This post is brought to you thanks to Lady Tabletop, who prompted folks to write about their own gaming experiences of the year and give out their own fun awards. I like the idea a lot, and as it turns out I actually have a lot of games to mention and talk about and give accolades to. I still plan to write up my usual X Years of Cannibal Halflings on the 31st to look back on the year, but this seems like a fun idea that focuses more on the games than the writing about them. So, let’s see what I played, what I thought about them, and who won what!
Tag Archives: Opinion
Crowdfunding Carnival: December, 2025
Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for December! Con season is well and truly over, with PAX Unplugged wrapping before Thanksgiving. That, combined with the upcoming holidays, has caused Kickstarter to slow…turns out game designers need a vacation too! We don’t have ten campaigns to look at this month, but there are still a number of interesting games on the horizon which are worth examination.
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A Glimpse Into The Vault: Expect Delays
There’s ice on the tracks, Tourists keep getting tangled up with regular Commuters, and two trains are Out of Service. That other subway line is going to have a much better reputation at this rate. Well, you can try some overnight repairs, see if you can funnel some riders into a tourist trap, and hope against hope the other line catches fire or something, but no matter what you can probably Expect Delays.
Last Kiss Backerkit Review
Ever feel like the world is out to get you? It is. Five radical teens with attitude should not be responsible for saving the world. You’re a bunch of god-damned teenagers. You might act like you have it all figured out, but you don’t. How could you when there is a literal evil force making your lives harder? So go ahead, seek out some normal high school goals like dominating on the sports field, kissing the mean girl, or becoming class president. While you play pretend, the darkness will seep in. The darkness colors the world so nothing is quite right. This is a world where disputes can be resolved via duels, where the next town over seems a world away, and where monsters live in secret. Normal doesn’t have a chance. What will you do before it all ends?
Perhaps there’s enough time for one Last Kiss…
My first corporate convention
When it comes to nerd hobbies, the convention scene is bifurcated. There are local, volunteer-driven cons that put a lot of effort into building content from enthusiasts around the area. There are also the massive, national affairs that bring attention and revenue to their parents. Gaming cons moved quickly into the latter category, even if the initial efforts were modest; both GenCon and Origins came to prominence after their alignment with TSR and GAMA, respectively. And now there’s a massive leader in the corporate con sphere: Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX.
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Two-Hand Path Review: Getting a Grip on Luck and Magic
“After the locusts and pits and boiling seas. After the war in heaven and feasting on earth. After the seven years of blood and forty years of night.
There is magic. Magic and bone.
Where streets grow weeds and skyscrapers stand hollow. Where old gods wake and new gods form in the hearts of the wayward. Where cult and banner flourish. Where the dead, they walk. Where the stars disregard their course and Jupiter’s children are born under powerful new signs.
Mages. Mages like you.”
With rings on your fingers, tattoos on your knuckles, and scars on the back of your hand, you’ll delve into the cursed ruins of a post-fall city and walk the Two-Hand Path.
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Weekend Update: 11/15/2025
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.
The design decision which won narrative gaming
Last week, Apocalypse World came back to crowdfunding, with the Bakers seeking funding for a Third Edition of the game. Apocalypse World was first released back in 2010 and it took the indie RPG world by storm; by the time Dungeon World was released in 2012 it was already all but certain that ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ would be a phenomenon. It’s easy to forget that there was another indie darling riding high in the hobby in the early aughts. Fate was arguably the other big indie game, and it even made its way into the ICv2 bestseller list after the success of its 2013 Kickstarter, an honor typically reserved for D&D, Pathfinder, and a few other corporate games. The ICv2 data point is particularly interesting. Fate outsold Apocalypse World; not only did the game peek into commercial sales charts as late as 2020, Fate even holds the statistically dubious honor of being one of only three games to ever outsell D&D in the ICv2 rankings (the other two being Pathfinder and FFG Star Wars). Commercially, Fate was an indie juggernaut.
Fate has clearly not maintained the degree of impact and influence it once had. Hell, the last three Kickstarter campaigns run by Evil Hat Productions, publishers of Fate, were all Powered by the Apocalypse games. The literal keepers of Fate have, thanks in no small part to John Harper and Blades in the Dark, seemingly seen the writing on the wall in terms of salability and influence of PbtA over Fate. Why is that? To start, there’s an obvious disparity to the degree in which unaffiliated designers took the respective systems and ran with them. That said, it’s fairly clear to me that this is a symptom, not a cause. While it’s hard to beat the Bakers’ approach of ‘sure, just don’t literally plagiarize us’ for licensing, Fate was licensed under the OGL and later Creative Commons, which were both used by tons of creators in other contexts. No, the difference in third party support and expansion has to do with the design of the respective games, not their shepherding by their respective creators. And I think I know specifically which design elements made the difference.
Continue reading The design decision which won narrative gamingCrowdfunding Carnival: November, 2025
Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for November! There are a ton of campaigns out there this month; my initial pass easily got to 20 even after I realized that there were a lot and started filtering more aggressively. We’ve definitely got more designers putting in the juice, but there are some other interesting developments going on.
First, Gamefound has come roaring onto the scene again. While the provider got some recognition during the Kickstarter blockchain kerfluffle, their network was pretty weak until recently. First, over the summer Gamefound acquired Indiegogo (not the other way around). Second, Gamefound is currently in the midst of RPG Party, an event that started in mid-October to help promote and drive engagement with RPG campaigns specifically. Chaosium and Magpie got on board with RPG Party, so between their involvement and the recent access to the Indiegogo mailing list, Gamefound has jumped from also-ran to contender seemingly overnight.
But let’s move onto the games. This month features campaigns from all three major crowdfunding providers, meaning the space is starting to heat up a bit. Competition is a good thing, and supporting competitors to Kickstarter is a great idea when Kickstarter United is still on strike.
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SPINE Review: Making A Game Of Getting Lost In A Book
You and Granma were, frankly, on the worst terms. That’s what made it such a surprise when you got a package from your cousin, who had wound up being the executor of her estate. Maybe, your cousin writes, Granma was able to overlook your differences since you had become a fellow academic? Either way, the actual package is a copy from her rare books collection, willed to you. You can’t help yourself, so you start to read the book. It’s a weird one, an anthology of works all talking about books and stories and death and living forever and… rituals? Hold on. You really can’t help yourself. You consider just not turning the page, but you turn it all the same. The notes you’re writing in the margins stop being the words you intended to write. You can feel the book pulling you in…
The book is Siderius Plug’s SPINE – Immortality in Ninety-nine Endnotes.
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Cannibal Halfling Gaming 