I am incredibly pleased to announce that my OSR mansion-crawl The Waking of Willowby Hall has been nominated for Best Adventure at the upcoming ENNIE Awards! If you’d like to help it succeed, head to the voting page and give it a “1” in the Best Adventure category. I’m really proud of how Willowby Hall turned out, and the new review of it at Bones of Contention seems to agree!
The short version of this review is that this adventure is, as is likely well known by this point, absolutely excellent. It is a masterclass in usable design, and the flaws I find within are only minor nitpicks at best. The scenario provided within is dynamic and inventive, and the aesthetics of the product are absolutely dynamite and point towards, I think, a new sort of poetics for the old-school space moving forward.
The History of the OSR at the ENNIE Awards
It wasn’t too long ago that the OSR was regarded as an odd, fringe movement in RPG-land, but that’s changed dramatically in recent years, at least as far as awards go. By my count, the year-by-year breakdown goes like this:
2010 – 3 Nominations, 0 Wins
2011 – 2 Nominations, 1 Win
2012 – 0 Nominations, 0 Wins
2013 – 5 Nominations, 0 Wins
2014 – 1 Nomination, 0 Wins
2015 – 4 Nominations, 4 Wins
2016 – 5 Nominations, 3 Wins
2017 – 7 Nominations, 4 Wins
2018 – 15 Nominations, 8 Wins
2019 – 17 Nominations, 5 Wins
2020 – 19 Nominations, 11 Wins (That’s 26% of all winning products!)
This year there are 16 nominations for OSR-ish products. The links below go to video reviews by myself and others, if you want to see more about the product before you vote.
The Waking of Willowby Hall – Best Adventure
Halls of the Blood King – Best Adventure
DNDNGEN – Best Aid/Accessory – Digital
Neverland – Best Art, Cover
Neverland – Best Art, Interior
Halls of the Blood King – Best Cartography
Undying Sands – Best Cartography
Mausritter: Boxed Set – Best Family Game/Product
The Stygian Library: Remastered – Best Layout and Design
DNDNGEN – Best Online Content
Worldbuilder’s Notebook – Best RPG Related Product
The Stygian Library: Remastered – Best Setting
Undying Sands – Best Setting
MÖRK BORG CULT: Feretory – Best Supplement
The Stygian Library: Remastered – Best Writing
The Stygian Library: Remastered – Product of the Year
The ENNIES uses a ranked choice voting system, so you can rank your favorite products in each category from 1 (the best) to 5. If you don’t know anything about a product or don’t like it, leave it blank instead of giving it a low rank, since any vote for it improves its results.
I was planning on putting this ENNIES segment in the next newsletter, but voting closes on August 27th, so I figured I’d get this out to you early.
See you soon!