The 2022 Australian Role Playing Industry Awards – GUEST POST by Jane Routley
The 2022 Australian Role Playing Industry Awards
On the 17th of April 2022 ARPIA (the Australian Role Playing Industry Awards) held its 2nd award night at gaming hub Fortress in Melbourne, as part of the Conquest Easter TTRPG convention.
One of the few good things to come out of two-and-a-bit years of pandemic and lockdowns is that people got more time to be creative. You could see the results in this year’s ARPIA awards.
The ARPIA awards, awarded to TTRPG products created by Australians or with predominantly Australian content, fielded 75 very high quality entries, about three times as many as the previous awards in 2021. At least 20 of these were single player games – I suspect another reflection of pandemic life.
There were games for pirates, vampires, angels, space farers and adventurers as well as games that explored body image, local myths or promoted reflections about the ongoing climate crisis.
In other words, something for everyone.
The judges: two-times Aurealis Award-winning fantasy writer Jane Routley; writer, editor games designer and historian Dr Melody Watson; and the new judge, best-selling RPG writer MT Black had a tough time deciding on a selection, but eventually settled on :-
Game of the Year – Villagesong by Storybrewers Gaming.
In Villagesong players are village leaders responsible for the wellbeing of their fellow villagers. Drawing cards from the deck they discover what challenges their village faces. Do they work with or against the other village leaders to build a better future? Hayley Gordan and Vee Hendro of Storybrewers Gaming drew on legends from Vee’s Javanese background in crafting this game. I especially appreciated the how-to-play video on the Storybrewers Gaming Website. It’s a compact game that comes in a little card deck sized box for 4 players that is perfect for a single evenings play.
https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/littlebox-rpgs/?v=6cc98ba2045f
This is the second time Storybrewers have won game of the year after winning with back in 2021 with their Jane Austen roleplaying game Good Society
Best Scenario – Goblins of Zarth by Herbert Peppard.
Goblins of Zarth works both as a module for 5th edition dungeons and dragons and a self-contained game that uses the “Fantasy role-playing abridged” system designed by the author.
Zarth is a rich gritty exuberant world where goblins rule, having driven other races to the fringes. The players seek to regain their birthright in the face of corruption, mischief, politics, deadly dancing, interspecies romance and, yes, cannibalism.
Herbert Peppard hand illustrated the game and designed the maps which is why he also won Best Cartography
https://www.tabletopdynasties.com/goblins-of-zarth
Best PDF Only (Shared) – A Modern Prometheus by Mitchell Salmon.
The PDF’s Only were the hardest judging gig because there were so many mind expanding submissions. That’s why it was shared between two games. Both games experiment with game play to push the boundaries of the player self-knowledge.
In Mitchell Salmon’s A Modern Prometheus, a set of mini games for 2 players, you play a scientist dabbling at the edge of the natural sciences and the creature they bring to life by doing so. The aim is for players to discover what is human and what is monstrous.
Best PDF Only (Shared) – LOGAN – An Autobiographical Tabletop Game by Logan Timmins.
Logan Timmins’ single player journaling game is aimed at guiding the player through events in Logan’s life as a way of reflecting on their own life and “an invitation to write a love letter to the players own self”. In the words of the writer “LOGAN is a work of queer joy, trans pride, resilience, growth and love.”
https://breathingstories.itch.io/logan
Best Artwork – The Chronomancer’s Guide to the Future by Clint Skene.
The international nature of TTRPG made judging this section particularly hard. What do you define as Australian artwork? Artwork in an Australian game or artwork by an Australian resident? Something future judging panellist will have to think hard about.
In the meantime for this section Clint’s vibrant futurist illustrations, all created using CGI, really stood out. The reference book is “campaign agnostic”, but compatible with 5th edition, designed to inspire and assist any campaign in any setting looking to include time travel, cyberpunk, or both.
https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-haggard-clint
Best TTRPG Stream – Stream of Chaos – by Jackson Heenan, Art Hunter, James Coquillat and David Naylor.
There are some great Australian-run roleplaying streams from the newsy Eldrich Lorecast and of Dice and DM’s through to game playing streams such as Dungeons and Slatterns and Bardic Inspiration and the choice was tough. In the end Stream of Chaos, Chaosium’s official Roleplaying Stream stood out for me because it named the games and the games writers before beginning play. Which just shows you just how close the contenders were.
The winning submission was their one shot beginner scenario The Necropolis
https://www.chaosium.com/the-stream-of-chaos/
Best Rule System – Grimoire by Nicholas Robinson.
In Grimoire a fascinating solo story telling game the player responds to journaling prompts to create a grimoire of spells and explore what it means to be a wizard. The created character with its background story and collection of spells can then be taken onto other games or used to as a jumping off point into a great story.
https://thebardicinquiry.itch.io/grimoire
Thank you to all the wonderful gamemakers who submitted their work and thank you to Chaosium, The Quest Suppliers and The Tray Tinker for sponsoring the Awards night.
Information on the next Arpia awards will be available through the Arpia website http://www.arpia.org/
Fantasy and Science Fiction writer Jane Routley has published 6 books and won two Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy Novel. Her 7th book is Shadow in the Empire of Light. Her short stories have been widely anthologized and read on the ABC. She is a keen climate activist.
Despite years of encountering “things that cannot, nay, must not be described” in Call of Cthulhu, she is not insane. Honest.
