Canada Roles Awards - discuss
Canada Roles Awards
Joshua Kitz's draft 2026-01-12, minor updates 2026-01-21, 2026-02-07
Feedback is welcome from contributors. This post will be updated and the awards will have their own website in the future.
Purpose
To celebrate and recognize the work and achievements of Canadian RPG designers, writers, artists, and publishers.
Achieved through collaboration with conventions, retailers, distributors and customers across our great land.
To encourage the playing of Canadian made RPGs.
Principals and Eligibility
The creator's who's work is being honoured must be a Canadian citizen or Canadian resident.
Therefore:
- Art awards can be awarded to artists that are Canadians, regardless of the publisher's business address.
- Game design awards can be awarded to designers that are Canadians, regardless of the publisher's business address.
- In the case of, "Best Product" level award the Publisher is the recipient, and so the business must be Canadian.
Beyond the above, and potential award division for both EN and FR language awards, there is no favouritism based on a creator's background. Products are judged and voted on based solely on the contents of the product.
The awards are committed to being colour, belief, and gender blind. The work is evaluated solely on the content of the work itself.
In an ideal world, judges and voters would be unaware of any "segments" a creator falls into.
Zero edition, Ashcan, Preview and Prerelease Games are not eligible.
Award Categories:
For the first year, we plan to keep the awards to a streamlined four awards. Consisting of:
Visual Design: For art and layout of any RPG book. The recipient is the artist(s).
Rules Design: This category is for core rules of games meant to be played across multiple sessions. The recipient is the game designer(s) and author(s).
One Shot and Short Form: For games that are explicitly designed to be played in one session. This may be for a ~4 hours, or a short-form game of only 20-90 minutes. Recipient is the designer and writer.
Scenario or Supplement Design: Adventure writing and design as well as general supplement design. Recipient is the designer and writer.
Original brainstormed categories preserved in spoiler.
Proposed Award Categories:
Extended Play Award: a special award for titles that have proven themselves in long term campaigns. Therefore titles are not eligible for this award during their first year of release. This award is the only award that falls outside the standard time range. For the first awards titles will be eligible from 2019 onward.
One-shot + Short Form Award: for games explicitly designed for one shots. Includes short form games, that play in 1.5 hours or less. As well was ones that expect the more standard ~4 hours.
Scenario Award: this includes "scenario games" but also covers adventures for various system. Adventures can be written for non-Canadian game engines.
Supplement: large supplements which may include adventures, but are chiefly dedicated to other rules expansion or setting material. These can be written for non-Canadian game engines.
Solo Award: . . .
Core Rules Design: For new and bespoke game engines.
Rules Adaption: modification of a previously published design/engine.
Visual Design: awarded to the artist. (Three separate ones for layout, interior art, cover art feels like maybe to much, hence the current "Visual Design.")
Best Product: This award goes to the publisher. Quality rules, quality writing, quality art, and quality production values. It includes less tangible things like support for GMs and Players.
Something for socials/streaming: suggested caveat that this should be restricted to those focussing on Canadian made games. Leaning towards not in year one.
-- Addendum:
For the first year, we will likely reduce to a more streamlined four awards. Current thought is:
short form, rules design, scenario/supplement, visual design
<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Breaking here. Additional structure in following post.
Comments
Thoughts on voting
The structure is meant to support the goal of working with conventions, retailers and publisher/designers across Canada.
Multiple Votes
Member of CCU – 3 votes – Canadian publishers and designers who are members of the Canadian Creators United are granted 3 votes. https://ccuttrpg.ca
Canadian Retailer – 3 votes – Friendly Local Game Stores are given additional votes. Each retail location provides 3 votes for up to 3 staff members.
Convention Organizer – 3 votes – if you are a convention organizer, then you are given additional votes. Generally this should be a few organizer per convention.
Con attendee – 1 vote – votes made in person at a Canadian convention.
Online vote – 1 vote – for any Canadian resident not using CCU or FLGS voting.
Canada Roles event attendee – 1 vote – votes made in person at any designated Canada Roles event.
Vote Clarification:
Anyone may vote once at a Convention they attend at the Canada Roles table, or at a Canada Roles event. They may then vote again online.
Example 1: Bob attends JeffCon and votes there. He votes later online. He also votes when he attends CharlotteCon a month later. Bob has gotten to vote 3 times.
Example 2: Sue manages a FLGS. She has 3 votes as a base. She also hosts a Canada Roles event in her store, where Sue can vote again.
Voting is high trust.
Any paper forms or digital forms should have wording similar to the following:
As I am a person of honour, I will limit myself to voting only the eligible number of times. I affirm that I am citizen or resident of Canada.
Signed _______________
Thoughts on Nominating
Nominating: Any con attendee can nominate a title to a category. This counts as their vote in that category. They should be confidant that this title was released in the appropriate time period (almost always the prior Calendar year*) and was created by a Canadian (citizen or resident).
*exception: extended play award – must have been available for 15+ months as of March.
Most nominations will occur at conventions in March. The committee will also provide a nominations list.
I have considered not allowing anyone to self-submit.
Nomination Validation
Some evidence must be provided for the release date of the title. Emails may be sent to designer/artist/publisher asking for confirmation of eligibility.
Award Announcements
The 2026 Canada Roles Awards will be announced at CanGames (May 15-17, 2026) in Ottawa, Ontario. CanGames is Canada’s longest running convention, it also is the last of our very busy Spring convention season.
Thoughts on Committee
Canada Roles Awards should not be solely at the discretion of one arbiter.
It is a suggested that committee help adjudicate it its operation and policies.
Ideally at least one “seat” should be held by the following:
Committee member will recuse themselves of decisions that could be deemed a conflict of interest.
At this juncture the exact role of the committee is somewhat indeterminate. The first committee will weigh in on the ideas and policies laid out here, and help to define its own role.
It is suggested that committee members be allocated up to 3 additional votes.
Thoughts on Judges
The vote structure is meant to provide something akin to a democratic process, that is weighted towards those with expertise in the field.
Judges are not currently planned, but it is possible that a “judges spotlight” winner could be added in the future.
Thoughts on Shortlisting
Currently there is no plan to “shortlist” nominees. This could get challenging if nominee list grows too long.
If maintaining the “no shortlist” approach becomes unsustainable, then a shortlist will be announced towards the end of April. Further voters will only be able to vote for those on the shortlist.
Top X
When awards winners are announced a Top X list (likely the top 5, at least the top 3) will also be provided.
Tech stack
How will online votes be done? TBD.
I love this. I do think people should be allowed to nominate themselves, though not be allowed to vote for their own game. Can someone with 3 votes (i.e. con organizer) spend the votes on the same title, such as putting all three votes towards one game? When someone gets 1 vote, does that mean per category?
Everyone can vote for all 4 categories. There's two possible options for the "extra votes" that someone gets. The first is that their choices are just given extra weight (i.e. Bob the retailer votes for Awesome Game in Visual Design, and we count that as three votes for Awesome Game).
The second is that these voters can make up to three selections in each category. This is more time consuming for the person submitting the vote, so I'm leaning towards the first option.
I could also see folks with extra votes wanting to make a 1st (2 votes) and 2nd (1 vote) choice.
I think I can implement either of these in lime survey which I am testing now for online voting.
Just a quick note that convention nominating and voting is confirmed at
Terminal City Tabletop Con, Vancouver, March 13 - 15th 2026 at the Compose Dream Games booth
Breakout Con, Toronto, March 19 - 22nd 2026 next to the RPG registration desk.
Winners will be announced
At CanGames May 15-17, 2026 in Ottawa, Ontario on the Saturday.