Transcript: The Awards 2024 with Nico MacDougall

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The Awards are back! The rpg awards show with a bent towards indie games and the guaranteed worst SEO of all time is back for another around, and the current steward of The Awards - Nico MacDougall - is back on the show this week to talk through some of our favorite mechanics from the last batch of winners.

If you want to get involved in The Awards, you can apply to be a judge through the end of April and you can submit your games during the month of May! This year's Awards will cover games published between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025.

Further Reading

The Awards 2026 - apply to be a judge today!

Cloud Empress by Watt

Border Riding by Stout Stoat Press

This Maze Will Be Big Enough To Call Home Someday by Anna Anne Anthropy

Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya by Munkao

Socials

Nico on Bluesky

Sam on Bluesky and itch

The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer.

Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!

Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop mechanic and rank it against its peers. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co-host today is Nico McDougall. Welcome back to the show, Nico.

Nico: Good to have you. Glad to be here again.

Sam: We’re diving straight into it today without much intro, because we’re here to talk about the awards, an awards show for tabletop RPGs that you’re running these days.

Can you tell us a little bit about them? What are the awards, and why are you here?

Nico: Yeah, the awards are an NDTTRPG awards show. We recognize 20 best things each year. What sets it apart is that those 20 things aren’t ranked within themselves. There’s no number one or number twenty, just 20 things that are worthy of attention: cool, weird, artsy, whatever metric the judges decide to use.

The other thing is that, lately, I’ve taken more steps to focus on smaller, weirder games, or any kind of TTRPG-adjacent work that things like the Ennies, IGDN, or the Diana Jones Award might not give as much attention to.

Sam: Yeah, I think it’s a cool awards show. Before we get too far in, I want to talk a bit about ranking things.

Broadly speaking, today we’re going to highlight a few entries from the last cycle of awards and some mechanics from them that we love, in classic Dice Exploder fashion.

I have a real love-hate relationship with ranking things. That probably goes back to my love-hate relationship with the movie High Fidelity. I find ranking things really fun. I’ve done a lot of it and will continue to do it forever. It’s a compelling solo activity, a form of self-expression, and a framework for talking about art.

But it has limitations. You’re ranking things that don’t need to be compared, and saying one piece of art is better than another is kind of silly. A lot of people want objective rankings, but that’s not especially healthy.

Still, the act of doing it is fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. What I like about these awards is that they do as little ranking as possible while still being a ranking activity. They carve out a niche that’s very vibes-based and changes year to year depending on the judges.

For context, I was a judge in the first year when someone else was running them. So I want to ask: what do you think about awards shows in general? Why do you care enough to run one?

Nico: I also have a funny relationship with ranking things. People ask, “What’s your favorite book or movie?” and I feel like I’ve never had good answers. Suddenly I forget every book I’ve ever read.

I can tell you what I like, or what I read recently and enjoyed, but strict ranking has always been hard for me. That’s part of why I liked these awards when I first judged them.

The process starts with a simple yes-or-no vote: is this good enough to consider further? Then, once you have a pool of finalists, you distribute votes, you can give one vote to 20 things or 20 votes to one thing.

At the end, there’s no reveal of who got the most votes. It’s just the 20 things that collectively rose to the top. It’s an interesting way to reach a consensus about good, interesting art from a group of 8–12 people.

It’s still ranking (you end up with 20 “best” things) but you’re not trying to get granular about first, second, third. I’m more interested in what sets apart a pool of good, weird, artsy work. Maybe it asks interesting questions, or does one thing really well. That’s what we’ve consistently ended up with over the years.

Sam: Before we get into specifics, tell me how people can participate. How do they apply to be judges or submit their games? What are the deadlines?

Nico: We’ll be accepting judge self-nominations in April. There’ll be a Google form on the website and links on social media. The website is theawards.games.

This year, I’ve made a public commitment that at least 50% of the judging panel will be people of color, and at least 50% will be people of marginalized gender identities. Those categories aren’t mutually exclusive, of course.

I’ve loved past judging panels, but I want to make it clear that I’m especially interested in hearing from underrepresented voices in the tabletop RPG community.

Submissions (for games, podcasts, art, essays, and so on) will be open in May through a separate form. Eligible works are those published between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025.

Sam: We’re looking backward a bit.

Nico: Yeah. Partly because I skipped last year after doing two years in a row and burning out, but I always wanted to bring it back. Also, looking backward gives more attention to things that didn’t get as much visibility when they came out and helps reduce recency bias.

Sam: I’ll say up front: people should do this. Participating in the awards is great, and it gets better the more people are involved.

It is a lot of work, though. If you’re excited, you should absolutely do it, but know that it’s a significant time commitment. When I judged, it really shaped how I think about games and even led to starting Dice Exploder.

With that said, let’s talk about some games from the last cycle—June 2023 through May 2024. Nico, what’s your first pick?

