Diana Jones Award
The Diana Jones Award has been presented annually since 2001 at the American Gen Con Games Convention , which is given to people, companies and projects for their special significance for playing as a hobby. The prize consists of the remains of a copy of a destroyed Indiana Jones RPG rulebook, cast in a pyramid-shaped plastic body , of which only the part "Diana Jones" can still be read. Diana Jones is therefore not a real person.
Background and story
Peter Adkison was the first Diana Jones Award winner and is one of the few jurors who is publicly known.
The Diana Jones Award was established in 2000 and presented for the first time in August 2001. It is a prize awarded by a jury whose members are usually anonymous and to which new jurors are added irregularly. Jurors who have made public statements include Peter Adkison , Matt Forbeck , John Kovalic, and James Wallis .
All persons, companies and all products can be nominated as potential award winners, which in any way have a special meaning for the game industry and the world of games. The jury draws up a short list from all the nominations from which it selects a winner of the award. If the jury cannot name a suitable winner, it can also suspend the award.
The shortlist is usually presented in the spring of the year, and the winner is announced at the annual Gen Con Games Convention in Milwaukee .
The award
The winners receive a trophy as an award, which is passed on as a challenge prize . The trophy was originally made in the UK office of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in the mid-1980s as a reminder of the expiry of the license to manufacture and distribute the Indiana Jones RPG. After the license expired, the company had to destroy all unsold copies of the RPG books. The last of the destroyed copies was poured into a four-sided pyramid made of polymethyl methacrylate (Perspex, PMMA) together with two Nazi cards . The trophy is ten centimeters high and is on a wooden base. Of the original title of the role-playing game, only "Diana Jones" can be read, which is how the award got its name.
Award winners and nominees
The following list contains the award winners as well as the nominated persons and other bodies who were added to the short list of the jury and thus nominated for the Diana Jones Award.
| year | Award winners | Developer, key person |
description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Peter Adkison | - | CEO of Wizards of the Coast , in recognition of his contributions to the Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon TCGs, as well as the third edition of the pen and paper RPG Dungeons & Dragons |
| Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition | Gary Gygax , Dave Arneson | The third edition of the pen and paper role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast. | |
| Mage Knight | - | A strategy game with collectible miniatures that of the company WizKids produced | |
| Wizard's Attic | - | A mail order company that primarily focused on the gaming sector and has made many previously hard-to-find games available to a much wider market. | |
| 2002 | Sorcerer | Ron Edwards | An independently produced role-playing game by Ron Edwards, the first edition of which was sold as a PDF file and which featured a new dice mechanism. |
| De Profundis | Michal Oracz | A letter role-playing game by Michal Oracz based on the works of HP Lovecraft with elements of traditional pen & paper role-playing games, published by Portal Publishing. | |
| The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game | Robin Laws , John Snead and Peter Freeman | A pen and paper role-playing game system by Robin Laws, John Snead and Peter Freeman, published by Pelgrane Press. The role-playing game builds on the novels and stories of Jack Vance and turns them into a game. | |
| Robin D. Laws | - | Robin D. Laws was nominated as one of the most respected authors and developers in the game industry in the field of role-playing game systems (Rune, Pantheon) or RPG versions of existing genres or canons (Feng Shui, Hero Wars, Dying Earth). | |
| 2003 | Nobilis , 2nd edition | R. Sean Borgstrom | An RPG by R. Sean Borgstrom published by Hogshead Publishing / Guardians of Order. |
