On Friday night, the Alexandrian won the 2019 Silver ENnie for Best Online Content.
I’d like to once again thank all of my patrons on Patreon. Awards aren’t given for content that doesn’t exist, and this content literally wouldn’t exist without your support.
Thank you everyone who has supported the site, loved the site, and voted for the site! What makes this award so meaningful to me is that it’s a testament to how many people have found the GMing advice, reviews, essays, and other content here at the Alexandrian useful and enlightening.
GEN CON STORY TIME
My Gen Con this year was packed to the gills: Before the ENnie nomination and before becoming the RPG Producer at Atlas Games, I had been invited to run the Cthulhu Masters Tournament (CMT). For those unfamiliar with the CMT, it’s an annual Gen Con tradition that dates back to Milwaukee: It’s a three-round tournament, with players advancing from the first round on Thursday & Friday to the Semi-Final rounds on Saturday and, ultimately, to the Final Round where one player will earn the title of Cthulhu Master. It’s a really cool tournament where advancement is based on the votes of your fellow players. Not only is the content of the scenarios usually elevated to a really high level, but the tournament attracts really high-caliber players who are then further refined through multiple rounds of play. By the time you reach the Final Round, you’ve got a fantastic group of players combined with richly detailed characters who are thrown into a generally spectacular scenario in a system specifically designed to push those characters to the brink of personal identity. The results are usually electrifying.
It was an honor to be asked, and an even greater honor to assemble and work with an absolutely phenomenal Game Master team. (Thank you Chris, Sarah, Heather, and Peter!)
I’ll have more to say about this year’s CMT in the near future here on the Alexandrian, but I mostly bring it up here because it was a major commitment that was then paired with a lot of other major commitments. We adjusted our schedule so that I could attend the ENnies Award Ceremony, but I was running my final Round 1 CMT session from 4pm to 8pm on Friday.
The CMT is run in a private room at the Omni Severin hotel. The Omni is basically right next to Union Station, where the ENnies ceremony was being held in the ballroom.
So at 8pm I leave my session. I walk out of the Omni. I walk down the street to Union Station. I walk through the doors into the ballroom. And literally the first thing I hear is:
“… and the last nominee for Best Online Content is The Alexandrian. And the winner of the Silver ENnie for Best Online Content is… THE ALEXANDRIAN.”
So I just keep right on walking, straight up and onto the stage.
I’ve been in the room for literally 5 seconds.
30 seconds later, of course, and this is a really sad story. Instead it’s absolutely perfect. And also bad-ass.
If you ever need to win an award, by the way, this is definitely the way to do it. No time for stress. No butterflies in the stomach. No anxiety. Just winning and then being able to enjoy the entire evening in the company of fabulous and wonderful and creative people, basking in a wonderful afterglow of giddy excitement.
Thanks, once again, to everyone who helped make this possible.
