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 11/19/2022
Top News Stories
Rumor: One D&D Might Be Killing Third-Party Homebrew Content: Game Rant has reported on a rumor that has been circulating for a couple of weeks now: The rumor is that Wizards of the Coast will curtail the OGL for One D&D. For clarity, there’s no real legal way for a game company to stop designers from making third party content, and the OGL as a document is out there essentially in perpetuity. What Wizards could do, though, is decline to offer the same sort of branding and licensing as they currently do to third party creators through DM’s Guild. While there will never be a stop to third party content, preventing third party creators from using IP like D&D-specific settings and trade dress will definitely put a dent in the burgeoning cottage industry that currently exists around D&D 5e. Considering how little actual content Wizards has released in the roughly eight years of 5e (six supplement books versus 25 for 4e, as one example), my initial reaction is that cutting off third parties is almost certainly a worse business decision than they think.
Discussion of the Week
NYC has a serious Dungeon Master shortage: I read the linked article of this Reddit post, and rolled my eyes; I dispute the conceit entirely. This is why the link is to the Reddit post, though: the comments have some thoughtful discussion about where the DM/GM role fits in games, their experiences with GM-led play culture, and how 5e’s explosion of popularity may be creating unfair or unrealistic expectations for first-time GMs.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 
I just had someone last night who has onlyran 3.5 and 5e. They talked about how being a GM is work and not really fun, bhut he does it because of the value of it. Not only that but when I talked about how it’s import to say no to some player ideas if they break the mood if the game and they aren’t fun for the GM, he almost seemed not to hear. His retort is that you have to allow these ideas as much as the game permits, because that’s the fun of D&D. The game should be fun for the GM too and as much as the GM thinks about what’s fun for the players, the players should think about what’s fun for the table and GM. And if they don’t, the GM should be happy telling people at the table No.
LikeLike