| Jordan Weisman | - | As a founding member of FASA Corporation and FASA Interactive, Jordan has been a successful driving force in the adventure game industry. After selling FASA Interactive to Microsoft, Jordan moved from Chicago to Seattle to work for Microsoft's entertainment software division. He re-entered the adventure game in 2001 with his new company WizKids and Mage Knight . | |
| Monte Cook | Monte Cook has worked in the adventure games industry since 1990, when he started as editor for Iron Crown Enterprises and headed their hero games line. He then went to TSR and, after Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, to Seattle, where he was part of the team responsible for creating Dungeons & Dragons , Third Edition. He left Wizards in 2001 to start a new publishing company called Malhavoc Press . He was nominated for his work for Wizards and Malhavoc on the d20 system . | ||
| Neverwinter Nights | - | A computer role-playing game from BioWare Corp. , published by Atari. The game uses the rule system of Dungeons & Dragons , Third Edition, and gives the player the opportunity to design their own adventures and to moderate them as a dungeon master. | |
| Nyambe | Chris Dolunt | A rulebook based on the d20 system under Open Game License , published by Atlas Games. The book brought a mythical version of Africa into the fantasy RPG, which until then had primarily been set in medieval Europe. | |
| The Riddle of Steel | Jake Norwood et al. a. | A role-playing game system designed by Jake Norwood and published by Driftwood Publishing. | |
| Unknown Armies , 2n Edition | Greg Proud , John Tynes | A horror RPG system by Greg Stolze and John Tynes, published by Atlas Games. | |
| 2004 | My Life with Master | Paul Czege | A narrative role-playing game system by Paul Czege, published by his publisher Half-Meme Press. |
| 2005 | Train to train (Ticket to Ride) | Alan R. Moon | A strategic board game by Alan R. Moon. |
| 2006 | Irish Game Convention Charity Auctions | - | A series of charity auctions at Irish game conventions such as the Gaelcon and Warpcon organized by University College Cork . |
| The Game Chef Contest | Mike Holmes, Andy Kitkowski | The Game Chef Contest is an independent role-playing game and role-playing system competition invented by Mike Holmes on the Forge website in 2002 based on a previous competition by Clinton R. Nixon and Jared A. Sorensen in the Gaming Outpost. It was continued by Andy Kitkowski on his own website. | |
| Magic: The Gathering , 9th Edition | Ninth edition of the trading card game Magic: The Gathering . | ||
| Perplex City | A combination of Alternate Reality (ARG) and trading card game developed by Mind Candy Ltd. has been published. The game had an open-ended story and combines a puzzle-based game and story developed in part by writer Naomi Alderman with an online community. | ||
| Spycraft 2.0 | Patrick Kapera et al. a. | A role-playing game system by Patrick Kapera based on the d20 system , published by Alderac Entertainment Group. | |
| Twilight Struggle | Ananda Gupta , Jason Matthews | A two-player strategy board game by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews and published by GMT Games . The game focuses on the Cold War between the two world powers Russia and USA, which are played by the two players. | |
| 2007 | The Great Pendragon Campaign | Greg Stafford | An RPG campaign book by Greg Stafford published by White Wolf. The book describes a century of continuous history that can turn into an RPG campaign of its own each year. |
| Pieces of Eight | Jeff Tidball | A game by Jeff Tidball published by Atlas Games. In the game, each player is given a stack of coins that symbolizes a pirate ship team, and can use it to attack the generic pirates and support their own. | |
| Stefan Pokorny | - | Artist who developed and designed the Master Maze miniature terrain series for his company, Dwarven Forge. This is a terrain for miniatures that are used in role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons . | |
| 2008 | Gray ranks | Jason Morningstar | A role-play system by Jason Morningstar about the Warsaw uprising against the German occupation forces in 1944. |
| Open Design / Wolfgang Baur | Wolfgang Baur | Wolfgang Baur began his career as assistant editor at Dragon Magazine under the direction of Roger Moore and Barbara Young and later took over the magazine. He then worked as an editor at Wizards of the Coast, which he left in 2006 to work freelance. On the Open Design platform he started, Baur publishes a number of ideas for possible projects, each with a financial threshold for each project in order to provide funding for potential sponsors. | |
