The Indie RPG Awards

Introduction

2008 was the seventh year of the Indie RPG Awards, and the contestants were particularly strong. As one voter described it, the field showed “a growing sense of diversification and love of production as simplistic boundaries of 'trad' and 'indie' as labels of content rather than production start to fall down.” Another simply said “indie games are breaking through all over.”

There were close races for best game and supplement this year, and a tie for free game! Best Production, on the other hand, was won hands-down. It seems there are a few names that no one can compete with in production values, and for this year frequent winner Luke Crane had teamed up with former winner Mark Smylie's company, Archaia Press. Most Innovative, though, went appropriately enough to an author new to the awards. Also, even though the awards are only for English-speaking games for now, we are starting to see more foreign entrants. Translations from Norway and France were prominent this year. The only down side was that there was less buzz about support from anyone, and many voters left off that category.