And The Winners Are In!

Folks, last year's contest was...anemic, at best...it kinda cast a dark shadow over the whole year for me, with the seeming lack of interest and overall dip in blog traffic.

This year saw a record shattering 109 entries, and this year's Top Six is already the 6th most read post in the history of my blog. Additionally, the response to my other posts have been pretty amazing, so I am trying to get back on my Tuesday-Friday blog schedule and pump out not only reviews, but Tommy's Thoughts on some RPG topics and maybe some homebrew stuff...so thank you to everyone that reads this blog.

Next, a point of clarification: The D&D Player's Handbook was never a prize entered in the contest. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure prize support from Wizards of the Coast on that one, but I never predicate my Top Six on publisher support...I believe that's disingenuous, even if it means I have fewer prizes to give away.

So, that being said, our five winners are, as determined by the Invisible Castle dice roller:

Accursed - Thomas Shook
ETU - Rich Spainhour
Fiasco - Mike Dale
Firefly - Empress
Tianxia - Greg Kerner

Thank you again to everyone that entered this contest, and to my wonderful sponsors: Melior Via, Pinnacle Entertainment, Bully Pulpit Games, Margaret Weis Productions and Vigilance Press...this is my favorite thing to do every year, and if I had more prizes to give, I would give every one of you a prize!

Finally, thank you so much to everyone that still reads this little blog. I do this for the love of the game, and it always thrills me when someone tells me I helped introduce them to something they never heard of or never would have tried on their own.

Here's hoping for a productive 2015!

Tommy

Tommy's Top Six of 2014 and Birthday Blog Giveaway

It's that time of year, in which I look back on the games I reviewed and played over the last year, and I pick out the six that were, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the rest, and worthy of your dollars.

The rules, as arbitrarily decided by me: 1) Only one product per publisher. 2) My primary exposure to the product has to have been between December 1st of last year through November 30th of this year, regardless of publication date. I don't watch my TV shows on the same day, or even week, that they air and I don't always buy and/or read books immediately upon release. 3) I can't have any involvement in the production of the book.

I have done this four times before:

Tommy's Top Six of 2010
Tommy's Top Six of 2011
Tommy's Top Six of 2012
Tommy's Top Six of 2013

This year, I have even put my money where my mouth is and purchased physical copies of all six books on my list.

Spoiler Warning: These are my Top Six.

Here they are, in alphabetical order, with six reasons why I selected each:

Tommy's Take on Tianxia: Blood, Silk & Jade

Used to be, this would have been a hard sell for me...but more and more I've been getting my martial arts geek on, and given my new found interest in Fate, I wound up backing the Tianxia Kickstarter, a martial arts setting and sourcebook for Fate Core by Vigilance Press! Before I get started, I do have to offer a huge shoutout to my blogging colleague Jay Steven Anyong, who is doing a great Let's Study series on Tianxia over on his blog.