Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards

The Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards are accolades given to members of the Oddworld Forums based on the votes of other members. The Awards were started in 2003 by Wolfpac, who ran the awards for their first five years. Wolfpac started the 6th Annual Awards but was unavailable to present the awards, so this was handled by Wired. Wired continued to host the awards until the 9th Awards. The 10th to 12th Awards were run by STM. The 13th and 14th Awards were hosted by Nepsotic and Varrok respectively.

Mirroring the migration of most regular Oddworld Forums members to the Oddworld Forums Discord server, the 15th and 16th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards were hosted on Discord rather than on the Oddworld Forums, and were organized by Oddey.

Procedure

Two threads are used for each Awards: the first is used to announce the categories and inform members that they can now start voting, the second is used to announce the winners. A basic narrative is often used to introduce and conclude the initial post of each thread, typically taking the form of a fictional awards ceremony; earlier Awards use several Oddworld Forums members, and occasionally Oddworld characters, in these skits.

Once the categories are listed and—where appropriate—explained, members may begin casting votes either by posting publicly in the first thread, or by privately contacting the organizer. Although there are no explicit rules about splitting votes, member will often vote for two or three nominees for the same category; in these cases, the nominees will each receive only a half or third of a vote.

Members are not allowed to vote for themselves or tell other members whom to vote for. They are also not allowed to disseminate progress updates based on public voting. Failure to follow the rules is punishable by removal of the member's eligability to receive any awards that year. As of the 7th Awards, it has been made explicit that members are only eligable to receive awards if they have posted in the preceding calendar year (with the exception of ‘Dearly Missed Member’ for which the rule is reversed).

Winners are announced in the second thread, which remains open for members to share their congratulations and thanks. Winners do not receive any tangible reward, but out of 20 winners of the award ‘Member Who'd Make a Good Moderator’, eight did go on to become moderators.

Awards

The Awards are held mostly annually, with only the years of 2011 and 2014 skipped; 2017 was also skipped, but ended up being rolled into the 14th Awards with 2018. The voting and results are usually posted some time between January and March in the year following the year covered by the Awards.

#	Year	Voting	Results	Categories	Voters	Host	Venue
1st	2002	20 Jan 2003	8 Feb 2003	22	18	Wolfpac	Oddworld Forums
2nd	2003	12 Feb 2004	27 Feb 2004	22	16	Wolfpac	Oddworld Forums
3rd	2004	19 Feb 2005	5 Mar 2005	23	31	Wolfpac	Oddworld Forums
4th	2005	22 Feb 2006	14 Mar 2006	23	21	Wolfpac	Oddworld Forums
5th	2006	19 Apr 2007	5 May 2007	23	24	Wolfpac	Oddworld Forums
6th	2007	17 Mar 2008	18 May 2008	23	20	Wolfpac, Wired	Oddworld Forums
7th	2008	20 Feb 2009	14 Mar 2009	29	28	Wired	Oddworld Forums
8th	2009	6 Jan 2010	28 Jan 2010	28	28	Wired	Oddworld Forums
9th	2010	4 Jan 2011	23 Jan 2011	28	19	Wired	Oddworld Forums
10th	2012	30 Dec 2012	20 Jan 2013	29	26	STM	Oddworld Forums
11th	2013	17 Jan 2014	15 Feb 2014	29	18	STM	Oddworld Forums
12th	2015	8 Feb 2016	1 Mar 2016	30	16	STM	Oddworld Forums
13th	2016	17 Jan 2017	7 Feb 2017	49	Unknown	Nepsotic	Oddworld Forums
14th	2017/2018	20 Mar 2019	20 May 2019	14	Unknown	Varrok	Oddworld Forums
15th	2019	3 July 2020	7 Sep 2020	15	Unknown	Oddey, EyeMeat	Oddworld Forums Discord
16th	2020	19 Jun 2021	Upcoming	15	Unknown	Oddey	Oddworld Forums Discord

Categories

Each Awards contains a number of different categories—between 14 and 49 but usually between 23 and 29—that members vote in. Occasionally categories are renamed, especially when a new host begins running the Awards, but their subject remains essentially the same. There have been 78 different categories across the 16 Awards, not counting those that have been temporarily divided into two sub-categories; 42 of these categories have only been used in a single year of Awards.

