Mythmere Game's Swords & Wizardry won 2nd place Silver Award for Best Free Product! Congrats to Matt Finch, all the authors, artists and contributors to S&W! Wow!
Matt - I need your phone number! You've got hardware coming, my friend!
Edited to add:
The reason that's my ugly mug up there is because Matt couldn't make it and asked me to accept anything in his place. We both had a "Yea, right, when pigs fly" attitude about winning, and look what happened. I was really honored to accept in Matt's place - it was a bit surreal considering what happened with my Dad this week. I hope I didn't sound like an idiot up there.
16 comments:
yowza!
This is absolutely fantastic!
Is there anyway to find out how any people voted? S&W has been winning a lot of recognition lately, but I'm really curious to find out how many people are buying/playing/voting for it.
Sweet. :3 Pass on my congrats if you can?
@Anon:
I think that -- even if one could acquire that information -- it may not be pigeonholed enough to really help.
Just taking myself for an example, I voted for S&W and I have gone to great lengths to acquire a copy (just ask Chgowiz *grins*) ... but though I very much like it, and am gleeful it won the Ennie, it's not what I'm working with at the moment ;3
@ Taichara:
I agree that most statistics would be very vague, but I'd love to just get an idea of how many people are playing retroclones, how much traffic the blogosphere gets, how many times retroclones have been downloaded, etc.
I think it would be valuable to know how many issues of Fight On! were sold during the month(s) that it won the Lulu sales contest. As I said the statistics would no doubt be misleading, but I'm curious to find out the general size of the active, playing, purchasing OSR. A hundred players? A thousand?
I'm not saying that the success or validity of the OSR or retroclones depends on a massive following, but I'd be very interested in knowing how many products the publishers are selling.
Rereading my last entry, I realized that it makes no sense whatsoever.
The questions I was trying to get at were
Roughly how many copies of their various products have the OSR publishers sold? How many downloads?
I think that the community aspect of the OSR is its greatest strength, but as James Raggi and a few others have pointed out, mutual praise and toothless criticism define the blogosphere.
What I am (badly) saying is: I would be interested in statistical information on sales and downloads if the publishers were willing to provide it, as the blogs tend to produce an echo-chamber effect that makes the reality of the situation extremely hard to discern.
Obviously I am in no position to demand anything, but I would like to know if Goblinoid Games, Brave Halfling, Fight On! or any other publisherhas achieved any measure of financial success. Is publishing OSR material a purely nonprofit hobby enterprise, or could a company such as Paizo (for instance) actually hope to sell old school products, or is the audience too niche for that to be viable?
I don't believe that having profit or mass appeal is necessary to the OSR, but I would be interested in knowing if Old-School is genuinely on the rise, or if we're the same small group we've always been, making more noise than usual.
tai: I think that Fight On! and Mythmere Games both needed to move about 500 copies the month they won the lulu award. That's a rough number, not me quoting actual sales figures.
Michael: Thanks for being there and being the poster boy for the OSR. You're exactly the kind of guy that we need there your beard may be gray but you're no grumpy grumbler.
Fan-frick'n-tastic. Score one for the good guys. Or are we not doing alignment?
This is great news! Will the OSR get some respect now? :P
Aren't we the neutrals? :)
@Chg': I cannot imagine you making a fool of yourself at the podium. I'm certain it was very cogent. :)
@Matthew Finch: Congratulations! :D
To all of us: Yay! :D
there ain't no school, like the old school fool. werd.
OSR aside, it's a truly free game and it's done very well. I will not rest until I see a truly free RPG in the top spot next year!
Great news!
Thank you all for the kind comments. I think that the amount of buzz that the win generated surprised me. A lot of people were much more aware of S&W than in the past. It'll be cool to put that little blurb/graphic on the website and book now. :)
@Rob - I was speaking to Denise Robinson who was amazed at the ground support that we were able to raise to get S&W voted onto the podium. Our voices were heard and that's a fantastic thing. Perhaps you should start a "Recommend for the ENnies" category of the Free RPGs you want to see included in the review/nomination process?
Excellent news! Long live the OSR. :D
Great news! I picked up a copy of Mike's Quick Start Rules at GenCon, but it was a real bummer that no booth had S&W for sale. Talk about a missed opportunity to capitalize on some very real buzz!
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