Two Awards and a First From Gen Con 2024
Three things from the four best days in gaming
I intended to write an article before Gen Con talking about what I was looking forward to, but then Con prep took over my life and I couldn’t find the time. Whoops! I guess that means I just get to tell you about all the cool things after the fact!
Gen Con, in case you didn’t know, is a four-day gaming convention held in Indianapolis over the first weekend of August. The convention has been running for over fifty years and sees thousands of gamers from all over the world come to play games and make friends. Attendance has grown over time, reaching over 71,000 attendees this year: enough to sell out the entire convention!
I networked, I shopped, I tried as many new games as I could, and it still wasn’t enough. I only scratched the surface of Gen Con’s offerings. I cannot share everything that happened, but here are some highlights:
Shadowdark Wins Game of the Year, Among Other Accolades
Shadowdark blew away the competition this year, earning gold in four separate categories during the Ennie awards, as well as Gen Con’s “Best of Show.”
Produced by the Arcane Library - the publishing label of one-woman powerhouse, Kelsey Dionne - Shadowdark is modern Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with an old-school twist. Where modern D&D leans more into the roleplaying aspects of the game, giving players plentiful options to create a character to their tastes, Shadowdark embraces the deadly exploration that made early D&D so popular in the 80s.
This marriage of old and new has proved extremely popular, as evidenced by its winning Best Rules, Best Layout and Design, Best Game, and Product of the Year in the Ennie awards.
The Ennies are an annual award show in which volunteer judges sort through hundreds of submissions to nominate the best RPG products in a variety of categories. The winners are determined by a popular vote open to the public.
The Ennies have garnered their share of criticism, but I believe they serve an important function in celebrating the gaming industry and spotlighting lesser known titles. Even I, plugged in as I am, hadn’t heard of half of the games nominated this year.
Congrats to Shadowdark, congrats to the Arcane Library, and congrats to all the nominees in this year’s Ennie awards!
Paizo Worker’s Union Wins Diana Jones Award
The Diana Jones Award is not - as I previously believed - a literary award named after fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones, but rather a prestigious award given by veterans of the TTRPG industry to individuals, organizations, and movements that had a major impact on the games industry as a whole.
The award gets its name from a pulped copy of the Indiana Jones RPG, the remains of which were preserved in the trophy handed out every year.
The award ceremony is often seen as the unofficial start to Gen Con and, while not technically closed to the public, is not a widely publicized event.
This year the award went to the United Paizo Workers Union, which formed in 2021 and ratified its first union contract with Paizo last year. It is the first of its kind in the games industry.
This shift in worker’s rights comes as similar shifts are happening in the video games industry. Just last month, both Activision Blizzard and Bethesda Games Studios, two major players in the games industry, announced the formation of corporate-wide unions.
Hopefully, this is a sign of good things to come, and more workers in the games industries, both tabletop and digital, will feel empowered to stand up for their right to a fair work environment.
For more coverage on the award ceremony, check out Rascal News’ coverage here: https://www.rascal.news/united-paizo-workers-win-the-diana-jones-award/
Jubensha Played at Gen Con for the First Time
China’s hottest gaming experience is one virtually unheard of in the West. Jubensha (剧本杀) or “scripted murders” are a genre of murder mystery games combining elements of role-playing, social deduction, and escape room design.
Jubensha recently came to Western attention when popular YouTube channel, People Make Games, made a video explaining the phenomenon.
The video caught the attention of the western gaming audience, and a few intrepid individuals have started to bring this popular gaming medium to the West.
One such individual is Jeff, founder of Deception Ave, who has already translated two Chinese jubensha into English, which are available for free on the Deception Ave Ko-Fi page. He also runs jubensha online, and plans on adding more games in the future.
This year, Jeff led multiple five-hour sessions of the script “Mountains of Madness” for players eager to try this new gaming form at Gen Con. It is the first time jubensha has appeared in the event catalogue (so far as anyone can tell).
