I'm delighted to announce that Hal and Roger's Creature Compendium has been nominated for an ENNIE award in the Best Monster/Adversary section.
Having now entered twice and received a win last year for Abracadabra and now the nomination this year for Hal and Roger I am humbled and delighted.
I have no expectation of winning the award this time, the voting process works against me as whilst my supporters are beautifully supportive and encouraging they are far fewer in numbers than the other parties in the category. And that's fine, I'm totally cool with a nomination.
As those of you who have read Hal and Roger's will know, I based those characters off the characters in the classic Willard Price adventure book series. Mine are a loving homage to those characters as I remember them from my childhood.
Roger is the younger brother, a little green around the gills when it comes to the way of the world, (especially when it comes to women) but a kind heart and capable mage.
Hal is older, takes his role as being responsible for the missions and Roger quite seriously and can be a little uptight. Sometimes to his downfall. He also has less magic.
(At some point I'm going to stat them up fully.)
Whilst their job for the readers is to introduce new creatures I personally enjoy their adventures, and occasional misadventures probably more than the new creatures themselves. I do try to rein that in though as their reports are the creature features of each issue of The Oracle magazine and it's important the articles don't lose their focus. It might be one day I will try my hand at long fiction and Hal and Roger might be contenders for that.
I like to think, that if these fictional brothers knew that their creature reports had been award nominated they would be pleased. And I like to think that Willard Price, an author who kept writing into his 90's (that's inspirational to me) would also approve.
If you haven't voted and you would like to then the link is below. A '1' vote is the highest score (seems backwards to me but never mind). Some of those other publications also look good and you might want to track them down.
In celebration of the nomination I am also discounting the PDF in the store:
Volume 2 of Hal and Roger will be released in September. It's sitting in draft form with a few gaps in the bestiary which we are working on currently.
So well done to the brothers. All that adventuring paid off.
Until next time, stay safe and keep gaming. Stephen