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 7/5/2025

1. Daggerheart Corebook
2. Warhammer: The Old World Roleplaying Game Player’s Guide
3. Daggerheart NEXUS Corebook
4. Cyberpunk Red: Interface RED Volume 4
5. Essays from a TTRPG Professional

Top News Stories

Diamond Comic Distributors To Sell Off TTRPG Stock With No Pay For Publishers: Long story short, the US-based distributor of comics and books filed for bankruptcy in January, and is now desperate to pay off its debts. They happen to have a lot of TTRPG products sitting in stock, and have filed a motion that would allow them to sell that stock off without having to pay the publishers who gave them the books to sell in the first place. One quote from the article sets the tone pretty strongly:

“I spoke to my attorney, he looked it over, and his exact quote to me was ‘It’s not as bad as you think it is, it’s much worse’.”

2025 ENNIE Award Nominees Announced: Of particular and immediate note are the Judges’ Spotlight Winners: Punk is Dead: a post apocalyptic songwriting TTRPG, Letters from the Dark Vol. VIII: Lucky Stars, Let Us Build A Tower: A Mythic Bronze Age Adventure in Babel, Darkenhaven, and Heroes of Cerulea. For the actual nominees it strikes us as a fairly diverse and interesting list, lacking anything from the big megacorp and with a lot of small/indie publications. 

Actual voting will be from July 11th through July 20th, with the winners announced live and online at Gen Con on August 1st at 8pm Eastern. Nominations are now also open for Fan Award for Best Publisher, and the ENNIEs are also accepting applications for judges for 2026. Nominations for Best Publisher and judge applications will be open until July 8.

There are several familiar titles on the nominees list, including…

From the Archives

Playing at the World, 2e, for Best RPG Related Product,

Stewpot for Best Family Game/Product,

Triangle Agency for Best Game, Best Rules, Best Writing, and Product of the Year, 

and Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast for Best Art (Cover), Best Family Game/Product, Best Writing, and Product of the Year.

Discussion of the Week

Which DM books actually teach you to be a good DM? Running games can be challenging, especially if the book that’s supposed to help you… really doesn’t. This thread is full of examples that posters credit with making their experience easier, and in many cases it’s not just limited to the one game they’re running!

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.