My Picks for the 2023 ENnies, Part 1

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The ENnie Awards are an annual recognition of excellence in the tabletop role-playing game (RPG) industry. They celebrate outstanding contributions from publishers, writers, artists, designers, and other creative professionals involved in the creation of RPG products. The awards cover various aspects of RPGs, including game design, writing, artwork, layout, supplements, adventures, and more. The ENnie Awards are highly regarded within the RPG community and serve as a platform to showcase and honor the best and most innovative work in the industry.

With the 2023 awards coming up soon, the nominees have been announced. Here, I take a wee look through the nominations and give my picks for each category. There are a lot of categories, so I’ve split this post into two parts. For each category, I’ll list the nominees before giving my pick and my reasoning. With that said, on to Part 1!

Best Adventure

My Pick: VHS: Very Horror Stories

Steeped in the traditions and tropes of horror stories and films, VHS provides players with a classic horror experience. It’s all about revelling in the cliches and trying to survive the sorts of ordeals that we know from all of our favourite horror movies. This is a cool angle and something that I’ve not seen done all that often; at least not with the polish and self-awareness on display here.

Best Aid/Accessory – Digital

My Pick: DDDice

This was another really strong category. I had a lot of fun playing around with the Rimspace Planet Generator and the Session Zero System, and the Sonic Library is a useful and well-presented resource.

DDDice is the winner for me because I can see myself using it regularly. Shared dice rooms that can be themed around your games and are super user-friendly? That’s great. Chat-based dice rollers can be fiddly, command-wise, and most theatre of the mind games don’t really need a full virtual tabletop like Roll20. No, this is accessible, fun, and pretty. Bravo!

Best Aid/Accessory – Non-Digital

My Pick: The Book of The New Jerusalem

There are a few interesting items in this category, but The Book of The New Jerusalem is hands-down the winner for me. It is a book on nglish folklore that can act as a resource for GMs, or as an in-game resource for player characters. I like this idea; arming players with a respository of in-game knowledge.

Best Art, Cover

My Pick: SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm Special Edition

Simple. Striking. Gothic. This is a great cover. Xanadu comes second for me, as it gives a good sense of tone for the game, but this SHIVER Gothic cover is fantastic.

Best Art, Interior

My Pick: Vaesen RPG – Mythic Britain & Ireland

This was a hard category. My biggest issue came down to the issue of quality versus consistency. I think that Incantations has some of the best artwork in this category, but it’s not consistent. Some of it I really love and some… meh. Oz, meanwhile, is incredibly consistent, but with a style that just isn’t really to my liking. Vaesen won out for striking the best balance of these two factors, though I do wish there was more art in the book.

Best Cartography

My Pick: Claw Atlas: New Maps for Beak, Feather, & Bone

Simple, detailed, hand-drawn maps led to my choosing Claw Atlas for this category. Another factor in this choice was how central to the game these maps are. Beak, Feather, & Bone is a map-labeling game, and the addition of these 10 maps adds a huge variety and replayability to this game.

Best Electronic Book

My Pick: Host and Hostility: Three Regency Call of Cthulhu Scenarios

Another tricky category. I really liked Brindlewood Bay and Lichdom seems very interesting. That said, I liked the Regency-era sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu, so it’s great to see more content for this setting via Host and Hostility. I’m especially excited for the amount of extra content in here. The handouts are the best bit of this!

Best Family Game/Product

My Pick: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set

Ok, so, The Goblings is a beautifully illustrated product, and Color My Quest is just lovely. Either would be a worthy winner. For me, I’m going with Avatar Legends, largely because it’s the item that’s given me the most joy. I really liked this game, and I was very impressed both with how it played and the aesthetics. It’s a really good implementation of the PbtA mechanics, and the workbooks make it really accessible. That it held this appeal even for someone who, like me, had never seen any Avatar is pretty high praise!

Best Free Game/Product

My Pick: Exclusion Zone Botanist

I’m not really a fan of solo games. That I would choose one to win in this category should therefore tell you just how much this one must appeal to me. It’s conceptually rather interesting. There’s some interesting horror going on here. Could this be the one that finally makes me try out solo games?

Best Game

My Pick: Fabula Ultima

Part of me wanted to pick Pasión de las Pasiones for this category, just because I love the concept. Ultimately I think that I’m just not that likely to really want to actually play it. Fabula Ultima caught my attention when it first came out. It draws heavily on JRPGs for theme and mechanics, and it’s beautifully presented. The art for the character classes is very reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics! That’s a big plus to me.

Best Layout and Design

My Pick(s): Tie between Blade Runner RPG and Eldritch Overload

Thankfully, I’m not choosing the actual award winners, so I am free to cop out and call a tie. I know; I’m a coward! These are two very different books. Blade Runner is that slick, art-rich design work that Free League is so deservedly known for. Eldritch Overload, on the other hand, is more colourful and whimsical. I love the layouts for both of these gorgeous, art-packed books.

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