THE INAUGURAL SALTY AWARDS

They're arbitrary!

They're weird!

They reject continuity of time!

They reject meaningful distinctions of category!

They're an off-brand bootleg of the Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence!

It's time for...

THE SALTIES

The selection process is simple. I choose things and then my choices are correct.

BESTEST OF THE BEST 

The Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, also Dissident Whispers is there.

Thousands of voices singing "fuck the police" in beautiful harmony, to the tune of over 8 million dollars raised. Every game featured within gets this award regardless of my opinions, lack of opinions, or any other qualities it may or may not possess. Because fuck the police.

TRIFECTA GRANDE 

Ultraviolet Grasslands (Luca Rejec), TROIKA! (Daniel Sell), Trilemma Adventures (Michael Prescott)

Also known as "the three books I would save from a fire." Each is magnificent in its own way, and a combination of the three would render one set for life in terms of RPGs. One is the ideal setting book, one is the ideal system book, one is the ideal book of adventures. Together they are unstoppable.

THE VOICE CRYING OUT IN THE WILDERNESS

@pandatheist

Proving that even RPG twitter is capable of sustaining coherent thought, @pandatheist is an island of good critique and spotlight threads in the midst of tepid seas of nonsense. And it's interdisciplinary, too, covering material from the 5e, indie, and OSR spheres.

PRODUCTIVITY POWERHOUSE

Emmy Allen (@dyingstylishly, cavegirlgames.blogspot.com)

How this woman manages to consistently put out so much material is beyond me. Holy shit. Wolfpacks, Enterprises, Ynn, Stygian, that one psy-ops game I never looked into, pretty sure there's an Arthurian miniatures ruleset, and now Dungeon Bitches. Holy shit. How.

ACTUAL GOD DAMN HEROES

Jarrett Crader & Fiona Giest

Go look at some of your favorite books, the real good ones. Odds are good you are going to find these two in the credits for editing or proofreading. This is because they're real fucking good at it, and I speak from personal experience. They gave Unicorn Meat a brilliant polish and turned clunky words into unclunky ones and chef's kiss.

BEST BOOK THAT IS NOT YET IN BOOK FORM

The Monster Overhaul (Skerples)

From art to organization, this is shaping up to be to monster manuals as Tomb of the Serpent Kings is to dungeon adventures - the sort of thing that takes the fundamentals and applies long-needed functionality updates.

I AM A PATIENT MAN

BREAK! (Naldo Drinian and Grey Wizard)

It will be here eventually. I am a patient man. I will wait. I am a patient man. It will be here eventually.  I AM A PATIENT MAN.

QUARANTINE FUN

Solo Games! (Various)

There were a good number of solo games in the Justice Bundle, and I hope that their spread leads to the creation of more. There's an entire field of design here that is just beginning to be explored. Special shout outs go to Ex Novo and the Wretched & Alone games, which are breaking out into more structured solo games than I typically see (and in the latter's case, immensely successful proliferation of hacks)

AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE

Shattered: A Grimdark RPG (It's Never Dark Enough)

There are glimpses of a gonzogrot diamond in the rough buried in this game, but unfortunately Shattered clutches all the sins of mid-aughts design close to its heart. The dread combination of tiny font, minuscule margins, double column text blocks, and uneven topic headers render the book almost unreadable, and this is accompanied by burdensome backstory and worldbuilding, clunkycrunch mechanics, and an insistence that all women have precisely the same body type even when they are of a species where having breasts makes no sense at all.

All this being said, the game's art is striking enough for me to remember it, and it does a decent enough job of establishing its own identity, two steps that man games do not accomplish.

AN ATTEMPT WAS NOT MADE

Wizards of the Coast

From the hypocritical and draconian policies of DMs Guild to their limp-wristed response to criticism of their perpetuation of race essentialism in the ttrpg sphere, WotC has proven to all that there is no bottom to the barrel of their milquetoast corporate cowardice - there is only another barrel. It is an infinite recursive column of barrels, matched only in its terrible depth by my confusion that people are still expecting a different outcome from this company.

SELF-INFLICTED PETARD HOIST ULTRA COMBO

James Edward Raggi IV

It's not even schadenfreude at this point. Just a vague sadness, though any sympathy that might come of it is obliterated by the fact that he released a book painting the very credible accusations of abuse against known malignant narcissist and abuser as mob hysteria, is an open supporter of a man who made his fortune slandering trans people, still refuses to cut ties with aforementioned malignant narcissist and abuser, and practices that most insipid form of cowardice - believing that freedom of speech means freedom from responsibility.

BEST PODCAST

Apocrypals (Chris Sims & Benito Cereno)

Not an RPG podcast, which makes it the best RPG podcast, because it'll actually learn you some stuff. Like biblical apocrypha and how absolutely wild it gets. More gnostic tomfoolery than you can shake a stick at. Dunking on Paul. Interpretive Torah funtimes. All the best Bible fanfiction, all in good humor. Go learn yourself a thing.

JUDGE'S CHOICE

Yokai Hunters Society (Chema Gonzalez)

I have spoken at length my thoughts and praise for YHS - for it's system, for its themes, for its economy of writing, for its flavor, and for how it addresses monster hunting within a different (and often less violent) cultural framework. It's good stuff.

 ***

This has been the inaugural Salty Awards. You may now return to your homes, untroubled.