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 1/26/2025

1. BattleTech: ilKhan’s Eyes Only
2. Grimwild: Cinematic Fantasy Roleplaying
3. Ancient Wonders
4. ACKS II Revised Rulebook
5. Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: The RPG

Top News Stories

This $10 game bundle is a great deal to support the trans community: The ‘Best of 2024 TTRPG Bundle’ has more than 75 games from 40 creators, with all funds going towards the Trans Empowerment Project. “The organization is a 501(c)3 non-profit that directly aids hundreds of trans folks each year. It also recently began the Quest Collective — an initiative to support the community of tabletop gamers of marginalized genders by spotlighting a different game by a trans designer each month.”

Solo But Not Alone 5 Bundle Supports Mental Health:  Once again the Bundle of solo games organized by Cat McDonald is “partnering with Take This, a charity working to support mental health in the gaming community and industry by decreasing stigma and making supports available to people who need them. Take This had a rough 2024 so let’s help them start 2025 off right! 

We have games from literally around the world, from first-time designers and veteran experts. We have rituals and meditations, we have adventures and kid-friendly games, we have lyric games and artifact creation games! We have a helpful spreadsheet so you can find the perfect game for you, from our collection of over 100 (over $400 worth) games that you can play on your own!”

Of note is that none of the games in the Bundle (which, for disclosure, does include one locally-sourced) have been in a previous one (it was a rule for submitting, actually), so if you’ve supported the Bundle in the past you won’t be buying anything twice by doing so again!

Ennie Awards Try To Have Their Slop Cake And Eat It Too: Backlash against the Ennies’ policy when it comes to “AI” content got loud enough this week for Polygon to report on it. In short, products using it can be submitted but can’t win in categories that the machine was used for, so a slop cover disqualifies from Best Cover Art but not Best Interior Art provided the interior art is human-made; like other spaces in the industry, this is largely based on an honor system. This is pretty much guaranteed to make nobody happy, since slop makers can’t win unless they also lie and people who are opposed to slop for its theft, exploitation, and environmental damage point out that all three of those will still be happening. The article notes that this is the second year this policy is in place but with much more of a hullabaloo this time, suggesting that “with more attention given to the subject of AI-generated content in the wake of its use by Hasbro, members of the industry are perhaps more aware of the technology now than in previous years.”

We saw at least one suggestion out there that they didn’t want to ban it outright for fear of having to ban Hasbro products, and, well… it’s a hard thought to shake. The backlash won’t cause any change this year, but “the ENNIE Staff is currently considering putting the choice to a vote on the eligibility of AI content as part of this year’s awards ballot.”

Discussion of the Week

Punching Nazis (Game Recommendations): Apropos of nothing, we’re sure, comes a more focused kind of recommendation thread with quite the range. Indiana Jones, cybernetic revolutionaries, time-traveling professional athletes that try to beat the speed running record for killing Hitler… The mod team’s reaction? “To those of you reporting this post because it’s “promoting hate” against Nazis or “threatening violence” against Nazis, I refer you to this subreddit’s stance on Nazis: Fuck Nazis.” Did we mention that /rpg is one of several communities to ban links to Twitter? 

From the Archives

Unsurprisingly, Eat the Reich was a strong contender in said reddit thread. Feeding them to vampires might not be the most realistic way to deal with Nazis, but it certainly has an appeal. For a more realistic option, you can always send in the Night Witches. 

And we still need to keep having that talk about AI, it seems.

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.