THE WINNER OF THE 2024
DIANA JONES AWARD IS UNITED PAIZO WORKERS!
The Diana Jones Award committee is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s award is United Paizo Workers, a workers’ union.
As a union of workers at Paizo, Inc. (publisher of the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games), United Paizo Workers is the first of its kind in the tabletop roleplaying game industry. Organized as part of the Communication Workers of America’s CODE-CWA project to support workers in the tech and game industries who are organizing for change, United Paizo Workers was voluntarily recognized by Paizo management and ratified their first union contract with Paizo in 2023. In addition to achieving raises, expanded benefits, and enhanced protections for workers at Paizo, the union provides a voice for Paizo’s workers to communicate their needs to upper management and speak out about issues that matter to the union’s members.
Read the union’s statement at UnitedPaizoWorkers.org
In the committee’s opinion, United Paizo Workers exemplifies excellence in gaming.
The committee would also like to congratulate our finalists for this year’s award:
- Adepticon, a miniatures games convention in the Midwest
- Ami Baio, a game designer and owner of Pink Tiger Games
- Fastaval, an RPG and board game convention in Denmark
- TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida, a charity bundle organized by Rue Dickey
For more on each of these finalists and why they’re excellent, see the “Finalists” tab on the 2024 Award page.
The winner of this year’s award was announced at the annual Diana Jones Award ceremony in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con Indy convention.
SPONSORS
We’d like to thank the award’s key sponsors for this year, Azora Law and Kobold Press.
Our other ceremony sponsors are:
- Andrew Chesney
- Anthony Gallela
- Beach House Games
- Bully Pulpit Games
- Chaldea
- Chip Theory Games
- The Corner of Story and Game
- Daniel and Laura Block, in memory of Stewart Wieck
- Free League Publishing
- Gen Con
- Gen Con TV
- Geoff Engelstein
- Heroic Journey Publishing
- Heroic Signatures
- Jim Kitchen
- Lazy Wolf Studios
- Lou Anders
- Lucky Duck Games
- Matt Forbeck
- Mechanical Muse
- Nate Heiss
- Onyx Path Publishing
- Pacificon Protospiel
- Pelgrane Press
- Peter Adkison
- Randy Price
- Renegade Game Studios
- Ross Thompson
We’d also like to thank our board members: Peter Adkison, Matt Forbeck, Michelle Nephew, and Camdon Wright.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product, company, event, or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its committee, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of tabletop gaming in recent times. The winner of the award receives the Diana Jones trophy.
The finalists and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones Committee, a partially anonymous group of tabletop gaming industry luminaries that includes designers, publishers, cartoonists, convention organizers, and more.
Past winners include industry figures such as Peter Adkison, Jordan Weisman, and Eric Lang, the roleplaying game books Sorcerer, Nobilis, My Life With Master, The Great Pendragon Campaign, Grey Ranks, Fiasco, Hillfolk, The Guide to Glorantha, and Star Crossed, the board games Dominion and Ticket to Ride, the book Nordic Larp, the website BoardGameGeek.com, the web series Tabletop, Gen Con, Irish games convention charity auctions, the Actual Play movement, Black excellence in gaming, the publisher NIBCARD Games, and Ajit George. This is the twenty-third year of the Award.
CONTACTS
To contact the Diana Jones Award committee, email committee@dianajonesaward.org.