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 8/17/2024

1. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit
2. Star Trek Adventures – Second Edition – Core Rulebook
3. Knave: Second Edition
4. Star Trek Adventures – Second Edition – Game Toolkit
5. The One Ring™ – Moria™ Through the Doors of Durin

Top News Stories

Karen Page Gets The Punisher Into D&D: Deborah Ann Woll was on Real Ones With John Bernthal and over the course of their conversation they got talking about Dungeons & Dragons, which Woll has quite a bit of experience in to say the least. At one point Woll asks Bernthal if he wants to play D&D, and as he starts to respond with interest in at least trying she continues with “No literally, I mean right now.” Without any books or materials Woll leaps right into a theater of the mind encounter, describing Bernthal moving through dark woods when he hears something large step on a branch, explaining how one would roll dice to find out where it came from and so on.

It’s a genuinely good pitch for the game, and we include it here because other games, their designers, and anyone who wants to introduce someone to TTRPGs  may want to pull a lesson from this: the best way to get someone interested in a game is to get them into it as fast and as painlessly as possible.

From the Archives

Aaron, Geni, and Seamus took their own stab at recruiting players for the hobby in Episode 17 of Cannibal Halfling Radio, Looking for Players – recruitment methods, mechanical choices, potential pitfalls, and what actually makes someone stick around in the first place!

Discussion of the Week

What do you think will be the next big trend in TTRPGs? Interesting speculation and debate, taking the temperature from personal experiences and what people are seeing at conventions, trying to puzzle out which mechanics have room to grow and which ones have played out – including some noting, as we did earlier in the week, that the next big thing might have nothing to do with the actual design of a game.

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.