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Joe Mucchiello
United States
Edison
New Jersey
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Oh, and my votes:
1 Retrospect
2 Shakespearead
3 The Hermetic Order of the Chimera
4 Witless Minion!
5 Gym, Tanning, Laundry: The Jersey Shore Role-playing game
Retrospect and Shakespearead were neck and neck. I gave the tip to Retrospect because it felt easier to play without English Lit majors among the players.
For a while I wasn't sure what to do with HOotC as it feels a lot more like a board game than a RPG. I could see a card driven version of the "plot" being made as a board game easily.
Gotta love minions. I'd liked the idea that one could advance to "name level" and retire with a castle and henchmen, er... a great homage to D&D.
GTL - I live in NJ and I personally know nobody like the people on that show. But game evoked the concept of the show so perfectly I had to put on my list somewhere.
After the top 5 there were a lot of near misses among which I would also put my own and since I didn't want to vote for my own. I stopped after 5.
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Scott Alden
United States
Dallas
Texas
Aldie's Full of Love!
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Congrats to all involved and I am really impressed at the quality of the items.
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Jaime Lawrence
Australia
Sydney
New South Wales
See Below.
Evil Bob: Lawful good since 2038!
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Scrowe wrote:  ShakespeareadI would have looked favourably on a game where players were Shakespearean characters, so I was likely to go crazy for a game where you play ideas for Shakespearean characters floating around inside the Bard's head. I liked the structure of the game, the layout, the quotes, the writing style, the alternative settings and themes. My first notes on this game were “Written in 24 hours? Really?”.
I was definitely playing to my strengths on this one - as an English Teacher (and a lover of Shakespeare), I'm doing this every day, so most of the text came rolling out in mere moments, it was the mechanics and structure that took me a while to hammer out.
The idea of being concepts in Bill's head has been knocking around inside mine for years; I wanted to do it as a freeform for a con, where at the end of 3 hours, Romeo is marrying Viola and Richard III has been deposed by Iago...
I spent the first 4 hours creating/finding the artwork. This, for me was the hardest part, so hearing that it turned out 'Printer unfriendly (which I hope means that it was too colourful and expensive to print, not that it tried to hurt your printer!) is quite pleasing 
Mechanically, I showed it to a few of my non-Geekdo friends who were very critical of the system, so I'm glad that some of you found it intriguing. I tried to strike a balance between the mostly narrative side of play (Diaspora, Agon) and the traditional dice-ness of the games I like. I tend to run most games rules-light with only a half-dozen rolls in a session, so the mechanic of altering the game had to be fairly attainable for me.
I guess in the end I'm proud of Shakespeariad for a few reasons, but mostly because I think it really sounds like me. It has my style of gaming/GMing all over it, so if you liked it, come to Australia and sit at my table some time.
Since it seems to be the done thing, here's my top 10 (not counting my own game):
1. Useless!
2. Familiars
3. Naked in Space
4. Against the Darkness
5. Grimdark
6. Octopus’ Garden
7. Witless Minion
8. Retrospect
9. Fatale
10. Third War
While it didn't get my top vote, I was CERTAIN that Grimdark was going to beat me. I thought the 40k parody stuff was sure to appeal to the humour around here.
Octopus' Garden wins my personal 'LOL' award - It made me smile so much through the reading.
Fatale is the game going home with 'most likely to be released in hardback' - wow, the production values on that were incredible!
Useless!, in the end, was my favourite. The comedy potential of that game is outrageous and I think that, no matter who you are, you would have to come away from that table laughing.
As I've already said, I'm happy to give feedback to any who want it.
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Steve Donohue
United States
Allen Park
Michigan
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My top ten (I ranked all the games but mine)
1. Shakespearad
2. Familiars
3, Brementown Musicians -
4. Against the Darkness
5. Retrospect
6. Grimdark
7. Lucha Libre
8. Objects and Objectives
9. Fatale
10. Monster Hunter's Club
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Shanya Almafeta
United States
Kansas City
Missouri
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Hida Mann wrote: While it didn't get my top vote, I was CERTAIN that Grimdark was going to beat me. I thought the 40k parody stuff was sure to appeal to the humour around here.
It was supposed to be a pastiche of all sorts of overwrought, grimdark emogoth horror sci-fi that we've been treated to lately (although since I cut out early without discussing the Space Commies, I think only the influences of one really showed through well). And if you're going to build a good lasting satire, you have to build a structure that will stand up to all the poking and prodding you're going to be doing.
And you shouldn't have been surprised. If one of us is riffing off of Games Worshop and one of us is riffing off The Bard, one of us has far more of an audience and material to work with than the other... 
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I'm glad Familiars appealed to a few people. There were so many great games in there I knew I wasn't getting into the top three. How you guys and gals came up with the ideas I'll never know. I am a little curious as to how so many of us came up with fuzzy animal or sorcerous apprentice games. Must be something in the general subconscious, I guess.
Loved the idea behind Witless Minion, but I'm a big fan of Venture Brothers and such.
There was so much quality in the stack of games it made it hard to arrange them in a specific order. Even after I sent it in I was thinking I could have tweaked it a bit. Thanks muchly to everyone involved for the chance to read so many great games.
Pat
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Eric M. Aldrich I
United States
California
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Congrats all! I look forward to reading them -- doing this during con season stopped me cold. I got an idea for one about two days after it closed -- maybe next year
If ever anyone wants to run one/several one of these at a con and you happen to be in the L.A area, let me know -- we can make it happen.
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