The ENnie nominations for 2017 are out, and they include some of the best new products in the world of tabletop role-playing.
The EN World RPG Awards, a fan-voted contest that started over at the venerable EN World forums, have grown to become a fairly high-profile event in the world of tabletop RPGs. The ENnies, as they’re called, have been given out at every Gen Con since 2001 and they’re more than just a popularity contest. Games are nominated by a panel of experts selected each year from the gaming public. After all the entries have been winnowed down, just about anyone can vote on the ENnies. The awards are then handed out during each year’s Gen Con, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the country.
You can find the complete list of nominees for every category right here and vote on them starting July 11. Polls close on July 21.
The capstone award is the Product of the Year, given out to the best new product published since last year’s awards. It’s also the ENnies largest category, and includes stuff from major publishers as well as some of the best independent work in the space.
Here’s this year’s nominees, in alphabetical order:
7th Sea: Second Edition Core Rulebook
Written by John Wick, Mike Curry, Rob Justice, Mark Diaz Truman and Jesse Heinig.
Published by John Wick Presents.
7th Sea is a tabletop RPG of “swashbuckling and intrigue, exploration and adventure, taking place on the continent of Theah, a land of magic and mystery inspired by our own Europe. Players take the roles of heroes thrown into global conspiracies and sinister plots, exploring ancient ruins of a race long vanished and protecting the rightful kings and queens of Theah from murderous villains.”
Players are able to take on archetypes ranging from the The Three Muskateers’ d’Artagnan, Milady de Winter, the Dread Pirate Roberts or Jack Sparrow.
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Atlas of Earth-Prime
Written by Steve Kenson with Scott Bennie, Jason Brick, Darren Bulmer, Daniel Eymard, Fred Furtado, Jon Leitheusser, Alejandro Melchor, Jack Norris, Jakub Osiejewski, and Ade Smith.
Published by Green Ronin.
Atlas of Earth-Prime is a sourcebook for the popular Mutants & Masterminds system that allows players to create their own superheroes. From the website:
“Visit a world not our own, but strangely familiar — a world of heroes and villains, of wonders and dangers, and limitless adventure! The Atlas of Earth-Prime is a trip around the world of the Freedom City and Emerald City settings for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG. Your heroes can explore the sites and perils of all seven continents, as well as fabled Atlantis, the Lost World, and the strange realms of Sub-Terra that lie at the center of the earth. Packed with locations, heroes, villains, and worldwide agencies, the Atlas of Earth-Prime is the campaign setting book Mutants & Masterminds fans have been waiting for!”
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Bubblegumshoe
Written by Emily Care Boss, Kenneth Hite and Lisa Steele.
Published by Evil Hat.
Bubblegumshoe looks like the perfect system in which to play out your very favorite vintage Judy Blume and/or modern Archie fan fiction. Best of all, it’s based on the rock-solid foundation of the Gumshoe System, which was created in 2007 by Robin Laws and now exists in an open-source format. From the website:
“The world is full of mysteries. It’s up to your group of intrepid teen sleuths to solve them. In Bubblegumshoe, players step into the shoes of high-schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small town. Discover clues, solve problems, and throw down with enemies in this streamlined RPG based on the Gumshoe System.”
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Doors to Darkness
Written by Christopher Smith Adair, Glynn Owen Barrass, Brian Courtemanche, Tom Lynch, Kevin Ross and Brian M. Sammons.
Published by Chaosium.
The latest, entry-level product in the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG, which was first released in 1981. It includes five new scenarios as well as ten “diverse and ready to play investigators. If you can’t tell your fhtagn from your mglw'nafh this sounds like a fabulous place to start.
Here’s the hooks that come inside:
- The Darkness Beneath The Hill — “A friend’s house renovation project leads to unexpected discoveries in Providence, Rhode Island.”
- Genius Loci — “Not all is well at Danvers State Lunatic Asylum and it’s down to the investigators to heed a friend in need’s cry.”
- Servants Of The Lake — “The hunt for a missing person reveals ancient secrets in the wilds north of Kingsport.”
- Ties That Bind — “Strange rock formations have been found in Mrs. Carrington’s prized fountain. But these are like no rocks seen before!”
- None More Black — “The death of a Miskatonic University student leads the investigators into unsavoury neighbourhoods and dark business dealings.”
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Polaris RPG – Core Rulebooks 1 & 2 Deluxe Edition
Written by Philippe Tessier.
Published by Black Book Editions.
