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 9/11/2021

1. Deviant: the Renegades
2. Cepheus Deluxe
3. Fallout: the Roleplaying Game Core Rules
4. Alien RPG Colonial Marines Operations Manual
5. 2300AD

Top News Stories

SideQuest, a creator-led funding drive, launches November 2021!

From SideQuest’s own press release, helpfully dropped in our Discord: “On the 8th of September 2021, the Zine Creators Workshop announced SideQuest 2021. This event is modelled after the popular ZineQuest promotion on Kickstarter. Designers will crowdfund games over the course of November. By pooling resources, they will shine a light on all their projects.

The thinking behind SideQuest is simple. ZineQuest is so successful that many designers wait all year to launch projects. Kickstarter becomes flooded with indie games campaigns. The rest of the year, it becomes hard for new designers to promote zine-sized offerings. SideQuest will address this, providing a second focal point. The event is not limited to a single crowdfunding platform. Participating campaigns will include the SideQuest logo and appear on the SideQuest website.

Marc Strocks (he/they) founded SideQuest. “I was excited for ZineQuest but didn’t see any community form between participants. I created a Discord server to help people network and lift each other up. We don’t need corporations. We work together to show what indie resources can do.”

Laurie O’Connel (he/him) had breakaway success with Lichcraft. “For me, the exciting thing is the opportunity to do projects that come from your heart, but aren’t as ‘mainstream’. When I put Lichcraft together, I thought that it would get very little attention. It turns out, if you love a game, there’s a solid chance other people will love it too. My SideQuest project, Stolen Crown, has also been in the back of my mind for far too long. This is a chance to finally make it happen.”

Tanya Floaker (they/them) is publishing their first game. “I’ll be helping other designers. In turn, they will be helping me. Being part of a collective endeavour is why I’m involved.”

Spencer Campbell (he/him) of Slayers and LUMEN has to say about the event: “SideQuest represents everything I love about the indie RPG scene: an opportunity for a wide variety of designers to show off their amazing work, and the community lifting one another up together.”

SideQuest is an initiative of the Zine Creators Workshop. ZCW formed on the 8th of January 2021, before ZineQuest3. It is an incubator for game development, a knowledge base, and pushes to get new designers in to print.

Go to SideQuest.info to see all participating projects. Follow the conversation on Twitter and Instagram with #SideQuest2021. Sign up at tinyurl.com/JoinSideQuest or itch.io/jam/sidequest-2021 “

Discussion of the Week

Magpie Games provides answers, more questions, in Dicebreaker Article: Dicebreaker contributor Chase Carter spoke with Magpie Games CEO Mark Diaz Truman regarding their record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for Avatar Legends. Secondary discussions on Twitter were mixed, finding that Diaz Truman’s answers often asked more questions than they, well, answered. While the Avatar Legends Kickstarter is inarguably a massive success and also inarguably funding a corporate licensed game, the fairly small RPG industry provides many distortions. I mean, Wizards of the Coast makes over $100 million *a month*, but who’s counting, right?

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