x
search
menu

Links: Nominees for the 2013 Diana Jones Award, Winners of the 2013 Origins Awards & Loss Aversion in Games

Links: Nominees for the 2013 Diana Jones Award, Winners of the 2013 Origins Awards & Loss Aversion in Games
RPG Item: Dog Eat Dog
Board Game: Love Letter
• The shortlist for the 2013 Diana Jones Award, an "annual award created to publicly acknowledge excellence in gaming", has been announced, and it contains the usual mix of things that one wouldn't normally categorize in a single bucket. The nominees are:

-----• Dog Eat Dog, a role-playing game from designer Liam Burke and publisher Liwanag Press
-----• Love Letter, a card game from designer Seiji Kanai and publisher AEG
-----• Metatopia, a game convention in Morristown, New Jersey organized by Double Exposure, Inc.
-----• Playing at the World, a book from Jon Peterson and Unreason Press that "convincingly traces the roots of D&D's core mechanics all the way back to chess, its tropes through fantasy fiction and mythology, and its community back to the wargaming societies that formed at the turn of the last century."
-----• TableTop, a web series hosted by actor Wil Wheaton that features a different game in each episode

The winner of the 2013 Diana Jones Award will be announced on August 14, 2013, the day before the Gen Con games convention opens.

Board Game: Glory to Rome
• On Quartz, Leo Mirani summarizes the Glory to Rome black box Kickstarter saga under the subject line "Cautionary Tale" and the headline "This man lost his house because his Kickstarter was too successful". Well, sort of – the real culprit, as Cambridge Games Factory's Ed Carter points out himself in the article, is this phrase that appears in numerous places throughout the KS project: "Free shipping to any game store (anywhere in the world!)."

• Designer Grant Rodiek is collecting information on prototypes that designers will be bringing to Gen Con 2013 in August in order "to give the community an idea of what to experience". Shoot him an email if you plan to have a design on display or available for testing.

• Shannon Appelcline has started a new series on his Mechanics & Meeples blog titled "Psychology of Gaming" with the first article focusing on loss aversion and highlight designs from Reiner Knizia and Stefan Feld. I've recently learned both Rialto and Bruges from Feld, and both continue Feld's habit of using loss aversion in game design, with Rialto using a niggling minor penalty in only one aspect of the game while Bruges sics five threats on you, each of which carries a potentially harsh result. The man knows how to get players to jump...

• The 39th Annual Origins Awards were announced on June 15, 2013 while the 2013 Origins Game Fair convention was still underway. The winners in various categories are:

Board Game: Samurai Battles
-----• Best Board Game – Lords of Waterdeep, by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson (Wizards of the Coast
-----• Best Historical Board Game – Samurai Battles, by Richard Borg and Konstantin Krivenko (Zvezda)
-----• Best Traditional Card Game – Doctor Who: The Card Game, by Martin Wallace (Cubicle 7 Entertainment)
-----• Best Family, Party or Children's Game – Quarriors!, by Michael Elliot and Eric M. Lang (WizKids Games)
-----• Best Collectible Card Game – Legend of the 5 Rings: Embers of War (AEG)
-----• Best Roleplaying Game – Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game (Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.)

While Lords of Waterdeep and Samurai Battles both had expansions that debuted at Origins 2013 – respectively, Scoundrels of Skullport and Ninja Attack – and Quarriors! has several expansions on the market with more to come, fans of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game have bittersweet news from Margaret Weis Productions, namely that the publisher announced in April 2013 that it won't produce anything else for the line following less than hoped for sales.

Related

Days of Wonder Invites Relic Runners to the Table

Days of Wonder Invites Relic Runners to the Table

Jun 18, 2013

U.S./French publisher Days of Wonder has been teasing a new release on its Facebook page for several days, dropping one image after another with little clue as to what the game in question might...
Game Previews at Origins 2013 II: Galaxy Trucker Expansion, Legendary: Dark City, Impulse & Kaosball

Game Previews at Origins 2013 II: Galaxy Trucker Expansion, Legendary: Dark City, Impulse & Kaosball

Jun 17, 2013

• At Origins 2013, I met with Czech Games Edition's Petr Murmak after hours at his hotel to check out the new Galaxy Trucker expansion that will debut at Spiel 2013 in October. While this...
Designer Diary: Dark Darker Darkest, or Dipping into the Dark...A Beginner's Guide

Designer Diary: Dark Darker Darkest, or Dipping into the Dark...A Beginner's Guide

Jun 17, 2013

The Birth of an Idea"How does an idea for a board game actually start?" someone asked me out of the blue. We were sitting at a table playing a game described on the box as an "exotic adventure",...
Game Previews at Origins 2013 I: Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Conflict of Heroes: Solo Expansion, Spyrium & Council of Verona

Game Previews at Origins 2013 I: Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Conflict of Heroes: Solo Expansion, Spyrium & Council of Verona

Jun 16, 2013

• Time to start the video coverage of Origins 2013, and despite having many problems with the camera and its audio recording – some of which I discovered only after returning home and...
Origins 2013 News Round-Up I: Asmodee, Asmadi and IELLO

Origins 2013 News Round-Up I: Asmodee, Asmadi and IELLO

Jun 15, 2013

While Origins 2013 is still ongoing as I write this, my participation in that convention is over, so I thought I'd round up the news items that I tweeted during my two days at the show. In case...
ads