The Nineteenth Annual People's Choice Awards
Welcome to the 19th Annual People's Choice Awards, also known as The Deadlies! 
It's time to announce the winners for 2023!
Technical Design Excellence in Scripting
Stalwart Academy by Kieran Millar
What might come off as a themed beginner hold turns into something a bit more serious, and the scripting that allows some of the rooms to be reused makes an efficient use of space and story telling. Cutscenes and special room transitions are also well done, making playing this hold a satisfying experience for any enjoyer of RPG.
Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics
A Walk in the Park by Pavol
While DROD is an incredible puzzle game, the ability to not only make devious puzzles but also make them look nice is something that a lot of architects overlook. The fact that this hold looks as good as it does, especially when coming from an architect's first released hold, is quite the impressive feat. Hopefully it's a sign of more good things to come from Pavol in the future.
Technical Design Excellence in Concept
A Walk in the Park by Pavol
Sometimes a simple premise is all you need to make things interesting. "
Keep off the grass."
A Walk in the Park offers puzzles that play differently if you step on any of the grass tiles. Simple to understand, but fun to play around.
Creative Design Excellence in Storyline
Stalwart Academy by Kieran Millar
While stories are largely optional in the context of DROD, they can add a lot to the experience. Stalwart Academy's narrative does a lot to make this hold stand out, with the academy in particular providing a solid reason for the player to be playing and going through the trouble of clearing out the bosses in this hold.
Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty
Fendik's Fortress by mauvebutterfly
Normally I'd expect the DROD community to churn out a number of hard holds, but for some reason Fendik's Fortress ended up being the only high-difficulty offering of 2023, so it wins by default. Fendik's Fortress consists of multiple levels, each of which uses randomly selected elements and interactions, giving it a good amount of variety.
Creative Design Excellence in Entertainment
Stalwart Academy by Kieran Millar
While it's not exactly an easy hold, Stalwart Academy's difficulty should be approachable to most DROD RPG players. As is typical of DROD RPG there are choices you can make that will make your experience harder for yourself, and early optimisation will help to carry you through the lategame, but the balance is good enough here that things should never feel impossible or trivial.
DROD Hold of the Year
Fendik's Fortress by mauvebutterfly
Fendik's Fortress is a fairly large hold that explores a number of different themes. Some of the
Random Idea Generator's prompts were unpleasant to work with, but the finished result proved satisfying enough to win hold of the year, so perseverance paid off in this case.
DROD RPG Level Set of the Year
Stalwart Academy by Kieran Millar
Stalwart Academy demonstrates a solid understanding of RPG. It puts the player on an adventure, presents the player with multiple options/paths for getting through the levels, and has a satisfying sense of progression. It's long enough that careful planning early on can lead to payoffs in the end, but it's not so long that the player will feel overwhelmed if restoring to an earlier point to make different choices or to optimise their stats better. Stalwart Academy is a very enjoyable RPG experience.
Novice Architect Award
mauvebutterfly
Mauvebutterfly released his first two solo holds this year: Fendik's Fortress and Quake & Quail. Both holds explored unusual topics; Fendik's Fortress made use of a random idea generator, and Quake & Quail was a defence only RPG hold. According to user ratings, the former ended up working out a lot better than the latter. The architect has ideas for more holds, including several works in progress, so hopefully he'll actually get around to working on them sometime and give the DROD community more DROD content in the future.
Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement
Rabscuttle
Rabscuttle is a skilled veteran of DROD at this point who has been knocking out high scores and doing testing and Hold Administrator work behind the scenes for years. Rabscuttle also occasionally makes enjoyable DROD holds for us to play, and this award is in recognition of the quality of his architecture. Being good at playing DROD and being good at making DROD rooms are two different things, but Rabscuttle demonstrates mastery at both.
Best Community Contributor
Dragon Fogel
Have you been keeping your eye on that progress bar at the top of the DROD website? The long anticipated Entry Point project is nearing its completion, and while there are a number of things that go into making a good DROD hold, one of the most important is testing. Dragon Fogel has been tirelessly playing through and giving feedback on the entirety of this massive hold. He did a video playthrough that showed a bunch of issues that have since been fixed. He also helped to push things along during periods of relative inactivity. Oh, and he made some cool levels for the project. Without Dragon Fogel's contributions, there is no way that this hold would be potentially releasing this year, and it might not be an exaggeration to say that without Dragon Fogel this hold might not be releasing at all. Thank you for your work.
Best DROD Video Presentation
Chaco and Kieran Millar
We voted on the best video presenter once, and these two individuals rose to the top. We voted a second time, and they both still had an equal number of votes. It's safe to say that they both make good DROD content and are well worth checking out. In 2023 Chaco did a playthrough of his Smitemaster's Selection Treacle Stew, which is a fantastic hold about gel. Kieran Millar is the unsung hero of RPG testing, giving valuable video feedback to architects while also providing insightful commentary on what makes RPG fun. Congratulations to them both.
That concludes the Deadlies for 2023, a year that saw a lot of DROD RPG represented in the awards. It's nice to see that the DROD community is still going strong after all these years, and there are several exciting things in the works already for the near future. 2024 will hopefully see the release of Entry Point, and 2025 has promised DROD RPG 2. New holds have already been released in 2024 (it's already August after all) so there's always more to do. Here's to more years of DRODing.
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106th Skywatcher
[Last edited by mauvebutterfly at 08-23-2024 11:39 PM]
