This Year’s Origin Awards RPG Finalists are Absolute Powerhouses: ‘Yazeba’, ‘Cowboy Bebop’, and More
The Origin Awards announced the finalists for this year’s crop, including the new edition of D&D, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, and Cowboy Bebop.
If you needed proof that the RPG industry is growing, in spite of the horrors, you need look no further than this year’s Origins Awards finalists. In the RPG categories (Core and Supplement) you’ll find a motley crew of all sorts of games.
And sure, a lot of them are big names, or backed by well established IP, but creative indies are rubbing shoulders with those giants. It’s a showcase of the breadth of the industry. One that, I hope, more people than ever are realizing encompasses a world far beyond the roll of a d20.
Origin Awards RPG Finalists – D&D and Pathfinder Stand With Mothership and Eat the Reich
One of the best things about RPGs is the sheer creative possibility condensed into weird little zines, beefy pdfs, and/or chonky hardcover books with enough art to satisfy one of the less ambitious Medicis. Like, if there was one that wanted to just get high with their friends and eat White Castle while looking at pictures of wizards or whatever.
Whatever the form, RPGs embody imagination in a way that grabs you by the brain and refuses to let go. And this year’s crop of Origins Finalists echoes that sentiment. There are two categories, RPG Core (for whole systems) and RPG supplement (for modules and splatbooks). Both showings have an eclectic mix this year. Starting with RPG Core:
- Arzium Roleplaying Game
- Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game – Corebook
- PARA: The Role-playing Game
- Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
- Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
- Mothership Deluxe Set
- Pathfinder Player Core 2
- Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook (2024)
- Eat the Rich*
- Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game Second Edition Core Rulebook
* Real quick, I just wanna assume that “Eat the Rich” is meant to be Eat the Reich. Since, as far as I can tell, there’s not an RPG called “Eat the Rich.” But just look at this crop of champions. Right next to D&D and Pathfinder, you’ve got PARA—a personal horror game with a Tarot-based resolution system. And Mothership‘s sci-fi horror that will haunt your play, not to mention Possum Creek’s Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, a game whose rules are an experience as much as an actual text.
And that’s just the RPG Core.
Origins Awards RPG Supplement Finalists
In the supplement department you’ll find hust as varied a crew. And just as varied of “supplements.” Adventures, a history book, core rules updates—it’s all there:
- The One Ring: Moria – Through the Doors of Durin
- The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977
- Call of Cthulhu: No Time to Scream
- Mothership: Warden’s Operation Manual
- Star Crossed: Love Letters
- Heroes of Mythic Americas
- Through the Hedgerow: A Roleplaying Game of Rustic Fantasy
- The Wildsea: Storm and Root
- Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game – Starter Kit (2nd Edition)
- Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts
All that to say, there’s a lot of good stuff at this year’s Origins Awards.
Who do you think is gonna win big?
