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 5/17/25

1. Cyberpunk RED: Interface RED Volume 4
2. Rolemaster Creature Law Volume One
3. ZWEIHANDER Reforged Edition Core Rulebook
4. Traveller: SOLO Second Edition
5. Shadowrun: Margin Calls

Top News Stories

US-China tariff agreement pauses some, cancels other tariffs: Happening overnight US time on Monday, China and the US reached an agreement to limit their reciprocal tariffs on one another. While the first IEEPA tariff on China (blaming them for fentanyl smuggling) is maintained, the second (technically third because Trump announced a second which never went into force) has been reduced to 10% for a period of ninety days, after which it will jump back up to 34% (which is, luckily, less than 125%). This is good news artificially created via the suspension of the existing bad news, but given the uncertainty watch for prices to go up anyway.

Solo But Not Alone 5 Bundle Enters Final Days: Partnering with Take This, a charity “working to support mental health in the gaming community and industry by decreasing stigma and making supports available to people who need them”, the fifth iteration of the fundraising effort organized by Leon Richardson has raised more than $27,000 as of this writing. With 107 solo games, none of which were in SBNA 1-4, the Bundle offers a 97% discount if you go in at the minimum $10 purchase. Let’s be honest, we could all use a bit of mental health help these days, so check the bundle out and spread the worth before it closes on 5/20/25.

From the Archives

From the archives this week we have another article that was released on this day seven years ago: Level One Wonk Does RPG Theory: GNS. We could probably revisit GNS every year and find something new to say about it, but in my opinion the article does summarize what makes GNS compelling very nicely. GNS is compelling because its three main words do align to things that gamers think about, and therefore can act as shorthand for thinking about story, challenge, and verisimilitude (or immersion). However, as Vincent Baker has been writing about recently on his Patreon, a lot of the efforts at The Forge went towards defining and building mechanics for Narrativism, leaving GNS as a model as a very uneven three-legged chair. Even so, you still see commenters on RPG fora to this day use gamist, narrativist, and simulationist as shorthand…although often in a way that’s completely contradictory to the way the terms were originally discussed.

Discussion of the Week

AMA with Tom Bloom, designer of Lancer and author of Kill Six Billion Demons: Tom Bloom stopped by r/RPG to talk games, Kickstarter, and his experiences. The AMA is clearly over but Tom’s responses are great. Piece of advice for an aspiring game dev? “Finish projects, do the work”.

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.