A Modest Proposal

I see the Origins Awards nominations have been announced again. Nice to see the Bosses nominated in the Best Game Aid/Accessory category for the CD-ROM release of Dirt Cheep Cityscapes. (When the Bosses are happy, they don’t throw me against the wall nearly as hard...) In truth, the nomination may SAY “MicroTactix”, but technically the product is from The CaBil -- releasing the MicroTactix products to CD-ROM under license. But what the heck -- the Bosses are still as proud of it as they were of the Budget Battlefield nomination in 2002. Even so, I have to wonder why everyone’s so hung up on selecting the One and Only Best of the Year.

Yeah, sure -- this could be just sour grapes because I can’t remember a Polyhedral-American like myself ever winning one of these here award thingies! (We dice are always underappreciated -- but what would you gamers do without us? Drawing chits out of a box is just not the same thrill, right?) But part of it is the fact that awards like this always seem to miss mentioning one or two deserving products every year, and handing out awards to a few that are not so stellar because they happen to be the best effort in a grouping where one award has to be offered.

“Well, not everyone can win”, I hear you mutter. (Yeah, you! In the back with the Dork Tower T-shirt. Just remember, buddy -- Perky Goths do not date guys who mutter.) Well, as a 10-sided die who makes his living in large part off of non-zero-sum roleplaying games, I say that’s hogwash! If you want awards that recognize outstanding achievement, do just that, and if there’s more than one outstanding effort, give more than one award!

In an industry where there are more exceptions than rules, trying to create a coherent set of categories is probably futile. At best, it arbitrarily defines narrow pockets of the wide scope of the adventure gaming hobby. At worst, it focusses the definitions so narrowly that they seem to deliberately try to include or exclude a specific product for reasons having little to do with clarity. Are comics out of the “Publication” category because (1) mags like Dragon and Pyramid need to be judged separately from comic books or (2) because the category was being dominated by Kovalic and his Tower of Dorks and it was time to give someone else a turn even if it took redefining the category to do it. (And if you vote for #1, how do you explain Knights of the Dinner Table, hmmmm...?) I don't mean to pick on that category -- the change there might have been a good call. But it is still arbitrary as all heck. One definition is as valid as another. (And don’t get me started on what makes HeroClix a Board Game and Mage Knight a set of Miniatures Rules. That’s a hair I can’t split with a vorpal sword.)

The Origins Awards are too steeped (or mired - roll high/low to choose one) in tradition to ever face a really radical change in direction, but wouldn’t it be fun to have an awards process somewhere that just rewarded folks for doing exceptional stuff, without all the categories and limitations to get in the way?

Imagine a nominations process open to all. Any person can nominate up to ten products for awards, regardless of product type. You don’t rank the ten you choose -- just choose things you think have special merit this year, by your own definition of “special merit”. Any product that draws above a set number of nomination votes is automatically added to the final ballot.

The results then go to a moderately-sized committee comprised of well-known and respected figures in the industry. This needs to be a group with a wide variety of experience and interest areas -- including working publishers, freelancers, con organizers, publishers and critics, and prominent non-professional game hobbyists. They then hash through the list to shape it up a bit. If an outstanding effort misses the cut because only a relatively few have seen it, committee members can champion it and add it to the final ballot. If a narrower field of interest (historical minis as opposed to D20 supplements or collectible card games) produces an unsung gem, it’s up to this screening committee to bring it to light. Every nominee that makes the final ballot must be cited by the committee, however, for the sterling qualities that bring it to this level. If the committee can’t describe adequately WHY the effort is worthy of note, it probably shouldn’t be on the ballot no matter how popular the thing is with the public.

When the list is completed, it isn’t just a list of products -- it is a general “outstanding achievement” guide to the Year in Gaming. The publication (in downloadable form) of this Ballot Booklet would be looked forward to by everyone, as it would be a cornucopia of the best that says WHY they are the best. Being in this (illustrated) booklet would be an achievement in itself (and a big boost to the products that make it this far).

