Origins Awards Awarded

Last night, GAMA gave out the 34th annual Origins Awards. Although I’ve not worked on many tabletop games over the past couple years, I had two books with my name in them that were nominated this year: 40 Years of Gen Con by Robin Laws and Hobby Games: The 100 Best edited by James Lowder.

My contribution to each was small. Robin interviewed me, along with dozens of others, for his book, and I wrote one of the 100 essays for Jim’s book. (My entry was about Space Hulk.) Sadly, both were up for the Non-Fiction Publication of the Year, and only one could win.

The voters at Origins chose Hobby Games: The 100 Best. My condolences to Robin, and many congratulations to Jim and the 99 other authors who chipped in on the winning book, among which I count several good friends. That includes many of my fellow Alliterates: Thomas Reid, Monte Cook, Steven Schend, Stan!, Tim Brown, Lester Smith, Wolf Baur, Steve Winter, Jeff Grubb, and Doug Niles.

Now, I can only wonder if GAMA will try to fit all 100+ names on to the trophy? If the rulebooks for collectible card games have taught us nothing else, it’s that people can read really small print.

Congratulations to all of the rest of the winners too! Notably, Jim Lowder’s Astounding Hero Tales anthology of pulp stories took home the Fiction Publication of the Year award too. (Robin was one of the book’s authors too, along with fellow Alliterate writer Thomas Reid, so there’s some small consolation for him.)

As Jim pointed out to me, this is likely the first time both awards have been won by creator-owned projects. Jim always stands strong for creators’ rights, and the contracts for both books show that.

Congratulations also to my friends at Paradigm Concepts for Codex Arcanis winning Roleplaying Game Supplement of the Year. I wrote a chunk of the original edition, although I’m told my work is only there in sprit in the latest, award-winning version.