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 3/1/2025

1. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: High Elf Player’s Guide
2. Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, Darktide: Extraction
3. Traveller: The Borderland
4. Urban Shadows Second Edition
5. QuestWorlds

Top News Stories

Ernie Gygax has passed away: From Christian Hoffer at ENWorld:

Ernest “Ernie” Gygax Jr., son of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax and an early playtester of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. The Gygax family confirmed the news via Gary Con’s website today. Cause of death was not given, but Gygax had been hospitalized several times in recent years. Gygax is best known for the creation of Tenser, the first magic-user character, and whose name appears on several D&D spells used in current editions. Per Ernest’s bio, some of his contributions to the games include multiattacks for fighters, different hit dice for different character classes, and Cone of Cold being a 5th level spell.

Gygax often appeared at gaming conventions, especially Gary Con, and also collaborated on various TTRPG projects. He was involved with a failed attempt to “resurrect” TSR and take over several IPs controlled by Wizards of the Coast, but it failed after litigation and eventual liquidation of assets. During that process, Gygax alienated many with questionable views and also his choice in business associates.

Our condolences to the Gygax family and their friends.

From the Archives

As we keep plumbing the depths of the RPG hobby, one thing is fairly constant: Players want games to feel like games. While there’s absolutely no consensus to ‘how’ a game should feel like a game, it still seems like everyone wants to play and wants to be engaged, and sometimes that means providing more mechanics to play with. From the archives this week we go all the way back to the first year of the site to investigate my first analysis and consideration of rules density in Level One Wonk: Crunch.

Discussion of the Week

Your favorite unpopular game mechanics: I found this discussion interesting, because even starting with the OP, almost everyone seems to have one or two favorite rules or subsystems that the hobby at large derides as too complex, too cumbersome, or otherwise crunchy and unnecessary. There is a significant underlying demand for mechanical widgets to play with, and everyone has their favorite.

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.