Those of you who voted in the Ennies last year may remember that they started late (like this year) and then after a day or two of voting had gone past, something went south and it had to get restarted, with everyone who voted early needing to cast their votes again.

Guess what else happened this year?

If you cast your vote already, please drop by their site and see if it recognizes you as having voted before. If it hasn’t, you’ll need to vote again!

http://www.ennieawards.com/voting/index.phtml 

Your support as always is appreciated!

Ennies voting is live:

http://www.ennieawards.com/voting.html

In order for indie and small/micro press games to have a chance and a voice at the Ennies, we need every single one of you reading this to get on over there and vote. Please participate! Earlier is better, of course, but you have a week. And please don’t try to vote multiple times. We’d rather have your honest support!

Here’s the “indie-focused” ballot, as I posted earlier on the Summer Revolution:

http://summer-revolution.com/?p=12

On a personal note, as the publisher of Spirit of the Season, I’d especially appreciate your vote this year!

So, the Ennies Voting is supposed to be live today, according to their voting page.

It’s not, yet, but I’ll try to be patient.

In the meantime, let’s look at the ballot, and how I might vote in support of the “indie” games out there. Note, I’m voting this way because I like what I’m supporting and I have a bit of an indie-support agenda besides, but I’m pretty impressed with a lot of the products in these categories, indie or not, so please take all of this with the necessary grains of salt!

Best Fan Product: I’m going to go with Flames Rising here. They’ve been a strong supporter of horror games both indie and not, and I’ve personally had nothing but positive interactions with their staff. It’s a pity podcasts got lumped into this category, but that’s on the podcasters — they didn’t provide enough submissions to support the two categories separately.

Best Art, Cover: The indie vote here is Thousand Suns, from Rogue Games. If you’re going non-indie this time around, there’s a lot to love here. The Scion covers have been gorgeous, and I pretty much love everything I see at Green Ronin’s booth whenever I drop by — Pirate’s Guide to Freeport being no exception.

Best Art, Interior: Alpha Omega from Mindstorm Labs is our closest indie fit here (they’re with IPR), and boy, they’re entirely spot on about the art on this one. Check out some interior peeks (scroll down to see them) over at IPR’s site. Outside the indie track, I know I drooled openly at Solomon Kane, and Changeling was pretty evocative.

Best Cartography: At present, indie doesn’t really compete here. In a pinch, I’d throw Green Ronin some love, but I have to admit that I’m not yet well versed in most of these guys.

Best Production Values: What a kooky category! I think I’ve said most of what’s to be said about the stuff here, already. Alpha Omega may well deserve your love.

Best Writing: I’m terribly biased here. For me, it’s a fistfight of the indie kind between Monsters and Other Childish Things and Trail of Cthulhu, with Two-Fisted Tales swinging in with a surprise left cross. I won’t tell you which one I’ll pick above the others, but I have much love for the work and words of Ben Baugh and Ken Hite (both of whom have done/are doing work for Evil Hat, so yes, I’ll fess up to being a little biased).

Best Rules: Trail of Cthulhu’s here again as an IPR-sold contender. Alas, I have little knowledge of the other entrants, so Trail gets a firm and enthusiastic first place vote from me, here.

Best Adventure: Indie doesn’t do adventures that often, so I’m not too shocked this one’s devoid of things I’ve seen!

Best Monster/Adversary: Oh my (elder) gods, The Book of Unremitting Horror is full of exactly what this category’s about.

Best Setting: Another fairly unfamiliar category here, though Warp World is from BTRC, a frequent member of the Forge Booth.

Best Supplement: Why, Ennies? Why must you stack Evil Hat up against Exile Studios (let alone Green Ronin) again? You can guess I’ll be casting my vote for Spirit of the Season, while looking fondly upon Exile’s Secrets of the Surface World. Those curious about Spirit of the Season can check out the special Ennies 40-page extended preview available for free on DriveThruRPG.

Best Accessory: I have never seen a sturdier nor more impressive GM screen than the one available from Exile Studios. For me, at least, it wins by a mile, and that’s in a category full of worthies.

Best Miniature Product: If we didn’t sell Disposable Heroes paper minis over at IPR, I’d still be a fan. What’s particularly smart about this PDF product set is that each one contains three versions of the minis art, so you can print out ones according to your preference — flat “chit” style, “teepee” style, or “prism” style. Badass.

Best Regalia: Hobby Games: The 100 Best from Green Ronin would have my vote even if they didn’t include Amber Diceless and My Life With Master on their list. A fantastic book from a bunch of people I really respect.

Best Electronic Book: No indie contenders here per se, though I look upon the efforts of Open Design with a fair amount of enthusiasm.

Best Free Product: How did I not end up with all of this schwag? I stink.

Best d20/d20 OGL Product: Blue Devil Games didn’t field a contender this year, for which I weep.

Best Game: I adore Monsters & Other Childish Things and would encourage folks to give it support in this category. Any game that’s like Calvin & Hobbes where Hobbes is an eldritch horror from beyond the stars deserves some love. (Og: Unearthed is no slouch either — and recently spawned a variant in my head built around zombies instead of cavemen.)

Product of the Year: Did I mention Monsters & Other Childish Things has completely captured my imagination? There’s a reason I knew Benjamin Baugh was the right man to write Don’t Lose Your Mind!

Fan’s Choice: Best Publisher: So much to love here. I’m from Evil Hat, and if you like us, we really appreciate your vote. Other worthies from the indie and IPR scenes include Arc Dream, Cubicle 7, Exile Games Studio, Lumpley Games, Mind Storm Labs, Pelgrane Press, Precis Intermedia, and Schrodinger’s Cat Press. Which isn’t to say I don’t have some love for the folks I’m NOT listing!