This post-apocalyptic RPG is a big deal in Europe. It posits a world where humanity has been driven from the land into the sea. As the tagline in the trailer above puts it, “Humankind was born in the seas, and is now coming back here to die.” This English adaptation of a game is the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign from April last year. It will be on sale for the first time on the floor of Gen Con 2017 in booth #103.
Tales from the Loop
Written by Simon Stålenhag, Nils Hintze and Tomas Härenstam.
Published by Free League Publishing.
Another Kickstarter success, Tales from the Loop was picked up for a story by our friends over at The Verge and they thought very highly of its campaign.
“Simon Stålenhag’s artwork is well-known for its blending of 1980s suburbia with the fantastic,” wrote The Verge. “Giant robots roam the empty countrysides of Sweden, while sleek buildings loom in the distance. It’s the perfect environment in which to channel something like Stranger Things, and a new role-playing game utilizing Stålenhag’s art will let you reenact your own version of the Netflix show.
“Stålenhag’s art is the central focus as players play a group of teenagers in the late 1980s, after a Swedish particle accelerator known as the Loop malfunctioned and caused some strange things to happen in their backyard. If you loved Stranger Things, and wanted to play your own version, Stålenhag’s artwork feels like it’s drawing on many of the same influences and desire for nostalgia.”
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon via an relationship with Modiphius.
TimeWatch
Written by Kevin Kulp.
Published by Pelgrane Press.
Not only is Kevin Kulp the nicest man on the face of this planet, he’s also one of the very best game masters I’ve ever had the chance of playing with. When I ran through a session of his Timewatch I was simply blown away.
TimeWatch puts players in the high-tech boots of a rogues gallery of time-travelling secret agents. Think Legends of Tomorrow meets Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and you’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. The best part is just how quick and easy it is to get players performing at the table. The system is light and virtually melts away in motion. Before the session was over, Kulp had me professing my love for a sentient velociraptor, a feat further complicated by the fact that I was a Neanderthal with a five-word vocabulary.
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Torment: Tides of Numenera — The Explorer’s Guide
Written by Shanna Germain.
Published by Monte Cook Games.
The spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, the computer game called Torment: Tides of Numenera was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2013 to the tune of nearly $4.19 million. If you read Polygon’s review, you know that the final product — which was released earlier this year — came out just fine. The Explorer’s Guide is the player’s guide to the tabletop incarnation of the Ninth World, the setting created by Monte Cook.
The product includes usable maps of areas seen in the PC game, including Sagus Cliffs, the Bloom, and the Forge of the Night Sky, the Lost Sea, Tiaow Chain, and the Great Library. There are also new character templates, new creatures and tons of familiar NPCs.
There’s a free preview available here. Also available on DriveThru RPG.
Savage Rifts®: Game Master Handbook
Written by Sean Patrick Fannon.
Published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group.
Rifts is a wild setting from Palladium Books. From the website:
“Earth itself has become an alien landscape where the people, cultures, technologies and madness of countless alien worlds and realities collide with our own. ... [The] setting is one of contradiction and juxtaposition. It is an environment that is simultaneously familiar and alien, wondrous and horrifying, good and evil. It is an adventure setting where the magical, supernatural and alien may come to you, or you may find them.
“An environment where technology and science co-exist and clash with magic and psychic power. Robot warriors and power armored troops battle dragons, demons, and magic users. People of science and technology share a Megaverse® with magic-wielding sorcerers, gods of legend, Elemental beings, demons, creatures of magic, aliens, and the forces of light and dark.”
Savage Rifts applies the Rifts setting to the Savage Worlds core ruleset.
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.
Veins of the Earth
Written by Patrick Stuart. Art by Scrap Princess.
Published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
This is a new sourcebook for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) system, which you may not have heard of before. It’s a weird fantasy setting “born out of love for underground heavy metal, horror literature and film, and in fact all things strange and macabre.”
From the website:
“Whatever the inspiration of the moment, be it Lovecraft and Barker, Troma and Hammer, Argento and Fulci, the NWOBHM and True Doom, or Ito and Morrison, LotFP's cadre of writers and artists deliver mind-bending and merciless content for your game table.
“Rules-wise, LotFP belongs to the ‘Old School Renaissance’ family of games that uses the Open Game License to recreate game rules of the late 70s/early 80s, with LotFP's particular twisting of those rules flattening out the power level a bit and emphasizing a more horrific and go-for-the-throat attitude.”
Veins of the Earth includes more than fifty new monsters and a half-dozen new underground cultures.
Also available on DriveThru RPG and on Amazon.