The ENNIE awards ceremony gives game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve and we are grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of it each year. It's always an honor to be nominated and to receive support from fans and fellow creators.
The 2025 ENNIE Awards were an amazing year for us! We had an incredible 14 nominations 🤯. We were so absolutely thrilled that 7 of these nominations won awards! We work with many talented creators, have such wonderful supporters and we truly thank everyone again for voting last year to make that happen!
Let's check out some of those winners and nominees!
“The Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets” in this lighthearted fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about exploration, discovery, and being creative!
Land of Eem, winner of THREE 2025 Ennie Awards!
🥇 Best Family Game/ Product! 🥈 Best Production Values! 🥇 Best Monster/ Adversary!
2026 Origins Award Winner for Best Roleplaying Game!
Land of Eem, created by Ben Costa and James Parks, is a game of whimsical, colorful characters exploring a wondrous world full of danger and discovery. Set in the fantasy world of the graphic novel series Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, and the book series Dungeoneer Adventures, Land of Eemis easy to learn and packed with rules and resources that make playing and running the game a breeze.
Rules That Support Creativity Land of Eem emphasizes player creativity and collaborative storytelling, with character abilities that allow players to invent and shape the world around them. The game is more about roleplaying, teamwork, exploration, and finding lost treasures, than it is about always fighting monsters--though that's definitely part of the game!
A Rich, Expansive World The Mucklands Sandbox brings a massive realm to life with a hexcrawl map, perfect for emergent gameplay. It's filled with so many characters, adventure seeds and ideas that GMs can use it with any RPG system or simply as inspiration for their own campaigns.
400+ pages
6 Regions with unique biomes
140+ Locations (Settlements, Sites, Zones, Points of Interest, and Lairs)
450+ NPCs (all with illustrations)
40+ Factions
500+ Rumors
400+ Quests
70+ Heroic Titles that characters can earn
Full Color Bestiary Land of Eem is chock full of original and classic fantasy foes, each with an unusual spin on traditional tropes.
190 Creatures, Critters, and Creepers
Super simple stat blocks
Unique, succinct abilities to make GMing painless
Advice on how to roleplay adversaries during social encounters and run them during combat
Free Month of Patreon with any Land of Eem Pledge!
Pledge for any reward containing a Land of Eem item and unlock a free month of our official Patreon, which contains a trove of content including:
New Classes: The Wizard, Witch, Tycoon, Unicorn, and Inventor
The Profession System: 150+ new Abilities to further customize your characters
Magic Items: 200 new items to expand Treasure Hoards
Points of Interest: Illustrated adventure sites you can drop into any campaign
Heroes and Fiends: Complex NPCs to beef up your campaign
Paper Minis for all 25 Adversaries in the Core Rulebook
After the campaign, we'll send a link to claim your free month!
Land of Eem: Beginners RPG for Kids + Underlands Expansion - COMING SOON!
Dungeoneer Adventures Beginners RPG—an easy, fun, family game—plus The Underlands Sandbox, a brand new setting for Land of Eem. Pre-order here!
Join Tiger Wizard and Beckett July 9th at 1pm ET on Coffee & Coffins where their guests this week are Ben Costa and James Parks, creators of Land of Eem!
His Majesty the Worm, winner of TWO 2025 ENNIE Awards!
🥈 Best Game! 🥈 Best Rules!
The forest's thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground. With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones.
"Why, where have you brought me, Fool? This is a cemetery!" And the Fool says, pointing to the invertebrate fauna feeding in the graves: "Here a monarchy reigns, mightier than you..."
A new-school game with old-school sensibilities: a classic megadungeon experience given fresh life through a focus on the mundanities and small moments of daily life inside the dungeon.
His Majesty the Worm is a tabletop roleplaying game designed for dungeon crawling written by Josh McCrowell and published by Exalted Funeral. The Game Master is given tools to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element.
Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.
Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!
The game has robust procedures. Characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World.
The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Roleplaying drives the game forward.
Everything You Need to Play (Just Add a Tarot Deck!)
The game is intended for a traditional setup between a single GM and 3-6 players. It emphasizes long-term, Metroidvania-like play. The book is 404 pages long, split up over 10 chapters and 5 appendices. The print edition is silver foil stamped and has a ribbon bookmark. The digital edition is thoroughly cross-linked, with a robust index. It is a complete game with everything you need in one tome (just add a tarot deck).
Created by Josh McCrowell Published by Exalted Funeral Press
404 pages, hardcover, A4 size, black and white throughout, silver foil stamped cover, a ribbon bookmark. Instant PDF access included.
A space to play your tarot cards as you crawl the infinite Underworld in search for…HIS MAJESTY THE WORM
Because His Majesty the Worm uses tarot cards as randomizers, we flipped the traditional GM screen around and put it in the middle of the table.
