Hello and welcome to the Weekly Show Podcast.

My name is Ryan and that's all you get today.

No Hunter today, but we do have a special guest that is Clayton Notes sign.

How you doing today Clayton?

I'm doing good, doing good.

Yeah, for those who know EEE.

For those that don't know you though, Clayton in the TRPG space like who the heck are you and what might people know you for?

Yeah, so, you know, I am one of the many nameless people in the role-playing space who's doing the indie stuff.

But I run a website calledexplorersdesign.com.

It's sort of like a, it's a blog, it's a newsletter, it's a website and it's all about design, specifically visual design, graphic design, everything, that product design, all of the parts of design that aren't game design and how they plug into game design.

So, you know, I'm mostly trying to like, you know, educate.

I, I, I love role-playing games.

I also really like graphic design.

So they just sort of came together and I'm trying to like spread the gospel of like, hey, good margins, good typography, all these things that only make the awesome things about everyone's work even better when you do, when you execute it just a little bit better.

Yeah, and it's funny, for those that don't know, we did this, we did 15 minutes of this episode already and then found out that we weren't recording.

So we're like retreading things that we talked about like 15 minutes ago.

But it's it's that's the way that I kind of really started following you more.

As you know, as I said before, followed you on Twitter, but once you dropped your yeah, that's when I was like, oh shit, this person knows what they're doing.

This website looks great.

The thumbnails look awesome.

Definitely got to follow this little bit more heavily.

And that's when I became, you know, a a fan of your work.

Yeah, and I said it before and I'll say it again, I am still surprised that people liked it.

I mean, I knew, I know that there are people like me out there.

I, but I, when I was making, I was like, I am a, this is a very specific thing for a very specific type of sicko.

And so the fact that it's still got legs, it's, it's the tail on this thing's been a lot longer than I thought it would be is great.

And then the other thing that I love that I really like about it is that I was worried that when I made this template that maybe it best case scenario, a bunch of people were going to make stuff with it.

And then I was going to become the guy where people were like, oh man, he just made everything look generic because everyone is using the same template.

And I am like astonished that some people have gone taking that template and made things that look so much better than anything that I could have made.

They're just using me as like a good like springboard to like save some time.

They're shaving off like 20% of the setup for themselves.

And so if you want to see what that looks like, what the tempo looks like when it's good, go look at like the realist Ash can or Eco Mofos or any of these other games.

They they look really great and they don't look anything alike.

So, you know, besides the fact that they both have sidebars, which is really not enough to say that they all look the same, right?

So it's good.

I mean, I've seen some books with bad sidebars so.

Yeah, and I will say it is possible to make really bad sidebars with the template.

I, I, I tried to explain, I think in the actual template, because one of the things that makes it unique is I, you know, I had this thought is like, OK, people make templates all the time.

But what if the template, all the Lorem ipsum type was actually like guidance.

It was commentary on how to use it.

So it's, it's its own manual while you're using it.

And I made a note in that I was like, Hey, make sure you don't you want, you want like an ideal length of words in a line.

And we still, there's still quite a few instances where people have like really big words in those sidebars and it doesn't look quite right.

Looks a little horsey, to borrow a term from another graphic designer I know.

But that's OK.

It's not the goal was always to, and this is the thing of with explorers design in general, it's to raise the, the basement into the crawl space.

Not, not, not not much higher than if they can just raise a couple inches.

It did something and that's good enough for me.

You know, and that, I mean, that's what the indie space needs, right?

The knee space needs, I mean, guidance is great.

A lot of people get into the space and it's so spread out.

I guess like it it, it's the indie, the TGRPG space in general is, is an umbrella with, with a million things underneath it.

And finding your niche in it and then finding the resources in that space is, is really difficult.

You know, I, I wasn't in this space during the G+ era, but, you know, post G+ shutting down and then post Twitter, everything has fractured into a million different directions.

So yeah, being able to find the guidance, being able to find some things like that, you know, there's a million art resources for people, so you don't need to use fucking AI.

And if you can find those links, that's great.

But it's hard to find that one thing that you really need in this giant space.

So, you know, it's a great thing to have.

You know, it's something that just gets people going and makes things look more professional and and readable.

You know is is wonderful.

And, and one of the things I learned very, and this is actually kind of ties into how I found RPGs in the 1st place, but like the, the problem is weirder than than even just like not knowing all their like resources.

Sometimes it's just not knowing the name for the things that you're trying to do right.

So funny enough, like a lot of my, like most popular post that I've ever made on Explorers design are just like glossaries.

They're, they're, they're, that's all they are.

They're just glorified glossaries being like, this is what a margin is.

This is what gutters are, this is what alleys are, columns, all that stuff.

But the reason why is because like an RPG space, like we're all, we're all just trying to like, you know, we're trying to make stuff, we're trying to express ourselves.

And you're off that.

People are often reinventing the wheel and they have to like rediscover things all the time.

You know, that's just, and that is, that's, that's the system working as intended, right?

That is what an indie space is, but it does kind of become a situation where you're like, man, your life would be so much easier if you knew that you can Google this word, you know, Google what EM is an M and this will help you do all it will unlock all these other like things.

It tells you where to go for tutorials, where to go to for books, you know, all that different stuff.

So a lot of it is like just taking like I went to school for graphic design and copywriting and branding and all that good stuff and being like, OK, let's let's take like the One O 1 syllabus and just like put it out into the public market and like, people just have it because all it is.

It's not even like sophisticated things.

It's just knowing like the terminology that everyone else uses.

So yeah, anything to go and prevent people from having to reinvent the wheel, which is laborious and not very fun.

Yeah, I mean, and that's great with graphic design because you know, one thing that is good about graphic design is those words are the words for that thing, right.

So like I'm already there's always a gutter is always a gutter.

I think one thing you kind of hinted at and then teach RBG space is this RE, you know, reinventing the wheel.

Like, you know, people, you always find someone that you realize just discovered like the quote UN quote, the OSR yesterday and you immediately know that in three months they're going to be spitting the same stupid bullshit opinions that people did 20 years ago.

And I find that tedious.

I don't like the reinvention of the wheel constantly.

I wish there was a better resource and a better kind of centralization at least of resources than teach RPG space because the amount of times that I see people arguing with each other and both of them are saying the exact same fucking thing but they use different vertical terms.

Yeah, they're talking beside each other or past each other, Yeah.

And and obviously it's the Internet, so people have to argue and just be like, well, no, you're wrong.

It's this.

And it's like, it's that thing where someone sees from like a six from one side of nine from the other.

And it's just like it's, it's, it's tedious.

It's the spider man meme.

You know, they're all pointing at each other.

And I, and I, honestly, I, you said the word Internet and I, for the podcasters out there, I touched my nose and pointed at the camera because the, the problem, most of my problems are not even problems, They're just like frustrations.

You know, that, that the things that rankle my feathers a bit are often times because the Internet exists.

Like, people used to make mistakes and you never knew about it because they were working at a drafting table on the third floor of a building or, you know, they were working on a Xerox printer at, you know, for a punk concert show, doesn't matter.

But at no point today, then there was no expectation or ability for them to be like, all right, now you have to go talk about what you're doing and let everyone know and you better have an opinion about it.

Like that was never part of the process that the the thing you made was more or less the statement being made.

There wasn't a Twitter or Facebook or any social media platforms constantly they're asked, you know, pushing you to go and say more about it before you have actually formed an opinion.

And God, I'm, I'm kind of happy that Twitter's gone because I, I really am happy.

A lot of my early opinions on things rotted away so nobody can find them.

That's that's a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the your your online footprint, you know, it is, it exists.

I, you know, it's an interesting, interesting thing.

I, I'm very much in the camp of man, I just hate a lot of stuff.

So where do I start?

I personally think that if you are creative in the space and you want to be a professional in the space that you should have a professional profile and a private profile.

Because which in this extraordinarily parasocial social like algorithmic environment we live in now is probably not the best for marketing.

Because we honestly, at the end of the day, a lot of people buy your shit because they buy, they're buying you.

But I, I personally hate that.

And I think that having a public facing professional thing and keeping your shitty opinions somewhere else would be great and I wish people did it more.

But unfortunately, we do have a space now, just like every space on the Internet where people are buying a thing because of a person, maybe not necessarily for that thing.

Once you've made enough of a name for yourself in TRPGS, you're going to buy something because someone made it who's popular or because a bunch of the Internet told you to.

I could name up a popular book right now that half the Internet in the TWG space.

But you know, and I guarantee 70% of them haven't even cracked the cover yet.

But it's a popular book.

Everyone says it's super great.

I mean, you definitely got to have it.

And that's.

I don't know, I find that also annoying and tedious.

I don't remember where this tangent came from, but it just.

Comes naturally from the ether.

Yeah, the Twitter.

Yeah, the Twitter.

To to you know, and I, I don't 100% agree with you, but I am going to say that I think most people should have probably two different ones because it's just healthy.

It's just a good way to live 1's life like to, you know, put up what am I to isolate and silo parts of your life.

Now, I, this is ironic because my persona online is just basically me.

It is a cop is a weird bizarro version of myself who just talks about RP GS.

And the reason why that is is because I don't want to be on the Internet for anything other than RP GS.

Like I, I don't want to talk about anything else because there's not enough time.

Like I have to go outside and I have to garden when I'm not doing this.

So you know, or I'm playing, you know, video games or whatever else.

So, you know, I think it's one of those two things you either, and this is and now we're talking, see me, I'm going into the whole like trying to talk to like a beginning designer, trying to give advice on what was supposed to be a rant.

But it's like you need to choose your own adventure.

And either you're going to silo and it's like, I'm going to have a version of me that is the professional side.

And then the other part of me that is like slightly private or just only use the tools, the platforms, the social media, the Internet for that one thing and then keep the rest of your life like out of it.

Like I, my Co workers, want to see pictures of me and my wedding.

And I've insisted, Nope, you're not going to see any pictures of me and my wife.

I like my Co workers.

They're rad people, But it's just like, I like having the fence and being like, you can't see past it.

You know you're not going to see it.

Which is funny because I'm a foot and a half taller than everyone on the other side of my new family.

So all the pictures are hilarious.

I look like a monster but they don't get to see it because they're my Co workers.

And then as soon as they they leave to the company, it's like here's your here's your exit package.

You get to see we're now officially friends without the asterisk next to it.

Yeah, that's, that's so that's funny you say that because I I don't really have like private social media, right?

Like not like a me one.

I have some of their accounts for other things, like I have like account that I can just like follow hobby stuff on and things like that.

You know what I mean?

But like there's nothing that's like pictures of me and shit.

There's a thing at work going on right now where like they're putting pictures of everyone up on the wall and I'm like a fuck that I'm not doing that.

But also BI literally do not have a picture that's like within eight years, you know what I mean?

But I also.

No, I can talk about this forever, but we don't need.

To Oh yeah, one of the things you said specifically with the Co worker thing is exactly what I do, but it's probably for a very different reason.

Like I most of the people at work don't know anything about me.

They know my name, they know me at work, but they don't know anything about my outside life.

And I keep that extremely close to the vest with pretty much everyone.

I, you know, back when I did have social media like Instagram and stuff like that, when I was like friends with people, but I moved and we kind of fell out like, you know, you can go on most of the things and like have make them unfollow you.

And I would do that routinely with people.

I would purge the people that were following me because I was like, we're not really friends anymore that I have a private profile.

They don't get access to me when we're not friends, you know what I mean?

And, and that's kind of how I see it work.

And I, I've tried to explain it to people.

People ask me about it too, because again, most people work don't know anything about me.

And it's because I feel like my, it's not that my, I feel like that sharing that is, is me.

And when I, the more I give it to somebody, the more I am spread out because, you know, you're.

Yeah, giving information about myself is, is like, they know this thing about me.

There's this, like tie to them.

And I feel like giving too much of myself to too many people just spreads me too thin.

And it's the same way I feel about friends and stuff.

I have a lot of acquaintances but very few friends because I feel like the amount of energy that I have, I want to give 100% to a few people instead of 10% to a lot of people.

So I see my personal information as something that I protect very close and like really bothers me if people that I don't consider friends know things about me.

It's just interesting.

They brought it up to be like, yeah, my coworkers, you know, they don't get to see that I'm like, hell yeah.

Like we're work buddies.

Like if we've, if I've never seen you outside of work, you don't know shit about me, you know?

Yeah, I, I learned that early.

I, I learned it the hard way.

I think some people, they just naturally, that's how they live their life, and that's good for them.

My dog's leaving, so I'm going to wait.

Goodbye, Goodbye.

And yeah, no, But like, I had to find out the hard way because I used to work in an ad agency and AD agencies are these super toxic places, you know, with lots of personalities, everything else.

And I found out very early on I was like, oh, OK.

So in some parts of the world, some parts of, you know, just culture, people still think role-playing games is like akin to leprosy.

So I was like, I'm not going to go ahead and share that I'm a leper, you know, willingly.

I'll, I'll let them figure it out on their own.

It's not very hard.

You know, listen to me talk for a while and you'll be like, OK, so that guy obviously knows like stat block with a stat block is you can tell very early.

But yeah, so I found out the hard way.

But I, I do think that that's a generally good policy, especially since we live in a capitalist, you know, hellscape and so on and so forth.

So probably good just to keep it's, again, it goes back to what we said at the very top of this earlier is like, it's just a safety thing.

If nothing else, it's safety.

It doesn't have to be like principles or anything else.

It can just be for your own health.

Yeah, I mean, and it's weird.

I mean, we live in a weird world now.

I mean, not that it always wasn't, but I mean, it's extremely parasocial.

And even to the point of people, like, I say this all the time.

I'm like, remember Diaries?

Like, remember when people put their, like, secret thoughts in a book so that no one could see it?

And that was like a whole, like, that was like a whole fucking trope of like, someone found your inner thoughts.

Oh, no.

And now people put their like everything possible out on the Internet for people to see.

And it's not healthy.

I know people that have been fired because of their Facebook posts and stuff.

So it's like, I don't know, it is a, it is a huge safety thing.

We do live in a capitalist dystopia that's sliding slid, that is slid into fascism.

And, you know, there is people whose social medias have been checked at the border to make sure you weren't saying anything bad about people.

And we still got like what, two to three more years of this?

