Yesterday, September 17th 2021, happened the ENNIE Awards ceremonies at Gen Con and for the first time I was actually in the run for an award like the many authors and publishers I admire and have inspired me for so many years.
Halls of the Blood King, the adventure I wrote for Old-School Essentials was nominated for Best Adventure and Best Cartography (although I still can’t believe it wasn’t nominated for a Best Cover or Best Interior art, as the work by Justine Jones is simply so good and fresh that made the adventure much more than it initially was). It was actually the first time something I’ve worked on got sent to the ENNIE Awards for consideration, so I was already super excited and honored to have been nominated for the award.
Of course I did what I could to spread the word that I was a nominee and asked people, friends, relatives, coworker and everyone I could to vote for me. But, seriously, I didn’t expect I could win an award. As far as I knew, I was way over my head. I just started publishing RPG stuff five years ago, in a completely independent and almost amateurish way. So to suddenly see myself side by side with so many great creators, people who I was following way before I started writing anything, was unbelievable. The other nominees were so great, I was just happy enough to be side by side with them and be close enough to see they rising.
And this Friday, when I had a couple of friends over and we were watching the awards and we won Gold for Best Cartography (congratulations Glynn, your work is amazing), I thought “wait a minute, we might actually win something.” And when the Best Adventure category arrived, I saw myself together with a very tough and competent group of peers, many of which I am a fan of for a while.
When I saw that Free League got the Silver ENNIE, I was sure Ben Milton (from the extraordinary YouTube channel Questing Beast) had won Gold. After all, he is like a legend in the OSR now. But, miraculously, they announced my name and my adventure as the Gold ENNIE winner for Best Adventure! I couldn’t believe! My friend even recorded we screaming here, very late in Brazil! I was super excited! To see the “thank you” video playing, my wife by my side, friends by my side, and all around me in the world through the internet! It was so cool. I could feel a lot of care and love, and it’s really moving. I am really grateful for this honor. Grateful for all this support, and all the friendships I’ve made along the way, and all the friends I am sure I will make in the future with this amazing hobby.
I really don’t have the words to describe how happy, honored and grateful I am for this. I could not imagine, way back in 2016 when I out of a whim made Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and started delving into the Indie and OSR scenes that it would one day come to this. Thank you everyone who has welcomed me in any way in this hobby. Thank you who give my games and adventures a chance. Thank you who like my art, my style and my incoherent babble once in a while!
Please, if you want to know more about Halls of the Blood King, there are many things you can do, I will list just a few!
Listen to Fear of the Black Dragon’s episode on which they review the adventure and analyze it with keen eyes! This is one of my favorite podcasts of all time and it was a gift when they looked over something I made!
Bryce Lynch review of Halls of the Blood King over his famous and rigorous blog! He is very rigorous and praised the adventure very highly! It made into his “The Best” list!
Jason Cordova form The Gauntlet has a very cool actual play of Halls of the Blood King using Trophy Gold, their narrative game with Old School influences! It’s a great watch!
Finally, if you want to purchase this module, you can get the PDF at DriveThruRPG and physical copies at Exalted Funeral!
And as always, follow me at @diogo_oldskull both at Twitter and Instagram, and Old Skull Publishing at Facebook to keep up with I am working on at the moment (more news soon)! Ah, and take a look at the stuff I made here!
Congrats again! 😀 It’s awesome and you deserve it ~