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, something from the archives, and discussions from elsewhere online.

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 4/20/2024

1. Wrath and Glory: Vow of Absolution
2. Grimdark Future World Book
3. This Is Free Trader Beowulf
4. Traveller: The Fifth Frontier War
5. Fallout: Wanderer’s Guide Book

Top News Stories

Cynthia Williams out at Wizards of the Coast: Per an SEC filing, Cynthia Williams resigned from her post as president of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming on April 15th, effective April 26th (next Friday). While the gaming sphere has created some hullabaloo over the announcement, the fact is that all of the concrete information about Williams’ resignation is in the SEC filing and there isn’t much of it. My theory is rather anodyne; April is the beginning of the second quarter, and Hasbro showed Williams either poor financials (which aren’t public yet) or ludicrous revenue targets for Magic, D&D, or both, and she decided to bail out instead of become the latest in a line of woman executives scapegoated for broader underperformance. All we know for certain is that the shakeup is due to the financial woes of Hasbro at large, which bring Wizards under scrutiny no matter how well the division is doing.

From the Archives

This week, Cannibal Halfling marked our 1,000th article, a heady feat to be sure. Back in 2017 we hit the first hundred articles at the end of the year, and it happened to be a big one. I need to offer a bit of a caveat; our Genesys Review (a two parter, so it’s either 100 and 101 or 99 and 100 if my math is right) contained the 100th new article for the site. When Seamus started Cannibal Halfling Gaming the very first upload was a whopping 75 articles of backlog from his writing at the Mad Adventurers Society; it was a firm foundation for the site but it meant that as we started on a new venture it was important to distinguish what was new and what wasn’t. Now, though, with 7.5 years of history and the Mad Adventurers Society merely a glimmer in archive.org, those first 75 articles are Cannibal Halfling articles more than anything else, and we gladly count them in our current 1000.

Regardless of the math, the Genesys article is not only a solid Article #100 but it also represents the beginning of real readership onto the site. We wouldn’t get as excited about day one view counts again until 2019, when we broke the internet for daring to suggest that people should play something other than D&D.

Also, we’re having a bit of a celebratory giveaway – leave a reply with a favorite article or episode on socials and you’ll be entered  to win some DriveThruRPG credit!

Discussion of the Week

Your favorite free RPGs: While Cannibal Halfling isn’t a money-making endeavor, we do get enough pocket change from readers like you clicking on our finely crafted affiliate links to purchase review copies with relative impunity. For people living in the real world, though, free games are both a relief to the wallet and a GM tool, as you can just throw PDFs around the table like candy. This discussion covers some of the Reddit fan favorites; one of our favorites, Ironsworn, is near the top, but Fate, the Without Number games, and many other solid titles are also covered.

Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, through Mastodon via @CannibalHalflingGaming@dice.camp, and through BlueSky via @cannibalhalfling.bsky.social.