History

The most long-lasting categories were established by Wolfpac in the 1st Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, which contained 22 categories. For the 2nd Awards, Wolfpac solicited category recommendations on the Oddworld Forums. Only one new category was adopted: ‘Most Missed Member’, which was suggested by oddguy and has been used every year since. The ‘Insane Poster’ category was dropped in the 2nd Awards, but returned in the 3rd Awards before being dropped permanently along with ‘Most Respected Poster’ in the 7th Awards. These were the first Awards not run by their creator, Wolfpac.

The 7th Awards, which were run by Wired, split ‘Best Artist’ and ‘Best Writer’ into Oddworld and Non-Oddworld sub-categories, and otherwise introduced five new categories that were suggested by Forums members after Wired asked for recommendations.

• Greatest Debator—suggested by Killy
• Best Blogger—suggested by Bullet Magnet
• Most Unintentionally Funny Poster
• Best Avatar—suggested by hobo and GrigtheSlig
• Best Photo—suggested by Kimon
• Most Likely to Still Be Here in 20 Years—suggested by Mac Sirloin

The latter three of these only lasted a year and were removed in the 8th Awards, which also recombined ‘Best Oddworld Writer’ and ‘Best Non-Oddworld Writer’ into a single category. Three new categories were introduced.

• Most Accomplished Troll—suggested by Killy for the previous year
• Member in Dire Need of a Life—suggested by GrigtheSlig 5 years previously
• Most Welcome Return

For the 10th Awards, host duties were assumed by STM, who removed ‘Best Role-Player’ and added two new categories that have continued to the present Awards.

• Most Insular Member
• Most Changed Member

The 10th Awards were also the first to have the prefix ‘The Oddworld Forums’ dropped from all categories except ‘The Oddworld Forums Unofficial Mascot’. The 12th Awards introduced two new categories, although neither has been used since.

• Most Stoic
• Best Modder/Hacker

The 13th Awards marked a radical change from the usual lineup of categories, with new host Nepsotic saying he would create the Awards ‘from scratch.’ Nevertheless, 11 of the previous year's 30 categories ended up being used, one of which (‘Most Changed Member’) was split into two subcategories—‘For the Worse’ and ‘For the Better’—and one of which (‘Best Artist’) was recombined from its Oddworld and Non-Oddworld subcategories at the recommendation of kjjcarpenter. Of the 37 new categories, some were inversions of previous categories (such as ‘Most Unwelcome Return’ and ‘Worst Artist’) while others, significantly, were the first awards designed to be awarded not to individual (or pairs of) members but to memes, events and other content.

• Best 80s Poster
• Best “OWF Is Dead” Blog
• Narrow Escapes from Necrum
• Spiciest Meme of the Year
• Greatest Drama of the Year
• Quote of the Year
• Forum Highlight of the Year

Of the 37 new categories, only one was used again in subsequent years, in the form of the ‘Best Meme’ category. The 14th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards under new host Varrok took the opposite approach to categories, plummeting from the all-time high of 49 to the all-time low of 14. 11 of these were continuations of existing categories (though just 5 had been used in the immediately preceding 13th Awards), with 3 new categories completing the reduced lineup, all of which were designed to be won by something other than an individual member of the Oddworld Forums.

• Best Oddworld Discord Server
• Best Emoji
• Worst Emoji

These new categories reflected the migration of many regular Oddworld Forums members to the Oddworld Forums Discord. The following year onwards, the Awards—now hosted by Oddey—were held entirely on the Discord. Four long-standing categories from the 14th Awards were dropped in favour of alternative pre-existing categories from the 12th and 13th Awards, and a single new category, ‘New OWI moment’, was introduced.