So, you know, it, it is what it is.

But yeah, I, whether there's social media or not, you know, I, I do think that having a professional side and having a personal side is not only good for your professional life, but also good for your personal life.

Like you said, to keep it, to get to, to have a buffer man, to be able to like turn it off.

If if your personal and your professional is always the same, then you're always on, you know, And that just seems crazy to me.

Yeah, no, exactly.

I just got a message from someone from the the Emmy Awards so I wonder what they're asking.

Me about interesting so good Segway into the any awards so.

They're asking me about layout.

All right, It's it's the same question I get all the time.

There you go.

The layout.

Yeah, Take a seat.

Let's talk about it.

Yeah, but you were so you were an innies judge for for these past innies.

Yeah.

And and I was there.

I actually got to go to Gencom this year.

We got to meet once again, proved that, yeah, proved that everyone in the TJRG space is 6 feet fucking tall.

And and I'm not, but and then I actually went to the innies and man, anyone that's listened to me ever knows my opinion on them.

So I would love, I would love, let's just I don't even know.

You hit me with just let's just get going.

Yeah, let's let's talk about it but first I got like a three-point plan of like let's set the stage let's let's set the table.

I want to get things straight.

You know, one I like award shows, that's that's that's the first thing that needs to be known.

I people are.

So I'm, I'm writing a, you know, some thoughts of post mortem on my experiences in any judge, because it's such a it's a black box in our industry.

It is, it is bizarre how huge of a mind share it holds and nobody really knows anything about it except what they can see in the ceremony every year and the website, which is, you know, obviously just like a an announcement and that's about it.

So you know.

I'm I'm going to write about that, but I, you know, I have it at the very top of my post mortem right now.

I'm like, I need to set this straight.

This is not a giant, you know, thesis on why award show should not exist.

I think there's reasons why most of them shouldn't exist, but generally I actually quite enjoy them.

I think they're a lot of fun to talk about, especially the ones that are really well executed.

RP GS generally don't have really well executed award shows.

I think more of the other industries I'm in there are, and I'm not in movies or film, but you know, obviously they have dozens of award shows.

I'm in design and advertising.

So we have just like, and this is something that maybe people don't realize, when you are in a industry that makes content, that makes something that it's full creators, you get a lot of award shows.

It's just part of how the system works.

It's the infrastructure.

And so I have a really like strong like relationship to award shows from outside of RP GS and that's why I have a huge opinion of RPG award shows, especially now that I've been a judge.

So top level 1, I actually like award shows 2.

I really liked being in any judge.

I mean, at the end of the day, as much as I'm, you know, I'm going to talk about all sorts of different frustrations that maybe had especially in the this post mortem when I can put it in print and, you know, edit it and re edit it and all that good stuff.

But at the end of the day, it's hard not to be happy or grateful that you get to like read like all of this awesome work and people like sent them to you.

So it would put a pin in that.

But I will just say this.

If you're making an RP GS send send stuff to people you like, let them, they they like that.

And then they'll they'll probably do something with it if you give it to them freely.

And then the third thing, you know that I want to set the straight, you know, in addition to I actually like award shows.

I was grateful being a judge is 3.

I know that the Annie's are a lot of work.

They are actually it's, it is like running a Kickstarter for an entire year, every year until you die.

So it is not, it's not an easy job.

So you know every in this is what I say all the time in design spaces.

But when you critique something, you're critique in the work.

You're not critiquing the person.

You guys do this all the time where you might critique like a game, but you're clearly not talking about the individual.

You're not saying like, oh, yeah, this person sucks because their layout is too, too narrow or small.

You're just saying that the work is not representing that person's vision or their ideas or their, you know, the best part of them in the way that it could be, you know, with the execution.

So those are the three things about the Emmy Awards that I want to make very clear, you know, So like everything I say has an asterisk next to it.

I'm like, remember, he actually really likes the stuff.

He wants to be super constructive.

I'm not trying to put like a bile into the world.

But yeah, the Annies are really weird, really complicated.

And it's a next to impossible to write about him because every single sentence that I could say about him has like 1000 caveats and like footnotes in it where I got to be able to, I feel the urge to like explain myself and explain the Annies and be like, it's because it's so complicated and weird and not intuitive, not even a little bit.

And some of that is self-inflicted by me and some of it's self-inflicted by the any awards.

So that's that my opening sort of a long not rant, more of a, you know, it's me.

It's me on the defense stand being like, I didn't kill him.

You know, that kind of like that thing in the courtroom, but I think you got you got to ask me a question and then I can answer it.

I think that's the only way to like actually get into it.

And I and I know you got some real like spicy ones that you're going to ask me.

Well, I mean, here's I'm I'm an opinion guy, you know what I mean?

Questions just kind of RIP.

I mean, my opinion is well known for anyone that's watched the show in the innies.

I I don't like them.

I think they're bad and and that's one reason I, I mean, I wanted to talk to you regardless.

Didn't even know you were an Indies judge until like way until much more recently than than wanting to talk to you.

That was just a bonus to be like, oh shit, now we definitely have to talk about this.

Despite my best efforts, I I tried to make it clear that I was an Indies judge, not because I wanted to advertise it, but because I was like, man, it would be really, really cool if people knew an Indies judge, yeah.

We got one.

We got one.

You're hearing one talk.

This may be the first time for a lot of you that you've ever heard of a person who was an Ennies judge talk about being an Ennies judge.

That's that's.

Really rare because there's a lot of random fucks that get to be innies judges that like, make no fucking sense to me.

So let's start there.

Well, let me get my caveats out of the way.

Let me get my circle.

Let me get my way the ennies.

In my opinion, I don't like award shows for the most part and I think the innies are incredibly broken and I would love to hear from you about why The Annie's to me are.

It's one of those things where, man, I'm going to not say what I wanted to say there.

It's one of those things where if your friend gets nominated, you're happy for them.

If they win, you're even happier for them.

But that doesn't mean that you don't think the thing still sucks, you know what I mean?

Like, I, I think the Andes are terrible, but I'm very proud of the people that I know that won awards because the recognition is great.

And I understand like the trickle down from being able to say that you won an Andes is fantastic for them and for the work that they do.

And that's really, really great.

Those things can coexist at the same time.

And I think that's a lot of people's opinions on the Andes.

A lot of people I think are like fuck the Andes, but if I got one that'd be cool, you know what I mean?

It's the point of being joke or a meme.

Like there's a like I I know Brad who who won this year for the dream shrine is like, actually, I think the enemies are great.

Now, you know, being very overt about, you know, just that knowing how, how, how funny it is that relationship.

Yeah, and and and again, like things can be two things.

Things can coexist.

They're not mutually exclusive.

You can think any suck and and still be happy that you want one.

I'm very, again, very happy for our friends at 11.

I think that's my only asterisk.

I mean, I if you want to hear the spiel, go listen to the cyber plus punk episode.

I had a nice one about that.

So let's start.

Let's start from the top.

So I actually didn't know for a long time that the judges are voted on.

And I must have seen it before because I've I've voted in the Indies multiple times, but the judges are voted on in the Indies and I'm going to keep it a buck with you.

I read every single word of this current crops for next year and my opinion of the Indies is much worse now based on those responses because there's about how many people were were listed, about 20 people, 15 I feel like.

Yeah, I feel like it was like a a dozen and a half something, a big dozen people minimum.

Crazy amount there's I, I think, I think there were three that I was like, I would have a conversation with this person about games and that's about it.

Like I thought that the vast majority of those people should not have anything to do with winning awards.

Some of the questions were ridiculous and the responses were worked.

No, I actually really liked the questions.

I thought I was surprised at how good the questions were in my opinion, but the answers were ridiculous things like what are the last five games you ran?

And like 10 other people were like 05 E and dagger heart and Pathfinder and just literally like the biggest box most like corporate generic possible games ever with no mention of anything, anything indie or creative or anything.

And then one of the last questions is like, what do you think we could improve on?

Innies?

Great question.

Innies like not sarcastically at all.

It's a great question.

A bunch of people are like a bunch of people are like nothing.

It's great.

And I'm like, you should not be a fucking judge.

What is wrong with you?

Like you're don't be a fucking pick me have a goddamn opinion.

And there were two or three people that had really great opinions that I that I thought were great.

And 20 bucks says not a single one of those people actually gets picked or voted in or whatever.

But So what?

I guess there's like 10 questions from that.

But like I got, I got.

10 things to say about it already.

How would I just hit you with a topic instead of a question?

And we'll just kind of tangent from there.

The any getting to be an Andy's judge.

Let's talk about that that how that process went and and your thoughts on it.

Yeah.

All right.

So let's a lot of what I have to say about the innies is about systems like the design of the innies and big asterisk on that, because the Annie's are not designed in the traditional sense of like designing something.

There's like a good metaphor.

And now I'm going on a tangent.

So I'm already failing this the topic, but I'm going to do it anyway.

So, you know, one of the things I think about is like, so when I first started playing role-playing games, I got into it through Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by the Gary Guy Gats not alone in that, but I may be unique in that.

I am way too.

I'm a younger guy.

So the fact that I got my hands on AD and D1 as opposed to two or three or any of the other versions or maybe Vampire the Masquerade is a little bit of an anomaly.

And there's a whole story about that involving garage sales and all that stuff.

But point being is that one of the things that's really interesting about advanced DND is that when you take when you go and you look at that, then you look at advanced DND 2E and then you look at 3E, there's a huge shift because in one E it's cobbled together.

It is an iterative game.

Gary Gygax is making shit up.

He's laying the track while the train is moving, trying to codify stuff for a number of reasons.

But at the end of the day, there's no like clear of one goal.

Like he's got like some ethos, but he's not like this is how the system is going to work.

This is the kernel and we're, and this is our the core idea and we're going to know when that thing would come up.

He'd be like, all right, let's make a new system for that.

So that's why AD and DS got like all these like weird subsystems.

You're using dice and then like one day you're using like D6 and then you're using AD 100, even though they're both percentile and you're like, why are we doing this?

Because they're just making things as they go.

So it's not designed in the sense that, you know, in in the traditional sense, that designer would be like, OK, what's my good?

What's my strategy?

What's my design goals?

What's the intention that I'm going that's going to guide me on all these different little decisions.

This exploration touch my nose cause explorer's design is, that's what it's about.

It's about exploring design.

So with that said, when third edition came out, that was the first edition of DND that was designed where they're like, we are going to create a core resolution system and everything is going to be built in a vertical along that system.

We're going to use AD 20.

There's going to be it's going to be plus minus and that's going to be like the core of just about everything.

And what we see with the NES is more of an AD and D serve approach.

It was inherited somewhere around 20/19.

It was originally started like most RPG things, it's like a lark or or a bit and then it it's by time and just like inertia getting a gain momentum, like a snowball going down at a mountain.

It became more than what it was ever intended to be.

And so the the Annie's is just a cobbled together the vestigial artifacts of years of this thing changing slightly, ebbing and flowing as it went.

And often times to the question.

I, I would imagine I'm, I'm inserting myself into the shoes of the coordinators is how are we going to keep at the Annie's running next for next year?

As opposed to the question that I think what more people would expect them to be asking, which is what do we want the Annie's to be next year?

That's not the question.

The question is how do we keep it running?

So you're, it's Danny's is you know that it's not designed.

That's at the end of the day.

And I think if we did design the innies, it would not be designed this way.

Like if that if we were going to rebuild it from the ground up starting today, we wouldn't, it wouldn't be designed this way if it were a game.

This is not the game play we would want.

So with that said, the judges, it's a very interesting system of having the judges be publicly voted on because it and it creates a system that automatically favors certain kinds of judges.

If you're, if you don't have to read certain criteria, you're never going to be a judge in the innings.

I think I had a really weird experience in that I was like this crazy weird edge case where all the, you know, plants aligned and I shot the gap and somehow got in.

I had a big enough audience, not a big and not a really big one, but a big enough audience that I could actually get critical mass to get voted in.

I've probably had like there are only 5 judges every year.

I probably had the fifth most judge, you know, votes.

But I, you know, I ended up in the innings anyway.

So.

And part of the challenge of that is like if you look at the people who win on a regular basis, it's generally skewed towards the big box games like Dungeons and Dragons because they have the bigger audience and because people just naturally vote for the thing that they understand.

No more so that by wide margin more people play DND than anything else.

Even when DND is doing terrible, quote UN quote, it's still leagues above any other game combined usually.

So if you say that you play DND, you get a lot of votes.

Like it's just part of like how it is.

It's the same reason why like if anything has like a big like product name on it, like Lord of the Rings, it's automatically going to be weighed more heavily than everything else in its category when it gets to the time for public voting.

So that's the first thing.

And, and, and I think what that really leads to is like, OK, so you basically every year the, the system automatically favors not intentionally, just because, again, it's not intentionally designed, it's just how it is.

It automatically favors design.

It favors judges who are into the most tried stuff out there, the most popular thing that there is, and streamers, content creators and nobody else.

And more specifically, like content creators who don't make RPGs because one of the rules of becoming a judge, it's in the the guidelines, it ends up being part of the NDA is that you can't have made anything for the innies in the two years leading up to the innies that you want to be a judge.

So don't.

You could, you could not have submitted anything, you could not have designed a game or anything.

And you can't have any professional relationship with any publishers, distributors, anyone that has a relationship.

That could be a conflict of interest, which in our space basically means effectively designers, game designers are banned from being judges in the innies.

So that is why the judges are more or less a certain type of archetypal, you know, people as opposed to the one, maybe the ones I think we all kind of want to be judges.

You know, I, I, I want, I want designers judging.

So this goes back to me being a in another space that has award shows in design and advertising.

The panel of judges usually is like known quantity people who are famous in the thing that they do.

So like if you submit something because you're making, I don't know, amazing videos, all the judges are directors and videographers that you probably know because you've seen their work in the wild.

Or if you are something to a category for copywriting, all the judges are copywriters.

And they're not just any copywriter.

They're usually copywriters and jobs you wish you had or who copiers who wrote something that you wish you were good enough to write.

So even then it yeah.

So it really is just like, that's the the first part of like what makes the ennies probably unsatisfying to like most people, me included.

I I want to be judged by a jury of my peers and I, and if not a jury of my peers, I at least want them to have a so much clout.

