards planning, and provides a huge
amount of delightful replayability.
PRESENTATION
The winner of this year’s award will be announced and the Diana Jones
trophy will be presented at the annual Diana Jones Party, which will be
held in Indianapolis at 9pm on August 13th — the night before the
Gen Con games convention opens to the public. All games-industry professionals are invited to attend.
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