So, That Happened

So, the 2011 Ennies were announced on Friday night. I watched most of it via live-streaming (thanks to neoncon) and caught the parts I missed via twitter. I greatly regretted not being there.

The flowchart held up decently well, but it's clear I overestimated the power of WOTC. The reality is that I could have gone with a much simpler chart that was basically "IS PAIZO IN THE CATEGORY? THEN THEY WIN!" There's a bit of a joke to it, but that's kind of the reality. Paizo walked away with 9 ennies, and the only one which was silver was for Best Adventure, where they also took the gold. Now, I totally don't want to bust on Paizo - they do great stuff - and it seems mean spirited to suggest that there's any reason for the wins other than their quality, and so i shall not do so. Instead, I'm going to cheer them - it used to be that you had to handicap the ennies for several companies, but now it seems it's just Paizo, and that speaks well for how well they've done.

Of course, I can say this without sour grapes, primarily because the Ennies were very kind to us indeed. Evil hat took home 6 ennies for The Dresden Files - Silvers for Best Production Values and Product of the Year, and gold for Best Writing, Best Rules, Best Game and Best New Game. That was...jaw dropping. I was hoping for us to take home a few silvers, maybe a gold if we were lucky. There was just so many good competition and I had expected to be beaten by Pathfinder: Bestiary 2 for Production Values (and we were), Delta Green for writing, D&D Rules Compendium for rules (that was the real breaking point for the flowchart), The Laundry for Best new game and Mutants & Masterminds for Best Game. I didn't even expect a showing for Product of the Year (which we lost to Paizo, natch).

Were I a younger man, this would be insecurity talking, but the reality is far more about the fantastic quality of the Ennies slate this year. And with that in mind, even though it's just for this year, I'm going to encourage folks to handicap for Evil Hat. We did great, and thank you all for your support. It means the world, and the best reward you can give yourself is to check out some of the folks we beat because, man, there's real metaphorical gold in them thar hills.