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 9/17/2022
- Mutants & Masterminds PDF Mega-Bundle
- Legend of the Five Rings: Writ of the Wilds
- Adventures in Rokugan
- Tales of the RED: Street Stories
- WFRP: Sea of Claws
Top News Stories
Wizards of the Coast Files Lawsuit Against NuTSR’s Star Frontiers:In the latest legal broadside between WotC and TSR LLC, aka NuTSR, this injunction seeks to prevent the release of NuTSR’s New Genesis: Star Frontiers. Aside from trademark and copyright issues, which are at the core of already-extant legal efforts, this is largely because of a NG:SF preview document that was leaked in July and found to be chock full of blatant racism and transphobia. To quote the injunction itself:
“Wizards would be irreparably harmed by the publication and distribution of the game using its trademarks because consumers may mistakenly associate Wizards with the reprehensible content of the game, damaging its reputation and goodwill and undermining its efforts to foster a culture that embraces diversity around its games.”
We’re not predisposed to cheer a megacorp siccing their lawyers on a smaller business around here, and WotC can’t quite seem to avoid open-mouth-insert-foot on social issues themselves. In this case, though, “dumpster fire” and “grift” fits better than “business” when talking about NuTSR, and obviously deliberate bigotry is probably worse than what could theoretically just be messing up. WotC could at least potentially fix its problems via, among other things, more diverse hiring practices. NuTSR? Doubtful that it would ever have a desire to improve, is probably not salvageable, and why would anyone bother anyway?
Discussions of the Week
Do Not Give Your Players Time To Do Everything: So many plot hooks, so little time. Sometimes you have a bunch of great ideas for adventures, but when the players find the plot on one and take off, you’re left wondering what to do with all the others. This discussion is all about letting hooks stay inside the tackle box if they didn’t catch so that the pace of the story can carry on, as well as how you might turn some of those ignored hooks into bigger adventures later on.
Whiff Up, Not Down: “And by that, I mean, when you blow a roll which normally means spectacular failure, use the opportunity to describe how competent the foe or challenge is, not how the action itself was poor.” It can sting when you’re supposedly-competent player character eats dirt because they left their shoelaces undone, or some other wacky reason triggered by the local equivalent of a Natural 1. This discussion focuses on turning those critical failures into frightening competence on behalf of the bad guys and ‘being a fan of the PCs’, while still leaving room for silliness if the players so desire it. As one commenter says, the GM shouldn’t put you in clown shoes, but if you want to put them on yourself feel free.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
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