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 10/26/2024

1. Traveller: Traders and Gunboats
2. Tales from the RED: Hope Reborn
3. WH40k Imperium Maledictum: Inquisition Player’s Guide
4. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Dwarf Player’s Guide
5. The Mutant Epoch RPG Expansion Rules

Top News Stories

Dire Wolf Digital closes books on Cortex Prime Kickstarter: Perhaps a niche bit of news, but Dire Wolf Digital put out a statement on the long-running Cortex Prime Kickstarter. Cortex Prime funded on Kickstarter seven years ago, and over that time the system has changed owners twice; Dire Wolf Digital acquired the game from Fandom. Here in 2024 there was one outstanding element of the Kickstarter rewards, print copies of the Cortex Spotlights, and Dire Wolf decided to officially not pursue printing the spotlights given the costs. For the several hundred people who backed at that level, they’re out a potential reward. On the other hand, thanks to the game changing ownership, Dire Wolf never received any money from the Kickstarter campaign.

I think this is worth discussing because it shows the third outcome of a Kickstarter, one that (unlike failing outright) is more common in large, corporate-backed games. The core product of the Kickstarter is released, but due to the post-campaign sales lagging, the money to get the rest of the goals over the finish line never materializes, and the campaign drags on 90% fulfilled. With Cortex, unfortunately, you can see this happen: A very late campaign, for a system with enough promise that not one but two different media companies see it as worth buying, that for multiple reasons is not really selling.

I am a big fan of Cortex Prime. I also think it’s been saddled with some terrible business decisions, including the decision to try and sell the game in a closed ecosystem (which not even Marvel is truly getting away with). While Dire Wolf will likely at least break even continuing to support Tales of Xadia, the real way for them to make a return on this investment and get Cortex Prime the attention it deserves is to nut up, kill their dead storefront, and get PDFs on DriveThruRPG. 30% of nothing is nothing, and that’s how much the Cortex Prime distribution strategy is earning them.

From the Archives

Cortex Prime suffered and may die at the hands of boneheaded distribution, but the game is a truly fascinating set of mechanics that, with some good supplements, could outperform GURPS as a generic system for a lot of gamers. From the archives we’re looking at Aaron’s review of Cortex Prime.

Discussion of the Week

One of my biggest weaknesses is struggling to improv: While you’re not going to learn how to improv solely from a Reddit thread, this discussion does set down some good ways to think about improv, and things you can do to improve your skills.

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.