Winners

145 recipients have been given at least one award across the 15 completed Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, with 120 of them being registered members (although some of these may have been ‘multis’, a ‘multiple account’ registered to the same person as an existing member). The 25 award recipients that are not registered members of the Oddworld Forums range in nature from memes, emojis, events, celebrities, fictional characters, groups, brands and other media, as well as family members of registered Forum posters.

Although votes can be split between nominees, awards are not split between winners, as all nominees who receive equal highest number of votes in any category receive the award in full. This is also true of all individuals who win the ‘Best Couple’ award, even when it goes to multiple couples, although if the same winner is in two winning couples, they still receive the award only once that year.

Most Awards

Ten members have won more than 10 awards in total.

• Wil: 31
• Nate: 27
• OANST: 24 (29 counting awards that went to his children)
• Alcar: 23
• Nepsotic: 20 (21 counting a meme)
• Xavier: 20
• Bullet Magnet: 18
• Varrok: 17
• Hobo: 16
• MA: 15 (16 counting an event)

Most Consistent Awards

Wil is the only member to have won the same award, ‘Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge’, for all 12 years the category was live. The next greatest such consistency amongst winners is to have received the same award for 6 non-consecutive years or 5 consecutive years.

Winner	Category	Wins	Consecutively
Wil	Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge	12	✓
OANST	Funniest Poster	6	✗
Nate	Best Staff Member	6	✗
OANST	Most Accomplished Troll	5	✓
Abbey	Oddworld Forums Mascot	4	✓
Alcar	Oddworld Forums Mascot	4	✓
Nate	Most Dedicated Member	4	✗
Nate	Best Advice Giver	4	✗
Nepsotic	Most Changed Member	4	✗
Splat	Best Writer	4	✗
Varrok	Best Couple (albeit always with a different partner)	4	✓
Wolfpac	Best Thread Creator	4	✓
Xavier	Most Respected Poster	4	✓
Xavier	Most Dedicated Member	4	✗

Most Years

Having won ‘Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge’ for 12 years, Wil is the member who has won awards in the highest number of Forums Awards, although seven other members have been winners in at least seven Awards.

• Wil: 12
• OANST: 11
• Alcar: 10
• Xavier: 10
• Nate: 9
• Splat: 8
• Hobo: 7
• Bullet Magnet: 7

Most Awards in a Year

The most awards won by a single member in one year is ten, which was accomplished by Nepsotic in the 13th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, the year he was responsible for running the Awards. The same year featured several members winning higher numbers of awards than in any previous year, including Vlam, Alcar and Varrok winning 7 awards each. It should be noted that the 13th Awards featured 49 award categories, much higher than in any other year. The year with the second highest number of categories was the 12th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, which had 30 categories.

#	Member	Awards won	Categories that year
2nd	Wil	4	22
3rd	Alcar	4	23
6th	Hobo	5	23
7th	Bullet Magnet	4	29
8th	Nate	4	28
8th	Disgruntled Intern	4	28
9th	OANST	4	28
10th	Wil	5	29
10th	Nepsotic	4	29
11th	MA	4	29
11th	Nepsotic	4	29
12th	Nate	4	30
12th	OANST	4	30
12th	Varrok	4	30
13th	Nepsotic	10	49
13th	Alcar	7	49
13th	Varrok	7	49
13th	Vlam	7	49
13th	Xorlidyr	6	49
13th	MA	6	49
13th	RoryF	5	49
13th	Xavier	4	49

Most Categories

The member to have won awards in the greatest number of different categories throughout the history of the Awards is Alcar, who has won at least one award in 16 different categories, although a number of members have come close to this amount.

• Alcar: 16
• Nepsotic: 14
• Varrok: 14
• MA: 12
• Xavier: 11
• Nate: 10
• Hobo: 10