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 4/19/2025
- Fabula Ultima Atlas: Natural Fantasy
- Tome of Worldbuilding
- Kinks and Cantrips
- The Nomicon
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: High Elf Player’s Guide
Top News Stories
RPGs maybe…not exempt from tariffs?: Another article on the tariff mess, this time bringing up an old CROSS ruling from the TSR days which put RPGs under a different HTS code. Let me tell you something from my day job: In all likelihood, RPGs have been imported under both codes, especially those which appear as bound books. Some freight forwarders will use the codes from the CROSS ruling, others won’t, and if you’re not bringing in millions of dollars of product, it probably won’t be checked.
The article does have some important points about the economics of manufacturing in China, especially around board games and boxed form factors, which were never in a position to avoid tariffs. On the “plus” side, the administration’s recent lack of spine with regard to Harvard University means we can expect them to blink with regards to China as well. In the interim, there are still European printers that are less expensive than printing in the US and ironically, thanks to the paper situation, will be less tariffed than even domestic printers. What a joke.
From the Archives
In the wake of looking at the TTRPG universe on Reddit (see below), it’s highly appropriate that eight years ago today we published a review of the one of the best surveys of the TTRPG universe extant. From the archives this week we’re looking at our review of Designers and Dragons by Shannon Appelcline.
Discussion of the Week
A map of r/RPG’s favorite RPGs: Click on the image in the header, it’s really cool. Still, this is a great visualization to show that even in a million-plus subscriber community like r/RPG, they don’t really talk about much at all. Thinking about the inclusions (and exclusions) is interesting, too; definitely shows that the community skews newer/younger. Also of note is that this diagram shows games in reference to each other, so games discussed in a vacuum (including big ones like 7th Sea and the Cypher System) aren’t shown in the graph. Also fascinating: the upvotes per mention metric. From that, the most well-liked games in r/RPG are Mausritter, Apocalypse World, and Paranoia.
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.
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