Nico: Our first game is Cloud Empress by Watt. It’s a Mothership hack. More accurately, a Panic Engine game.

The mechanic I chose is that you gain stress whenever you draw your weapon, and also when someone draws a weapon on you.

In Mothership, most stress triggers come from failed rolls. You might take a variable amount of stress, which can escalate quickly and create a death spiral—that’s part of the design.

But in Cloud Empress, this mechanic directly addresses the effects of aggression. You don’t even have to attack—just drawing a weapon changes the scene.

Sam: It’s clearly about violence, but not by modeling violence itself—by modeling the threat of violence. It focuses on that hovering possibility.

Nico: Exactly. Drawing a weapon changes the situation. It changes you and the people around you.

That’s often true in play anyway, but building it into the system means stress increases, panic becomes more likely, and bad outcomes follow. It makes you think carefully about whether violence—or even a threat—is the right choice.

Sam: Great mechanic, and Cloud Empress is a really cool reinterpretation of Mothership.

Nico: And it’s modular. The “gain one stress when X happens” structure makes it easy to customize environments, encounters, or entire modules. It highlights a really fertile design space.

Sam: Yeah, you could easily drop this into a Mothership game. Great pick.

My first pick is Border Riding by Joe Reed. It’s about a place and how its borders change over time. You play through scenes, jump forward in time, and redraw the map as things evolve.

The game comes as a fold-out road map, like something from a glove box, with rules printed around the edges. That form factor is the mechanic I want to highlight.

It’s incredibly evocative. Unfolding it at the table reinforces that this is a game about space and territory. The physical scale makes the world feel expansive, and the format makes rules easier to reference.

It also reinforces the idea that games don’t have to be books—they can take other forms. That physicality creates an emotional experience even before play begins.

Nico: And that comes through even in the digital version. The awards only use digital submissions, but the PDF includes the full map layout and a booklet version of the rules.

The physical version enhances the experience, but the game still works without it. The themes and structure come through either way.

Sam: I do think it might be even stronger if it required the physical format. I love games that fully commit to their presentation.

Nico: Yeah, games that demand a specific mode of engagement are really interesting. Changing the format changes the experience—and sometimes means you’re effectively playing a different game.

Sam: What’s your second pick?

Nico: From Forgotten Palaces by Anna Anthropy, there’s a game called This Maze Will Be Big Enough to Call Home Someday.

You play as kids in the 1990s making their dream video game, drawing rooms and building a kind of dungeon.

The mechanic I’m highlighting is the ending condition: when every room has a name, the game ends.

It creates a tension where players control when the game ends—but not entirely. You could keep expanding forever, or someone could push toward ending it. It reflects both collaboration and conflict.

Sam: I don’t have quite the same emotional reaction, but I really appreciate any game that clearly defines its ending. RPGs often don’t do that well.

Knowing the structure and pacing helps players make better decisions and shape the story more intentionally.

Nico: For me, it ties into the theme of kids making a game. There’s that feeling of wanting play to go on forever, but knowing it won’t.

It’s practical—it defines an ending—but also thematic, reinforcing the idea of creation, completion, and maybe unfinished dreams.

Sam: My final pick is Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thams by W. H. Moncrief.

It’s a dungeon where a monk has been meditating for ten years, and a giant hive of bees has formed inside. You need to escort him out without waking him.

The mechanic I like is the premise itself: escorting a person who can’t be disturbed. It’s a strong, focused “toy” for the players to engage with.

It creates clear stakes, interesting constraints, and a cohesive design. Making the central object a person rather than an item adds emotional weight.

Nico: And if you fail, it’s not just mechanical failure—it’s disappointing the monk and the others. That can feel more meaningful than losing money or missing a reward.

Sam: Those are some of our favorites from the last cycle.

To wrap up: in April, you can apply to be a judge. Even if you don’t think you’re qualified, you are. By the time you’ve reviewed a hundred games, you’ll definitely be qualified.

In May, submit anything you published between June 2024 and May 2025. Nico, what’s the rest of the timeline?

Nico: Judging runs from June to August for the first round. Then there’s a shorter second round, and winners are announced in a livestream around October.

Sam: And remember, you can submit more than just games—podcasts, essays, and other work count too.

Nico, thanks for coming back on Dice Exploder. One day we’ll have you on for a regular episode.

Nico: One day. I’m happy to talk about multiple things at once, though.

Sam: Thanks again to Nico for being here. You can apply to be a judge in April and submit work in May—check the show notes for links.

Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. You can follow Nico on Bluesky at giganticspider, and you can find me at diceexploder. My games are at sdunnewold.itch.io.

Our logo is designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is “Sunset Bridge” by Purely Grey, and our ad music is “Lily Pads” by Travis Tessmer.

Thanks for listening. See you next time—I’ve got to go make lunch.