It's undeniable.

That's at the end of the day.

But I, I really want because that also informs that you know what their tastes are and you can kind of trust their taste.

Even if you don't agree with their taste, you kind of know what they are.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's what do you, I mean, again, this is the first time this year that I really sat down and dug into that process and my immediate like 1 + 1 equals this is, oh, This is why it's broken.

I'm sure there's a million other reasons, but starting from here, starting from this moment, because this is the people you're going to pick to be doing it next year.

From this moment.

It's already flawed and broken like there.

You can't fix it from there because like you just said, you're always going to have the same kind of people with the same opinions every year.

And if nothing else changes, I'm saying if everything else stayed the same, that in and of itself would permit would would just rule it out as, in my opinion, respectable at all.

Because yeah, you basically get a bunch of fucking DND streamers and and and Internet personalities to to review shit like it just it boggled.

It boggled my mind again, some of the responses.

It was just they, it couldn't have been just more generic pick me bullshit or people that literally just like, oh, I just play DND.

Like it's like this isn't even they don't even play the game to play.

It's like, I have no problem with people like just having a social thing that they do with friends.

Like it's a fucking poker night with their buddies.

They don't give a shit about poker.

They're just hanging out with their buddies.

I don't want to want those people judging like a poker tournament.

You know what I mean?

Like that's, that's crazy to me.

So that that I mean step one, yeah, fix that.

Right so so the and here's the thing and This is why right in the post war room has been such a pain in the ass.

The enemies is filled with bottlenecks like that where you're like, if this thing doesn't change, the other changes don't matter.

You could change everything, but if this thing doesn't change, then it's kind of for nothing.

And I mean, the judges 1 is probably the biggest one because the other thing that I want to say is that, you know, and I, and I have to be delicate about this because I don't want to talk about the other judges or anything like that.

But one thing that that is both a good thing and maybe not a good thing depending on the circumstances is that the, the coordinators really do entrust the judges to make a lot of like the, you know, administrative decisions about things like they self organize.

We figure out how we're going to, you know, select things, nominate things, how we're going to like communicate about them.

And I have some opinions on that Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk because yeah, there's some caveats there, but yeah, there's just like, and there.

And I, I will say there were some people that, you know, even though I didn't know them, which again, I would like to know more judges just without having to read their BIOS.

There were some people where I read their responses and I'm like, cool, I like this.

This person seems interesting.

I would definitely want to be like talk to them probably in any normal circumstances because I, because I, I see curiosity, I see shared kinship in them that I see in a lot of other people that I play RPG's with or talk about RPG's with.

And 95% of the ones I voted for did not end up being judges.

So it goes to show you that that's just how it is.

And it's not great.

It it sucks.

I I don't like it at all.

And next year's going to be really interesting.

I'm not going to, you know, write it off right away.

I think this year, not to toot my own horn, but I think the variety that the sort of spread of nominations was probably more strange and like going it was different probably than previous years because by luck, me and maybe like two other judges were probably a little off type.

You know, the system kind of broke a little bit and kind of let us breakthrough because we were like weird, weird fringe cases.

But I, I, I again, I don't want to write off next year, but I do think it's going to be really hard to see next year's nominations list and be and and not for it to be what I think most of the Emmys years are.

Because next year is going to be the year of Dagger Hart draw steel, all the big box games and their stuff coming out.

And all the judges are people I I both don't know and also based off their answers, probably don't have a lot in common with me, which is, again, not a negative thing.

But when the innies is and we're getting to another topic, when the innies is positioned as this broad church award show for the entire industry, and then its goal is to award quote UN quote excellence in games, then you're like, OK, well, we have some sort of obligation to expand our palate and our eyes and perspective on this thing because excellence is subjective.

Award shows are subjective, but in order to be but they're not arbitrary.

Subjectivity is not does not mean arbitrary necessarily.

And in order to like be subjective but not arbitrary, you have to be willing to, you have to 1 have open curiosity.

You have to have some experience with other games because it makes it easier for you to actually recognize when a thing is doing something interesting.

And yeah, I lost my train of thought, but like it.

I mean, that's at the end of the day, you need to play something other than D&D or call Cthulhu to recognize that something by Adam vast fucking rules.

You know, like that's, that's just how it is.

Like, and you know, I, I, and this is the thing too, is like I've heard, you know, people say in the past, it's like, well, obviously a word show is about awarding excellence.

Like it can't be anything else.

And it's like, not really like, and this is this is this is the topic of that I was hinting at what your stated goal of is for an award show doesn't have to be what it actually is about.

And more often than not, the thing that the the sort of the quote UN quote metric that you're trying to nominate and award people for is just a vehicle is just a means to an end to get to the real thing, which is that you want to go, you want to shine a spotlight on people, you want to get people talking about things and you want to like drive the culture in some direction.

And the any awards, I think struggle sometimes to do that because it's, you know, it's the winds of yeah, yeah, they're not designed.

They're not designed.

They don't have a.

System is what it does.

I say this to be a bunch of times.

A system is what it does right?

You can say a thing does a thing as much as you fucking want, but when you repeatedly see a system do a thing, that is not what you say it does.

Yeah, right.

It is doing what it does.

The system is what it does.

And this is one thing that I said earlier this year.

If not even that, like based on the judges, not even that, the nominations or whatever, But if you get a nomination for the innings, you fucking won.

Because there's a reason the Oscars are not fan vote, right?

Like that's the most even.

Even if you go to something like, I believe, like the Screen Actors Guild award or something like that, like it's at least all of your peers voting on the award.

It's not the fucking MTV Music Awards that you text in to to pick the best one.

You can't award.

It's not award an award in any type of excellence whatsoever.

It's a popularity contest.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's, I mean, they say it on their website, but it's not like the prominent thing of like they are People's Choice Awards and people like want to think of it like, Oh, this is like the Academy Awards for RPGs It and I sometimes get that because if you go to the ceremony, they're trying very hard to be like this, like big thing.

They even have like, you know, people who like put, put a medal around your head and everything else, which is very fun and silly.

But but no, at the end of the day, it's more like a Nickelodeon good Choice Awards than it is Academy Awards.

And that's it's not what I want.

Let me put that.

It's not what I want.

I want something else, but if you were candidly like we are a People's Choice Awards and we are just about celebrating the things that we think are really fun and these are the things that are the things we want to elevate to that celebration.

I think that would be fine.

I, I, I think that would be, it wouldn't, it probably wouldn't change the mob's opinion of the Emmy Awards, but it would at least change my opinion of the Penny Awards, right?

No, I mean, I think it definitely would.

I think there's there.

There is this weird kind of like dichotomy in it where they they want to look professional, same professional, seem like it's something that should have importance.

But then like you just said, like it's the fucking kids Choice Awards.

Like you can't have both.

Like they try.

And this is one reason why they spectacularly fail is you can't put yourself up as this like prestigious thing and then give like the the elbows and the her, her, hers, like as if it fucking like either either become the professional prestigious thing or start busting out the GAC.

And just like having fucking skits and shit on stage and stuff like and trying to walk this line and failing to walk it year after year is a ridiculous thing.

In my opinion.

It's bad for the TRBG space because like there's I can't it's bad.

It's bad, it's bad because what people want and what the innies is in a position to be is an Excellence Award, right.

But I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm going to try not to say names and name games that did not deserve the awards that they got and that the other ones that did deserved more.

But it's, it is a popularity contest.

If you have $1,000,000 Kickstarter, you want an any like you don't even need to wait.

Like they might as well just hand it to you at the end of your Kickstarter because you know the following year it's going to win a fucking any.

It doesn't matter if it's good.

It doesn't matter.

It's the most generic bullshit ever.

If it was popular, it will win an Emmy.

And like that's the bottom line.

And very few times is something both good, excellent, I'm sorry, and popular, you know, because, and, and that's, and that's the opinion of people who who, who, who have read more than a couple of books, you know what I mean?

The the I think, I think any award shows really good when it does one thing, it awards something that is both good and not popular.

Like if you if you see a no name show up on a list in an award show and it's actually really great, that award show has done something truly awesome, right?

Like I and it's the whole popularity thing.

We're officially off of topics a little bit.

There's a lot of concerns that judges had on the back end, things that I specifically had concerns about.

And one of the ones that I haven't, I came up with the term for it is like sandbagging categories.

And basically the idea being that like we know at the at the end of the day, the best way to probably treat the Annie Awards, especially as a judge, I'm saying this now for the judges who are going to be judges, is like treat the nominations list like the winners.

And, and frankly, everyone should just do that, treat the nominations list as the winners.

The other thing doesn't really matter as much because it's kind of, you know, all about marketing inertia and all impressions and things that we all agree that we don't really enjoy.

But you know, one of the things that we're constantly doing is like trying to like figure out and we failed multiple times as you, as you've hinted at in the different categories.

But like trying to figure out what thing is going to be that crazy popular thing in a month that isn't popular right now that is just going to steamroll its way through the categories.

And so, you know, there are some and then the other challenge and there's this is a converging like number of complexities are coming in on each other.

Is that often times a thing that is good in one category?

More often than not is good in multiple categories because people who are good at design games are good in a holistic fashion.

They're often times like if they can get a good writer on, they often have good enough taste to also get a good artist on.

So there are games where like they have multiple that they're they're justifiably should be nominated for a lot of categories, but you know not to nominate them for a lot of categories because by nominating them for a lot of categories, one, if they're popular, you might you risk basically getting a goal for like 1 game seven times.

And then the second reason is because the ennies are so finite.

It is a 0 sum game of you only can give 5 nominations in every category and there are more than 5 great short adventures, more than 5, whatever.

You're constantly being like, if I give this game another nomination in this category, that means I am not giving a nomination to this game.

That's not going to get a nomination in any other category besides maybe this one.

And so you're you're playing this game with yourself, this 40 chess of like trying to figure out what the game, which game is popular?

Which games do you think might justifiably get to have more than one silver award than one gold?

And then also being like, all right, 30 things should probably win or be nominated for best design and layout this year.

Which five are we going to give it to?

And then you then on top of all that, there are some judges who are going to disagree with you and they're going to think that this thing is good and they're going to be wrong.

No, I mean, I say that I think they're going to be wrong.

You know, I like from my perspective and they're going to look at me with my things and be like, that guy is wrong.

And so you're doing this tug and pull thing where you're like getting on your soapbox and you're like cap in hand, being like, I, I think mythic Bastion land is really good.

I think it's better.

No one's playing it right now and but I think this thing is got it's got the juice and I think it should go into best rules like that.

Like that's like a an instance of like a thing that happened in the any awards judging already.

And you know, solely through political like it's politics, It's like it's social capital.

You're sitting there trying to like figure out how how hard can I push like this game or this thing because you don't want to like, you don't want the winds to turn on you.

And then when it comes to the next category, people are like, I'm tired.

I've already given Clay his pet thing in one category.

It's time for me to get my things in this category.

And again, this sounds animosity, but it's not.

It's this is just how, you know, collaboration on like, decision making works, right.

But the Iowa.

Yeah.

So sandbagging is like a huge thing.

And sometimes we would have categories where it's like, OK, here's a multiple of really popular games, maybe we can at least pit them against each other, you know, in the popular vote.

And you're sitting there thinking that.

So I'm thinking, you know, in one category I was like, surely is Ava's Bed and Breakfast is an OK one to put in this category if it also has to fight land of EM and Stu Pot and like another like really popular like these games that are like everyone talks about all the time.

It's like some people's like favorite games and multiple discords.

It's got tons of videos and things like that.

And so you know this enemies there was multiple categories where we're like, we were like, let's put some giants next against each other.

But to give a fun like a little this is some something that nobody knows.

So it's going to be for this podcast before the postmortem goes out is a when we decided that Mythic bachelor might get nominated for some categories.

And I, you know, I campaigned really hard for it and specifically best art and best rules.

The Quinn's Quest video did not come out until after we finalized our nominations.

So it was a little bit of like, I don't think if the Quinn's Quest video didn't come out, I don't think it would have done as well as it did in the public vote.

But it and we could not have predicted that Quinn's proclaimed like OSR fantasy RPG hater was going to come out with was going to make one of his one of five reviews a year, this one, right?

So yeah, it's just a crapshoot.

And some of that is like you can't actually design against that.

But it certainly doesn't help that we're doing a 0 sum game with a People's Choice Awards, so that so now that those challenges become realities that you have to deal with that you have to consider while also judging.

So this is also broken.

So we've established that this process is fucked.

Well, yeah, I mean, like again, like it's all about perspective, right?

Like if you think that that that popularity, like I can see someone saying, making an argument that like, Hey, maybe award show should codify what is popular in that year.

Maybe that's maybe they're right.

But I, I, I, I don't want that to be the award show.

I don't want to be the like prestige, the the the giant in the industry.

I would like it to be like some other like side thing, right?

Well, and and that's the issue.

That's part of the issue too, right, Is again, the innies has is in the position by momentum or by whatever that they can do this every year.

And part of that is financially they can do this.

They can't they it would be very difficult for someone else, some other group to get to the point where they have a three hour long fucking streamed show at Gen.

Con in fucking Union Station.

Right?

Like that is not going to be a thing that's possible next year or the year after the year after for anything out there.

So this is this is one reason that I also despise the innies is because they are the only one that could be what the space does need and cannot be because of themself, you know, And that that to me, I think is more infuriating than anything.

There's a reason we don't do an award show on the podcast.

We review things.

We even quantify it with fucking numbers, right?

And there's a reason that we don't do an award show.

All we do on the show every year is just go back through the numbers we already gave and just review the scores we gave, right?

And then we have like our personal favorites that have nothing to do with scores.

And sometimes our personal favorites aren't even in the top scores that were given out on the show because it's, and again, that's why we don't do a fucking award show.

It's just a recap to, to, to not have to do with any of this bullshit, right?

And I would much rather have someone's like post innies.

Here's my 5.

Like the the game that made me jump the highest, you know what I mean?

Like, Oh yeah, the Superlative awards are, yeah.

They are, in my opinion, better for the space than the Innies has any hope of being.

You know I.

So, you know, I'm not going to say too much about what I think would be my ideal award show because spoiler alert, I kind of want to shop that idea around and get somebody to buy buy it in right.

