I would like to take this opportunity to invite members of the Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 communities to consider volunteering to join the Academy for Modding Excellence, or AME.
For those who may not know, the AME is a group of community players, builders, and reviewers who are dedicated to RPG “modding.” We award the annual Golden Dragon Awards, or GDAs, in recognition of excellence in module and custom content design for NWN and NWN2. Our members turn their passion for NWN modding, including playing, building and reviewing modules and custom content, into an opportunity to support the players, and to give recognition to the content creators, who keep this great community alive.
Despite the aging of the NWN communities, we in the AME believe that these games still have some life and interest left in them. We also believe that the AME mission would be a valuable one to at least consider expanding at some point in the future to other moddable games, such as Bioware’s Dragon Age. For the last couple of years, however, the AME roster has been declining due to members moving on from the community or to other projects, and to fewer new members joining each year. This has made it increasingly difficult for us to meet our goals for awarding the GDAs — especially for NWN2, which we had to forego entirely last year due to lack of particpation. For that reason, I would like to take this opportunity to issue a special appeal to members of the NWN and NWN2 communities to consider joining the AME, and helping us to maintain what we consider to be a valuable community tradition: awarding the AME Golden Dragon Awards for Achievements in Modding Excellence.
One of the perennial responses that we’ve always received to invitations to join the AME has been that, while interesting, it sounded like it would be more work than they could afford the time for. In past years, this has been a legitimate concern: the AME has had an often considerable workload, especially with the sometimes limited number of members available to do it. So upon re-assuming the Chairman’s position earlier this year, I undertook to reorganize the AME’s rules and procedures to try to make them significantly more friendly toward potential members who would like to participate in the awards, but who may have limited time with which to do so. I believe that with these changes, helping to fulfill the AME mission is something that individuals with limited time would be able to undertake effectively.
To help explain how the AME and its new procedures work, I’ve posted the following summary:
Overview for Prospective Members of The Academy For Modding Excellence (AME)
The basics are fairly straightforward. The AME maintains a running “queue” of award categories that are currently being worked on, which move through several stages — starting with “Nominations,” then proceeding to “Finals,” and finally to “Awarded.” At the end of each quarter, each award category is checked for eligibility to move from one stage to the next. For example, a category with four or more nominations having three or more seconding votes each will have the top three nominees proceed to the finals. Members can work on whatever categories they are interested in, with whatever time they have available. Which awards proceed through the stages to being finally awarded, and at what pace, will depend on member interests and choices regarding which categories to work on. Categories include things like “Best Storytelling Module,” “Best Custom Content,” “Debut Author,” and so on.
Member eligibility for the AME basically depends on having some experience as a player, builder, or reviewer for one of the games and some of the categories that the AME covers. The main qualifications for membership are:
- A genuine enthusiasm for the game and modding community that they serve;
- Experience as a player, builder, or reviewer of modding content for their game; and
- An ability to carry out the AME’s mission of giving awards for modding excellence in a responsible and trustworthy manner.
I hope that some of you will consider volunteering to join the AME. If anyone is interested in or has questions about the AME or about AME membership, please feel free to email me (at andarian at ame-gda dot net), or to post followups here, or on our forum thread:
Sincerely,
Andarian
Current Chairman, The Academy for Modding Excellence