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.
Category Archives: Weekend Update
Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week!
Weekend Update: 10/9/2021
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 10/9/2021
- Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
- Deviant: the Renegades
- WFRP: Empire In Ruins
- Star Trek Adventures IDW Year Five Tie-In PDF
- Black Spear
Top News Stories
PAX Unplugged 2021 Confirmed, and Mandates Vaccination: From a press release sent to CHG:
“PAX Unplugged, the most attended tabletop gaming convention in the eastern U.S., returns to the Philadelphia Convention Center from Dec. 10 – 12, 2021. Badges go on-sale soon for the first in-person PAX Unplugged in two years, where attendees can experience new game demos, exciting tournaments, panels with industry giants, and more.
ReedPop and Penny Arcade will build on the successful return of PAX West over Labor Day weekend, where robust health and safety guidelines resulted in universal mask compliance and 93% of attendees showing proof of vaccination. PAX Unplugged 2021 will require all attendees to show proof of a complete COVID-19 vaccination series and abide by stringent masking requirements. For more information, please see the official health and safety guidelines.
Three-day badges for PAX Unplugged 2021 go on-sale soon for $75, while individual Friday, Saturday, and Sunday badges will go for $35 each.”
Vendors name-dropped in the press release include Cephalofair, R. Talsorian Games, CGE, Bézier Games, KOSMOS, Rock Manor Games, Lone Shark Games, Mage Hand Press, Devir Games, Chaosium Inc., Leder Games, and Wyrmwood.
Discussion of the Week
Twitch Hack reveals streamer earnings: The massive Twitch hack which dumped the site’s entire source code, among other things, revealed the revenue made by top streamers on the service. Of particular interest to the TTRPG world was the top streamer on Twitch, Critical Role (of course), which made roughly ten million dollars over the last two years. There’s been a lot of discussion on this front, including Critical Role fans getting unnecessarily defensive about…everything? More germane to the conversation is how earnings play into criticism. Critical Role was already the centerpiece of a conversation about diversity and representation, areas where their very white cast really could do a lot better. Combine this with Twitch’s overwhelmingly white top content creators, and there’s a lot that we need to talk about. Does the volume of CritRole’s earnings change this conversation? Not much. They are at the forefront of RPG streaming and they need to consider that, and those earnings make any excuses for not addressing their diversity problems a little hard to believe. Besides that, though, they do not become the bad guys merely because they’re popular and make a lot of money.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 10/2/2021
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 10/2/2021
- WFRP: Empire in Ruins
- Deviant: the Renegades
- Heirs to the Shogunate
- Achtung: Cthulhu 2d20 Player’s Guide
- Soulbound: Champions of Death
Top News Stories
Next revision of D&D expected in 2024: The next ‘expansion’ of Dungeons and Dragons was announced by executive producer Ray Winninger during a livestream event, and predictably it set TTRPG discussion spaces afire. While there isn’t much detail with any official confirmation, guesses about what this will look like center around two pieces of information. First, the new rulebooks have been said to be backwards-compatible with existing Fifth Edition material. This would imply the sort of collation and expansion of mechanics last seen in the ‘Essentials’ revision of Fourth Edition, the lightest touch of the mid-cycle rules revisions seen in modern D&D and the one most easily argued to be backward-compatible. Also building evidence for the ‘5e Essentials’ theory is the paired announcement in the linked article, the ‘Expansions Gift Set’, which seems to do the same sort of collation, albeit with a lighter touch. The second major piece of information has to do with Fifth Edition’s digital ecosystem. Here it would make sense to look to the VTT ecosystem; the VTT value chain is dominated by third parties like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, and digital infrastructure is one place in the TTRPG hobby where a massive corporation should have a distinct advantage.
In summary: As the edition of D&D which has gone longest without any edition-wide revision (Third Edition only lasted eight years), Fifth Edition is unlikely to be changed much by whatever new material is released in time for D&D’s 50th birthday. Fans, players, and DMs likely have little to worry about (though I’m sure many of you will buy the new rulebooks anyway). On the other hand, if you are employed by or invested in Fantasy Grounds or Roll20…you probably have about three years to plan an exit strategy.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 9/25/2021
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 9/25/2021
- WFRP: Empire in Ruins
- Heirs to the Shogunate
- Soulbound: Champions of Death
- Star Trek Adventures: Shackleton Expanse
- Deviant: the Renegades
Top News Stories
Asmodee up for sale: Report has come out that private equity (not venture capital, those are different) firm PAI Partners has retained Goldman Sachs to help them sell Asmodee, aiming for a valuation of around two billion dollars. As there’s no seller lined up, this is…not great? When PE firms look to sell without a counterparty lined up, it more means they’re looking to get rid of a company. My personal guess is that current supply chain issues have them spooked, and owning a major games distributor is not a good look. As for what this means for Asmodee divisions like Fantasy Flight and Edge Studios…there could be upside depending on what happens, but this is not what I’d broadly call “positive”.
Funcom grants license for The Secret World TTRPG: Cult classic MMORPG The Secret World is slated to be turned into a tabletop game. Publisher-to-be Star Anvil Studios states they’ll have more to share by the end of the year, and are aiming for a Kickstarter in 2022. Funcom is a bit looser with their IP than some others we know, but that seems to have only strengthened the fan community; I’ll be looking out for this one.
Discussion of the Week
Don’t Kill Your Players: An important Reddit thread this week. If you’ve killed one of your players, call the police, and probably a lawyer! Behind the goofing around, there’s some good lessons about design considerations and how games address players versus their characters.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 9/18/2021
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. This week: chaos gods, Critical credit snafus, hurricane relief, dirty laundry, and dad discussions!