Like I want to I want to run an award show and I want to build 1 it with what I know.

But one of the things I did think would be I always thought it would be funny with an award show is like, OK, yeah, it have your whole like categories and everything that's like it's it's set in stone every year, what have you.

But would it be kind of fun if like every year whatever crop of judges just had like 10 superlative awards every year just to throw it in like, and it could be completely random every year like that?

Because there are some things where like they, they defy categorization, but they do not.

But they are also 100% the thing you want everyone to know about for some reason or another.

And you want to use the the award shows platform to do it.

There is a game that was submitted, Congrats to anyone who made this because they're going to have someone talk about it.

It's a game called Green Oaks.

Now, I don't like the rules of the game.

I think they're, it suffers from the consequence of like a lot of RPGs where they kind of can't commit to like 1 theme because they want people to play it.

So they're like, oh, it could be anything.

You know, it ends up being one of those kinds of things that it has a lot of caveats in the writing of qualifiers of like, or you could do this.

But there's one thing about this game that rules, which is that it looks exactly like a brochure for a old folks home, like an elderly like care center.

And when I say it looks like it, I don't mean like it looks like it in the way that like a lot of RP GS ape genre.

I mean my wife almost threw it out because she thought it was a brochure for a local old folks home.

And then consistently I would constantly forget that it was actually an RPG in the pile of all the stuff that I I had like a filing system for the innies.

And every time I would see it, I'd be like, why is that there?

Oh, right, that is a game.

I forgot that it it uses like the most like boring boilerplate like layout.

It's using photos of like old people, like from a Cialis commercial.

It's 100% design.

It like visually designed, the art direction Immaculate.

It's perfect.

It's exactly what because the game is about playing elderly people in a mysterious care center.

So like, is that it?

Is it the best design, though?

No, not, I don't know, not really because the execution is like it's bad, but it's also exactly the kind of bad that a designer or a person in a marketing team would make a brochure at one of these places.

So it's actually 100% spot on, right?

Dead center in the bullseye.

But it's not got the best writing, it's not got the best setting.

It's all just sort of it's just different in every way, right.

And I would have loved like a superlative of like the most like non RPG looking RPG of the year, you know, and then it gets an award and it was like we talked about it.

It was one of those games where it's like we had a huge conversation about the whole time about like, I don't, I kind of think it might need to be in a category.

It might, it might be kind of it might be good.

It might maybe we put this out there.

And I, I will say that's one of my if, if anyone liked the the crop of a nominees this past year, I think most of that is due to the fact that the judges.

This year, me specifically, because I only want to speak for myself and I want to speak for them, is that there's a lot of metrics, execution, creativity, originality, context, those things are all very important to me.

But there's another little metric which is a does it?

Is it taking a swing?

Is it taking like a big?

The bolder, the more ambitious the swing, the more idiosyncratic it is.

That is not that is not a non 0 number that that is actually a puts a thumb on the scale for me.

So like there's a lot of stuff that like we almost nominate or we did nominate where it's like, I don't know if it's good, but it's going for it.

And I I think that should be awarded and it goes.

You know, I, I think that would be its own award show, like an award show that's just like we're going to.

And I thought this is what the the awards dot games was going to be of like awarding because they're like tag lines, like awarding weird shit.

I thought I, I think they should just like double down on that, go all in on weird shit, like the weirder the better.

And I like cuz I award show where all it is, you just know everything on the list is going to be the weirdest thing that came out that year or, or at least some of the weirdest stuff out here.

That would be cool.

That sounds like a great award show to me.

Would be cool.

That does sound like a great.

Award show and and that goes and that goes to you know a theme generally is that like the award shows that I think everyone wants that I think a lot of people like have specificity built into them and the the more broad you get the less satisfying they become.

Like one of the other concerns is being a judge is that you know, you have all these categories and you only have 5 nominations in each category and there are more than 5 sub communities in the design space for RPG.

So now should we feel obligated to give an award to like, let's there was no quota.

You know, we weren't like, OK, we need one for the triad people and one for the story gamers and one for the OSR people and so on and so forth.

But there was like a consideration of like, OK, we got, we got good.

Like we're representing this community well enough, but can we get something that's not part of this community in here that because because they are working on different metrics, right?

Like they are ostensibly fighting for the same award, but the way that they get to best writing is different because their genre conventions are completely divorced from the other groups metrics.

Right?

Like we were talking about this off the call, but like we talk about adventures all the time.

Adventures have like an assertive, like there's like culture of play and design built into a lot of them.

And what's an adventure to a story gamer versus an adventure for an OSR, you know, or NSR or whatever, you know, whatever acronym doesn't piss people off, you know?

Yeah.

So yeah, that was the, that was one of the other challenges is like you're sitting there being like, well, we got to have those things.

And I there is something that one people a complaint or critique that I've heard where I don't actually agree with it.

And I'll say it right now because we got to keep the show kind of spicy because this is the weekly scroll is people are a lot of people are like, oh, there's too many NSROSR elf games in the adventure categories.

They're the ones who make adventures when you make it when you make an adventure or like a campaign frame for like a part by the apocalypse, everyone asks you why the fuck did you do that?

That because most of them they're like that's counter to everything that that game stands for.

And you know, there are there.

I'm not saying that there aren't those.

I mean Jason Lutz has made amazing like campaign settings and like adventures for Dungeon World style stuff in the past.

And there's people will occasionally make something for something like Offworlders, which is one of my favorite games and I wish they had more stuff for it.

But ultimately on the grand scheme of things, some of some categories do just lean towards certain genres or more than others.

Adventures lean towards game genre based games like horror, fantasy, adventure, things like that.

And writing generally favors a story games in many ways because and specifically like the more like literary heads of story games because that's the something that they really care about.

And they don't have to try and put stats on anything because it's not part of their game design.

So they can just they can just write, you know, and and have fun with that and take swings.

Anyway, Ryan, what's your next question or thought I what, what are we doing on time?

I don't have a time, so I'll go as long as you want to go, OK?

I'll keep going, yeah.

Because I got plenty of stuff to go, I think.

I think let's take a quick, just a couple minute break real quick and we're going to get back because and, and remind me so my ADHD brain doesn't forget.

We're going to talk about categories because I would love to talk about categories a little bit more in depth.

So I'll go back in, just we'll be back in this 2 seconds.

Sounds good.

It seems like Amy's is trying to catch up with the Internet I think a little bit.

And I have no idea how to approach actual play and streaming and blogging and and all the rest and somehow have this like I couldn't even tell you.

Like there's, it seems like there's like 4 awards where they don't really know what it's for and it's some mix of all of that tucked into them.

So what?

So what the heck, What what the heck?

What the fuck?

Yeah.

Real quick side note, you said it's a weekly scroll so you got to get spicy.

Are we known for being spicy or something?

Well, Ryan, I'm sorry to tell you this.

You have opinions and they consistently come out every episode.

It's one of the reasons why I listen to it because you're just sort of like my like my spirit animal, you know, kind of like, you know, I don't know, I'm not going to say that insensitive, but like you're sort of like, you know, this, this thing that, you know, you're saying a lot of the things that I think half the time.

So, you know, I want to be to some degree have that degree of that level of candidness in the weekly scroll, because I think that's what a lot of people probably listen to this podcast is that they want that, right?

So I'm not going to I'm not going to completely dance around every question you give me.

I might, I might, I do, I do give quite a few caveats.

I do know that I know I'm kind of softballing and I'm, but you know, at the end of the day, I think I do think there is a lot of nuance to this.

And I think ultimately, and this is where we get back to the categories.

My complaints with the Annie's categories is that complaint I have with like all the award shows in RPG's categories.

Like I, I think like there's always, almost always on.

There's a couple award shows where they don't have that many categories.

I mean, I think of like the origin awards, which is not an RPG award show.

It's like a gaming tabletop award show.

So they only have like best RPG and best RPG supplement and that's it.

That is one with an Academy attached to it and they're the ones who do the voting.

And then there's the awards dot games, which also similarly they, you know, they don't actually have categories at all.

They're just like, here are the 10 games for this year.

Yeah, they pick like 10 to 20 games.

They just go, we like these.

There you go.

OK.

Yeah, again, if there's a little bit more specificity, I think that'd be more exciting.

Like that'd be, that would be totally fine.

But because it is again, still very broad, it's kind of like whatever.

And I and that is ultimately my biggest complaint with most award shows is that the Annie's and the crit awards, they want to be the award show for everything like, and that's why there's so many categories.

And then there's also the thing too with the Annie's of like, because it's so much older than a lot of these other award shows, they you know, there's clear like they have vestigial organs.

There's a lot of appendix sort of style like categories in here that were probably more relevant years ago and they've grown less relevant over time, but they haven't been removed or they haven't been like really revised a lot because again, every year it's, it's, it's an innovative process.

It's it's not they they're trying to figure out how they're going to make it run again next year.

It's not about what is it going to be next year.

So the question is never I again, I'm, I'm putting myself in in like Stacy and team's shoes a little bit here.

So maybe unfairly so, but I, I do think there's, it's the question more or less is like, how do these categories work this year?

As opposed to what category should we have in the innies?

And there's some categories where it's like, and I'm looking at the list now off to the side here.

I like so, you know, I think a best adventure, which I actually really like that category.

I think it's one that I want to see stay, but I do recognize also that that was a much easier category when RPG seem to be basically only called Cthulhu and D&D back in like 2005.

Now in the in the age of the itch dot IO story game world and the capsule games and the lyrical games and LARP, the Jason games best adventure again, it goes back to what we said before the break.

It leans into it leans towards certain genres of or subcultures of play and completely doesn't serve other ones.

And that could be fine theoretically, but it does.

It does just it feels it's a little bit of a a thorn in the side right when you're sitting there.

And there's some categories that are just like that.

But I, you know, I, I voiced, you know, overtly while I was a judge to the any awards that I, I think they should just cut a bunch of them loose, like just get rid of some categories, I think.

And it's kind of goes back to a little bit of what we were talking.

I can't remember if it was on stream or not.

But this idea you said earlier, like you don't like everyone knowing everything about you.

You like being pride, having keeping some things private because you don't want yourself spread too thin.

It feels like you're being spread thin.

I think I feel that same way about when I'm running a thing or I have like a thing I'm I'm I've made an institution or organization.

I like it to stay as compact as possible because all the problems and challenges that I have then are easier to address when The thing is small and simple.

The more like broad and like variable the thing becomes, the harder it is for me to like rock it, so to speak.

So I if I was running the Annie's, I would probably I would kill things like product of the year, fans choice for best publisher and everything to do with streaming and content creation.

So let's start go ahead.

Let's.

Start from the top product of the year is got to be the most fuck I to me, it's very easy and I don't understand.

If you look through the list of the past number of years, including this year compared to other things, it makes no fucking sense to me.

So what was the what is product of the year?

What it what what is the criteria for that when you were when you guys were picking that?

What is the criteria for product of the year?

Let me Scroll down to that.

All right.

So product of the year is 10 products will be nominated.

So that makes it already a a weird fringe case.

It is not like the other ones.

It it doesn't have 5, it has 10 now.

I think they're, I believe best game is the same way that one has 10 in the category.

I get that because that's to me, that's the capstone like award.

I think everyone thinks of that, right?

Everyone when they watch the ceremony, when they think of it, any awards they think of like there's a bunch of categories and then the ER category, the final best picture nominees is best game.

I think, I think that is more or less exactly how everyone conceives of it in their heads.

So the fact that you are at the ceremony and it's best game and the big thing get wins or whatever.

And then there's another category after that and it's best product of the year.

It's just, it's strange.

And I, I think in previous years, this is where, like, I mean, I don't know how to say this without sounding a little bit despairingly, but this is the category where you're like, OK, we want to have the best picture nominee, but we don't want to leave out the maps, GM screens and the plushies and the dice makers.

So we have this like other secondary competing, uh, category, this top category with best game that is for all those, all those submitters who are not submitting a game.

And I just don't think you need to do that.

I, I think those, those categories exist already.

There's the best RPG related product, there's the best supplement.

I think those things can exist in the in those territories.

I don't think they need a top spot like vote, you know, for like the best of the year.

Here, here's my here's my take on this.

I like product of the year, right?

One of the things that we do on the show, how we try to review games is as a consumer of the thing as if we just read the thing and this is our our our initial read through and take on it.

And I like, and that's one of the reasons like we don't do we get hit up all the time for people like, oh, check out this my game that's coming out.

If you want to review it.

I'm like, it's not out yet.

Why the fuck would I review it?

And if it's going to get a print edition, I'm going to wait till I get the print edition because I've seen some beautiful PDFs and some shit books.

So like, why would I like I'm going to wait till I get the book I like product of the year.

But here's my issue with product of the year is one thing you said is it's for the dice screens and and the plushies and shit.

So why the fuck don't those things win?

So let's look at the category this year and I'll name names.

We got gold winner, the one ring, Moria through the doors of Dern.

It's a fucking book, right?

And then the silver winner, Mythic Bastion land.

It's a fucking book, right?

In the cyberpunk episode, we talked about cyberpunk, one of the coolest form factor fucking things I've ever picked up.

Lost to shadow dark, a black and white book, right?

But then you have things on the list like Doom song, which is a series of books that are gorgeous but also come with like hand printed maps and shit.

All the rest of that stuff.

You got Memento Mori deathless edition, which is like this fucking box set, but the box is like AGM screen and stuff, right?

You got you got a triangle agency of all the awards that they want.

They didn't win product of the year with the fucking briefcase.

One of the coolest.

Like it's it's this is a a product, right.

So this is what I don't know.

This is what will always get me about product of the year is if it's supposed to be for things like Revolt, which is like a box set with meatballs and shit in it, or even Monty Python, which I could not give less of a shit about Monty Python, but it's a giant box of cool shit.

It is a cool product.

How are two of the only just plain ass fucking books in the category winning gold and silver in product of the year if the point of that category is it's kind of supposed to be for the shit that's got bells and whistles.

Like that's the thing that doesn't make fucking sense to me about product of the year.

It's a it's, it's again, like if that's what the award is supposed to be, why don't those things win that award?

Well, you know, and that's that's just a word.

The ambiguity doesn't serve it at all, right.

Because like the product of the year as written is the best overall product.

