Tabletop gaming’s most eclectic prize, the Diana Jones Award, has unveiled the latest clutch of finalists for its annual celebration of excellence in the field of gaming.

Price Johnson, the new CEO of Gloomhaven publisher Cephalofair, is among the five finalists for this year’s award, as are miniatures game Trench Crusade and Minnesota-based game retailer Mischief Toy Store.

They are joined by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle’s board game Molly House, which explores the joy and fear experienced by gender-defying Londoners in 18th century society, and Rob Wieland, a much-loved TTRPG designer and journalist who died last October aged 47.

Price Johnson’s nomination comes less than two months after the long-time Cephalofair COO was promoted to CEO at the publisher – with Isaac Childres, the company founder and designer of its runaway successes Gloomhaven and Frosthaven, stepping back to focus exclusively on game design at the company.

Johnson has been a high-profile voice in campaigning against tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump over the last year, aiming to highlight the heavy financial burden it has placed on tabletop game publishers – many of which rely on Chinese manufacturing for their titles.

The Diana Jones nominations committee praised that work, saying Johnson’s appearance on multiple national news outlets, “consistently and clearly explained how the tariffs posed an existential danger to many companies in the adventure gaming industry”.

Mischief Toy Store in the Twin Cities was also selected for its involvement in a lawsuit against the US tariffs last year, as well as its work battling activity from anti-immigration ICE agents.

The committee said that hours after criticizing ICE in a TV interview the store was targeted with a surprise audit, but resisted turning over their employee records to DHS.

It added, “They have been printing ICE OUT posters to distribute as fast as they can and have organized a network of 3D printing hobbyists to distribute thousands of ICE whistles.

“Amid the chaos in Minnesota, they had to suspend online ordering, and their website directed folks to support local immigrant rights organizations instead. They work hard to make space at the gaming table for everyone.”

Trench Crusade, which focuses on an alternate 1914 in which humans have been battling the forces of hell for 800 years, was picked out by the committee as “a triumph of community and creativity”.

The Factory Fortress-published title was built around initial sketches and lore created by artist Mike Franchina, who later teamed up with sculptor James Sherriff and game designer Tuomas Pirinen to design the game.

Diana Jones’ nominations committee described Rob Wieland as “a relentless advocate and promoter for the entire tabletop gaming community for years”.

It said, “He served as a mentor to countless others, and he brought the industry to wider and greater awareness through his work with Forbes and other publications.

“In addition, he regularly hosted on-stage sessions of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen at conventions to raise money for charity.”

The 2026 Diana Jones Award ceremony will be held in Indianapolis on July 29 at its annual gathering of tabletop games industry professionals, marking the unofficial kick-off of Gen Con.

The award aims to celebrates “everything that’s the best about gaming”, with previous winners across the award’s 26-year run having included Blood Rage designer Eric Lang, Nigerian games industry publisher and evangelist NIBCARD, and the entire ‘actual play’ movement of people livestreaming and podcasting roleplaying games.

Last year’s award resulted in a tie between Daybreak, the climate change-themed board game designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace, and Rose Estes, an early TSR employee who went on to write the Endless Quest series of choose-your-own-adventure game books.

The original Diana Jones award trophy was a clear lucite pyramid containing the burned remains of an Indiana Jones roleplaying game from the 1980s – one element of which spelled ‘Diana Jones’ after the preceding letters were burned away.

That trophy was lost in the post six years ago during the traditional handover from one winner to another, never to be recovered – but a replacement trophy has now been created by the organisation.

The Diana Jones Award also runs a separate emerging designer programme prize, which aims to help up-and-coming creators via a $6,500 prize package that includes an all-expenses trip to Gen Con.

The post Cephalofair CEO, Molly House, Trench Crusade among finalists for 2026 Diana Jones Award first appeared on .

The Diana Jones Award committee has picked a trio of TTRPG creators as the latest winners of its emerging designer program, who will each receive a $6,500 prize package that includes an all-expenses trip to Gen Con.

Glaiza Champion, J Strautman and Kodi Gonzaga will also receive one-year memberships to trade bodies GAMA and the Tabletop Game Designers Association through the award, as well as prizes including prototyping credit at The Game Crafter, an online badge to Protospiel and a game demo spot on Gen Con TV.

The emerging designer program, now in its sixth year, seeks to amplify the voices of up-and-coming tabletop creators, with a particular focus on designers from marginalized communities.

Filipino-American designer Glaiza Champion describes themself as a ‘third-culture’ kid whose experiences span Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines and Korea.

Champion is a game designer, writer, performer, podcaster and variety streamer, whose work is rooted in tabletop roleplaying games and storytelling – with designs to date including Beef, Missing Month and Meet Your GelCub.

Toronto-based RPG designer J Strautman, who also works under the name Yes No Goodbye, combines game design with a career as a professional musician.

Strautman has released the GM-less zine-sized RPGs Contact and Insatiable Cravings, and in 2025 co-released A Fool’s Errand through Planet Arcana Games.

Alongside their design work, Strautman tours internationally as a professional bass player, and co-hosted, and scored and edited the tarot-infused science fantasy actual play podcast Planet Arcana.

Los Angeles-based designer Kodi Gonzaga began designing games in 2018, and has since created a growing catalogue of tabletop RPGs including Extra Ordinary, Misfits & Mayhem SRD, Down the Road Through the End of the World, Voxinn: A Firebrands Hack and In This Echoing World.

Gonzaga is also a creative writer, actual play performer, Big Bad Con POC Scholar and former IGDN convention coordinator.

Other finalists in this year’s competition included Wyrmspan and Apiary designer Connie Vogelmann, Cretaceous Rails designer Ann Journey, and Elijah Djan – the co-creator of FinMaster, a game designed to help teach families about investing and enable positive discussions about money.

Also making the list of finalists this year was board game designer Gene Koo, who works to promote tabletop game designers based in the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Last year’s emerging designer program winners were High Tide designer Marceline Leiman, Ashraf Braden, Elliot Davis and Lyla McBeath Fujiwara.

Speaking to BoardGameWire after being selected last year, Leiman said the award had enabled her to attend Gen Con at a time when financial pressures and industry uncertainty would otherwise have made the trip impossible.

“Gen Con is an incredibly important convention for freelance designers to get their work noticed and signed,” Leiman said. “This amazing opportunity for underrepresented and underprivileged folks represents a great step in equalizing this dream of a creative field for all.”

The Diana Jones emerging designer award program was launched in 2021, with Jeeyon Shim picking up the inaugural award.

The emerging designer program is part of the wider Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, which was founded and first awarded in 2001.

That award is presented to the person, product, company, event, movement, concept or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its committee, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year – and is traditionally hugely wide-ranging in its choice of candidates.

Previous winners across the award’s 22-year run have included Blood Rage designer Eric Lang, Nigerian games industry publisher and evangelist NIBCARD, and the entire ‘actual play’ movement of people livestreaming and podcasting roleplaying games.

Last year’s Excellence in Gaming award was deemed a tie between author Rose Estes and the climate action-themed board game Daybreak, designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace.

The post TTRPG trio triumph in latest Diana Jones emerging designer program, win expenses-paid trip to Gen Con first appeared on .