Anybody have examples of swim lane flow charts that look better than this?

I'm using a Swimlane structure for an overview of Do's turn order, but I can't find many references that don't either look barebones or garish.

So, the 2009 Ennie Award Nominations are out this morning:

http://www.ennie-awards.com/nominations/nominees.asp

As someone on Twitter said, my fingerprints are all over 'em. This is good, because I like the Ennies, and it's really great when the Ennies like me back. I'm already a proud papa lately, but this magnifies the feeling, and for my other 'babies' to boot. :)

Evil Hat's Nominations

• Best Writing - Don't Lose Your Mind
  
• Best Setting - Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
  
• Product of the Year - Don't Lose Your Mind
  
• Product of the Year - Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

One Bad Egg's Nominations

• Best Electronic Book - The Death Mother
  
• Best Electronic Book - Hard Boiled Armies

I declare TRIUMPH with chadu at this point, since we went back and forth on the presentation of the Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies' setting so much, and lo and behold a BEST SETTING nomination. Yes, I'm jazzed as all hell for having two entries on Product of the Year (out of 10), but the setting nod is the real marker there as ultimate validation of the goal we had in producing S7S.

And Ben Baugh getting BEST WRITING for his work on Don't Lose Your Mind? Well, yeah. He did such wonderful things with language and vignettes and all that in DLYM, I would have been sorely disappointed if that hadn't gotten a specific nod, too.

The One Bad Egg stuff is a happy thing, finally, as that's the place where I actually wrote some stuff this year instead of doing higher-level production and layout stuff. I'm a little startled that Armies and Mother beat out Cultures (Cultures has been a consistent strong seller) for nomination, but they're both results from me working at the top of my game at OBE, so I'm pretty tickled.

It doesn't stop there, though, as I look towards the question of "What non-Fred IPR-carried products got the nod?"

IPR Nominations

• Best Cover Art - 3:16 (BoxNinja)
  
• Best Interior Art - HELLAS (Khepera)
  
• Best Interior Art - Mouse Guard (Archaia)
  
• Best Writing - Hot War (Contested Ground)
  
• Best Production Values - Mouse Guard (Archaia)
  
• Best Production Values - HELLAS (Khepera)
  
• Best Rules - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7)
  
• Best Setting - Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (Arc Dream)
  
• Best Setting - Hot War (Contested Ground)
  
• Best Podcast - Voice of the Revolution (IPR!)
  
• Best Game - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7)
  
• Product of the Year - Mouse Guard (Archaia)
  
• Product of the Year - Starblazer Adventures (Cubicle 7)

I'm mixed, of course, in my feelings about Mouse Guard. Mouse Guard is a fine work, worth the nods it has gotten (and more that it curiously didn't). But Luke and I are on the outs (something I don't really want to talk about, but also don't want to pretend isn't true) after he decided that it was more important to spit in my face than accept an apology for a big goof-up I made earlier this year. As such, I am doubtful that I'll be continuing The Summer Revolution past this year, and am on the fence as to whether I'll use that promotional site this year at all, since it was based on a partnership with Luke, and Luke's temper makes him a poor partner for me. I might be giving Mouse Guard some vote love, but that love's all for Archaia at this point.

Anyway, enough of that drama.

Overall, that's a pretty good spread. It's a great spread from the Evil Hat perspective, too, given that Starblazer Adventures is based on the Spirit of the Century SRD, but I'm also intrigued that IPR's catalog includes three of the five Best Setting nods, given that I think there's a sort of general perception out there that "indie means setting light". I'm sad that Master Plan isn't on the Podcast list, but Ryan's influence is still strongly felt, as he's been doing the audio production on Voice of the Revolution, which has improved the show's quality in all sorts of subtle-but-palpable ways. Don't Lose Your Mind author Ben Baugh is getting some love for Candlewick, too, which is good & just; he's probably one of my top five setting authors these days anyway, and it's *hard* to get me to love setting writing.

In the end sum, it's important to realize that in one very big way, the Ennies are already done for us (speaking in the smaller EHP/OBE sense, and in the larger IPR sense). Nominations are hard-won and carefully considered by the judges each year, but the voting is in the hands of the general public. It's particularly hard getting actual wins from that everyone-in-the-world vote; our catalogs do their best work not in quantity, but in quality, so to some extent creating the product familiarity necessary to garner a vote is the biggest obstacle of all.

So when you hear folks on the above list say things like, "It's an honor just to be nominated" -- and it is! -- listen a little closer. That nomination they're talking about is a win all by itself.

Edit: Chad's post: http://chadu.livejournal.com/743514.html

Second Edit: Somehow I failed to mention I did the layout on Starblazer Adventures, so I have an actually-palpable connection to that product beyond contributing to the SRD on which it's based.

Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies has been nominated for two 2009 ENnie Awards:

Best Setting and Product of the Year!

Other fine product nominees, for each category, include:

Best Setting
* The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor, Arc Dream Publishing
* Hot War, Contested Ground Studio
* Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, Paizo Publishing
* Slipstream, Studio 2 Publishing

...and...

Product of the Year
* Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods, Fantasy Flight Games
* Don't Lose Your Mind, Evil Hat Productions
* Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook, Wizards of the Coast
* Hunter: The Vigil, White Wolf
* Mouse Guard, Kunoichi/Archaia
* Scion: Ragnarok, White Wolf
* A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, Green Ronin
* Starblazer Adventures, Cubicle 7 Entertainment, Ltd
* Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Wizards of the Coast

As ever, it is an honor to be nominated.

Full list of nominees in all categories here.

Voting begins on July 24th!

[This post is part of a series examining Archipelago 2 and what parts of that game might help solve some issues in Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Previously: Ritual Phrases]

Destiny Points
Archipelago: Destiny points are an end in your character's story that you will reach by the end of the game.You actually know how your story will end right from the start, so the rest of the session is about how those events come to pass. From the text, it sounds kind of like an in media res or "Coming up next, on Archipelago..." technique

Do: I've got something kind of like this in the current draft of Do.

A while back, I was trying to think of a way to reflect a pilgrim's adventures changing her a little bit at a time; growing into the adult she will become.

If you recall, the first word of your temple name is called your Banner and it represents how you get into trouble. The second word is your Avatar and it represents how you help people. At the end of each session, your little choices will culminate into one big change for your character: The Banner or the Avatar will change.

In other words, your character's experiences on each world will change how she helps people or how she gets into trouble. What that new word might be depends on what happened in the story. For example, let's say the following events occurred in the story.

---

Trouble: Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird is unconscious, probably something in the mysterious elixir she accepted from the spooky merchant.

Resolution: Pilgrim Daniel the Fluffy Curl uses his voluminous hair to lift Liz's body in the path of a lightning storm. The mystical powers of the storm flood her body with a powerful energy, resurrecting her!

New Trouble: The lightning and the elixir had an unexpected combined side effect. Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird is now a zombie with a thirst for living flesh. Yes, thirst. She prefers smoothies.

---

So those are the events that happen in the story. If in the course of the gameplay the player had chosen to keep more black stones than white stones, her character's Banner would change at the end of the session.

Pilgrim Liz the Little Bird becomes Pilgrim Liz the Zombie Bird. Instead of getting into trouble by being small, she now gets into trouble by being one of the living dead.

In Archipelago's destiny points, you know what will happen. In Do, you know you're going to change, but you don't quite know how. Is this is a specialized, dichotomous Destiny Point or something totally different?