I haven’t seen any official announcement yet (EDIT: List is here), but scuttlebutt on twitter has the Origins Awards nominees up.

For best game:
DC Adventures
Dragon Age
Dresden Files
Fiasco
Gamma World

Best Supplement:
Song of Ice & Fire Campaign Guide (SIFRP)
Our World (Dresden Files)
Advanced Player’s Guide (Pathfinder)
Sixth World Almanac (Shadowrun)
Sunward (Eclipse Phase)

There are other categories, but I don’t yet know how they’ve shaken out.

Obviously, I’m blown away that Dresden made both lists, and given the quality of games this year (including the many fantastic games that didn’t make the final list) I am happy to embrace the cliche and just be happy to be nominated. I could happily lose to anything else on either list.

Interesting also to see the clustering. This is a good year for Catalyst and Green Ronin (and deservedly so), but very weird that between them an Evil Hat, that’s 7 of the 10 slots, with the three “outliers” being WOTC, Paizo and Bully Pulpit (not a grouping I would have imagined). I wouldn’t read too much into it though – there were enough good things this past year that it would be hard to limit either list to 10, much less 5.

ANOTHER EDIT: I somewhat boneheadedly forgot that Sunward was a Posthuman Studios, not Catalyst, for reasons that are a story of their own. So, that undercuts my point, but in a fuzzy enough way that I am either Internet Right or Internet Wrong, depending how you look at it. But apologies all the same.

I am, I admit, a little sad Leverage didn’t make the list, even if it would have lead to a fistfight with myself. Realistically, if one Cortex Plus game were to make the cut, it would probably be Smallville, and I’d be good with that too. Again, I’m pretty sure Cortex Plus merited a top 10 slot on many lists, but there’s no shame in getting bumped out of it by that particular top 5. Or so I keep telling myself.

Anway, I know there are reasons to be cynical about any awards in the RPG industry, but all the same, I watch these lists with great enthusiasm and curiosity. I take pride when I see my stuff on them, and I feel a little kick when I don’t. It’s not rational, but some part of me just loves these lists and awards, and I don’t think I’m the only one. So long as we keep getting that little buzz, the awards aren’t going anywhere.