The winner of the 2019 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming is Star Crossed.
STAR CROSSED
By Alex Roberts
Published by Bully Pulpit Games
With Star Crossed, designer Alex Roberts brings the most important stories – love stories – further into the embrace of the tabletop roleplaying medium. Building on the work of pioneering designers such as Leslie Scott and Emily Care Boss, Roberts brilliantly focuses game play on the moment of truth between two lovers separated by distance, prudence, or society.
The result: a game with no doubt, no edge cases, and no GM, which embraces pure roleplaying as its core joy. Beautifully produced, artfully designed, desperately needed, and joyously welcoming, Star Crossed is everything the roleplaying medium dreams of.
The Diana Jones Award committee is proud to declare that Star Crossed exemplifies excellence in gaming, and awards it our trophy this year.
From another long and eclectic collection of nominees, the committee of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming selected four finalists that it believed best exemplified “excellence” in the field of gaming in 2019. The finalists for the 2019 Diana Jones Award was announced on 16th July 2019. It consisted of:
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ART & ARCANA
a book by Mike Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer
Published by Ten Speed Press
A gorgeous, amazing book that details the history of D&D through an art history lens. Written by a team that includes top gaming historian Jon Peterson, Gygax biographer Mike Witwer, Mike’s actor brother Sam, and Fanboys director Kyle Newman. The production values are fantastic, and it all makes for a heady, stunning trip through the history of the RPG that started it all.
HOLDING ON: THE TROUBLED LIFE OF BILLY KERR
A board game by Michael Fox and Rory O’Connor
Published by Hub Games
An international flight has made an unexpected landing due to a medical emergency: a passenger has suffered a massive heart attack. Players are the over-worked nursing unit of a local hospital, struggling to comfort this dying patient, who – after a lifetime of regret – must get his story told. The suspense is palpable as stresses work on the staff, and Billy’s memories emerge, cloudy and half-remembered at first, more focussed if the players are lucky. Contemporary boardgames strive for “theme” and “mechanics” that go hand-in-hand, to create not simply a game, but a participatory story experience. Some have succeeded better than others. But never has a boardgame taken storytelling to the level of Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr. This is an extraordinary work that stretches the bounds of what a boardgame can aspire to, creating a gripping narrative that unfolds dramatically before the players’ eyes, fully dependent on the decisions they make as a team. Masterful, engrossing, and truly astonishing, Holding On is not just a top-notch game – it is a bold direction for the both the art of game design, and that of storytelling. We look forward not only to more games in this line, but what other games and directions Holding On will inspire.
THE MIND
A card game by Wolfgang Warsch
Published by NSV GmbH and Pandasaurus Games
The Mind is that rarest of things, a game that is genuinely unlike anything else. Stripping the essence of co-operative play down to its barest elements, it challenges its players to put down the number cards in their hands in ascending order, without making a mistake, and without speaking to each other. The description may sound mundane but the gameplay is the purest magic, somewhere between breathless tactics and a wordless communication so profound it can become almost psychic. Good games show us truths about the other players, but the best games teach us about ourselves. The Mind does both.
STAR CROSSED
A role-playing game by Alex Roberts
Published by Bully Pulpit Games
With Star Crossed, designer Alex Roberts brings the most important stories – love stories – further into the embrace of the tabletop roleplaying medium. Building on the work of pioneering designers such as Leslie Scott and Emily Care Boss, Roberts brilliantly focuses game play on the moment of truth between two lovers separated by distance, prudence, or society. The result: a game with no doubt, no edge cases, and no GM, which embraces pure roleplaying as its core joy. Beautifully produced, artfully designed, desperately needed, and joyously welcoming, Star Crossed is everything the roleplaying medium dreams of.
The winner of the 2019 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was announced to a packed house on the evening of Wednesday 31st July, at the annual gathering of hobby games industry professionals in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con games convention.
The recording of the presentation is below for your enjoyment. Host Matt Forbeck highlighted all of the finalists and sponsors, then Steve Segedy of Bully Pulpit Games accepted the trophy for Star Crossed. He read creator Alex Roberts’ statement to the crowd of supporters, and encouraged them to play her excellent game at the convention.
Special thanks to all the sponsors of the 2019 Diana Jones Award ceremony:
- Battlefield Press
- Carolina Game Tables
- Chaldea
- Chaosium
- Conan Properties
- DriveThruRPG.com
- Matt Forbeck
- Anthony Gallela
- Gamehole Con
- Gaming Paper
- Lee Garvin (in memoriam)
- Gen Con
- Green Ronin
- Jim Kitchen
- Magpie Games
- The Onyx Path
- Pelgrane Press
- Perilous Worlds
- ProFantasy Software
- Renegade Games
- Roll20
- Sellers Editorial Services
- Greg Stafford (in memoriam)