In 1952 London, the tearoom trade blossoms. The Countess Dillymore reminds us that we may have “forgotten that these particular queer men existed,” and perhaps we have. Countess Dillymore’s Too Much Slap on the Ecaf is an intimate larp about homosexual men hooking up in 1950s rural England. We saw this game and were immediately hooked by its solid intensity. But what sold us on it for this particular award was the tender and highly subjective portrayal of closeted queer men. Written as a letter from Dillymore to an anonymous audience, the game itself takes the induction into the social life of queerness quite seriously. Each player sets up three scenes laden with all the negotiations and emotions of men having sex with each other in the only places they can. Then the players show intimacy through their characters along negotiated physical boundaries. We see so few games these days with such an earnest, no-nonsense portrayal of the world before Stonewall and Pride.

Our selection for Funniest Game is an exuberant send up of phallocentric culture and corporate politics that takes a simple but clever joke and really commits to the bit. The clear, concise rules set players up for over the top physical comedy with almost no prep required (apart from sourcing a variety of brightly-colored balloons). Both hilarious to read and promising some very fun times in play, Big Dicks hits the mark.

Countess Dillymore has again graced our contest with her exquisite games dealing with the marginalization of queerfolk in the mid-20th Century. Disciplinary wields the language of bureaucracy as instrument of both narrative enrichment and character persecution. Although safety and context are shoved to a footnote in the end, the game materials themselves are their own argument.