The Nominees
The shortlist for the 2012 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming has five entries. Listed alphabetically they are:
Burning Wheel Gold
An RPG system by
Luke Crane
Published by
Burning Wheel
Burning Wheel Gold (BWG) is the newest edition of the
Burning Wheel
fantasy roleplaying game system initially published in 2004 by Luke
Crane. If you're looking for a big system that can stand up to long-term
campaign play as well as D&D but is designed with contemporary
design sensibilities,
BWG is the game for you.
The
Burning Wheel system has introduced a host of design
innovations over the years. A few examples: with the fail forward
mentality a missed die roll isn't a failure, it's an unexpected outcome;
instead of the GM designing adventures, players direct the action by
listing their beliefs and what they intend to do about them; players can
make world-setting contributions by creating NPCs using the Circles
mechanic or historical facts using the Wises mechanic; and players
develop rich character concepts using an elaborate (and fun) Lifepaths
mechanic reminiscent of
Traveller.
The latest edition,
BWG, cleans up old rules problems and
brings together material from a number of different books into one
comprehensive and attractive hardback tome.
Crowdfunding
When historians of the hobby-gaming movement look back on 2011, they
will certainly note the production of several fine games and gaming
products, including others appearing on this diverse, exciting
shortlist. The truly defining shift, however, will be found in the
introduction of crowdfunding. By combining consumer micro-capital and
community-building, all to the ticking of a suspenseful pre-order clock,
it truly warrants the overused label of game-changer.
Forward movements in art forms have always depended on the opened purse
strings of a few key patrons. By democratizing patronage and widening
the field of opportunity for all game designers, this broader market
transformation well deserves recognition as a cauldron of present and
future gaming excellence. Within this recognition comes an
acknowledgment of the movement's dominant force,
Kickstarter.
Nordic LARP
A book by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola
Published by Fëa Livia
Nordic Larp is a history of the Nordic larp scene, from its inception in post-
D&D
fantasy through experimental drama, historical recreation and far
freaking weirdness, done as a massive and profusely illustrated
coffee-table book, written by two gaming scholars. The book documents
more than thirty larps that took place over 15 years, including ones
with animatronic dragons and a space opera played out on a submarine.
Nordic larps have become an elaborate art form, featuring detailed
costumes, interesting settings, and varied plots. While these larps can
be massive productions in terms of time, players, and material, they can
also be maddeningly ephemeral, with no official or comprehensive
documentation. Stories pass from community to community, but ultimately
“I guess you had to be there.”
The
Nordic Larp book assembles photos, memories, and designer
notes, allowing the reader to survey these fantastic and sometimes
legendary events. These records are bracketed by an introduction that
summarizes the recurrent elements of the larps and a final essay on
Nordic larping as art, theater, and game. Nordic larping is a major,
dynamic branch of the gaming family tree, fully deserving of this
massive, beautiful book that takes larping and game-history as serious
business.
Risk Legacy
A board game by
Rob Daviau
Published by
Hasbro Inc.
One does not expect to find ground-breaking innovation in a revamp of a
classic family game from a market-leading publisher, but
Risk Legacy
produces not just one but three startling leaps forward. It is a
board-game designed for campaign play; it does not allow players access
to all the components, units and rules at the start of play, instead
having in-game events unlock sealed sections of the cleverly built box;
and it demands that the players permanently change the game, putting
stickers on the board to alter it, and destroying other components. The
game-world reacts to victories and defeats, and the game becomes a
permanent record of its play, different for every group.
Risk Legacy combines these ideas into a brilliantly playable whole that’s recognisably
Risk, yet something brand new. Rob Daviau and Hasbro must be applauded for such a risk.
Vornheim
An RPG supplement by
Zak S.
Published by
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Vornheim
radically strips the fantasy RPG city supplement to its foundations and
erects dizzying Gothic buttresses of pure playability. Combining
specific encounters terrible and wondrous with superb, table-tested
techniques for on-the-fly urban adventure creation,
Vornheim illuminates one fantastic city and all fantasy cities.
Literally not an inch of this book is wasted space: all of it provides
game masters with tools, tables, and terrifying inhabitants perfectly
suited to the powerful senses of possibility, wonder, and nightmare
logic buried deep within fantasy gaming's very nature. Zak S's rococo,
idiosyncratic production design and stark, febrile art brilliantly
contain and present the mad glories within its covers – as with a proper
necromancer's tome, merely opening the book plunges the beholder into a
world of demonic genius.
The winner of this year's award will be announced on Wednesday 15th
August, at the annual Diana Jones Award and Freelancer Party in
Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the
Gen Con convention.
About The Award
The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first
awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product,
company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly
anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the
quality of ‘excellence’ in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous
year. The winner of the Award receives the Diana Jones trophy.
The short-list and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones
Committee, a mostly anonymous group of games-industry alumni and
illuminati, known to include designers, publishers, cartoonists, and
those content to rest on their laurels.
Past winners include industry figures such as Peter Adkison and Jordan
Weisman, the role-playing games Nobilis, Sorcerer, and My Life with
Master, the board-games Dominion and Ticket to Ride, the website
BoardGameGeek; and the charity fundraising work of Irish games
conventions. Last year’s winner was Fiasco by Jason Morningstar.
This is the twelfth year of the Award.
More information is available at
www.dianajonesaward.org or at the Award’s Wikipedia page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Jones_Award.
Contact
For more information or an invitation to the announcement of the 2012
Diana Jones Award you can contact a representative of the DJA committee:
committee@dianajonesaward.org