Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 12/4/2021

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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 12/4/2021

  1. The One Ring Core Rules
  2. Trinity Continuum: Assassins (Pre-Order)
  3. WFRP: Empire in Ruins Companion
  4. The Third Imperium
  5. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy

Top News Stories

Mothership is the best-funded non-licensed RPG Kickstarter: In a Kickstarter update from December 3rd, Sean McCoy confirmed that with roughly $1.4m in funding, Mothership is the eighth-most funded RPG Kickstarter ever, and the best-funded non-licensed Kickstarter ever. The immense success of this indie darling shows, among other things, the power of engaged and enthusiastic fans, which the Mothership designers encouraged throughout the game’s design lifecycle.

Discussion of the Week

Cortex licensing agreement causes jeers, confusion: Fans of the generic RPG Cortex Prime reacted with confusion and dismay to the announcement of the game’s new licensing terms, which hand down onerous (and in some cases utterly unenforceable) terms to anyone who makes even free content with the system. Although it has not been confirmed outright the best-supported assumption is that the terms were written by someone in the game’s distributor, Fandom, which is already known for attempts to monetize other people’s intellectual property. Discussions (and shitposts) have flared across Twitter, but this thread by @POCGamer (and the retweet of @FrivYeti) does a solid job of laying out some facts, making some solid predictions about what Fandom may have been trying to do, and explaining why they failed.

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

Audio/Video, Cannibal Halfling Radio

Cannibal Halfling Radio Episode 16: Going Independent

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Where is the line between traditional and indie games, and what does it mean? Who is running the show in a game that has no master? How can you make your storytelling a solo affair? How can you find the indie game that’s right for you? Aaron and Seamus are Going Independent as they try to answer these questions and make leaving the traditional behind an easier and more rewarding experience.

Continue reading Cannibal Halfling Radio Episode 16: Going Independent →

Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Kickstarter Wonk: December, 2021

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Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for December! I don’t know what it is about timing at this time of year. Several great campaigns are ending today or ended yesterday, not really giving enough time for readers to grace them with their clicks. On the other hand, it seems like everyone is rushing to get a campaign wrapped before the holidays…and some of these campaigns needed to bake a little longer. No matter. I read a lot, but these seven I will stand behind as new games you should definitely check out. Onward!

Continue reading Kickstarter Wonk: December, 2021 →
Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 11/27/2021

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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 11/27/2021

  1. Traveller: The Third Imperium
  2. Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy
  3. WFRP: Archives of the Empire Volume 2
  4. Twilight: 2000 4th Edition Core Set
  5. Aerospace Engineer’s Handbook

Discussion of the Week

It’s Thanksgiving here in the US, so the Cannibal Halflings are all off spending time with their families. Hope everyone has a safe and restful holiday, we’ll get back to the salt mines next week!

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

Articles, Editorial

Adding Flavor To The Table

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Between spending some time at the Flying Stag earlier in the week and recovering from the trials and tribulations of Thanksgiving, I’ve got food and drink on the mind with a side of tabletop worldbuilding. So your party of characters wander into the tavern and order… what? An ale?  Your freighter crew has two weeks of… consumables? That’s it? We can do better than that; both people running games and playing them can get some extra detail out of their setting and characters by keeping one fact in mind: even most protagonists have to eat.

Continue reading Adding Flavor To The Table →

Articles, Editorial

Game Wizards Review

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The story of role-playing games begins with the story of Dungeons and Dragons; the story of Dungeons and Dragons begins with Gary Gygax. And Dave Arneson. And, frankly, all of TSR. As our hobby evolves and our record keepers get older, we need to look back and make a good record of what got us to this point. With both Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson passed away, the invention of D&D is becoming just a story, in some people’s minds a footnote to Mentzer and Moldvay and Allston and Tweet and Mearls and Crawford that have come since. Well, Jon Peterson to the rescue.

Off the success of Playing at the World, a history of the role-playing game as a concept, and The Elusive Shift, an investigation of the role-playing game as its own standalone ‘thing’, we now have Game Wizards, arguably now the definitive text on the luminaries who invented D&D and how rabidly they fought over credit for that specific thing. Peterson is showing his breadth here, moving from broad-based historical synthesis (Playing at the World) to deep, particular investigation (The Elusive Shift) and now into that popular but difficult historical realm, disputed narrative. In some ways, this is a bit of a departure from Peterson’s earlier work, which was very much grounded in the how and why that made RPGs what they are. That said, Game Wizards as a book has convinced me that, as someone interested in RPG history, the story of Gygax and Arneson is one I need to know.

Continue reading Game Wizards Review →
Articles, Solitaire Storytelling

Solitaire Storytelling – The Broken Cask

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Well, hello there! Welcome to the Flying Stag, our hearth and home among the treetops. My name is Wulflen Skyway, I’m the proprietor of this fine establishment. Now, the dancing doesn’t start until twilight, and you don’t look like you have an undead problem, so what shall it be? We have a moongoat shawarma that’s proven very popular, and craftsmanship demands I recommend the Frozen Drupelet, our raspberry spiced ice wine made right-

Ah, touring around looking for stories, are you? Well, I was a bard back in the day, before some… stuff happened, so I could spin you a few yarns. No, no, the scale armor is just an affectation, nothing to worry yourself about. No, I’m not going to “dish” about my past, thank you. The Flying Stag, though, well, it may not be as well known as The Broken Cask – yet – but it has its stories to tell. Continue reading Solitaire Storytelling – The Broken Cask →

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 →

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