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 5/14/2022

1. Ironsworn: Starforged
2. WFRP: The Night Parade
3. Specialist Forces
4. Delta Green: Iconoclasts
5. WFRP: Up in Arms

Top News Stories

Two Books Removed from D&D Beyond: There was a bit of hubbub when it was announced that Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes and Volo’s Guide to Monsters were being removed for sale from D&D Beyond later this month. The move is mostly version control, with the two books being superseded by the to-be-released Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse, which makes the earlier books redundant. Statements from D&D Beyond make clear that the older content will not be removed from those who have already purchased it. Though not as extreme as past moves like the release of 3.5e, it’s clear Wizards is still nudging players to repurchase books as the playerbase expands. While players won’t lose any of the older material, the newer versions are rebalanced and will more than likely be treated as the ‘official’ ones.

TTRPG Bundles for Reproductive Rights: In response to the leaked report that the U.S. Supreme Court is planning to overturn Roe v. Wade, large swathes of the TTRPG community have banded together to raise funds for reproductive rights in the USA – in more than one bunch. The RPGs for Reproductive Justice [Bundle], organized by the Hydra Cooperative on DriveThruRPG and offering $581.99 worth of games for $25, is donating funds to the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). It includes CHG subjects such as Lands of Legends, the Fate Accessibility Toolkit, and Exuviae.

The TTRPGS for Reproductive Rights bundle on itch, organized by Roll for Romance, is donating funds to Planned Parenthood and the NNAF via ~$1,385 worth of games for a minimum of $5, and as of this writing has already raised more than $30k. It includes Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, Unbound, Heavens of Khepri, and a few things sourced from cannibal halflings, and will run for another month, also as of this writing.

Finally, the Bundle for Reproductive Rights, also on itch but organized by Misha, is currently rallying creators and their games to form up by using a ‘jam’ to take stock. The jam will last until May 16th and knowing itch’s bundle approval process it will take some time after that before the bundle itself goes live, so there will be some overlap with the TTRPGfRR bundle but this one will quite likely continue past the first’s time period. While the dollar value is unknown, the numbers so far are impressive: the BfRR jam has 429 entries so far, including Disposable Heroes. We’ll report back in when this bundle goes live.

Discussion of the Week

Alternatives to character death as a means of raising the stakes: We’ve said it before, but there are many ways to hit your players where it hurts. Though when and how often to threaten your PCs or things they care about is another discussion, this Reddit thread has a bunch of great examples of how to raise the stakes, and how to generate stakes your players care about in the first place.

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