From this list (say, 50 or so products) the public votes in a final round, choosing five favorites on their ballot form. The committee gathers these votes and tabulates them. The top ten vote-getters automatically win awards. From among the list of the top half of the vote-getters, the committee itself can vote to add up to seven more winners. From the remainder, the committee can choose to add up to three more, if they feel the merit is there but unrecognized by the public. No differentiation is made in any of these awards. These are simply announced as the “Best of the Year” -- a minimum of 10 awards and a maximum of 20 are given each year.

Radical? Unquestionably! In need of some tweaking and rethinking? Probably. But perhaps a totally category-free system like this is worth considering, sometime in the future.

What is it with gamers and dead people? Wanting to be a knight in shining armor, a valiant space captain, or a cape-clad flying superhero -- that I can understand. But it seems like there's a whole subculture of roleplayers who like to play dead people, or -- at the very least -- people who hang around a lot with dead people.

Yeah, every roleplayer gets his characters terminated on an occasional basis. (More than occasional, if you play like some of the guys around the office here. Greg Poehlein even managed to kill off a whole game party in the first session of a campaign once.) But, in some of these games, death comes at the beginning on purpose! Gives new meaning to the phrase "rolling a die", doesn't it?

I mean, look at some of the titles out there: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel... and the original Dead Like Me RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade. Great games all, I'll grant you. Guy and Barbara McLimore are huge Buffy/Angel fans. Plus, I have close 10-sided family members with bloody red tips and a rose where their one-spot ought to be, so you won't catch me dissing V:tM! But if you stop to think about it... well, it's a strange sort of wish-fulfillment. They used to give the original Traveller a hard time because you could die during character creation, but in these games it seems to be your goal to croak as part of your origin story!

So when I see a new RPG called Dead Inside, I have to figure it's just Truth in Packaging finally coming to the adventure game industry. But, no! This is actually a pretty nifty original concept - one I wouldn't mind tumbling across the felt for, as we polyhedral player-types like to say. In this game, PC doesn't actually stand for "Post-Croaked". What's dead here is not the body but the soul.

The game revolves around player characters who face the ultimate in alienation. The parts of them that make them human are dormant or just gone, leaving them emptier than a bag of Doritos after an all-night session of Munchkin. Some PCs have sold their souls and learned to regret it. Others had them stolen, the humanity ripped right out of them. Some of them just watched their inner light fade and die from lack of care. All start the game suffering from the ultimate in alienation. Mostly, it makes characters from these other games whose only problem is not breathing anymore look like they got the better end of the deal. Your job: get back what you've lost.

It's one of those snazzy more-brooding-than-thou ideas that should appeal to a lot of gamers just for the chance to emote about suffering without really having to.. you know... suffer. But Dead Inside also appears to have some real depth to it, in a time when a lot of authors seem to think depth is measured by the thickness of the expensive hardback rulebook. The subtitle of the rulebook is "The Roleplaying Game of Loss and Redemption", and the game really does seem to allow players and gamemasters to explore this theme in many, many ways. Don't get me wrong -- this is definitely a game and not a philosophical treatise. It didn't forget to be fun. But it's also thought-provoking, and that's a good thing when there are already plenty of games that are designed merely to give your mind a light rinsing-out.

The author of Dead Inside is Chad Underkoffler, which speaks well of it right there, considering he's the first person to ever give Ken Hite a good run for his money in the "Gives More Good Ideas Away On A Weekly Basis Than Most People Ever Have in A Lifetime" sweepstakes. (You haven't been reading Chad's Campaign In A Box columns in Pyramid right alongside Hite's Suppressed Transmissions? Sheesh! What are you doing sitting here reading MY ramblings? Pony up for a subscription and immerse yourself in some of the best idea-mines any gamemaster ever had!)

Best of all, Dead Inside is available from publisher Atomic Sock Monkey Press as an instant-download PDF format book for only $13.00 at RPGNow! (Of course I love e-published games! Heck, what do you think pays my salary around here and keeps me living in a posh Crown Royal dice bag instead of an old sock?) For those of you still into making trees die for your sins, it's also available in a print-on-demand edition.

Enough talk. Go buy Dead Inside. It's good enough that I'm willing to forgive them for also including a diceless version of the game system. (Underkoffler, are you trying to put hard-working polyhedrals out of their jobs? What were you thinking, man?)