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, discussions from elsewhere online, and something From The Archives!

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 12/16/2023

1. Candela Obscura
2. D&D: Chains of Asmodeus
3. Four Against Darkness: Treacheries of the Troublesome Towns
4. Traveller: The Deep and the Dark
5. Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, Ulfenkarn: City at the Edge of Death

Top News Stories

D&D Fails Its Save Against Hasbro’s ‘Rocks Fall, Everyone’s Laid Off’: Earlier in the week Hasbro announced another 1,100 layoffs, and since then it’s been increasingly clear that their actual moneymaker Wizards of the Coast has not been spared the knife. Both D&D and Magic: The Gathering have lost significant chunks of their teams – the CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Larian Studios has been saying that almost nobody that worked with them is left, and the lists of names keep growing. There are some staggering losses listed already. Decades worth of experience in game design and the industry, the creator of the DM’s Guild, the head of licensing (which one can safely assume had something to do with Honor Among Thieves and BG3)! To those who remain, the message would seem to be clear: the people at the top simply don’t care, and it doesn’t matter how well you do.

Of course, the announcement of the layoffs is full of corpo speak that would make even the sturdiest of edgerunners go cyberpsycho, and at no point are the millions of dollars said corpos are taking home mentioned as a potential alternative to making Hasbro ‘lean’. Ahead of the 50th anniversary and the release of the next edition of the game in 2024, it seems like an utterly daft decision, and other than ‘corpo gonna corpo’ it’s a headache to try and figure out the why. Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade has speculated in recent posts that it’s part of the drive towards further sending the game into a gated digital enclosure, and it’s hard to argue with that simply because there aren’t any other better ideas.

Either way, starting with the OGL fiasco and ending with gutting the teams that actually made money is certainly a dumpster fire way for Hasbro to bookend a year. 

From the Archives

Maybe…Don’t Play D&D? Alright, alright, we’re being a little cheeky with this one, and owning up to the fact that despite our efforts we haven’t always resisted the urge to use the dark art of algorithmancy for evil. However, the actual original point of the article stands: whatever is going on over there, D&D doesn’t particularly need the help when it comes to what you’re talking about on the socials or making an actual play series of. You still shouldn’t use ‘D&D sux’ as your elevator pitch, not even for the anti-corpo reasons, but if you’re going to pump oxygen into the room consider making sure it goes to games that actually need it.

Not for nothing, a healthier rest-of-the-industry might give at least some of the people that just lost their jobs somewhere to land.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Lunar Exalt: Gosh, Cannibal Halfling Radio was a very different show back in the day – even though, let’s be honest, there aren’t that many episodes between now and then. Still, it’s the holiday season, and our ideas for appropriately-themed one-shots ranging from Knights of Hanukkah to A Very Changeling Christmas are as playable as ever.

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.