Tag Archives: Hasbro

Weekend Update: 2/28/2026

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 2/28/2026

  1. Traveller: Vehicle Handbook Update 2026
  2. Cyberpunk RED: Interface RED Volume 5
  3. Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 3
  4. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Temple of Spite
  5. Outgunned Superheroes

Top News Stories

Paramount wins Warner Bros. Discovery: We discussed this a bit at the end of last year, but Netflix’s purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery was beat out by a counteroffer by Paramount. While this is still another move towards consolidation in an already top-heavy industry, the monopoly play of Netflix in particular did not come to pass.

Hasbro lawsuit dismissed: The lawsuit brought against Hasbro in January has been dismissed. This is likely because it’s hard to sue someone for financial mismanagement after they make a butt-ton of money.

From the Archives

On this day eight years ago we discussed a fascinating PbtA game intended to emulate the intrigues and dark fantasy of properties like Game of Thrones. Since then, I’ve run the game and found it’s very good at doing exactly what it says on the tin…if your group actually wants that sort of story, though, is another question. From the archives this week is The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power.

Discussion of the Week

This dungeon doesn’t play nice and neither should they: Johan Nohr, of Mork Borg fame, describes his group going through the Tomb of Horrors. Short, punchy, and exactly the sort of PC logic I both encourage and dread in my own games.

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.

Weekend Update: 2/14/2026

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 2/14/2026

  1. Cyberpunk RED: Interface RED Volume 5
  2. ICRPG Power Tools: Game Mastery Book
  3. Halls of Arden Vul: The Thicket
  4. Proteus Sector: A Gazetteer for Stars Without Number
  5. Delta Green: The New Age

Top News Stories

WotC Continues D&D’s Advance To Digital First Brand: We talked about the Hasbro earnings release quite a bit this week, but other investor materials and presentations continue to add more context. In the earnings call, CEO Chris Cocks confirmed the growth was part of a strategy to move to a digital-first company, compounding the growth from earlier calls where it was stated that 60% of D&D’s revenue was digital. When taking these most recent results with WotC’s decision to add digital-only content earlier this year, it’s becoming clear that the company intends to migrate more D&D activity to their exclusive digital platform.

From the Archives

There are few game mechanics which have gone from popular to cringeworthy as quickly as parallel Merits and Flaws. While many modern games have embraced some nuance about how to dole out discrete character merits, GURPS is still rocking Advantages/Disadvantages from 2004, when 4e was released and when the mechanic hadn’t fallen from grace. From the archives we have a System Hack look at GURPS Disadvantages to provide a few ideas to modernize the system.

Discussion of the Week

A disaster is presently unfolding vis-à-vis the official Neopets tabletop RPG: Licensed games are interesting; they can both provide more engagement to existing fans of the property while opening the gate to the TTRPG hobby as well. This requires that the licensed game not only be decent, but also provide an experience aligned to what fans are looking for. In order to provide that experience, a game designer has to, among other things, pay the freelancers he’s working with. The licensed Neopets RPG has apparently failed on all of these counts, looking to be such a disaster that it both induces schadenfreude and could even get me to say that the Fallout TTRPG wasn’t all that bad.

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.

Five Tiers of RPG Publishing

Hasbro’s annual earnings came out this week, so I took a look. It is truly staggering how much Wizards of the Coast has changed the company since they were acquired; when looking at unadjusted earnings the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Games division was the only one that turned a profit in the entire company. Not only that, but Wizards is responsible for roughly 47% of the entire company’s revenue and over 90% of all revenue growth over the last year. That’s over 2 billion dollars in revenue; roughly $1.7 billion is attributable to Magic: The Gathering and the rest is attributable to Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons is obviously the largest, most popular roleplaying game, but $400 million in revenue is staggering. If this was all books, it would be eight million copies. It’s not all books of course; one of the reasons D&D is growing (though perhaps not as fast as Magic is) is the continued expansion of digital services like D&D Beyond, products with high margins and minimal variable costs. This is the future, not because it makes for a better gaming experience, but because it makes for a better balance sheet.

Continue reading Five Tiers of RPG Publishing