The ENNIES, independent since 2019, are a prestigious TTRPG Award, which has been hosted at Gen Con since 2002.

The submissions for the 2025 ENNIE Awards have been open since September last year, but the process has recently come under fire on social media.
The Awards ask people to disclose whether or not AI was used to create or modify any content. The use of AI does not prohibit the game from being submitted but does exclude the game from the category relating to the AI content. For example, a game with AI art could not be submitted for Best Art but could still qualify for Best Rules.
RPG designer Shawn Tomkin of Ironsworn and a contributor to The One Ring RPG said:
Needless to say, ENNIES should rethink this. Eligibility is for human-made products. Simple. AI-gen proponents like to talk about the democratization of art. No. It is the abandonment of art. The smothering of a fire that — once extinguished — will never roar back to life.
Kat the Lore Mistress said,
This is a disappointing decision from the ENNIES, which presents itself as such a prestigious award to receive, and yet happily receives AI generated submissions that harm the industry, community, and environment. The fact that the ‘but’ is there means you know it’s bad enough to have to defend.
The word “modified” in the disclosure “This product contains AI-generated or modified content.” is not defined, and some might consider that to include algorithmic spellcheckers and some machine learning-enabled writing assistants such as Grammarly. In contrast, others might only assume it applies to machine-rendered art. In the case of art, some might assume digital editing software with filters, auto-fills, and other machine learning tools are, therefore out of bounds, and others might not.
Objections to the policy, however, stem less from the definition of ‘AI’ and how it’s applied and more from a general resentment of a resource-hungry, sometimes unethically trained, increasingly commercial and disruptive technology which could put creators out of work or, in the nightmare scenario, used to design the next COVID.
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- ENNIES: Submissions
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