The Black Tentacle™ Awards were established in 1985, to commemorate the first year of playing Cthulhu Lives. Like the traditional post-game trips to Denny’s, the ceremonies offered an opportunity for players to get together and reminisce, debrief, discuss, and otherwise share their game experiences. They were also an opportunity to compare one game to others, to see what gaming techniques were most effective and fun. Nominees were named by the Keepers of the games in competition, and the winners were determined by secret ballot of the people present at the ceremonies, most of whom had played in at least one of the nominated games. Occasional ties were broken by a re-vote between tying nominees. There were eight categories at the original award ceremony, because Sean Branney made the trophies out of a toy octopus, which of course had eight arms. In later years additional categories were added, and different people undertook the manufacture of the trophies. Joe Givan sculpted a tentacle in clay and made rubber duplicates, and that design was used from 1987 to 1989. In 1990 Andrew Leman took over the fabrication, sculpting an individual trophy for each category. Ceremonies were always fancy-dress affairs, featuring food and some kind of entertainment. Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and Phil Bell served as emcees. The 1987 ceremonies were the most elaborate, complete with musical numbers between awards from the never-completed HPLHS musical “Shoggoth on the Roof.” As the core group of Cthulhu Lives players got older and moved on to cities across the country, game activity became less frequent, and after 1993 there were seldom enough games played within a single year to justify competition for the trophies (if only one game is played during the year it is pointless to claim that it was the “best” one). Accordingly, no Black Tentacle™ awards have been given since 1993. However, we may hold out hope that the practice may soon be reinstated. We encourage you to click your way through the years. The buttons on the left of your screen will take you to the details of each year’s Black Tentacle Awards including a listing of the award winners, descriptions of the event and photographs (when we have them). Enjoy.