The ENNIE Awards (the “ENNIES”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENNIES give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.
The ENNIES were created in 2001 as an annual award ceremony, hosted by the leading D&D/d20 system fan site, EN World in partnership with Eric Noah’s Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News. The awards were owned by Russ Morrissey until 2019. As the awards have grown, the ENNIES have expanded from an Internet-based awards selection to an annual award ceremony at Gen Con. The ENNIES have also branched out from their roots as an award ceremony focused upon d20 system publishers and products to celebrate the achievements of all tabletop RPGs and the publishers and products that support them.
With award categories recognizing the components that make a game great to the types of products fans have come to love, categories for fan-based websites and much more, the ENNIES are the best way for fans to acknowledge outstanding effort from and to say “thank you” to the creators, publishers, designers and artists who make this hobby great.
That’s true, but I also suspect there was a lot of astroturf. I mean, it beat out Blades in the Dark, which (in my admittedly subjective experience) had WAY more of a splash with a significantly larger audience. I’m not saying the ENNIEs did anything sketchy, but that I suspect the voting system is susceptible to abuse. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway. On a brighter note, I’m also a big fan of sword & sorcery, and the fact that it manages to use the Gumshoe framework (and by all accounts very successfully!) makes it extremely intriguing. :)
What! It beat out BitD? But on the other hand I didn’t notice BitD back then, could be the circles I frequented and those I played with. Zweihander for me had a much larger presence. It also tagged onto the much larger Warhammer brand which is why it was on my radar and Blades wasn’t.
Still wouldn’t put it past the Zweihander author to use shady methods knowing what I know today.
I know, right? Obviously in hindsight, Blades has had a WAY bigger impact, and WAY longer shelf life. Also in hindsight, Zak S had a grudge against John Harper, and weirdly reveled in Zweihander beating Blades. And since he has a history of organizing brigades and using sockpuppet accounts…
It’s all ultimately speculation. Like you pointed out, the buzz the two games got varied from circle to circle. I might just be bitter because I bought Zweihander based on the hype, and was sorely disappointed in what I got. :P
The main reason I got Zweihander on my radar was because one in my group was a big Warhammer fan and had bought into the kickstarter and the hype. Once material started coming out from it he started shit talking Zweihander. He too was disappointed.
Unsurprising. :/ I actually wasn’t yet into Warhammer, but hey, I heard good things, I’m into OSR stuff, it was on sale… but once I started reading it, it was just a bloated and ugly. When I went to fix the bookmarks (because of course they were terrible), I realized it was very badly organized. Top to bottom, it’s a mess.
Since it came out, the old editions have become available as official PDFs, from what I’ve heard the new edition hews closer to the older ones, and there are even other games heavily inspired by it like Warlock. I think there was a real hunger for something like old-school Warhammer FRP, but between all of these, people just had better options, so Zweihander quickly fell by the wayside.