ENnies Gold MedalThe 2015 ENnie Award Nominations and Judges’ Spotlight Winners were announced this morning. The list of nominees covers roleplaying games and related items that were released between May 1, 2014 and April 30, 2015. This year’s list was developed by a panel of five judges who have no professional ties to any game publisher. The nominees will be voted on by the public between July 4th and July 14th.

This year, the ENnie Award committee commissioned a physical medal to be awarded, created by Campaign Coins and designed by Daniel Solis. (Image from Daniel’s blog on the right.)

Each category in the awards has five nominees, except for Product of the Year, which has ten. Interestingly, the Mass Effect RPG, a fan-created unofficial game based on EA and Bioware’s popular video game, was nominated for three awards: Best Electronic Book, Best Free Product, and Product of the Year.

The award was created in 2001, hosted by EN World (originally a Dungeons & Dragons message forum and fan site) and a fan-run D&D 3rd Edition news site. The awards quickly moved from D&D and d20 System related products to covering tabletop roleplaying games and is now a major award in the industry. The ENnies are awarded at Gen Con Indy.

The full slate of nominees are available at the ENnie Awards website.