| Canon puncture | Rich Rogers, Chris Perrin and Chris Norwood | A podcast by Rich Rogers, Chris Perrin, and Chris Norwood that resulted in several interesting interviews in 2007 with game developers such as Jared Sorensen and Red 5 Studios to Kevin Siembieda . | |
| Child's Play | Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, Mike “Gabe” Krahulik | Child's Play is a charity campaign for gamers that supports children in the children's hospitals with games and other gifts. It was founded in 2003 by the creators of the Penny Arcade Game Review comics, Jerry “Tycho” Holkins and Mike “Gabe” Krahulik. | |
| Come out and play | A festival for the movement of persuasive or urban games that relocate games to the real world ( e.g. PacManhattan , Journey to the End of the Night ). The festival took place in New York in 2006, in Amsterdam in 2007 and again in New York in 2008; it still exists as a regular event in New York City (as of January 2019). | ||
| Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media | Pat Harrigan , Noah Wardrip-Fruin | A textbook on role-playing games, published by MIT Press, which scientifically elaborates the development of role-playing game systems and thus opens the scientific discourse on these games. | |
| 2009 | Dominion | Donald X. Vaccarino | A card game considered the first successful deck building game . |
| Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition | Rob Heinsoo , James Wyatt , Andy Collins , Mike Mearls , Stephen Schubert | Fourth edition of the pen and paper role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast. | |
| Vi åker jeep / Jeep shape | Vi åker jeep is a Nordic role-playing collective that has developed an innovative and influential role-playing style, combining the best of several RPG styles. | ||
| Mouse Guard | Luke Crane | An RPG system by Luke Crane, published by Archaia Studios Press. Crane combines the graphic design of the comic world of medieval mice by David Petersen with his Burning Wheel game system. | |
| Sweet Agatha | Kevin Allen, Jr. | A self-published tabletop game for two by game developer Kevin Allen Jr. | |
| 2010 | BoardGameGeek | - | A community managed board and card game database. |
| Chaos in the Old World | Eric M. Lang | A board game by Eric Lang, published by Fantasy Flight Games . In the game, players take on the roles of four cruel deities to destroy humanity. | |
| Kagematsu | Danielle Lewon | A role-playing game system by Danielle Lewon, published by Cream Alien Games, which is set in historic Japan and revolves around the legend of Ronin Kagematsu. | |
| Montsegur 1244 | Frederik Jensen | An RPG by, published by Thoughtful Games. Against the backdrop of the last, brutal siege of the Catholic crusade against the Cathar heresy, the players take on the role of true believers trapped in the fortress of Montsegur. | |
| 2011 | Fiasco | Jason Morningstar | A role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, published by Bully Pulpit Games. |
| Catacombs | Ryan Amos , Marc Kelsy , Aron West | A board and skill game by Ryan Amos, Marc Kelsy and Aron West, published by Sands of Time Games. | |
| The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game | Leonard Balsera et al. a. | An RPG system by Leonard Balsera, Jim Butcher, Genevieve Cogman, Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler and Clark Valentine, released by Evil Hat Productions. | |
| Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space | Mario Porpora, Pietro Righi Riva, Luca Francesco Rossi, Nicolò Tedeschi | A board game by Mario Porpora, Pietro Righi Riva, Luca Francesco Rossi and Nicolò Tedeschi, published by Santa Ragione and Cranio Creations. | |
| Freemarket | Luke Crane , Jared Sorensen | An RPG by Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen, published by Sorencrane MCRZ. | |
| 2012 | Nordic Larp | Jaakko Stenros , Markus Montola | A book by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola about Live Action Role Playing (LARP) in Scandinavia, published by Fëa Livia. |
| Burning Wheel Gold (BWG) | Luke Crane | An independent role play system based on the predecessor Burning Wheel (2004) by Luke Crane, published by Burning Wheel. | |
| Crowdfunding | - | Crowdfunding has resulted in numerous new project financing options in the games sector, especially through the market leader kickstarter.com | |