All proximated will be automatically considered for this category.

10 products will be nominated.

And you know, a book is a product.

I I think.

But here's the thing I see for the podcasters.

Ryan made a jerk off motion.

But now the the product of the year is like a weird category because I think it's conceived of by the and again, I'm putting my, my, my, I'm going into someone else's shoes here.

So caveats there, but I think they're kind of thinking like that's the actual like top win category.

I don't think, I don't think this is like a duo like thing.

Like we get the best picture game and then we get the best picture product.

I think they're thinking like best game is nestled under it and that's why best product of the year is at the top of that category.

And I think it's more broad because again, they're trying to like be inclusive that maybe possibly something that isn't a game at all might be qualified for that category.

But then when we get to that part of the process as a judge, it is one of the last categories that where we we like finalize more often than not.

I mean, I can't speak for more often, not because I don't have the other previous years and I don't know what those judges decided on.

I don't trust that.

But I will say that nothing when we when we were putting things on the list, I had no point.

Did we like think to ourselves?

At least I didn't think to myself.

I was like, Oh yeah, there's a there's a non RPG that is as good as triangle agency or what have you.

So yeah, I mean, I can't, I unfortunately, I couldn't tell you why some things were omitted off that list and why other things got on the list.

I think it's just one of those things where it really is kind of hard to place what the heck it's the categories for.

I mean, if I were going to fix it, I would first of all put game of the year at the end because that is that is the big one.

It's ridiculous to try to do this dual thing.

I mean, if you want to leave it 10, sure, drop it to five and make it the fucking the weird or the bells and whistles category, which is what it should be.

To me, product of the year is is it's more than just a fucking book.

It is a it's the multimedia experience, right?

Like it's the thing that you go, damn right, and you're looking at the production of the thing.

Yeah, well, there is A and that's the other weird thing is there's the best production category.

Which then get rid of fucking product of the year.

It's a pointless double category.

Just like fold it into one thing and make it the bells and whistles category and just be fucking done with it because I there is a huge fucking difference between something like the fucking normal briefcase from triangle agency and the one ring Moria.

It's a fucking book versus unexperienced.

Realistically, like when you open this thing up like the all that you get from it without even ever cracking open the book itself is a completely different category than than just a book sitting next to it.

In my opinion, if you're gonna, if you're gonna have those things, just get rid of 1 and double that into, like I said, get there shouldn't be anything that's just a plain book, unless that book is the most insane shape you've ever seen with like holes punched in it and like it's backwards somehow when it breaks space-time or something.

Like that's the only way it should be in there.

And that's why, you know, again, cuz we, we, we, we talk about things on the show, like like value and, and like rules is one of five things that we review.

You know, there's a bunch of other stuff that goes into it and and that's, that's a big part of it, like actually having a thing in your hands because you can like anyone that's played to teach RBG.

If you're handed a black and white 2 column book and you're handed something like the the normal briefcase, the vibes are going to be a little different.

Like there is something to say about the production value, the way it's presented that the immersion that that thing can give you.

That is a completely different experience.

So anyway, but that's product of the year.

But I interrupted you.

You said two other things.

I wanted to get that.

I wanted to get that rant out.

I had to get.

Oh man.

No, no, yeah, it's good.

It's good.

I'm trying to.

And again, I, I, I'm not going to, I'm not going to invalidate anything you said because I think it is just, it's really challenging.

Like some of these categories weirdly overlap with each other and some of them it's like, what is it actually for?

Like it's really hard to say.

And then there's this other thing too that.

So you know how we were talking earlier about sandbagging, like you're, you're trying to do the math in your head that you're, you're you're trying to read the projective projection maps of like how popular is this thing going to be when it gets to the public voting?

The other thing that you're thinking about is like how much does dumping budget into the this thing give it an advantage over everything else?

Or like how much does quantity beat or play a role just in general in the thing?

And like, so, you know, in my mind, like I and again, this is goes to show that like every year, the any awards, because it's so broad, when you see any variability at all in it, where you're like, there's something weird happening here that is inconsistent with the previous years.

And again, the consistent thing of most years is that it's just going to be the things you expect to win at the end.

He's get a win and nominate.

So when you see like a weird, like fringe case on more often than that, that's showing a betray, that's betraying the fact that maybe some of the judges have like an idea or a thought or like an opinion or in it.

I'm not I don't want to use the word agenda because people will think that means something negative.

But like one of the things that like I'm constantly, you know, worried about is that I want the any awards to be awarding more indie people than not.

And I want it to be not an automatic like cheat code that you had the million multi $1,000,000 Kickstarter when you went into this thing.

So like there were instances where like, and again, this is probably unfair of me, but it is, it's just the natural reality because again, I can only, we can only nominate 5 things where like I would be like, OK, yeah, Triangle Agency is really good.

It's really interesting.

But does it automatically end up on this list?

Partly because it's just also a really good game.

That's more of game.

There's more game than there is in this other thing.

So and I guess in a way that's kind of nice thing about the production value is it kind of becomes this like heat sink for like the money category.

Like more often than not, everything that was in the best production values was probably something that made a butt load of money somehow.

Landavine Mothership, Tides of rod rule, you know, but.

Which is fine, then get rid of product of the year and just make that the fucking.

Again.

Yeah, yeah.

Make that the money sync one, then I that's fine.

Like someone I just said, like, if you're getting a collectible thing, it should look like a collectible fucking thing.

And it's okay to reward that, to award that.

And I mean, especially if you can award some of the shit, some of that we're we'll, we'll go through this entire fucking last, but like some of the stuff that gets awarded on here and and it's fine to award the thing that is a cool fucking thing because it's a cool thing.

God, I had a thought.

And This is why I need to keep posting notes so I can write stuff down.

But I got a piece of paper with notes here just to do the same thing.

It's, it's, it's, I don't know.

It's, it is what it is.

But we're, we're going to, we're going to keep going through it.

So do you, do you want to, do you want to go top to bottom and just be like keep it, toss it, keep it, toss it.

How do you want to go through this?

I, you know, I probably shouldn't go keep it, toss it on this thing because that would then get into me explaining to you which things I hated that ended up on the list and I don't want to do that.

I could all I can do that then though, I'll tell you what I hate.

Let's get let's let's just go with what I hate, OK?

Great.

Best online content gone.

Best streaming content gone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Individual things.

I thought we were talking about individual.

Things it's like I'm not gonna.

Drown No, no, no, no, no.

One thing I wanted to say.

One thing I wanted to say is I, I and I understand that that's really difficult.

There's something that we actually struggled with on the show for a long time because we we talked about Zenes for a long time, but didn't rate Zenes in the way that we do our metrics for a long time because we didn't feel that there it it didn't.

There is a very different having like a 16 page Zine and a 200 page book and to try to hold them to the same metrics.

We were like you can't, you can't do that.

And it took us a long time to choose a different set of metrics specifically for zines.

Yeah.

So there's so yeah.

OK.

Can I, can I interrupt there so I can use an actual example here?

There is no delineation between size like length or scope of product project in the categories.

And so again, here's an example of where you could see some judges, myself included.

We're thinking like, how do what do we do?

Here's a weird thing that we're going to do and best family game.

You have land of Eame huge book.

You got stupot classic book Isabus, which is a door stopper.

It's thick.

Anyone who doesn't know it is a big book.

And then Dungeon Cats is a tiny little Zine that's about, I think 16 pages.

And if it's pocket sized, it's it's no, it's very tiny.

And we like Dungeon cats.

Like we were like, and there's a whole conversation about it.

And again, I can't get it.

I'm not going to name names of the design, you know, the other judges, but like a couple of us were like, it's good, It's really good.

It it doesn't need to be longer to to be nominated for this category.

And there is a whole debate about like, we'll should something bigger or longer go in that category because it's more game.

And so it's like it's kind of harder to execute something that is very big in some ways than something that's a little bit smaller.

And then at the end of the day, it was just like, no, not really.

Because actually, you know, the Mark Twain quote of like, if I had more time, it would be shorter kind of thing plays a big role.

So yeah, we you had that problem on this on this show.

I remember, you know, the the scenes kind of having its own metric system.

It does, yeah.

They they get 3 metric versus versus 5.

And now we kind of go over all of that combined during the episode and then just pick and then just throw those scores in at the end.

So, you know, now we'll talk about vibes for books and not just scenes and stuff, but but also then when you look at our favorites at the end of the year, even though we go over things that are both 100 page books or scenes, it's a lot.

I mean, we unapologetically hate big books and.

I'm still here.

I don't know what's going.

On we unapologetically hate big books, so we don't go over as many.

We might go over more now with the new metric, but like I understand that it's difficult, but at the same time like no, like we we might use a different metric, but at the end of the day, I can hold up a 300 page book and a 30 page scene and tell you which one I like and which one I think is better.

You know what I mean?

That's that's true that so it's you don't.

I mean, the fact that dungeon cats was in there compared to the others is sometimes it's a lot.

It's harder to put something into different challenges for different things, right?

Bigger books can be difficult because the the more you make a thing, the more spread it has, the more scope it has, the more creep it has, the more it kind of has to sing with itself.

But it also gives you more room to make more game.

Right when you make a yeah.

When you make a smaller game, you have a limited amount of space to, to express what you want to say to get the rules in there.

But one of the things that we that that makes us choose Zenes more than others is when you have that smaller size, all of the things work together better, right When the art and the layout and the rules all sing.

It's more important when you have a smaller Zen, I think, than in a bigger book because it's much more noticeable when you have a much smaller size to deal with.

Like if something, if one chapter in a giant book is kind of off, it can hide.

But when you know a couple of pages of a 12 page Zine is a little bit off, it can't.

So there's gives and takes to it.

I can't remember which writer is, but the theory of composition really applies to RPGs as well.

This idea that when you're working in something like a short story, every word has to serve the thing right.

And the and the bigger, the bigger you get.

It's like a it's a conservation of energy.

The bigger the thing gets, the less potential or energy is in each individual part because there's just so many more parts.

So you can kind of spread it out.

But when you're working with like a tiny Zine, yeah, you kind of want every single part of that Zine to be like really firing on all cylinders.

And so now I'm going to get we should have a whole category of conversation.

We just talked about some little observations for anyone who wants to submit to the ennies and once or once like to win.

But I will say that when a short game is bad, it's merciful.

It's like, OK, it's not great.

It's fine.

When a big game is bad, it's excruciating.

It sucks.

I it is a miserable thing because like again, I'm, I'm reading through these things like I'm not like I I don't want to.

I feel obligated to give everyone a fair chance at bat.

So when your, your Zen is like 16 pages, I read front to back.

No, there's no question about it.

It requires no work whatsoever to do that.

When your book is 300 pages.

I'm reading at least 50.

And there's a lot of books where you're like, you know, right away from like page 5, you're like, this thing's probably not going to get much better, is it?

And then you get to page like 20 and you're like, it's still not there.

What's happening?

When's it going?

And here's just a tip for everybody get get to it as soon as possible.

Like there are too many books.

And this is a this is a problem with the 5 E trad D&DRPG culture and like the call Cthulhu sort of adjacent world, because I know that trad players don't consider themselves trad, right?

That's that's like a category that the outsiders give those communities, but there are too many of these books where it's like it takes 15 pages to get to.

So what is this thing about like what is actually the game?

Yeah, I've gotten the lore, I've gotten the thank you page, I've gotten the safety tools, I've gotten the credits, I've gotten some art.

I got the maps.

I'm already 6 pages in.

When does the game get brought up?

Then there's the forward about what it was like making the game.

And then there's the the commentary from someone from the actual designer.

And you're to get to the point where it's like, OK, where's the game?

Just tell me what the game is.

I can't keep doing this.

So just get to the point.

And I have a blog post about this.

It says stop hiding your apes.

But it's yeah, it's just like, please just tell me, show me the cool thing as soon as possible.

Things any RPG or any submitter where like it was immediately obvious what the thing was automatically had an advantage in the in the any awards.

And I think this probably applies to all award shows.

If you want to want to win an award show, your thing should be able to show what it is right away.

Anyway, I can now go down in the categories and tell you what I think we should keep and what we should get rid of.

All right, best adventure, long form, short form.

We talked about this a little bit before.

I mean would would adventure is going to be in there adventure?

Is what I think.

So I I think it's the it's one of the pavers of the entire industry.

It's obviously not as prominent as it used to be in many ways because there's some cultures that don't exist.

But this is I mean, the best adventure categories are kind of like, again, they're scratching at that that bruise at the of the Ennis of being like, man, the broader with this, this industry gets the worst this category feels.

But I do think it's really good categories to have still.

How would you?

Would you, would you delineate it in a different way or or what would you do?

No, I don't know this one I've thought about a lot.

I think this is really what this really this category makes me think of is like maybe the the elf games OSR dungeon crawling.

Like game culture should just have their own award show an.

OSR award show.

Yeah, like an OSR.

Award show which which of the 20 different branches of the OSR is is going to.

Run the award show well, so here's here's the thing about award shows too that's really important about them.

And this is specifically comes from both knowledge of how it works in movies and in design and advertising.

One thing that award shows also do is they codify who is the thing and who isn't the thing.

So if you had an OSR award show that was run by people who fucking hate Nazis, they get to go and basically tell the world and set the set in stone.

They are not in this.

They can claim they are, but they're not in the award show for the category.

So are they really?

Like that's kind of part of like the setting, the culture and driving the culture.

Like, if an award show is, you know, it codifies and sets in stone certain, like, norms or expectations of a category or genre, which is why I like it has its negative off effects too.

Like, that's why I like Oscar bait is like a category in and of itself because the Oscars have established that, like, real drama is going to be this period piece about, you know, racism and a white woman doing something cool.

So yeah, it's not good.

It's not great, but it's not bad at the same time.

Yeah.

But then you're going to get, I mean, I mean.

But this goes back to the thing though, like if you're playing, if you are, it goes back to the judges thing of like if you're going to have like judges that everyone knows, well, it's probably you're going to probably need judges that are of certain play culture.

So like it would if I was only an OSR person and not also a story game lyric, game freak that I am, I think I would want all the judges to be from my so broadly from the category I, I am in, even the ones where I would be like, I don't know if they're part of me, but certainly they're close.

I think a lot of people probably want that It's.

