Category Archives: Articles

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/20/2021

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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, and discussions from elsewhere online.

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 11/20/2021

  1. WFRP: Archives of the Empire Volume 2
  2. Twilight: 2000 4th Edition Core Set
  3. Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound: Artefacts of Power
  4. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  5. Interface RED

Top News Stories

PAX East Returns in 2022, Mandates Vaccination: From a press release sent to CHG: “PAX East 2022 returns to the Boston Convention Center from Thursday April 21, 2022, to Sunday, April 24, 2022. Badges will soon go on sale for the long-awaited return of the East Coast’s largest gaming event.

After moving 2021’s show online for the health and safety of the community, entry to PAX East 2022 will require a completed vaccination series and mandatory face coverings for all in the venue. Proof of vaccination will be required for all PAX events in the foreseeable future.”

Discussion of the Week

Why GMing Isn’t More Popular: From Reddit, first r/dndnext and then r/rpg, a good thread has cropped talking about both why GMing traditional games can be difficult and why gamers are often disincentivized from doing so. While the conversation hits on a lot of GMing topics, one of the strong undercurrents of suggestion is to play games other than D&D 5e, which we wholeheartedly agree with.

Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.

Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling – Time To Kill

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Another job, another hotel, another lobby.  Being a paid killer might sound dangerous, or exciting, or glamorous, and it can be, I suppose. More often than not, though, it involves waiting. Lots of waiting, when the planning is already done and there’s nothing to do but count the moments, watch the goings-on, and think about what you’ve done and what you’re about to do while you wait for your target to appear.

That’s okay, though. I’ve got Time To Kill.

Continue reading Solitaire Storytelling – Time To Kill →

Articles, Editorial

Twilight:2000 Review

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The RPG hobby is driven by remakes and revisions. Fifth Edition this and Seventh Edition that, yes, but entire movements in the hobby are built around hacking and re-hacking D&D’s sub-sub-genre of play, fantasy dungeon crawling. With this perspective, RPGs fit in nicely alongside movie studios who remake Spiderman and Batman decadally, and media companies who continue to make live-action versions of critically acclaimed anime without asking how they’re actually improving things. In a young hobby like RPGs, though, there is still space for remakes to be good. So if you want to make a good remake, why not start with a game that practically screams ‘don’t update me’, the 1984 classic Twilight:2000?

Continue reading Twilight:2000 Review →
Adventure Log, Articles

Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6

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In the dark future, there’s no such thing as an easy decision; you either have the hard part now or you have it later. When we last saw our erstwhile entrepreneurs, they had just tattled on a mobster named Vlad and put him on the receiving end of an Arasaka kill squad. Then they quietly scooped up all the documents that the corporates didn’t stick around to grab. Priceless opportunity, or painting the target on your back by hand? CabbageCorp employees have to find out, of course.

And among all the mob mischief, Biotechnica is still making moves. Mason’s boss is pleased with the dirt the team has found on Jayhawk, and is planning to exercise a stock purchase option soon. Knowing the contract that Biotechnica made them sign, Jayhawk chief technology officer William Squires reached out for a meeting. Not interested in hearing his pleas or complaints, Biotechnica brass kicked the invite down the chain until it hit Mason. Mason accepts, even though his boss says it’ll be seen as an insult and no meeting will be set up. Despite that prediction, he’s invited to take a ride by private car down to the Heartland Complex in downtown Hydropolis.

Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6 →
Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/6/2021

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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, and discussions from elsewhere online.

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 11/6/2021

  1. Rangers of Shadow Deep: Dungeons Dark
  2. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  3. The Rich Bastard’s Guide to Magick
  4. Hundred Devils Night Parade
  5. Cults of Cthulhu

Top News Stories

Shipping costs still bad: COVID-19 wrought havoc on global supply chains, and we’re not out of the woods yet. This thread by Alex Flagg from Crafty Games details just how much the increase in shipping costs is affecting board games, and you can expect the impact on RPGs to be similar. As a consumer, now is a great time to focus on PDFs. As an industry member, now is a great time to look at localized printing and assembly options for your games.

Discussion of the Week

Gaming online still popular: Gaming online spiked in popularity at the beginning of the pandemic for obvious reasons. At this point in time, given higher vaccination rates and sheer exhaustion, many people are looking back towards in-person gaming, given that small-group socialization is both safer than it was before and still much safer than restaurants, bars, or event venues. A spate of threads this week started comparing online and in-person gaming again, as the two start to look like equally possible again. My own contribution pointed out that the increasing feature-richness of VTT platforms has started to get away from what most people need to game, more resembling premium items like interlocking terrain tiles or hardwood dice towers than utilities. The above-linked thread is from @Pandatheist, who made multiple contributions to the discussion which culminated in a useful discussion of what helps you run indie games online.

Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.

Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Kickstarter Wonk: November, 2021

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Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for November! There’s a whole bunch going on here as the year gets darker, and it’s a perfect time to stay in and play some games. This is also where the spooky games ended up: we have sea shanty poltergeists, food horror, and even a game where all women are werewolves! In addition, though it’s not a new game and as such isn’t included below, the new box set of Mothership has also gone live on Kickstarter and it looks sick. Even though it doesn’t quite fall in the bounds of a Kickstarter Wonk selection, it’s still definitely worth noting. As far as what does fall in those bounds, we have 8 (plus one) really neat games to check out this month. Grab your dice, pencils, and tarot cards!

Continue reading Kickstarter Wonk: November, 2021 →
A Glimpse Into The Vault, Articles

KÖ-ØP Kickstarter Review – x1 Flat Pack Relationship Game

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Our relationship is in trouble. But bringing that up never helps. Instead, let’s focus on our new flat pack furniture that just arrived! If we can just put it together – correctly, without it becoming a whole thing, everything will be fine. And we’ll be fine.

We’ll be fine, right?

Grab the bag of random parts, decipher the instructions with the vaguely Swedish names, and try to put together some furniture without everything – including your relationship – crashing down around you. Maybe you’ll even get to enjoy some meatballs. This is KÖ-ØP from offcut games!

Continue reading KÖ-ØP Kickstarter Review – x1 Flat Pack Relationship Game →

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 10/30/21

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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, and discussions from elsewhere online.

DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for 10/30/2021

  1. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy (5e)
  2. Traveller: Secrets of the Ancients
  3. Hundred Devils Night Parade (Collected Edition)
  4. Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022
  5. FlexTale Solo Adventuring Toolkit

Continue reading Weekend Update: 10/30/21 →

Articles, Meet the Campaign

Meet the Campaign: Intro to West Marches

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Seamus and I both came of age at a time where the long-running campaign was considered the platonic ideal of the role-playing game. There’s a lot of historical justification for this; the ‘campaign’ as an innovation in the wargaming space was one of the things that led to interest in the character-driven gaming that eventually became Dungeons and Dragons. The campaign as a procedure within a game, though, has been somewhat of a stagnant thing. Even as games continue to push on notions of advancement and other structures which define how events progress across multiple gaming sessions, it’s still assumed that a long-running game would be played in a series of continuous sessions by a consistent group of players. 15 years ago, a known luminary in the RPG design space ran a campaign that worked quite differently, creating ripples across the hobby. I’m of course talking about Ben Robbins’ West Marches.

Continue reading Meet the Campaign: Intro to West Marches →