| Risk Legacy | Rob Daviau | A legacy board game by Matt Leacock, adaptation of the classic Risk . Risk Legacy (published in German as Risk Evolution ) is considered the first legacy game to be published. | |
| Vornheim | Zak S. | A rulebook by Zak S. on fantasy cities published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. | |
| 2013 | TableTop | Wil Wheaton | A web series about board games, role-playing games and tabletop games by Wil Wheaton on the YouTube channel Geek & Sundry. |
| Dog Eat Dog | Liam Burke | An RPG system by Liam Burke, published by Liwanag Press. The role play was released together with the Asocena supplement. The game deals with colonialism and puts the associated violence and assimilation in the foreground. | |
|
Love letter |
Seiji Kanai | A card game by Seiji Kanai that was nominated for its simple and intriguing mechanics. | |
| Metatopia | A games convention in Morristown, New Jersey , organized by Double Exposure Inc. It is an event where game designers finance the convention for alpha gamers and invite them at a discounted price. This makes the event partly a workshop and a semi-academic conference. | ||
| Playing at the World | Jon Peterson | A book by Jon Peterson, published by Unreason Press. It is a scientific report on the history of the hobby game in general and of Dungeons & Dragons in particular. | |
| 2014 | Hillfolk | Robin D. Laws | RPG system by Robin D. Laws, published by Pelgrane Press. Hillfolk builds on the Laws drama system and was financed via kickstarter. |
| Evil Hat Productions | Robert Donoghue , Fred Hicks | A game publisher run by Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks. Evil Hat Productions was one of the first publishers to sell PDF versions of games using free licenses such as the Open Game License and Creative Commons , some of the games being crowdfunded. | |
| Paizo Publishing | Lisa Stevens | A game publisher managed by Lisa Stevens. With the Pathfinder role-playing game, the publisher released a role-playing game system based on Dungeons & Dragons and using the Open Game License. Lisa Stevens also raised US $ 1 million through kickstarter.com to create a massively multiplayer online game for Pathfinder . | |
| ROFL! | John Kovalic | A family card game by John Kovalic, released by Cryptozoic Entertainment. | |
| Terra Mystica | Helge Ostertag , Jens Drögemüller | A strategic board game by Helge Ostertag and Jens Drögemüller | |
| 2015 | Guide to Glorantha | Greg Stafford , Jeff Richard and Sandy Petersen | An RPG rulebook by Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, and Sandy Petersen, published by Moon Design Publications. The game is set in the mythological world Glorantha developed by Greg Stafford. |
| College of Wizardry | Liveform , Rollespilsfabrikken | A live role-playing game by a Danish-Polish team that revolved around a new school of magicians at Czocha Castle in the style of the Harry Potter books . | |
| Designers & Dragons, second edition | Shannon Appelcline | A series of books on the history of the pen and paper role-playing game and the designers involved, published by Evil Hat Productions . | |
| Mystery | Oleksandr Nevskiy , Oleg Sidorenko | A cooperative card game in which a player, acting as a ghost, has to convey clues to his fellow players to solve his murder. | |
| Torchbearer | Thor Olavsrud , Luke Crane | A tabletop role-playing game released by Burning Wheel . | |
| 2016 | Eric M. Lang | - | A game designer who became known for numerous board games. Lang developed Chaos in the Old World , the living card game series A Game of Thrones , Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000 as well as Bloodborne: The Card Game , The Others: 7 Sins , Arcane Academy and HMS Dolores in the award year alone . |
| ConTessa | ConTessa is an organization committed to encouraging more women to play and create tabletop role-playing games. They started out as a blog dedicated to this purpose and quickly developed a series of free online seminars, hangouts, and events to get women into role-playing games. Since 2015 they have been developing their own track within the Gen Gen Gen, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world. | ||
| Fall of Magic | Ross Cowman | A story-based game by Ross Cowman published by Heart of the Deernicorn. | |
| Larpwriter Summer School | Larpwriter Summer School and an event organized by Fantasiförbundet in Norway and Post in Belarus. It is a one-week intensive course on the topic of larp design. | ||
