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 11/29/2025

1. Curseborn Core Rulebook
2. ALIEN RPG Evolved Edition Core Rulebook
3. Labyrinth Lord: Revised & Expanded
4. Carcass Crawler: Issue Six
5. Vagabond \\ Pulp Fantasy RPG Core Rulebook

Top News Stories

American Library Association Announces Platinum Play Award Recipients: Specifically, the Games & Gaming Round Table (GameRT) of the ALA has announced them as part of International Games Month. 

“The “Platys” are awarded to games considered standouts for library collections or programming ideas across a wide swath of library types. In the categories of Board or Card Games, Tabletop Role-Playing Games, and Video Games for the Platys Hall of Fame highlighting games released in the last two to ten years and the Platys Classics recognizes classic games over ten years old, and many are evergreen selections whether at home or in a Library context.”

Among the 2025 winners are No Thank You Evil and Sodalitas for the regular Platys and Apocalypse World and Call of Cthulhu as Platys Classics.

Libraries are awesome, one of the few third places that don’t put additional strain on your wallet. That the ALA is acknowledging the value of gaming, that they’re using gaming as another way to help get people in the door and help them learn, and that creators are getting recognition are all equally awesome. As a bonus, the Platys are pretty young, and all the previous TTRPG recipients are mostly trad and fairly old; that smaller and more indie games are now being added is an excellent trend to start.

From the Archives

By sheer coincidence, some material for games we’ve reviewed in the past have arrived at CHG Branch S, so we’re prompted to remind you to check those reviews out! First, we got a copy of Hard Wired Island’s latest print run, so if you want a retrofuture cyberpunk game of people fighting the unchecked greed of corporations, technocrats, and worse to save their orbital communities give that a look. Second, we received a copy of Mandelbrot Set, a roguelike fractal campaign – which we may well review in turn – for FIST: Ultra Edition.

Discussion of the Week

“What’s the flavour of the current era of TTRPG design? Social Media Refragmentation? Is it a consolidation cycle? What are the new upcoming designers struggling with and against now?” So asks game designer Aaron Lim on BlueSky this week. The replies and discussions range from the hopeful to the despondent, from the vibe checks to the experienced analysis. It makes for a good temperature test of at least one part of the TTRPG world.

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.