Origins Awards 2025: ‘Cyberpunk’, ‘Record Of Lodoss War’, ‘Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast’ & More Big RPG Wins
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast won best RPG at Origins Awards this year, but wasn’t the only big name in RPGs being honored by GAMA.
This past weekend was the Origins Game Fair, and with it, comes the 48th Annual Origins Awards. The GAMA (the Game Manufacturer’s Association) gives these awards as a way of honoring outstanding work in the gaming industry. And it’s a long-running tradition that stretches back to the early days when Origins’ celebration of gaming mostly meant Wargaming and miniatures.
Now, years later, with its Hall of Fame and special lifetime service awards, Origins has expanded as the tabletop industry has. It is a record of gaming’s evolution. And this year, a few big names in RPGs popped up—some, an unexpected but delightful surprise.
The 48th Annual Origins Awards
There are two big categories for RPGs at Origins, Best Core RPG Product and Best RPG Supplement. The winner in each category comes as no surprise. Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast took home best RPG Core Product, and with little wonder. The game is a big experiment with the form and function of RPGs. With legacy mechanics, storytelling prompts that draw every player in different directions, and the promise that no game is ever the same, it carves out a space that stands apart from what most people think of when they hear an RPG and think of “campaign play.”
And No Time to Scream, winner of the best RPG Supplement award at the Origins Awards 2025, is a delicious entry into Call of Cthulhu. It’s one book with three different adventures, each that can be run in an hour or two. You can pick up this book and get your whole group playing Cthulhu in an afternoon. It’s accessible, it’s fun, it’s open—everything you’d want in a supplement.
But what caught my eye were the big honorees at this year’s Origins Awards. Starting with the Rick Loomis Service Award—an award given to honor the legacy of one of GAMA’s co-founders, that recognizes the “merit of like-minded individuals and organizations for their contributions to the game industry.”
This year, that award went to Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk RPG and founder of R. Talsorian games, awarded for “his outstanding dedication and lifelong contributions to the tabletop gaming community.” And a lifetime of Cyberpunk RPGs alone, would be enough, but Pondsmith has done so much more over the years.
This year there was a new class inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design’s hall of fame. The hall of fame is for “individuals and products that have left a lasting impact on the world of tabletop games.” Members include Gary Gygax and Steve Jackson, as well as gamesl ike Warhammer 40K and Settlers of Catan.
This year, among the honorees was Ryo Mizuno, the creator of Record of Lodoss War. If you’re unfamiliar, Record of Lodoss War is the ancestor of streaming actual play games. Originally running in 1986-1988 in Comptiq magazine, Lodoss was a “replay” of a D&D campaign. Think of it as a retelling, almost play by play. All the table-talk and in-game dialogue transcribed, introducing many to the adventures of Parn and company at the gaming table. It later became an anime, inspired an RPG all its own, Sword World—and it laid the groundwork for actual plays as we know them today.
Congrats to the winners! For a full list of Origins Award winners, follow the link below.
