The Awards 2026 judge announcement
The time has come,' the Coordinator said,
To talk of The Awards
Of judges -- self-noms -- and, at last,
Who will read submitted words
40 did their names advance
And 12 were finally chose.'
Thank god I can drop this self-imposed bit now to introduce our 12 judges for The Awards 2026.
Alexander Donovan is a Canadian TTRPG enthusiast who has run many campaigns in a myriad of systems. He received his MFA in Theatre Directing and has been involved in well over 50 productions as an actor, director, writer, and puppeteer.
Amanda Rivera (she/her) is a career creative who enjoys delightfully weird RPGs, improv-driven narratives, & reminding you we all have a story to tell. She volunteers with Tabletop Gaymers, UNPUB, & edits the podcast GDU: Inspiration to Publication.
Cat Green (she/her) @ihaveapencilbehindmyear is a game enthusiast and budding designer. She holds a MFA in Writing for Young Adults and Children, and her love of speculative fiction contributes to her fondness for the strange and unusual in TTRPGs.
Charles:
Avid TTRPG nerd since the ancient, forgotten, pre-plague year of 2019. Professional and devoted GM. Projected to die clutching a rulebook.
Nonbinary. Neurodivergent. Fil-Chi.
The entire woke agenda; The kid your mom warned you about.
Ennis Rook Bashe @rookthebird is an Elgin and Rhysling Award finalist and HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship-winning writer, game designer, and orange cat owner. They’ve worked as a therapeutic tabletop roleplaying game specialist and Big 5 sensitivity reader.
Gustavo Estrela writes at the brazilian site Movimento RPG, a Human Paladin 20/Artificer 7. Fry chicken lover and a ttrpg brazilian fan who breaks the language barries between countries. Trying to finish a rpg campaign, though.
Jahmal ‘Mad Jay' Brown is a Kansas City–based game designer, writer, podcaster, and software developer with more than two decades of experience building both digital tools and tabletop experiences. He is the founder of Digital Gnomes Software.
Janice Cheng (she/her), forever GM and intemperate TTRPG consumer. She loves games that take players by the hand and lead them somewhere hard to get to in real life without fuss or fancy. She grew up in Taipei, and enjoy sneaking pieces of my hometown into every game she runs.
KeganExe is a Washington DC Based TTRPG designer, artist, and streamer; and one of the co-owners of Indie TTRPG Publisher Plus One Exp.
Mids Meinberg is a TTRPG game theorist and designer, under the handle Goat Song Publishing. Mids has been playing games for over 35 years, but is very eager to explore the newest and strangest games out there.
R @kathanglangit is a schoolteacher, a martial artist, a mechanical engineer, a mechanics designer at Sword Isles Studios, and a strange little storyteller from SEA. Do those things not make sense in the same sentence? It's the stories in the details left unsaid.
Seraphina Garcia Ramirez is a trans woman born in Venezuela and living with joy in the USA, despite the best efforts of her enemies. She designs, edits, and writes about analog games, and recently served as a judge for the Indie Groundbreaker Awards.
Thank you to everyone who applied, and thank you to our 12 judges!
Now if you want these particular people to read your TTRPG-related thing published between 6/1/2024 and 5/31/2025, make sure to submit it here: https://theawards.games/?page_id=1143
