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Diana Jones Awards

August 22nd, 2008

PRESS RELEASE TO ALL MEDIA

2008 DIANA JONES AWARD GOES TO “GREY RANKS” AND WOLFGANG BAUR

Annual Award “For Excellence in Gaming” Locked in Second-Ever Tie

Indianapolis, 14th August—The 2008 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in
Gaming has been given to two winners: Grey Ranks (a roleplaying game
by Jason Morningstar, published by Bully Pulpit Games) and Wolfgang
Baur and his Open Design business model. This is the second time the
awards committee has locked into a tie over the winners in its eight
years. The winners were announced at a ceremony packed with games
industry professionals, from designers to publishers and distributors,
held at Jillian’s in Indianapolis at 9 PM on Wednesday 13th August,
the day before the opening of the games convention Gen Con Indianapolis.

Jason Morningstar’s roleplaying game of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Grey
Ranks, commands attention for many reasons, but it deserves highest
marks for two factors. First, it is a game of inexorable tragedy,
sacrifice, coming-of-age, mortality, and self-destruction. These truly
mature literary themes are almost unexplored in gaming of any sort,
and virtually unseen in roleplaying. If gaming is to approach the
other arts in depth and richness, it will be games like Grey Ranks
that make such an approach possible. Second, its emotional grid
mechanic anchors a solid, powerful rules design that drives such
themes home in play. Jason Morningstar has not created a game that
lazily appropriates the historical horror at its heart, he has created
rules that reveal that horror, rules that re-create that horror in its
players’ hearts and minds. Aristotle said that all true tragedy must
end in terror and pity. It’s hard to believe that Aristotle never
played Grey Ranks.

Open Design began as an experiment in funding the development of
roleplaying game supplements. Wolfgang Baur—a highly respected, long-
time Dungeons & Dragons editor and designer for TSR and then Wizards
of the Coast—went back hundreds of years to dig up the concept of
patronage, add a few modern twists to it, and apply it to the problem.
He posts a project and publicizes it along with a monetary threshold.
When the funding his patrons chip in reaches that threshold, he starts
on the project in earnest. Baur supplements his exemplary work by
letting his patrons suggest various directions for each project and
then allowing them to look over this shoulder as he works. Each
project becomes a master-level class on adventure design for those
privileged to be a part of it.

Also shortlisted for the Diana Jones Award this year were the Canon
Puncture podcast, the Child’s Play charity, the Come Out and Play
festival, and Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and
Playable Media edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin by (MIT
Press).

Previous winners of the Diana Jones Award include Peter Adkison,
former CEO of Wizards of the Coast; Jordan Weisman, former CEO of FASA
and Wizkids; the games Sorcerer, Nobilis, My Life with Master and
Ticket to Ride; the game supplement The Great Pendragon Campaign; and
the generosity of the charity auctions at Irish games conventions.

A fuller description of the history of the Diana Jones Award and its
extraordinary trophy, plus details of all the previous winners and
shortlists, can be found at the award’s website: www.dianajonesaward.org

More information

For more information on the award, please contact the designated
public representatives of the Diana Jones Committee:

Matt Forbeck: matt@forbeck.com

James Wallis: james@erstwhile.demon.co.uk