Funny you're you're I feel like we feel so we're so similar in so many things, but the you're like a story lyric game person and I'm very much like more in the OSR sphere, especially like however far from leer a game I can get, which I just think is really interesting that we have so many similar opinions and yet what we want in in games is they somehow presented differently.

I'm.

I'm, here's the thing with OSR stuff, I probably would only want to make that if I was making games.

I would only make, you know, fantasy sci-fi stuff.

I wouldn't be making like a game about any of the stuff that most story games are about.

I mean the problem too though is depending on who gets to pick.

I mean, I saw a recent OSR panel and I'm not going to name names.

I'll we'll end on this Shadow darks, not OSR best aid accessory digital, non digital.

I like this.

I think this is interesting.

Yeah, I think it's interesting.

It's interesting too that some of these categories are more competitive than others and some some years are not competitive at all.

So I think this is AI think these I I like these two categories and I also like that by having them exist, it kind of encourages more people to make them.

Yeah, which which I think is great.

I mean, things like the Mothership companion app is is great.

It's great.

Yeah.

I was so happy that Dungeon Scrawl got something because I love Dungeon Scrawl.

I think it's an incredible resource.

I run entire games in Dungeon Scrawl because I can just literally build the map as I play instead of having to like hide it and then you can just drag tokens in from the side to do a whole thing.

I mean, a lot of these are really, really incredible resources.

And it's really interesting the difference between the digital versions and the non digital versions, because the digital ones are pretty much all like this is going to help you play a game.

And the non digital ones are for the most part, these are parts of games.

When you look at like, you know, the tin candles one or the money Python 1 and things like that, It it's it's more of like this is an add on to a game that exists as opposed to that, I mean.

It's like, it's like almost like it's making a deluxe version of the experience as opposed to like making the core experience better.

I I could see that for sure.

I certainly the 10 candles tea light thing is that right where it's like, let's let's add a little deluxe little flair onto the.

Deluxe tea light.

I mean, whatever.

I like 10 candles.

I don't know what the tea light collection is, but you know, it's whatever.

It's scented candles that are themed around certain 10 candles scenario.

So like, some of them smell like campfire smoke and things like that, and then, you know, whatever the upsetting thing is.

That's definitely the accessory part of the best aid in accessory.

I, you know, I, I, I wouldn't mind this instead of going digital, non digital, having a best aid and a best accessory one, because the OP the, the, the difference between something like dungeon scrawl and something like scented tea lights is massive to me.

But you know, it is what it is, obviously.

I would have to think on that one.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, interesting.

Idea, yeah.

Yeah, there's just a big difference between the thing that helps you and the thing that just like you said, is just like a little bit of a deluxe bonus for you, a thing that smells nice.

But I think both are valid.

I mean, I used to burn fucking scented candles.

I my can't trip candles and stuff.

I loved being like, all right, we're in a dungeon tonight.

Let's light the dungeon candle.

Best cover art, I mean, and best into your art too.

I I think you have to have these.

I mean, I wouldn't want to get rid of them.

I mean, best cartography, we're basically saying like here's here's the art awards and an artist are a massive part of the teacher.

Virginia community.

Art sells books and let's be 100% honest, cover art sells books.

I have bought a lot of games that are bad, but they had beautiful cover art and I bought them, you know?

Well, and some people will be like, oh, the cover doesn't matter.

And it's like then why do they exist?

No, that's couldn't be.

Farther.

It couldn't be farther from the fucking truth.

If you any budget whatsoever, do a cover art, that's it and you're going to sell more games.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

And you can't amputate cover from the the thing because it's part of the thing.

Like I, I think looking at games and products and things more holistically, you find out that everything is more essential than you probably then some people would want you to believe.

I got a tiny note that's actually has nothing to do with these two categories.

It has to do with the fact that, and this is again, this is a little bit of a complaint, like if I could change something, if I could, you know, do it right now, I would just change the way some of these categories are written.

Like just call, you just call, you describe it as best cover art, but it's not best cover art.

It's best art, comma cover, best art, comma interior.

I would just I would spell it and write it as it is said colloquially.

And I think there's just something about that.

It's like clean like instead of saying best aid slash accessory dash non dash digital, I would just say best if I was going to keep that category best non digital aid or accessory.

Yeah, I mean, there's no reason to basically write it in such way.

So it stays in alphabetical order versus just saying this just if it.

We say this all the time about games.

If a thing is a thing, just call it a thing.

Like you don't have to come up with new ways to say the thing.

If it if it's hit points, it's called fucking hit points.

Like you know and.

The other thing, yeah, and another thing too is why is it doesn't have to be alphabetical.

In fact, it probably shouldn't be alphabetical.

I wouldn't have put these things alphabetical the product.

Of the year is not alphabetical.

Yeah, alphabetical exactly.

Yeah, right.

I completely agree.

It shouldn't be best art cover.

It should just be best cover art, best interior art.

The interesting the thing about the best art categories and best cartography category is that they are, they're showing how the any awards are in a really weird spot of being both a People's Choice Awards and also behaving a lot like a craft industry award.

Because if you go to industry awards, this is the I'm going to use, you know, a comparison.

We will always talk about how in the Academy Awards, how the production side of the award show gets less and less screen time at the award show, Like best cinematographer, best like wardrobe, like they're always like, it seems like they're always trying to get rid of one of those best special effects, things like that best sound design.

And and that's because the Academy Awards in many ways are moving more towards a broad audience.

They're not they're moving away from being an industry award because an industry award would care more about those things.

So it's kind of it's kind of a weird category because it is like clearly like something that if the judges were all like experts in their field, this category makes a lot of sense.

But because it's, you know, generally people who don't have an opinion on art besides whether or not they like it or not, this it becomes a weird category.

So there's things that are going to be in these categories that any, any category that leans craft.

I think you'll notice that there are things where you're like, wow, why did that get in there?

And the answer is because through the process of trying to come with nominations, judge some judges who don't have an opinion really strongly on the category, but have an opinion on what should win get nominations in there.

One weird thing about best cartography, I interpret cartography in a completely different way then I think probably most people do.

And I think that probably led to all being unsatisfied with cartography.

I thought of cartography in a more holistic fashion of like, it's not just the art, it is the art usability and how it plays into the overall experience of, of the game.

Like play tone, theme, what have you.

So like Pendragon map of King Arthur's Britain.

If you've seen it in real life, you know exactly why it won.

It's a gorgeous looking map.

It is.

It's really well made.

It feels like it's like really sets tone.

But then like if you look at like, say, Wonderland, a fancy role-playing setting, that map is all about like experimental functionality.

It's a Tetramino style map that shifts and it's got all these like different parts and pieces and you move it around.

And if it's playing into the Wonderland aspect, because the whole idea of like Alice in Wonderland is that when she goes into, it's like a non Euclidean space that constantly morphing.

So the cartography functions mechanically like Wonderland where it's shifts every time you enter it.

So that's why one of the reasons why I liked it for the category, but it's not artistically at the same, it's not on the same territory as say, Pendragon as far as like art is concerned.

Well, I mean, and then then yeah, that that comes down to it.

Need like more definition of the category.

Because to me, I mean, there's a reason that usability is one of our metrics.

Like it is a reason that like we're known for being the people that bitch about hyperlinks and shit because like actually being able to use the game at the tables a little bit more important than how pretty it is when you're actually playing in the game.

If you just want to sell copies, sure, prettier is always going to be better.

If you want to actually play the game, usability always going to go out.

So for me, usability would win hands down on this category because it's a map.

Map is supposed to be, I mean, and that therein is it supposed to be anything?

Is it supposed to just be dressing in the front or is it supposed to be usable?

I guess that's, that's up to, that's up to debate, You know, each, each year, I guess it's there's no definition.

Again, if they if the award show had more specificity, it would naturally probably lean one way or the other.

Best community content?

I don't understand what does that mean?

I don't understand this category either.

I I was the most I was the probably the most annoying person for a whole year to the coordinators and I apologize to them for it, but I asked over and over again what is the best community content?

I constantly asked like challenged the the interpretation of it because if you read the actual thing, which I'll read aloud right now because that happens on this podcast.

So I feel empowered to do so.

Formerly known as best organized play.

So right away it's this thing that is from previous years, right?

So it is it is morphed and changed as the industry has changed, which is probably why it feels unsatisfying in some ways.

For me, this category is a word to the best adventures created to support community content programs such as organized play either by the company owning the intellectual property or those given open permission to do so by said company community content programs or by or by a third party Commission to do so.

So my question immediately was, does that mean any third party community content program product is eligible for this category?

Is the Mork Bork third party like community content license every SRD?

Yeah.

Are are those all like eligible?

Because.

And the reason why I was asking this is because there was a lot of great stuff that was that would fit in this category on that basis alone.

There's a people are making amazing stuff for mothership, amazing stuff for Mork Borg, amazing stuff for Liminal horror.

Obviously like all these different things is like I, I want to know if I can put some of those people into this category.

And it's in this weird space where best community created content is specifically speaking to the style community content of that like was set forth by like Dungeons and Dragons in store play.

And so it's more like DMS Guild stuff and like Miskatonic University by called Kathua Chaosium stuff and Pendragon.

Like there's only like a few like things that are more or less ordained in that category.

Everything every because the industry has abandoned that that model, right?

Like the, the industry is like we are not going to do like all the indie creators out there.

Like why would we be that like regimented in this?

We're just going to freely give out like the rights to use this game so long as you credit it and you'll be in this content program and all that.

I mean, even like, don't you would think just by this definition, from age alone, Dungeon Crawl Classics would be eligible because Dungeon, because Goodman Games runs a huge content program in in stores.

They have the judges Guild, they run games, everything else.

But because none of those adventures are designed strictly for organized play in stores, none of them are eligible theoretically.

Yeah, this is fucking stupid and this needs to go.

Yeah, this category, it's weird, Yeah.

Miskatonic Repository, Miskatonic Repository, Miskatonic Repository, Pyzo, Dungeon Masters Guild, come the fuck on.

This is dumb.

Get rid of this fucking category that like you said, maybe fucking 6-7 years ago when adventures league and all that shit was like something that anyone cared at all about, maybe this would be viable.

These are adventures or whatever they are.

They are then eligible for whatever category they can be in.

It's dumb as shit to put to to somehow segmented to just be like these are corporate sponsored games.

Like we don't.

There does not need to be a corporate sponsored content category.

Come the fuck on.

That's stupid.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I want one last note everything in this, this is nothing to say about the nominees in this.

No, not at all.

Not at all.

It's about the category itself, the nominees.

Like there's something special about all of them, including the fact that they include, you know, the mountain in my home, my home state right now.

So that's great.

But yeah, no, it's just about the content it or the category.

It's not about the actual nominees.

I will very rarely talk shit about specific games on here except.

There's some really good stuff in there.

Man, we should have a blades counter in the in the in the in the chat.

Best family game or products.

Fine whatever.

I don't care to even.

Like can I pull?

Can I pull out a soapbox real quick on this?

Please do.

Please do.

I am coming to you all cap and hand to say that best family game or family friendly game is not the same as the kiddie game.

The best like game for kids.

I think a lot of people think like they get a lot of people get angry when their game gets put into this category where they're like my game is not kid childish.

It is a serious game.

And I think that is under the assumption that kids only get childish crap.

But that's not at all with this category is was interpreted this year, this past year.

We interpreted it as like any like amazing game that felt like it could also be played family friendly with any community, any like group of people, whether it is your actual family or a found family.

So everything in there is really good and some of it is for kids of younger age, but ultimately most of it is just like, is this game really good and could you play it with younger people?

Possibly.

If the answer is yes, then you might qualify for this.

It's funny, I had I had a discussion with somebody literally about this at the innies where mouse shooter came up, and I think mouse shooter is an incredible the fact that it one family game is it should it should every.

A million times.

It's great.

It's great for families, yeah.

Because but what's 1 of the things I love?

I've said this over and over again.

Like I have a short list of games that if no one's, if people have never heard of a teacher, but you have never played one, a short list of what I would play with them.

And the number one game that I would always pick 100% of the time is Mouse shutter.

If you've never played a TTRPG, you're gonna play Mouse shutter.

And one of the things that's great about it and why I think it's such a great family game is because the way it's designed, it is extremely helpful for accessibility stuff for younger.

Like the not only is the inventory thing fucking awesome, it's going to be super helpful for kids to keep that organized, right?

Yep, but is also going to be great for people in 50s, sixties, seventies, 80s of any age.

And it's deadly enough that it's going to be fun for the people that want that, but also like of a genre to like still fit kids wanting to play mice and stuff.

I it's it's, it's in my opinion, if you had to say what is a family game, you would just hold off the master box and be like, this is this, just define it based on this.

And it would be perfect from there.

And I won them over because they said it wasn't a family game because the mice die and shit.

I'm like, I watched where the red Fern grows to go into 4th grade because it's time to grow up.

You know what I mean?

Like old yellow.

It's a kids movie, you know.

A metaphor.

A lot of people think of Pez Family Game as the Coco Melon category.

It's not.

It's the Pixar category.

Yeah, it is the one that can be for kids, but is clearly written by adults for adults because of the shit that the kids are not going to get until they're older.

And then they go, oh, I get Wally now.

I get it.

It's not just cute robots.

Yeah, the themes are not dumbed down.

Kids are way more intelligent than people give them credit for.

And yeah, putting a soapbox on top of the soapbox.

Let's scare kids again.

Let's give them back to being scarred.

Like, let's get, let's give them the scar.

Throwing your father into the Stampede of wildebeest.

I think that more kids need to grow up with the with the, the tragedies and the nightmares and all that good stuff.

Yeah, I don't disagree at helicopter parents and and all of these like wrapped in these bubble wrap kids, come on, come on.

I mean, I mean in the same vein with a really quick tiny little tangent.

When we take away kids ability to go outside and play and take away every 3rd space where they could actually go develop themselves so and earn scars and earn a little bit of meat on their fucking emotional bones.

Where, where are they supposed to go do that though?

You know what I mean?

Like, you know, we've taken, we've taken all those spaces away and, and and and, and not only that politicized protect the kids as, as another, like, you know, Rod to beat down anything that a certain segment of society doesn't like.

So, you know, fuck fascism.