Weekend Update: 9/11/2021
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 9/11/2021
- Deviant: the Renegades
- Cepheus Deluxe
- Fallout: the Roleplaying Game Core Rules
- Alien RPG Colonial Marines Operations Manual
- 2300AD
Top News Stories
SideQuest, a creator-led funding drive, launches November 2021!
From SideQuest’s own press release, helpfully dropped in our Discord: “On the 8th of September 2021, the Zine Creators Workshop announced SideQuest 2021. This event is modelled after the popular ZineQuest promotion on Kickstarter. Designers will crowdfund games over the course of November. By pooling resources, they will shine a light on all their projects.
The thinking behind SideQuest is simple. ZineQuest is so successful that many designers wait all year to launch projects. Kickstarter becomes flooded with indie games campaigns. The rest of the year, it becomes hard for new designers to promote zine-sized offerings. SideQuest will address this, providing a second focal point. The event is not limited to a single crowdfunding platform. Participating campaigns will include the SideQuest logo and appear on the SideQuest website.
Marc Strocks (he/they) founded SideQuest. “I was excited for ZineQuest but didn’t see any community form between participants. I created a Discord server to help people network and lift each other up. We don’t need corporations. We work together to show what indie resources can do.”
Laurie O’Connel (he/him) had breakaway success with Lichcraft. “For me, the exciting thing is the opportunity to do projects that come from your heart, but aren’t as ‘mainstream’. When I put Lichcraft together, I thought that it would get very little attention. It turns out, if you love a game, there’s a solid chance other people will love it too. My SideQuest project, Stolen Crown, has also been in the back of my mind for far too long. This is a chance to finally make it happen.”
Tanya Floaker (they/them) is publishing their first game. “I’ll be helping other designers. In turn, they will be helping me. Being part of a collective endeavour is why I’m involved.”
Spencer Campbell (he/him) of Slayers and LUMEN has to say about the event: “SideQuest represents everything I love about the indie RPG scene: an opportunity for a wide variety of designers to show off their amazing work, and the community lifting one another up together.”
SideQuest is an initiative of the Zine Creators Workshop. ZCW formed on the 8th of January 2021, before ZineQuest3. It is an incubator for game development, a knowledge base, and pushes to get new designers in to print.
Go to SideQuest.info to see all participating projects. Follow the conversation on Twitter and Instagram with #SideQuest2021. Sign up at tinyurl.com/JoinSideQuest or itch.io/jam/sidequest-2021 “
Discussion of the Week
Magpie Games provides answers, more questions, in Dicebreaker Article: Dicebreaker contributor Chase Carter spoke with Magpie Games CEO Mark Diaz Truman regarding their record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for Avatar Legends. Secondary discussions on Twitter were mixed, finding that Diaz Truman’s answers often asked more questions than they, well, answered. While the Avatar Legends Kickstarter is inarguably a massive success and also inarguably funding a corporate licensed game, the fairly small RPG industry provides many distortions. I mean, Wizards of the Coast makes over $100 million *a month*, but who’s counting, right?
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 9/4/2021
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.
Continue reading Weekend Update: 9/4/2021Weekend Update: 8/28/2021
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 8/28/2021
- Legend of the Five Rings: Fields of Victory
- 2300AD
- Alien RPG Colonial Marines Operations Manual
- Fallout the RPG Core Rulebook
- Esper Genesis 5E Master Technician’s Guide
Top News Stories
Not much going on on the RPG front! Stay healthy everyone, mask up in crowds, and play some games.
Discussion of the Week
GM Experience should not be quantified simply by length of time: An interesting discussion about how to compare and assess GMing ability. No conclusion is reached, but a lot of intriguing questions are asked. Does it matter how many games you run? Should you consider the trends in the hobby when you started? Does depth or breadth make for a better GM? Worth a read.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 8/21/2021
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 8/21/2021
- Aliens RPG Colonial Marines Operations
- Fallout the RPG Core Rules
- Wrath and Glory – Redacted Records
- A Book of Tales
- Battletech: ilClan
Top News Stories
ENnies voting is live: Nominations are out and it’s time to vote for your favorites in the 2021 ENnies. The process has been rife with technical issues (votes have reset at least once) so it may be good to return to the site and check that your votes have in fact been counted.
Discussion of the Week
Beautiful Books, Great Settings, Terrible Games: On Reddit this week there was a discussion of games which hold tremendous value as pieces of media, or as static worldbuilding exercises…and then crumble to dust the minute you try to *play* them. As continued discussion around what makes a game and what makes a game good is centered within the discourse, we need to keep in mind that some things we just love to hate.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
Weekend Update: 8/14/2021
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 8/14/2021
- Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Core Rules
- A Book of Tales
- Battletech: ilClan
- Wrath & Glory – Redacted Records
- BLASTER: Volume 3
Top News Stories
2021 ENNIE Awards Nominees and Judges’ Spotlight Winners Announced: The header says it all, the list of this year’s batch of Nominees and Spotlight Winners has been released. There are a number of creations we’ve looked at in the mix: Cortex Prime, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, and Alice is Missing are all nominated for more than one category, and SLA Industries 2nd Edition got a Judge’s Spotlight!
Discussion of the Week
An Apology: A needed piece of meta-discourse. A Redditor concedes that he snarked about the game Ten Candles because designer Stephen Dewey was “a dick” to him…over a decade ago. The resulting post makes you feel good for knowing it happened, and reminds us all to take a step back from all the heated discussions we can so easily be sucked into, online and elsewhere. Also, you should probably check out Ten Candles.
Have any RPG news leads or scoops? Get in touch! You can reach us at cannibalhalflinggaming@gmail.com, or through Twitter via @HungryHalfling.
