2023 ENNIE Awards: ‘Broken Tales’ Nominated For Best Adventure
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
It’s that time of year again. The 2023 ENNIEs are upon us, and I for one am delighted. For those who may not be familiar, the ENNIE Awards are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. What I love most about the Ennies is that they give game designers, creators, artists, and writers recognition for the tireless hours and creative genius that they put into their work.
Created in 2001, the awards have grown and expanded from online award recognition to an annual ceremony in Indianapolis Indiana at Gen Con. As the ENNIES have stated, “With award categories recognizing the components that make a game great, to the types of products fans have come to love, categories for fan-based websites and much more, the ENNIES are the best way for fans to acknowledge outstanding effort from and to say “thank you” to the creators, publishers, designers and artists who make this hobby great.”
To be awarded an ENNIE, or even get a nomination, is a huge honor for someone who creates in the TTRPG space, and easily one of our highest honors in the industry.
I’m going to do my best to provide you with insight into all the projects who have been nominated starting with the Best Adventure category.
The first nomination in the 2023 ENNIE Best Adventure category is Broken Tales, published by The World Anvil and written by Alberto Tronchi, with illustrations by Daniel Comeric translations by Annalisa Zaniboni, and edited by Natascia Cortesi and Sean Newton.
Kickstarted by 1,900 backers who pledged €122,128 to help bring it to life, Broken Tales is dark fairytale-themed TTRPG based on the Monad Echo rule system. A system that is far less crunchy or rules-heavy than TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. The Monad Echo system tends to only apply rules to the game when absolutely necessary leaning very heavily on narrative building, group storytelling, and the role-playing aspects of tabletop… well… role-playing games.
Broken Tails firmly sets itself in a dark European fairytale setting where the players work at the pleasure of the Papacy to investigate and eliminate threats that are unable to be explained by logic or science. The Secret Order that the players become part of is made up of the villains from various fairytales and fables, now serving as protagonists in a reality sculpted child’s wish to see villains find redemption.
The game is very stylish and has a ton of wow factor. I mean they put this thing out with a record like a slipcase and the art evokes this very modern and moody fable-punk kind of feel. I don’t have a copy yet, but everything I have researched and seen about it gives me the impression this is the kind of game you could put on a streaming channel or do fan art for and get a ton of eyes on your work.
Another aspect of Broken Tales that seems really fun to me is that when you run a game you can have the options for a few styles of play.
There is a “Tell Me a Story” mode that is useful when you want to play a single game scenario out. You pick one of the scenarios in the book and then the players select their pre-generated Hunters and can pretty much start play immediately. Each Scenario can be run by the Storyteller following a sequence of premade Scenes that would be fairly uncomplicated and suitable for beginners, or in an improvisational gameplay style that reacts dynamically to the Hunters’ actions.
There is also a “The Storybook” mode that is for more long-term campaigns where the scenarios connect. The players in “The Storybook” mode are able to freely move around the map and interact with the sandbox world of Broken Tales, deciding each time which locations to explore and what storylines to follow.
I can’t even begin to count how many broody moody stylish fairytale cos-plays and prints I have seen over the years and this feels like it takes the best aspects of all of them and folds in a fun TTRPG system that is perfect for those who don’t want to learn a bunch of rules just jump into the group storytelling and table vibes. It just feels like something cool.
You can vote for Broken Tales, and all this year’s other ENNIE Awards nominees, over at this link.
Until next time, I hope you find the table you are looking for.
