Sunday, December 4, 2011

The 2nd Annual Three Castles Award

[Posted on behalf of Michael Badolato]

The 2nd Annual Three Castles Award is still accepting submissions through the end of the year (December 31st) for next year's award, to be given out at the 4th annual North Texas RPG Con. If you published a RPG adventure, setting, rulebook or sourcebook between October 1st 2010 and October 1st 2011 you are eligible. The focus of the award is on design, and last year's nominees (LoTFP Boxed Set, Stonehell Dungeon, Dungeon Alphabet, Majestic Wilderlands and B/X Companion) and initial winner (Michael Curtis' Dungeon Alphabet) exemplifies the type of excellence in small press products we want to publicize with the award. The NTRPG Con makes nothing off the award; on the contrary, we will NEVER break even considering the amount Doug paid for the absolutely beautiful statuette award given to the winner!

This is a designer award, not a publisher award, although the publisher is welcome to submit anything they wish for one of their authors. The only way this award will one day be able to boast an impressive run of quality winners is if the VERY BEST items are submitted every year, and that is up to the writers/designers themselves. So please, if you have neglected submitting your item so far, take the time to visit the site (ntrpgcon.com), go to the 3CastlesAward tab, fill out the required paperwork and send in three copies of your product for the initial selection process. Every year the judges are shuffled, and this year they are going to be Dennis Sustare, Rob Kuntz, Sandy Peterson, Dave "Zeb" Cook, and Steve Marsh....a group with an impressive list of skins on the wall in terms of products and ideas in the industry.

Share this with as many RPG designers as you can, and if you know of someone with an impressive RPG product release in the last year, encourage them to send in a submission for the award. Besides obviously promoting our convention, we really want to promote the industry and some of the great products out there that may be overlooked by gamers who only pay attention to the biggest companies releases each year.

2 comments:

  1. I would that I could, but 8 copies, 5 of which need airmail to make the window from Canuckistan to Texas in a two week window. Ouch.

    Still, I'll pass around.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the post Norman! Zzarchov, I understand the reluctance to invest that much of your product, but there really isn't any other way to do this thing since we do need to see physical copies for evaluation. The initial mailing is only three items, to be given to and passed around by the Steering Committee...if the item moves onto the final round, only then would we need another five items. The items themselves are then either given as door prizes or sold as raffle or auction items to help support the con. Some submissions come straight from Lulu or the publisher so they designer can save on shipping costs. In the long run, we hope that anyone confident enough in their product to assume it's the best designed gaming item of the year will submit their item.

    ReplyDelete

All Time Most Popular Posts