Whereas a GM screen hides information, a Divination Board puts it on full display. Each folding, double-sided board has all the reference material your table needs—one for the GM, one for the players.
The GM Board covers the procedures that drive the game forward:
The Disposition Wheel guides roleplaying the Underworld's various denizens
Monster-specific rules for the Challenge Phase, including the Mob Rule and Morale
All the game's effects
Bonus: The graphics help you track the state of The Castle Automatic!
The Player Board puts the principles of play in plain sight for everyone at the table:
How and when to charge your Bonds
The Challenge Actions—all the different actions, suits, and card values
References for tests of fate
Rules for torchlight
Constructed from heavy-weight cardstock built to withstand years of play, the boards lay flat on the table like a tarot cloth. They create a sacred circle for play to keep the cards turning and the game moving.
Two boards, each containing 2 A4 size horizontal panels, printed in black and white on both sides. Instant PDF access included.
The Castle Automatic's great gears sat still for an age. Now, His Majesty the Worm has begun the machines again…
What is The Castle Automatic?
The Castle Automatic is a 100+ room, 5-level Metroidvania-style dungeon designed for use with His Majesty the Worm, the 2x ENNIE-winning, tarot-based RPG. In the module, players will repair magi-mechanical engines that control the castle's sun, moon, weather, and seasons to overcome its deadly challenges.
Use it as an entire campaign! If you're new to His Majesty the Worm, you can get started with just this dungeon, the core book, and a single tarot deck! Or, slot it into your personal Underworld, expanding the core game with all new talents, monsters, dungeon lords, and magical treasures.
Importantly, The Castle Automatic is easy to run. Puzzles, traps, and combat sites are illustrated and included as handouts to be shown during play. The GM has a dungeon tracking sheet to monitor the castle's current state: mechanisms broken and repaired, time of day and year, and current factions in play. With maps for the GM, for the players, and included on every dungeon spread, it's easy to understand the sprawling space.
New to His Majesty the Worm? Want a ready-made dungeon to get started with? The Castle Automatic is for you!
This dungeon has it all
A reason to explore: Four magical artifacts are locked inside the castle—each is powerful enough that the factions of the City would give anything an adventurer wanted to get their hands on one. Also, adventurers can meet mentors to learn all new talents!
A reason to experiment: The Castle Automatic's magical engines are broken. Adventuring guilds can repair them to change its seasons, the weather, and the day/night cycle to overcome different challenges and unlock new sections of the dungeon.
A reason to talk: The dungeon is controlled by competing factions of golems, ancient giants who once ruled this place, and the otherworldly vampires who stole it from them.
A reason to fight: The module contains fully illustrated combat zones with new creatures and dungeon lords, including a wyvern, a shapeshifting vampiric hierophant, and four mechanical kings.
A reason to be surprised: Illustrated puzzles and traps let enterprising players balance risk and reward as they explore five interconnected levels.
A reason to breathe easy: GMs have lots of conveniences—handouts, maps, and indices—to make running as easy as possible.
A reason to return: With 100+ rooms, there's plenty of content to sustain an entire campaign of His Majesty the Worm.
The Team:
Josh McCrowell is obsessed with dungeons. In addition to His Majesty the Worm, he wrote a step-by-step guide to help GMs create dungeons that are fun and engaging. The Castle Automatic is a manifestation of his dungeon-design philosophy.
Interior fantasy art is provided by Marcin and Felipe Faria. Puzzles, boss fights, and traps illustrated by Tiger Wizard. Cover art by Strega Wolf. Cartography (player map, GM map, and minimap) illustrated by Guy Pradel.
Published by Exalted Funeral Press
Approx 150 pages, A4, black and white interior and cover.
Instant PDF access included. Art, dungeon tracker assets, and maps are also included as separate assets so GMs can easily distribute them to their players and display them during the game.
🏆 Best Production Value! 🏆 Best Layout and Design!
To the North is an ocean without water.
Boats built of bone and sinew slice across the grey waves, Mountains form islands in a sea of Ash and cinder. hunting the strange fauna and one another.
Once a forest, a verdant proliferation of green. Then came the Arsonist, and with her came fire.
The conflagration lasted a year and left a sea of Ash, smothering more than the forest could ever have hoped to —enough to choke the Basilisks themselves.
Tephrotic Nightmares is hexcrawl adventure campaign for MÖRK BORG written by Luke Gearing and with art and design by Johan Nohr. It's edited by Jarrett Crader.
Gather your crew, set sail and embark upon the grey waves with a sharpened blade and a mouthful of ash.
