So I thought we’d get a jump on The Quarterlies this year so that we can more quickly resolve the question that is on everyone’s lips but is never answered: who let those gosh-darned dogs out? For 2023, in keeping with the unique times in which we live, we are going to change up the voting a bit, because I think, yes, it’s time.
Exclusive to this year, instead of voting for your top five games of 2023, you can vote for your top TEN games of 2023! BUT! There’s a catch! You don’t HAVE to vote for all ten games! For each of your spaces that you leave blank, you can “power up” your other votes by the sum of the points you didn’t assign to different games, using the reverse 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rubric. Let’s use a device called the “Example of Play” to illustrate:
Someone thinks that The Banished Vault is the legit best game of 2023, and The Invincible is the second best game. Not unreasonable! But they then forgo voting for places 3-10, and instead tally up those points: 8 for 3rd place, 7 for fourth, 6 for fifth, etc. If you get out Excel, you can calculate that this is 36 extra points. You can now “power” your top two choices by any combination of points that adds up to 36! So if you were sandbagging and really thought The Invincible was better than The Banished Vault, you could take 24 points and add it to The Invincible’s 9 points for 2nd place, and it would have a total of 33 points! Then you could use the remaining 12 points (remember, you had 36 extra to assign) and give it to The Banished Vault, which would result in that game having 22 total (those 12 plus the 10 points it got for 1st place on your list). That’s tricky!
BUT! You can also “save” points and not assign them to ANY game, and instead use them to try and reduce other people’s votes. To do this, every voter is assigned a Str, Dex, and Cha score (please PM me for yours before you vote) and then buys a weapon from the vendor and is assigned to an 8x8 grid where you face off directly against another voter and make a Heroic Feat Check to reduce the score of any game they voted for by the difference between your modified roll and their modified armor class. However, if you miss, your score is instead reduce by the same amount. If you roll a Critical Miss, ALL your votes are canceled, and you are prohibited from voting in subsequent Quarterlies for the next [d4^e] years.
Man, wouldn’t that be great? I think someone should license the Quarterlies from Tom Chick and make a serious autobattler in the style of the Old School. Like maybe Bauhaus. Someone please look into this. Anyway, we’ll just do it the same way this year as all the other times, as follows:
The Quarterlies are the Quarter to Three Year-End Awards for Best Game of [the year that just ended]. Here is how it works:
Rule 1 : Just list your top 5 games of 2023. Put your picks in order* (see below), so that this is a weighted choice. Your first pick will get 5 points, your fifth pick will get one. Popularity will be aggregated to come up with a final set of winners. Please provide commentary on your picks if you are at all inclined to do so. I will quote them in the wrap up for the winners.
Rule 2 : Any game–console, PC, mobile, etc–released in 2023 is eligible. Early Access games are eligible if they were “released” by going to version 1.0 in calendar 2023. Boardgames are fine. Tabletop RPGs are fine. If it’s a game, it counts, as long as it was first “released” in 2023. (Sorry, no “these are the games I played the most in 2023, even though some came out in 1998.”)
Rule 3 : Revisions to your original post are fine. Revisions as subsequent posts are not fine because that will make me legit crazy. Imma do this by hand. Please make it easier on a guy. Only your first post with votes counts, so don’t make a new post to change your votes. Don’t separate your list into multiple posts.
That’s it. We’re going off the rails on the crazy train.
Voting closes at 10:00 Eastern Standard Time (États-Unis) on Saturday, January 13th. That’s an extension because Brooski forgot he was on call Friday night.
(*)HOW TO VOTE
[a] All in a single post, you must post your votes on separate lines, with a number next to the place in your list you are assigning it. Please put a period and a space between the number and the bolded title.
[b] Bold your choices.
[c] You can put other stuff in your list, including discussion/explanation (which is encouraged) and stuff like platform but please do not bold anything other than the name of the game. Don’t even bold the platform, like (PC) . Here is an example from @jsnell that is still working after all these years. Amazing.
For reference, the “Year in gaming” article on wikipedia has been used before to clarify what was released in the calendar year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_video_games