But yeah, I'm permanently out of Zobox, so I don't need to preface that.

Yeah, best free gamer product.

Fine.

Like, I don't understand why it necessarily like, I mean, I'm, I'm of a mind that all PDFs should be free, but you know, I I don't really like, OK, fine, whatever.

I think this is just a category in my opinion, that's kind of unnecessary.

It's an adventure just like everything else is, right?

Yeah, I It doesn't have to be an adventure.

It can be a game or.

It's it's, it's supplement, it's a product, it's whatever, Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Ultimately, when I was judge, I was happy to have any category that allowed me to spread the love around.

And there were a couple things that got to be like nominated here that probably wouldn't have gotten nominated in any other category.

A bunch.

And I think this is so fucking dumb that this whole idea that like, let's not put the best thing in the category.

Let's I'll compromise with you so I can get this thing that I like tucked in this other category.

So they didn't actually like that just seems like so broken.

Like instead of just being like, these are the best, we're going to like finagle and I'm going to whip votes and do like a whole politics thing so that I can get this other thing and this other thing that feels so broken.

Well, the problem with that thinking is that like what is best of anything like on it, it'll change from day-to-day too.

So like, honestly, it's just like one of those things where it's like, oh, great, like I can give you know, I'm just going to name one like Grim wild can become nominated for something and I don't have to then feel obligated necessarily to nominate for also best game that's not free, which is the category after this one.

My, my opinion really about the best free game is that, you know, it kind of remind, it reminds me of drive through RPG of like the whole conversation that always happens in the RPGs where people will accuse you of being like greedy if you charge any amount of money for something that some people presume should be free.

So, you know, I'm, I'm kind of on the side of like, if it weren't for the fact that there are some really great things that probably deserve recognition.

I don't like any sort of societal encouragement that games should be free or that we should be putting extra juice into anything just because it's free.

But you know, I I don't feel too strongly about this category either otherwise.

You are.

You definitely made me.

You know what is best in life?

The Conan quote definitely jumped into my brain there.

If I could, if I could have remembered it word for word, I would have ripped that out.

But I didn't.

No, I just saw they driven before you and the limitations of their women.

Crush your enemies limitations of your women and all that kind of stuff Yeah yeah fine.

Whatever best game OK so explain look so so let's So what is the difference between best game game of the year and apparently product of the year?

Like why we already?

Talked about it.

We don't know.

There's best game and game of the year.

What is the difference between best gaming game of the year?

Is it best?

I don't know game of the year and game of the year like like runner up like it makes no sense that you have best game and game of the year because you don't have best rules and rules of the year.

There's no.

Is there a game of the year?

No, it's product of the year.

That's what you meant, right?

So best game is best game.

Best game.

OK, never mind.

OK, then, never mind.

I'm I'm I'm arguing with myself about nothing.

So best game is best game.

Obviously this should be the this should be the this should be the end of the award thing.

Like that's the point.

It's a games award, right?

Like let's let's make it a games award and it should be game of the year and whatever.

What like it is what it is.

I mean, I again, make what you will.

I'm glad the gold got the gold.

No, I agree with that one.

Best layout in design.

So someone to chat asked what the fuck does that mean?

And we we we talk about art and layout on the show, right.

And I mean, I'm a I'm a keep it a whole buck.

Mythic bastion lands layout is not good.

I think it's art is fantastic, but I think it's layout is not good.

The first thing I thought when I got the PDF was damn, should have hired a layout artist.

The fact that I won a gold Emmy is literally one of the biggest proofs this year that it is just a popularity contest.

This award, they, they got layout on here because of Quinn's video and just because it was in a category, it got a bunch of votes.

I, I think it's serviceable.

I think it's crowded.

I think it's inconsistent.

I think the whole book would have been better with half as many, you know, legends or whatever at the end with more pages and and more breathing room.

Again, I think the art is beautiful.

Explain to me best layout and design category.

I told you already no comment on that.

I, but I think if you were to rewind this reason, you know, this whole chat we had in the podcast, I, I, I let slip what categories I campaigned with the bastion land to be in and it wasn't this category.

I don't, I, I, I clocked, I clocked.

You know, we'll move on from there.

This has to be here.

Layout, layout.

Both layout and design are again just as intrinsic to TRPTS as R is it?

You can't not have this.

It's one of the, it's one of the weird categories in that it is one of the most RPG categories of all time.

Like there's no other.

Like even in design and advertising, like there's not a layout category at most award shows.

Like there's a, there's other ones for like best, you know, graphic design, best print product, whatever.

But there's never like a best layout thing.

Layout is like a, a specific obsession within RPGs, justifiably so, because our information architecture takes a outsize role in the entire experience and whatnot.

So.

I personally wish that more people would view their TTRPGS as the instruction manuals that they are, but again, I come from a different side than the lyric and the story and whatever and stuff.

So the another thing we can talk about here is First off, actually I got a bunch of things I want to see.

This is why it's so hard to write the postmortem, because I want to say 1000 things about.

Everything.

You run this back and just be like a good one.

That was a bad one, yeah.

So.

You know, the first thing that's challenging about best layout and design is that it really does.

You really hope the judges know anything about those categories that those things.

And if they're coming from DND 5, they don't.

That's just Simply put, like D&D does not have like it has good art direction, but it doesn't have good like quote UN quote design.

And I say good art direction in a very like technical sense.

Let's not talk about like the rest of it, right?

I don't like it, but it whatever.

So that's the first thing I want to say about best layout and design.

So it's already kind of like a really challenging category that will almost always disappoint everybody every year, especially previous years when I wasn't on there because I am the.

Known layout freak.

The other thing is you, you said earlier like you want games to be rule books.

I think there are some arguments that can be made depending on what culture you're in about how true that needs to be.

But I will say one thing that when A, and this is not necessarily saying you should design your game like this, but if you are running, you're submitting your game to the any awards this will be this will come up.

We read 1000 entries.

I've read something like 20 games, sometimes a day, you know, for a whole year basically.

And getting there are some you, you're nobody's setting was as unique as they thought they're setting was.

And their lore was never as unique as they think their lore is.

So there were multiple instances while judging where it's like, OK, great.

You've told me what the what the setting is.

You've told me what the lore is.

I know the story, I know the themes, I know the tone.

I know all that stuff.

100 pages in.

What are the rules?

I've been wanting to know what the rules are.

Because at the end of the day, as you said before, what your system does is what your your game is.

And a lot of the entries and the, and this is just natural.

This doesn't even have to do with the any awards.

This could just be any award show and just RPGs in general.

A lot of games will say their one thing and then their rules are just 5th edition rules and they have basically nothing to do at all with the the thing that was promised.

It's yeah, they just toss on like a torch timer and call it something new.

Yeah.

So I'm not going to bring that up.

But anyway, point being, yeah.

So if you're if you're again, if you're submitting to the any awards, we can debate all we want about whether or not your rules should come first in the rule book before character creation or lore or setting or any of that other stuff.

But it it does give you an advantage in probably award shows.

Because when I read a bunch of books, I'm always asking myself, OK, but what are the rules?

Like that's going to decide whether or not your thing delivers on the thing that it's doing.

So we, we have come to a consensus here on the show that the best way to put a, in our opinion, the best way to put a book together is to start with the basic, the most basic rules of the system.

So tell me what the game is.

Tell me the basic resolution mechanic and the goals the characters have and then do character creation and then do all of the rest of the rules that people need to go because that's that.

That's just that our opinion that has come to be the best one.

If you just do character creation first, you're going to have people reading through it, not understanding.

If you just do all the rules first, you're going to have a lot of stuff before they understand like why they're using it.

So to kind of give you a brief, then the characters, then the rest of the rules, in our opinion is the is the best way to do it.

I don't remember why we got on that tangent.

That's the take away.

That's take away, yeah.

All right, best monster adversary.

Fucking point.

Do we even need to talk about this?

It's in a fucking supplement.

Just nominate the supplement.

Get rid of that shit.

That's terrible.

Yeah, it's not my favorite category.

Best online content?

What the fuck does that mean?

It means blogs, generally best blogs, generally best blogs.

Of course it's blogs and like other, which is why A1 Page RPG Jam is also in there.

Then that's pointless.

Let's we'll skip around a little bit here.

Then this goes this goes back to the thing of like I and we talked about it briefly, but I think the Annie Awards and again, this is just my opinion.

I don't think I think the Annie Awards would make itself its life a lot easier and then it'd be a lot more focused if it just bowed out.

It's seeded the desire to try to judge online content get rid.

Of all of that, that's that.

Like, don't even get me started on the current blogosphere or any aspect of APS, because I don't want to piss everyone.

Actually, I don't give a fuck.

But I'm not going to talk about it here.

Why?

Why?

Why Best blogs for what?

Because we've already, we've already said repeatedly, this is not an indie award show.

It's never going to be.

It's always going to be a big box game show that occasionally awards indie people.

You're not getting a lot of like 5 E blogs.

You know what I mean though, that's for YouTube.

That's for, you know, the clicks and the bait and all that kind of stuff.

But you're not getting a ton of like 5 E blogs.

Most of these people, things like playful void or Prismatic Wasteland, they're they're they're indie blogs.

Why is it an award that is clearly not an indie award show.

This is this is basically feels like it's tossing crumbs and it's pointless.

Get rid of that.

I couldn't agree more.

Let's jump down real quick to some of the other stuff.

Best streaming content get rid of that.

I don't care like they're if the APS want to be as professional as they want to be, create your own award show get there's already like Webfest and all corners shit like that.

It doesn't need to be at the enemies.

It's pointless.

Is that so?

Those two, in my opinion, Possum literally the the other issue with that too, is how obviously slowly this thing adapts to the current sphere, right?

Like we, we still have the community content, AKA the, the fucking DMS Guild award, right?

The online space is going to rapidly every year change and change and change, whether it's blogs or APS or that you're never going to keep up.

So you're always going to look ridiculous trying to reward those kind of things.

Like especially in two categories that only have 5 nominations each and you're trying to cover the entire Internet of like basically like opinion.

That's those are ridiculous.

Category and performance ridiculous.

Get rid of them, toss them, don't even bother with them at all.

Well, and I think one way of putting it too is like if you are a content creator, if you're a Blogger, you are being I, I don't think you're getting the the award show you deserve by having it rolled into the any awards.

I think it should be its own thing.

Like you want.

You should have.

You should.

Yeah.

The webbies.

Yeah.

the OR the, there's the bloggies.

Yeah.

I'm about to run that, so be nice to me.

But yeah, No, no, it's all right.

I don't think you're going to be, but yeah, No.

So, you know, it's just one of those things where it's, it's not equipped to cover that community, those communities at all.

Not well, not well enough.

And I had to make sure my dog was all right.

So, yeah, I, I, I think this is like, if you wanted to, if, if I were running the Annies and I wanted to, you know, not spread myself as thin, I would consolidate down.

And I, you would have to spend the next like year just eating all, which I could do.

But you just have to take all the, like, the brunt of people being like, but why isn't it in the Annies?

And it's like, because we're not good at it.

Like we, we think he should go, go go talk to people to create awards.

They are way.

More into it like you will never make everyone happy, so do the thing that you it's the Internet.

Like you're never gonna make everyone happy like so.

I mean, if this became perfect, in my opinion, it would piss off 1000 different people, you know what I mean?

So it doesn't matter.

Just do be the best at what you want to do and stop trying to you think people aren't going to like tune into the innies?

You think that like the the you know 150 people like Jenka that want to show up to sit in the seats that are way too fucking close together when half of it's empty?

Like why are we sitting on each others laps?

Come on.

If you're a judge, you get more space.

You can sit round table.

So think.

About I better be a judge.

Okay, We've already talked about breast production value.

Considering that almost every single one of these is also in product of the year.

We we we've discussed this already.

That's it's a ridiculous thing.

There's no point to have product of the year and best production values if you're gonna like just combine it into one and if you want to have 10 do 10 or whatever.

But it like this should be the bells and whistles category.

We talked about it already and if you look at the best production values, that's what this is.

You know, it's a vinyl.

I don't to frog nightmares is a beautiful book, but like I don't like just because it got this black on the side and you got to crack it does not mean it belongs in the best production values.

But like all the rest of it for sure.

It's just it's ridiculous to have this and product of the year and product of the year shouldn't be like the the the highlight category anyway.

Best RPG related product.

So we're not even talking about RPGs anymore.

We're talking about RPG related stuff.

Come on.

Yeah, I, I, I earlier said mentioned things.

Yeah.

I love, I love, I love what we nominated in that this category.

I love what?

Yeah, I'm.

Playing at the World is fantastic.

I think it's a great book.

Check it out.

I'm.

I'm, I'm, I'm happy to have, you know, put people on a stage for some of this stuff, so.

But HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for beginning readers.

I mean, he's been dead a long time, but he was a racist piece of shit, so let's give it to our kindergarteners.

Like come on, best rules sure, yes, of course, like don't need to argue.

It has to be there.

Best setting sure, of course.

I don't think that there there there's anything that that says that shouldn't be there.

Stop me if you have anything to say Best streaming continent.

We've already talked about it.

Cut the shit.

It's only going to continuously evolve.

You're never going to keep up and it's always going to look ridiculous.

Give them their own awards.

Best supplement sure I supplements are there are more supplements and there are games like it's huge.

I mean, I think there needs to be some more specificity, like you said, between what the fuck is a supplement?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, it certainly was.

Part of the challenge of trying to get this category figured out.

If it's just an adventure, then show, throw an adventure, like define what a supplement is.

Best writing, of course, have to have best writing, right?

And then product of the year we've already talked about chop it, cut it, don't have to.

There you go.

That's our award show.

Yep.

So with that said, a lot of things that you know, the categories are really strange.

So what's I don't know how I I only have a few more minutes like 20 minutes maybe.

So I want to tell everybody some things that maybe will help them win the any awards if they want to get nominated.

So First off, like submit with a category in mind.

You do any awards are strange.

You don't submit to individual categories.

Actually, this is an RPG thing in general.

That's strange is that RPG awards kind of just have you be a generalist in a lot of categories.

Other award shows usually have you submit to a specific category.

So you don't get to choose the category which you should probably be submitting with an intention of what you think that category might be.

And there are some categories that are less competitive than others.

