Monthly Archives: November 2021

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/27/2021

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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 11/27/2021

  1. Traveller: The Third Imperium
  2. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  3. WFRP: Archives of the Empire Volume 2
  4. Twilight: 2000 4th Edition Core Set
  5. Aerospace Engineer’s Handbook

Discussion of the Week

It’s Thanksgiving here in the US, so the Cannibal Halflings are all off spending time with their families. Hope everyone has a safe and restful holiday, we’ll get back to the salt mines next week!

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

Articles, Editorial

Adding Flavor To The Table

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Between spending some time at the Flying Stag earlier in the week and recovering from the trials and tribulations of Thanksgiving, I’ve got food and drink on the mind with a side of tabletop worldbuilding. So your party of characters wander into the tavern and order… what? An ale?  Your freighter crew has two weeks of… consumables? That’s it? We can do better than that; both people running games and playing them can get some extra detail out of their setting and characters by keeping one fact in mind: even most protagonists have to eat.

Continue reading Adding Flavor To The Table →

Articles, Editorial

Game Wizards Review

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The story of role-playing games begins with the story of Dungeons and Dragons; the story of Dungeons and Dragons begins with Gary Gygax. And Dave Arneson. And, frankly, all of TSR. As our hobby evolves and our record keepers get older, we need to look back and make a good record of what got us to this point. With both Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson passed away, the invention of D&D is becoming just a story, in some people’s minds a footnote to Mentzer and Moldvay and Allston and Tweet and Mearls and Crawford that have come since. Well, Jon Peterson to the rescue.

Off the success of Playing at the World, a history of the role-playing game as a concept, and The Elusive Shift, an investigation of the role-playing game as its own standalone ‘thing’, we now have Game Wizards, arguably now the definitive text on the luminaries who invented D&D and how rabidly they fought over credit for that specific thing. Peterson is showing his breadth here, moving from broad-based historical synthesis (Playing at the World) to deep, particular investigation (The Elusive Shift) and now into that popular but difficult historical realm, disputed narrative. In some ways, this is a bit of a departure from Peterson’s earlier work, which was very much grounded in the how and why that made RPGs what they are. That said, Game Wizards as a book has convinced me that, as someone interested in RPG history, the story of Gygax and Arneson is one I need to know.

Continue reading Game Wizards Review →
Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling – The Broken Cask

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Well, hello there! Welcome to the Flying Stag, our hearth and home among the treetops. My name is Wulflen Skyway, I’m the proprietor of this fine establishment. Now, the dancing doesn’t start until twilight, and you don’t look like you have an undead problem, so what shall it be? We have a moongoat shawarma that’s proven very popular, and craftsmanship demands I recommend the Frozen Drupelet, our raspberry spiced ice wine made right-

Ah, touring around looking for stories, are you? Well, I was a bard back in the day, before some… stuff happened, so I could spin you a few yarns. No, no, the scale armor is just an affectation, nothing to worry yourself about. No, I’m not going to “dish” about my past, thank you. The Flying Stag, though, well, it may not be as well known as The Broken Cask – yet – but it has its stories to tell. Continue reading Solitaire Storytelling – The Broken Cask →

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/20/2021

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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 11/20/2021

  1. WFRP: Archives of the Empire Volume 2
  2. Twilight: 2000 4th Edition Core Set
  3. Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound: Artefacts of Power
  4. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  5. Interface RED

Top News Stories

PAX East Returns in 2022, Mandates Vaccination: From a press release sent to CHG: “PAX East 2022 returns to the Boston Convention Center from Thursday April 21, 2022, to Sunday, April 24, 2022. Badges will soon go on sale for the long-awaited return of the East Coast’s largest gaming event.

After moving 2021’s show online for the health and safety of the community, entry to PAX East 2022 will require a completed vaccination series and mandatory face coverings for all in the venue. Proof of vaccination will be required for all PAX events in the foreseeable future.”

