Welcome to the Cannibal Halfling Weekend Update! Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week. We have the week’s top sellers, industry news stories, and discussions from elsewhere online.

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 4/17/2021

1. Dune – Adventures in the Imperium Core Rulebook
2. Worlds Without Number
3. Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound: Bestiary
4. Cyberpunk Red
5. Sentinel Comics Core Rulebook

Top News Stories

The Orr Report is here: Roll20 released the Orr Report, their report of internal play statistics, for Q1 2021. With the uncategorized numbers still north of 13% for both campaigns and players, we have a consistent reminder that this data tells us pretty much nothing other than literally what’s going on on Roll20. D&D 5e is still above 50% in both the campaign and account rates, and interestingly Pathfinder is beating Pathfinder 2e to a measly 1/20th of 5e. The growth numbers are slightly more indicative, though oddly Burning Wheel tops that list with a staggering 300% growth rate quarter-over-quarter. In the full list you can get juicy but completely meaningless tidbits like how Degenesis is tied with Eclipse Phase, and that Electric Bastionland has the same player count as Feast of Legends, better known as the licensed Wendy’s RPG.

Discussions of the Week

Matt Colville of MCDM Productions has some thoughts about the term ‘homebrew’ and where it fits into the range of creations available in the RPG sphere right now. Justin Alexander of Atlas Games has a response. Both threads are worth reading.

We talk a lot about the biggest Kickstarter campaigns in the RPG world, but ENWorld compiled the biggest RPG Kickstarter creators, including 19 creators whose total take between all their campaigns was over $1 million. Lots of 5e content creators here, but Free League, Monte Cook Games, and Onyx Path take the 1, 2, and 3 spots. In an interesting twist, only one creator on this entire list has a single PbtA project, and that’s Evil Hat with Thirsty Sword Lesbians. When you look into Magpie Games, though, and their rather unfortunate decision to unify their Kickstarter marketing so late in the company’s lifecycle, you might note that they could easily be a missing 20th creator (even just adding Bluebeard’s Bride and Masks, technically ‘created’ by Marissa Kelly and Brendan Conway respectively, would be enough to push Magpie onto the list).

Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.