| Pandemic Legacy | Rob Daviau , Matt Leacock | A legacy board game by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock. | |
| 2017 | Gen Con | - | The Gen Con is one of the largest games conventions worldwide, which took place 50 times in 2017. It was originally organized in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin by Gary Gygax , co-author of Dungeons & Dragons , and later moved to Indianapolis . |
| The Beast | Aleksandra Sontowska , Kamil Węgrzynowicz | An erotic card game for one gamer; In The Beast , the player has to imagine having sex with a strange and inhuman being and writing a diary that describes his erotic encounters, thoughts and fears. | |
| End of the line | Bjarke Pedersen , Juhana Pettersson and Martin Elricsson | A LARP by Bjarke Pedersen, Juhana Pettersson and Martin Elricsson, which is based on the role-playing system Vampyres . | |
| Gloomhaven | Isaac Childres | A legacy and role-playing board game by Isaac Childres. | |
| The Romance Trilogy | Emily Care Boss | A role-playing game by Emily Care Boss, published by Black & Green Games, which builds on and develops her publications Breaking the Ice , Shooting the Moon and Under the Skin . | |
| Terraforming Mars | Jacob Fryxelius | A board game by Jacob Fryxelius. | |
| 2018 | Actual play | Actual Play is a movement of hobby games in which people record their games and post them on the internet. | |
| The 200 Word RPG Challenge | An annual role-play competition since 2015 in which the participants develop a role-play system with a maximum of 200 words. All contributions are published under a Creative Commons license. | ||
| Analog game studies | Journal dedicated to the academic and popular study of games that contain an essential analog component. | ||
| Charterstone | Jamey Stegmaier | A legacy board game by Jamey Stegmaier. | |
| Harlem Unbound | Chris Spivey | A role-playing rulebook by Chris Spivey, published by Darker Hue Studios, in which the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu is moved from fictional Innsmouth to Harlem in the 1920s. | |
| 2019 | Star Crossed | Alex Roberts | A role-playing game by Alex Roberts for two players in which the story of a forbidden love is played with a jenga tower. It was published by Billy Pulpit Games . |
| Dungeons & Dragons - Art & Arcana. A visual history | Mike Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer | An art book that retells the history and development of Dungeons & Dragons based on the illustrations. | |
| Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr | Michael Fox and Rory O'Connor | A board game by Michael Fox and Rory O'Connor and published by Hub Games, in which players care for emergency patient Billy Kerr while getting to know the memories of his life. | |
| The Mind | Wolfgang Warsch | A cooperative card game by Wolfgang Warsch that was published by Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag . |
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d About the Diana Jones Award , description on the official website; accessed on June 28, 2018.
- ^ Charlie Hall: Tabletop gaming's most coveted trophy is a burned book. Who is Diana Jones? on polygon.com, August 10, 2016; accessed on June 28, 2018.
- ^ Canon Puncture , official website (discontinued 2009); accessed on January 30, 2019.
- ^ Child's Play , official website; accessed on January 30, 2019.
- ↑ Come Out and Play , official website; accessed on January 30, 2019.
- ↑ Pat Harrigan, Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Ed.): Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. MIT Press, 2007.
- ↑ BoardGameGeek , official website; accessed on January 31, 2019.
- ↑ TableTop , official website; accessed on January 31, 2019.
- ^ Jon Peterson: Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games. Unreason Press, 2012.
- ↑ The 200 Word RPG Challenge , official website; accessed on January 27, 2019.
- ^ Analog Game Studies , official website; accessed on January 27, 2019.
- ↑ Harlem Unbound on the Darker Hue Studios website; accessed on January 27, 2019.
- ↑ Star Crossed. Billy Pulpit Games, accessed October 15, 2019 .
- ^ Art & Arcana. In: Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast, accessed October 15, 2019 .
- ^ Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr. Hub Games, accessed October 15, 2019 .