Sadly I was not able to participate, as the tickets were sold out. But I was fortunate enough to catch Jeff in the hallway after a game, where we had a brief but animated discussion about the future of jubensha.
Suffice it to say, there are a number of hurdles in the way of jubensha finding purchase in the West. The cultural contexts are different, translation and licensing is difficult, and audience expectations may not always line up between one country and another.
But I think there is something in jubensha worth pursuing. This unique genre combines many forms of interactive storytelling while remaining unbound by the history and expectations developed around similar genres here in the English-speaking world.
It will be some time before we have enough English jubensha to really grasp the breadth of what this genre has to offer, but I look forward to what is to come.
I plan to explore jubensha in-depth in future newsletters. In fact, I’m already planning to dub October “Murder Mystery Month,” so look forward to hearing more in the near future.
You can find Deception Ave’s Ko-Fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/deceptionave
Announcements
This Month’s Theme is: “All Things Tabletop”
I’m trying something a little different here on Game, Play, Gather. I have a lot of interests, as do you, but bouncing from one topic to the next without rhyme or reason is exhausting. So from now on, I’m giving each month a theme to write about.
Given that August is Gen Con, obviously I’m going to be talking about tabletop games. Therefore I declare August “All Things Tabletop!”
The Cosmere RPG is Raking in Moneyspren
Few fantasy authors today are as beloved as Brandon Sanderson. His sprawling epics have enthralled countless readers, offering them a massive inter-connected universe of unique fantasy settings.
Earlier this year Brotherwise Games, in partnership with Dragonsteel Entertainment - Brandon Sanderson’s personal publishing label - announced they were working on an RPG based on the Stormlight Archive, one of Sanderson’s most popular series.
The official Kickstarter launched on Tuesday with a massive surprise: the Stormlight Archive is actually just one setting in an RPG that will encompass the entire library of Brandon Sanderson’s works, collectively known as the Cosmere.
The Cosmere RPG Kickstarter features play materials for both the Stormlight Archives and Mistborn settings with the promise of more settings in the years to come.
On one hand, this is fantastic news for fans of the Cosmere. The setting books promise tons of lore tidbits for both settings that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike.
On the other hand, if you are not a die-hard Cosmere fan or only read one series, the Kickstarter presents a gauntlet of pricey reward tiers and bloated add-on pages that make finding the product you want confusing and difficult. My advice: if you’re not all-in on the Cosmere RPG, just wait until the full release, when you can make an informed decision.
Hasbro Will Not Stop Until Their Feet are Full of Lead
Following the embarrassing OGL fiasco last year - a fumble so bad that it made the mainstream news - and the equally embarrassing incident in which they sent a Pinkerton agent to retrieve a pack of trading cards from an over-eager fan, Hasbro - parent company to Wizards of the Coast, designers of the current version of D&D - has decided to once again shoot themselves in the foot with a bad PR move.
D&D YouTuber Jorphdan (the ph is silent) was hit with a copyright strike this past week after uploading a review of the upcoming 2024 Player’s Handbook for D&D. Jorphdan had been given his copy by Hasbro, was past his embargo date, and had full permission to review the book. But Hasbro claimed copyright anyway.
Three copyright strikes for ANY reason results in a YouTube channel being deleted, and a YouTube channel is a source of income for YouTubers.
The situation has since been resolved and the copyright strike removed. A mistake by an over-zealous lawyer or automated copyright-detecting bot is the likely culprit, but the incident has convinced many D&D Youtubers to distance themselves from the upcoming release. Instead of positive press for their new product, Hasbro has once again shown themselves hostile towards their player base.
Next Time…
I share some of the games I played at Gen Con. In following weeks, I discuss the state of the tabletop industry and the availability of open licenses. See you then!
Sitting in on ENNIEs for the first time this year was an energetic experience. Shadowdark won big! ... A lot of great and interesting games got the spotlight. It was great to see the TTRPG industry in action.
So glad you got to go to Gen Con, Jonah! I hope to go one of these years. Thanks for sharing your experience!