A different kind of award show is possible for actual play

On September 29, the New Jersey Web Fest hosted its annual awards gala, marking the festival’s fourth year celebrating the medium of actual play and the people who create it. Over the course of three days, 73 actual play selections—the festival’s highest number to date—were screened in theaters throughout Montclair, New Jersey, offering many actual players their first opportunity to witness live audiences responding to their art in real time. 

Award ceremonies have (rightfully) come under significant scrutiny in the last few years for their lack of diversity and as grand displays of privileged opulence amidst times of significant geopolitical suffering. The Web Fest, though still constrained by the dressings and expectations of the larger American entertainment industry, offered examples of an alternative approach to traditional award ceremonies. A vast majority of the actual play nominees were masked during the gala to protect one another from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Awards for individual performance such as Best Lead and Best Supporting were not gendered. Many of the awards throughout the afternoon were won by marginalized creators. Significantly, acceptance speeches addressed not only the honor of being an award-winning artist, but the value of art towards the project of resistance and liberation for oppressed people across the globe.

Among the weekend's biggest winners were Transplanar’s The Chaos Protocol, which took home Best Ensemble (Video), Best Game Master (Video), and Outstanding Fantasy (Video); alongside Mage Hand High Five: The Badlands, which won Best Ensemble (Podcast), Best Editing (Podcast), and Outstanding Fantasy (Podcast), while editor Rowan McStay also won Best Player Character Performance (Video) for their role in Twice Rolled Tales’ Rogues and Romances​​​​​. Other notable winners include The Panic Table, The Atomless, and I Am A Teenage Witch, the last being a newly debuted solo AP by Saffron Hefta-Gaub and a direct selection to the festival from the all-queer Rainbow Roll Pilot Jam. A full list of actual play winners is available at the bottom of this article.