The second Zenobia Award contest has finished accepting applications, thank you to all who applied.

The Zenobia Award is both a competition and a mentoring program in which game designers from underrepresented groups develop and submit historical tabletop game prototypes. Throughout the design process, competitors will receive mentoring and feedback from industry leaders, to help them move towards successful game publication.

The Zenobia Award seeks to attract and reward more diverse design talent in order to improve historical tabletop game design and participation and to diversify historical topics simulated in published hobby board games. It seeks to apply the Derby House principles for diversity and inclusion in professional wargaming to hobby gaming.

When is the next Zenobia Award contest?

The contest is open now. Click here to apply.

Who can apply?

Consistent with the Zenobia Award’s goals, the contest is limited to Contestants from underrepresented groups with ideas for tabletop game designs about human history. Applicants will have an opportunity to explain why their voice will contribute to diversity within the historical game community on the application form.

Games entered into the competition must be new, unpublished games. They may be at different stages of development, and designers may have different levels of experience, but the purpose of the Zenobia Award is to help guide new games towards publication.

For more details please see the Rules page.

What sorts of games can I submit?

Each Contestant or team must present a single design idea for an historical tabletop game original to them and as yet unpublished and uncommitted to any publisher. The design idea may be newly conceived, or it may already be at a further stage of development. Additionally: 

• The design idea must be for a manual tabletop game (board, card, dice, tile-laying, miniatures, etc.). It must have a closed-system rules set that does not rely on role-play or referee adjudication to resolve actions and reactions.
• The design must be rooted in a historical setting from any time up to the present day. It may concern political, social, cultural, scientific, economic, military, or any other human affairs in any combination. 
• The game must be playable in under two hours. Longer games with at least one scenario playable in under two hours are eligible and will be judged by that scenario.

Submitted designs must not be under review with any publisher. For further details, see Rules page.

What is the contest procedure?

Each Contestant designer or design team will submit one Entry Application, completed in English, to the Zenobia Award.

Zenobia Award staff will review all applications and communicate their decisions to applicants roughly two weeks after the Application window has closed.

Each successful contestant will be assigned to a mentorship team as well be granted access to Zenobia learning spaces, tools and materials.

Past Contestants

Some past entries have went on to publication since the contest, including:

Published

• Dutch Resistance: Orange Shall Overcome by Marcel Köhler (Liberation Game Design)
• Rising Waters by Scout Blum (Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations)
• Tindaya by Lolo Gonzalez (Red Mojo)

Announced

• Borikén: The Taíno Resistance by Julio E. Nazario
• Kartini: From Darkness To Light by Sherria Ayuandini (Ion Game Design)
• Molly House by Jo Kelly & Cole Wehrle (Wehrlegig)
• Publish or Perish: Wiñay Kawsay by Alison Collins (WizKids)
• Ten To One (originally Liberation: Haiti) by Damon Stone (Mosaic Games Studio)
• Winter Rabbit by Will Thompson (Absurdist Productions)

Contact

Please contact us via email: contact@zenobiaaward.org

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