Discussion of the Week

Why GMing Isn’t More Popular: From Reddit, first r/dndnext and then r/rpg, a good thread has cropped talking about both why GMing traditional games can be difficult and why gamers are often disincentivized from doing so. While the conversation hits on a lot of GMing topics, one of the strong undercurrents of suggestion is to play games other than D&D 5e, which we wholeheartedly agree with.

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

Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling – Time To Kill

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Another job, another hotel, another lobby.  Being a paid killer might sound dangerous, or exciting, or glamorous, and it can be, I suppose. More often than not, though, it involves waiting. Lots of waiting, when the planning is already done and there’s nothing to do but count the moments, watch the goings-on, and think about what you’ve done and what you’re about to do while you wait for your target to appear.

That’s okay, though. I’ve got Time To Kill.

Continue reading Solitaire Storytelling – Time To Kill →

Articles, Editorial

Twilight:2000 Review

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The RPG hobby is driven by remakes and revisions. Fifth Edition this and Seventh Edition that, yes, but entire movements in the hobby are built around hacking and re-hacking D&D’s sub-sub-genre of play, fantasy dungeon crawling. With this perspective, RPGs fit in nicely alongside movie studios who remake Spiderman and Batman decadally, and media companies who continue to make live-action versions of critically acclaimed anime without asking how they’re actually improving things. In a young hobby like RPGs, though, there is still space for remakes to be good. So if you want to make a good remake, why not start with a game that practically screams ‘don’t update me’, the 1984 classic Twilight:2000?

Continue reading Twilight:2000 Review →
Adventure Log, Articles

Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6

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In the dark future, there’s no such thing as an easy decision; you either have the hard part now or you have it later. When we last saw our erstwhile entrepreneurs, they had just tattled on a mobster named Vlad and put him on the receiving end of an Arasaka kill squad. Then they quietly scooped up all the documents that the corporates didn’t stick around to grab. Priceless opportunity, or painting the target on your back by hand? CabbageCorp employees have to find out, of course.

And among all the mob mischief, Biotechnica is still making moves. Mason’s boss is pleased with the dirt the team has found on Jayhawk, and is planning to exercise a stock purchase option soon. Knowing the contract that Biotechnica made them sign, Jayhawk chief technology officer William Squires reached out for a meeting. Not interested in hearing his pleas or complaints, Biotechnica brass kicked the invite down the chain until it hit Mason. Mason accepts, even though his boss says it’ll be seen as an insult and no meeting will be set up. Despite that prediction, he’s invited to take a ride by private car down to the Heartland Complex in downtown Hydropolis.

Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6 →
Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/6/2021

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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 11/6/2021

  1. Rangers of Shadow Deep: Dungeons Dark
  2. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  3. The Rich Bastard’s Guide to Magick
  4. Hundred Devils Night Parade
  5. Cults of Cthulhu

Top News Stories

Shipping costs still bad: COVID-19 wrought havoc on global supply chains, and we’re not out of the woods yet. This thread by Alex Flagg from Crafty Games details just how much the increase in shipping costs is affecting board games, and you can expect the impact on RPGs to be similar. As a consumer, now is a great time to focus on PDFs. As an industry member, now is a great time to look at localized printing and assembly options for your games.

Discussion of the Week

Gaming online still popular: Gaming online spiked in popularity at the beginning of the pandemic for obvious reasons. At this point in time, given higher vaccination rates and sheer exhaustion, many people are looking back towards in-person gaming, given that small-group socialization is both safer than it was before and still much safer than restaurants, bars, or event venues. A spate of threads this week started comparing online and in-person gaming again, as the two start to look like equally possible again. My own contribution pointed out that the increasing feature-richness of VTT platforms has started to get away from what most people need to game, more resembling premium items like interlocking terrain tiles or hardwood dice towers than utilities. The above-linked thread is from @Pandatheist, who made multiple contributions to the discussion which culminated in a useful discussion of what helps you run indie games online.

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