Thanks for tuning in, folks. That’s as close as we’ll get to a “ballot” this year. I’ll put up a notice when it crosses my radar that Ennies voting is actually afoot!

There’s only one day left for folks to nominate and/or second their favorite publisher for the Ennies. On the personal interest angle, Evil Hat’s already covered; here’s the list of publishers looking for “seconds”:

Looking for a second:
0One Games
Arc Dream
Expeditious Retreat Press
Fiery Dragon
Goodman Games
Kenzer & Company
Mind Storm Labs
Wildfire

Of the list, I’d strongly encourage support of Arc Dream, who put out the excellent Monsters & Other Childish Things this year, but honestly they’re in good company here. If you haven’t yet nominated a company, give some love!

Mind Storm Labs is the other one on there that particularly hits my recognition filte; their game, Alpha Omega, was recently listed on IPR, and is chock full of eye candy.

Still processing, but here’s some stuff to pay attention to from an indie/IPR perspective. Forgive me for listing Evil Hat’s category first!

Best Supplement:
Spirit of the Season (Evil Hat)
Hollow Earth Expedition: Secrets of the Surface World (Exile Studios)

Best Game
Monsters & Other Childish Things (Arc Dream)
Og (Firefly Games)

Best Writing
Trail of Cthulhu (Pelgrane)
Monsters & Other Childish Things (Arc Dream)
Two-Fisted Tails (PIG)

Best Cover Art
Thousand Suns (Rogue Games)

Best Interior Art
Alpha Omega (Mindstorm Labs)

Best Production Values
Alpha Omega (Mindstorm Labs)

Best Adversary/Monster Product:
The Book of Unremitting Horror (Pelgrane Press) - They have this listed as “Unrelenting Horror” on the site, but it’s wrong.

Best Aid or Accessory
Hollow Earth Expedition GM Screen (Exile)

Best Miniature Product
Disposable Heroes (PIG)

Best Regalia
The 100 Best Hobby Games (Green Ronin) — Lists My Life With Master!

Best Fan Product
Flames Rising Website — Strong in their support of indie horror games!

Fan’s Choice: Best Publisher
(Nominations still underway, but I know that Evil Hat and Arc Dream have gotten nominated.)

Beyond the nod for Spirit of the Season, I’m jazzed in particular about Monsters & Other Childish Things — easily one of my favorite new games of the year.

Judge voting for the ENnies is on!

http://www.enworld.org/judgevoting/

This is the most important step in terms of shaping next year’s Ennie Awards. Folks whose profiles (last I checked) strongly interested me are:

- Jeramy Ware (his ennies judge blog at http://enniejudge.blogspot.com/ is stellar)
- Chris Gath
- Zachary Houghton

… but there may be more (I intend to look over their profiles again and look for signs of small press or indie friendliness in their gaming experiences). I also think the women deserve a boost in the voting; I’d like to see the panel as diverse as possible on that front, so rounding that out with Elizabeth and Gertie may be the way to go.  Five judges, total, get in — so certainly rank as fits your conscience, even offering up #6 and so forth choices if you see a lot of folks you like — but please consider keeping the above names in your top five!

Does anyone have some favorite judges they’ve got an eye on? Let’s share our discoveries. There’s a lot to read in the profiles, and I believe it’s only this week that votes can be cast.

The Ennies votes are approaching 10,000 in number of votes made.  Has the Summer Revolution’s voice been heard?  August will tell the tale.  But we’re not there yet!  You’ve still got a few days to make sure you and all your friends have voted.  Go vote!

So, thanks to everyone who’s voted for Spirit of the Century so far as a part of the Ennies, whether or not it was part of the Summer Revolution.

Now that I’m back from DexCon, there’s just one week left in the Ennies voting … and they’re up to 6000 votes. My brain’s fried by the con, but I’m trying to think about some questions. I’d love your thoughts!

Mainly I’m wondering:

- How many of our fans are numbered among those 6000?
- What could we do to reach more voters and get some backing for SOTC (and, ideally, our “indie allies” on the Summer Revolution list)?
- How underdoggy are we? Did we come off too “pro” somehow in our campaigning to get that underdog push? (I haven’t seen as extensive of a spread of the Summer Revolution idea as I had hoped…)

Thoughts?

This is an exciting year for “indies at the ennies”, but it’s going to stop cold at being just about the nominations rather than the awards unless our “fan push” gets some serious support in there.

Moreover, this is the point at which I want to say, anyone can vote on the Ennies. It’s an open process. So even if you’re only a fan of, say, Spirit of the Century, or Burning Empires, or Dictionary of Mu, and don’t have any feelings about anything else, getting in there and voting on just those one or two categories where you do have an opinion is going to be far better than voting on none at all. If that’s what’s been holding you back, now’s the time to hit the voting site and vote on whatever you’re willing to vote on.

We just got word of this over on Story-Games (thanks, Buzz!):

This is on the ENWorld site right now:
Notice: Due to an error in the ballot form for the ENnies it was necessary to add a missing entry and reset the ballot forms. If you voted before 1:10 PM EDT you will need to vote again. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

I know this means that I need to vote again. Make sure that you vote again too, if you were one of our “early adopters”!

Master RPG.net reviewer Christopher Richeson has posted up a nice collection of review links to the games on the indie ennie ballot, over on his LiveJournal. If you want to make sure you know something about these games before voting, definitely check out what Chris has to say!

http://cwricheson.livejournal.com/24154.html