Contains:
Tephrotic Nightmares - 160 pages, hardcover, open spine binding, black ink edges
GM-facing map of the Sea (A4 size)
Player-facing map of the Sea (A2 size)
Ship combat hex map (A3 size)
Ship combat chits (punch-out cardboard chits)
Exposed spine: The Arsonist's fires burned this book, exposing its spine like a gaping, blackened wound. This enables the book to lay flat on the table.
Sear-sealed texts: Tephrotic Nightmares' page edges are soaked in black ink which has dried to form a sealing crust, requiring you to tear it open. Either page by page or by grabbing the whole thing and breaking it like you would a human spine. If you want to read this book, you have to first defeat it.
We live on a dead God that is slowly decomposing...
We do not know what was before the Dead God, but one thing is certain: we were born on a sacred corpse floating in the universal ether and slowly decomposing. Everything that lived before the great God was forgotten with its death.
From the decomposing body of this immense being brought life; its blood formed the seas that bathe the coasts, its skin became the land, deserts, and mountains. And from its tears, rivers and lakes were born. The insects were the first inhabitants who walked this putrid land and through the infinite power emanating from within they evolved into insectoids; new beings with powers far superior to those of their ancestors.
The different species of insectoids organized themselves into tribes, cities, and kingdoms during a period of peace, leading to an age of discovery. The explorers gradually created a map of the lands they inhabited, discovering they lived upon a divine corpse.
Settlers of a Dead God is a setting for the Old School Essentials roleplaying game that can be easily adapted to a multitude of systems.
This new book is a comprehensive guide for embarking on adventures in the land of the Dead God, encompassing 96 pages with artwork, detailed descriptions, and new rules tailored for exploring this mysterious setting.
Inside the book you will find:
Geography of the Dead God
History and cities of the World
19 new Creatures
Full description of the interior of the Dead God
6 playable Insectoid Species
New rules for stress and travelling
Introductory adventure: The horn of Goliathus Regius
96 page hardcover A5 book. Color cover and interior. Instant PDF access included.
The God is dead. But something inside still moves...
Whispers of a Dead God is the first issue in a zine series expanding the world of Settlers of a Dead God.
Within these pages lie new regions such as Luxaeterna and the Acne Mountains, tables to shape the endless rot, mutations, radiation, new mounts, playable races and creatures, and the countless cults and faiths born from divine decay. Explore the body of the Dead God, uncover relics carved from sacred flesh, and decide what faith means in a world built from its remains.
32 pages, A5 softcover, staple bound. Color cover and interior. Instant PDF access included.
Dolmenwood had been nominated for SIX ENNIE Awards this year! To celebrate we are giving an instant reward FREE PDF copy of the 2026 ENNIE Nominated Dolmenwood Campaign Book to any pledge level!
Exalted Funeralis an award-winning publisher and extensive online store of unique roleplaying games, zines, weird art, doom, horror, fantastic adventure, adorable family games (believe it or not!), obscure pop cultural references, old school revivals, brief corporate bios, and all that sort of thing. They have raised millions of dollars across many successful crowdfunding campaigns and brought a wide variety of unforgettable RPGs to game night such as Dolmenwood Tabletop RPG, Old-School Essentials Fantasy RPG Box Sets, Land of Eem, Our Golden Age, Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, Herbalist's Primer, and many more! Exalted Funeral was founded in 2018 by Cristin and Matt Kelley, two nerds always looking to bring horror, humor, and heavy metal to the party. Say hi and pick up a game at exaltedfuneral.com.
ENNIES EMPORIUM 2026
🗳️ CAST YOUR VOTE for the 2026 ENNIE Awards now through July 19th!
The ENNIE Awards(the “ENNIES”) are an annual, fan-driven celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying games. Dedicated to recognizing outstanding achievement, the ENNIES honor the designers, writers, artists, and publishers whose creativity and passion shape the hobby. As a true people’s choice award, final winners are determined by online votes from the global gaming community.
This year, in collaboration with BackerKit, nominees from 2025 are coming together to further celebrate all the amazing games and products that were part of the ENNIES last year by launching ready-to-ship projects featuring their dominated game/product.
MORE ABOUT THE ENNIES
Founded in 2001, the ENNIES began as an online awards program hosted by EN World, the leading D&D/d20 system fan site, in partnership with Eric Noah’s Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News. Originally owned by Russ Morrissey until 2019, the awards have grown alongside the hobby itself. What started as an internet-based recognition program has evolved into a prestigious annual awards ceremony held at Gen Con.
Over the years, the ENNIES have expanded beyond their d20 roots to celebrate excellence across the full spectrum of tabletop roleplaying games. With categories recognizing everything from core game components to beloved product types, fan-driven websites, and more, the ENNIES provide fans with a meaningful way to acknowledge exceptional work—and to say “thank you”—to the creators who make tabletop roleplaying games extraordinary.
Let’s celebrate these amazing creators one more time, and who knows, you may discover your new favorite game within.