You can always tell when a category is uncompetitive because there's a page on the Annie's website that tells you what's been submitted already.

That was put there specifically to kind of keep like a, a receipt of what they've received so that people can say one thing or another about, you know, they can double check it.

But it's also a great way for you to go and be like, Hey, I I think I'm really good.

So long as Luke Gehring doesn't submit anything this year.

And then you look and you see that he submitted 2 things that he he didn't, by the way, he doesn't submit to the Andy's.

Did I did I want the the latest thing that he made Swivers.

Swivers.

Yeah, I wanted that.

It did not.

He did not submit it.

So that's why it didn't end up in the any categories.

But anyway, so you should submit with categories in mind.

You should make sure that the thing that the game is is front and center right away.

Make sure you send it whichever way you like.

There's no actual preference between PDF and print.

Most years, or at least the last the year I was judged.

Maybe it will change because again, we don't know how the judges work, but they are told repeatedly, like you have to check these things.

And we have a system where you have to mark when you receive things, when you read them, all that stuff.

Every single thing gets dated and postmarked.

So your thing's going to be looked at.

You just have to make sure that you submit it and make sure it gets to the people in the right way, which is what gets to another thing where like if you send APDF, it should say the name of the game.

Like the PDF can't be some acronym or whatever else.

Make it very obvious that you what The thing is that is in the awards.

If you send a physical product, if it probably should be a book.

If it's not a book, I don't you guys, you got to go and make you just got to package it so that I I know what it has to have wrapper, a wrapper on it and a label on it.

And if that means you have to submit a little slip that says, like this is a game.

These are all little pieces to the game.

It's a keepsake game.

Do it.

You know, there's no rules that say you can't do that.

And then little, tiny little things.

Now a single judge.

My year prefers glossy pages over Matt pages.

Who does?

Who does?

I I, so I will tell you the one instance where I think, yeah, I do glossy pages.

If you were making a superhero themed RPG and it's in the shape of a comic book, have it be this exact same gloss pages as a comic book.

If it's not, if it's not, yeah.

If it's not for the conceptual idea, then do then just do map pages.

They're oftentimes cheaper anyway.

So, you know, there you go.

There's there's like a little tiny like thing.

It's not even like it's not going to change whether or not you're a winner or not.

But if we're trying to like do edge cases, that's one way you can, you know, edge yourself out a little bit.

Weird phrasing.

The second thing is as far as like submissions, I would just urge people like don't just submit just to submit.

I think you should submit the thing that is your best work when you think it's at its best.

There are a lot of people submit things.

I I guess under the assumption that maybe all the judges will be collectively drunk and they will nominate you.

We won't, probably not.

So, you know, generally you have to be pretty good in at least one category to be considered at all.

So that's that.

Those are those are all the tips I know off the top of my head that we're getting to the part of where I don't have my postmortem written.

Hey, this is research, this is this is thought, this is exercise for you.

This is again, you know, you can read this, you can listen to this back and be like, that was a good point.

That was a bad point, you know.

We'll we'll get there.

Here's here's another one, and this one is probably going to be not something people want to hear, but it's true.

Don't submit just to the Ennis.

Honestly, the ideal scenario is that you submit sometime in the middle of the submission window around January, and you should have probably already like sent the game to every YouTube, you know, every podcast, every friend, every fellow designer weeks before you ever submitted to the Annie's play the ground game.

This is this is a People's Choice Awards.

You want a Quinn's to write about your game.

So just do the thing that and and don't and don't do the thing where you beg people to, you know, review your game.

Just go and be like, hey, I love your podcast, I love your YouTube channel.

I made this game.

Thank you so much for making this good stuff, no strings attached.

Hope you enjoy it done perfect.

Everyone loves that.

It always feels good and never feels bad when people do that.

I was I was literally going to if you didn't say that my I was literally going to be like, Hey, I don't remember if we talked about this on show or off, but please give give how people should fucking e-mail because you people e-mail badly, so badly like be.

Concise be be just quick.

It's so.

It's not even about quick and concise for me.

For you.

Let me find if you write me a book, I'll fucking read it if it sounds like you've ever watched my fucking podcast, like if it's immediately obvious that it is a bot, it is AI written or that you just did like find replace for the 10 other ones, right?

If you're submitting to people, it sucks if there's a ton of them, right for each one individually, even if you see the same shit, it's going to be a little bit different.

But again, like if you, I know that marketing is a huge thing, right?

But I can tell you right now, if I have, if I'm going to do I genuinely, we have we basically stopped doing interviews this week or two that we're doing.

We're we're punching a bunch in and then we're we're very rarely going to do them again.

But I can tell you right now if there's if I have two emails and 1 sounds like they have ever listened to the show when 1 doesn't, I'm not even like don't like it's I'm not even going to respond Like if you're just some bot bullshit like I'm just not going to so and please do exactly what Clayton said.

Exactly.

And and pretend, pretend that you're at like a convention or something and this is what you're doing.

If you were walking up to the person, because that usually changes the way people do things, if you write it as though you were going to do it in person, you would write it in a much different way than if you were like doing an e-mail blast.

And I think another way of looking at this is a lot of people feel icky about this.

They're like, oh, it's marketing.

It's not marketing If you do it this way.

It's just called mutualism.

It's called community.

Like I watch your thing.

I think it's really great.

I made this thing, thank you for being whatever that that is not marketing in the way that people think market because marketing is purely transactional.

But this is like under the guy this the assumption that maybe there will be no back and forth and I will and now I have never stepped out the soapbox.

There's this thing that's talked about in Indies of like, oh, we're all just passing the $10 around the the same $20 bill.

That's called an economy.

That is literally how the economy works.

People pass around the same amount of money.

The fact that it's only like $20.00 or $50 doesn't make it less of 1.

So don't worry about it.

Just just make your thing that is like 100% yours that you love and share it with people who make stuff you love.

And it will if it if it resonates, it works out and if it doesn't, that's fine.

Just keep making stuff because you know, it's all about reps You just keep making and eventually you get something to make better and better stuff.

And the any awards you submit it on a lark if it actually gets nominated.

Bonus if it wins, Extra bonus if it gets nothing.

It means nothing.

You know, what's funny is I've you quantified or really, really defined a feeling that I've had for a long time on the show.

And that is like the difference between some of the emails and some of the people that reach out and get stuff.

Because for a very, very long time, the show until extremely recently, we did not accept review copies or any free product at all on the show.

And if anyone sent us stuff, we would do a giveaway or I'd give it to a local library or something like that.

And we've recently kind of acquiesced to to recepting review copies.

And one of the reasons is specifically because of the second group of people.

You talked about it when it's not, when it feels like marketing, I hate it and I don't want it when it feels like mutualism, when it feels like someone saying, hey, I like what you do.

Like that's really cool.

I want to give you my game.

Maybe you'll like it, but it's kind of like a for you, I think you might like it.

That's a very different thing.

And when we weren't accepting review copies, that was sometimes hard where people reached out.

And it's like, I think you're cool, but like we just don't.

Versus the people who it's very easy to say no to because I didn't want to do the marketing thing.

And one of the reason, one of the biggest reasons that we have excited to accept review copies is because at one point, like I like had a thing that I wanted to like give to somebody.

And in my head, as I did it, I had this thing where I was like, oh, I just think it's cool and I want to give it to you.

And this is how people feel when they want to give it to me just because they think it's cool.

And now I kind of feel like an asshole.

A lot of the times they said no because it was the mutualism ones, not the marketing ones.

That felt good and felt like, OK, sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and that those kind of people are the people that we have decided to start accepting review copies like in general for, because we do want relationships with those people instead of being like, you know, basically fuck off.

And, and you know, versus the, the marketing 1.

So I appreciate you defining that a little bit more because that's how I felt.

But it's nice the way that you worded it.

So if you, if you want us to actually respond to your emails, write like we're real people.

Write, write like real people.

Just be a person.

Because at the end of the day, that's what people want to talk to anyway.

They don't want to talk to a corporation or company.

I think it should if people are going to look at my stuff, Explorers design, which is all about teaching like design and a little bit about teaching the business of RP GS a little bit and branding and marketing.

There's a little bit of that in there in the DNA.

There's a reason why Despite that my, all my social stuff is not my logo.

Even though I have all the branding materials around, I I still keep a face as my profile picture on everything I do because I want people to talk to me like a person.

I don't want to do the I don't want to run a a talk as a company to people talking to a company because I already do that at my day job.

It's funny we we don't have a person as a picture because there's two of us, but that is the reason we have both of our pictures as like the pinned on any of the things we can pin is for that exact reason.

And, and this goes back to the thing we I don't know if we talked about it on the stream or if it was in the before that, but like you get to choose your, you, you choose your, you choose your own adventure.

Do you, are you going to silo your personal life from your gaming stuff?

Are you going to basically have a company and then have your you be you or you can have different versions of you that are like safe to like market around?

Like as I've said, I'm, I'm only on social for RPGs.

I'm not on social for anything else.

The occasionally I'll say something negative about a cop or something on my blue sky, but that's just to go.

And like remind any possible fascist this don't follow me, right.

He's gotta drop one out.

Yeah.

Yeah, every now.

So anyway, with that said, thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

I'm I'm a long time listener, first time call.

Appreciate it.

You know, it's it's one of those things so like I'll never believe that anyone listens to it, but but it's always nice to hear, especially from again, someone who God, I'm glad you're so cool.

Like it's the number of people.

That teach.

PG space, like it's very much of this mixed bag of like don't meet your heroes because I've met some incredibly awesome people and I've met some people that fucking suck in this space.

And whenever I can meet someone who I really like and respect before I meet them and then they are as good as that or better is really, really fantastic and and you are clearly in in that I can.

Already tell that you were as equally shell shocked as I was then at Gen.

Con.

I'm not sure if you've been to Gen.

Con multiple years in the this is my first one.

Probably my last one, yeah.

Yeah, same here, probably my last one.

And they, there are so many designers where I was like, oh man, you're not only are you awesome, just as awesome as you were online, you're also a sweetheart.

You know, like there's a lot of sweethearts in the space and a lot of them are weirdly over 6 foot tall.

There's a lot of tall these motherfuckers.

Giants, yeah.

I said this already, people like, like you fucking Will Yost.

I mean, all the Swedes, they're all fucking 1,000,000 feet.

Tall Swedes are always tall.

Yeah, it's funny because in the pictures they look, they look more goblin esque.

And they're not.

Not even no.

They're just scrawny.

They're they're gangly, you know?

Yeah.

They're slender men, yeah, but is this the part where we do pluggables?

Yes, I was just going to say, is there Explorers design?

Where can people find it?

What can people find there?

Give the whole spiel and then and then we'll we'll get on out.

Yeah.

All right.

So I'm going to say real quickly, my pluggable is explorersdesign.com, www.explorersdesign.com.

You'll find everything there.

I got itch, all that good stuff.

I actually want to plug other people.

I feel like we need more people.

I don't know if that's terms of service, but I guess we can.

OK, so I want to plug if you haven't played anything by Adam Vas, go play things by Adam Vas.

If you haven't played an Adam Vas Stand podcast, we've said it a million times.

Couldn't agree more.

Yeah, if you haven't played anything by Will Yost or Spencer Campbell, go play their stuff.

These are all designers.

Designers like every designer that you like.

They probably like these designers.

Go look at don't.

Forget, I'm sorry real quick.

Don't forget Set Pines too.

Works with will yobs over there and good luck.

So yeah, absolutely.

And then possible world games as well.

Go, go look at all those folks and what they're making.

And they're, you know, they're, they're the David Lynch's of our space.

They're, they're super influential.

And you've probably interacted with stuff that they've made in some fashion form, what have you.

So yeah, I just want to plug them because why not plug them as often as possible?

And then I'm and I'm omitting like dozens of other people, but you'll, you'll see them on my website.

I talk about just about everybody at some point.

I'm going to talk about a lot more of them now that I can, because I'm not a judge in the innies.

There you go.

Yeah, we got to get.

We got to get Will on the show at some point.

I think we've had everyone on the show that you just named except for, except for Will and Seb.

So we're going to have to get good luck on the show.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Sooner than later, maybe they they gave me a copy of Plasmatics at Gen.

Con.

So I would, I'm, I'm sure they would, they would come on for I'm talking about.

For Plasmonics I got a copy of Plasmonics as well and this is the part where I I mock the the viewers because they probably don't have a copy of plasmonics but.

They don't, but we do.

But we do, so it's great.

You should be excited for it.

I want to make adventures for it or do something for it.

I don't know what, but it's really cool.

Yeah, it's very cool.

Thank you for plugging other people.

We will continue to plug Clayton here on the show and we will definitely have you back for the full the Full Monty with me and Hunter.

We can, we can talk about anything, anything going forward that's.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah, we'll figure something out.

That's how we do it on the show, though, is what like we, we, we're we trying to stop doing interviews and then we meet cool people that we have to talk to and then once we talk to you, once you got to come on again.

So that's how it's going to be, but I will make.

Sure.

So it's all right, Yeah.

Well, thanks, you know, you know why we don't do interviews for three seconds?

It's the fucking, it's the dance of death around scheduling that just burns me out so bad.

You know, because with between me and Hunter, even just getting one episode a week between us is tough with night shift and everything.

At least he's in the same time zone as me now, which is great.

But the East Coast people trying to be like, how does 10 AM on a Wednesday work for you?

You know, it's rough.

Yeah, trying.

To remember which one I just listened to that you guys had.

Oh yeah, Kobayashi.

I like that one.

Yeah, Kobayashi is incredible.

I'm not even done with it yet.

I was listening to it this morning.

Well, you'll get Logan Dean.

You'll get Logan Dean next.

Yeah, go back, go back into the your favorite app and listen to that pop that episode.

Whatever.

I was going to say something.

I've stumbled all over it.

Oh well, you're plugging.

Us on our show, which is great.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

Clayton, thank you so much for being here again.

You're going to be here in the future.

We'll make sure all the ways you can reach Clayton are down below where the Internet puts things.

And.

Yeah, thanks.

Seriously, that was thank you.

Almost a three hour talk.

And it's been a long time since we did a episode that long, so it was great.

Yeah.

Awesome, cool.

Thank you so much.

All right, we'll.

Catch y'all later everybody, Bye.