Zenobia Award

The Zenobia Award is an award given to board games with a historical focus that awards designers from underrepresented groups in the industry, including games by women, people of color, and LGBT people. The award was first founded in 2020 by a number of industry experts including board game designer Cole Wehrle and Dr. Christienne Hinz of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who is its director. It is named after Zenobia, a queen of the Palmyrene Empire who attempted to gain control of the Roman Empire.

Organisation
Relevant entries must be tabletop games which “tackle some historical subject - political, social, cultural, scientific, economic, military, or other”. Contestants must come from underrepresented sociopolitical, cultural and gender groups or feature one member of their design team from one of these groups, and designs must be themed after a period of human history or tackle a political, social, cultural, scientific, economic or military topic. They must not require roleplay or a referee, they must be analog, and they must have a play length at or below two hours.

Finalists are selected by a blue-ribbon panel of experts in the tabletop game industry, including academics, journalists, and tabletop influencers. These have included co-designer of Twilight Struggle Jason Matthews, COIN wargame series creator Volko Ruhnke, and Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile and Pax Pamir designer Cole Wehrle. The finalists are then assigned a mentor and given access to resources and tools to improve their work before the winners are chosen. Each awards, eight finalists are selected from which three games are given the award. At its first inception, winners of the award received up to $4,000 in funding as well as direct publisher mentorship on their prototype of the game.

The award runs in accordance with its Derby House Principles which dedicate it to promoting inclusion and diversity in wargaming, helping underrepresented people into positions of power, and reassessing and improving its own apparatus according to community concerns.