Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for October! It’s not exactly that spooky in here. I mean, there’s a bit of grimdark, and some goblins, but overall things are light, bright, and colorful. And there are several games about food. Overall though it’s a great crop, with eight games and an honorable mention zine that should make it into your campaign. Ready? Onward!
Continue reading Kickstarter Wonk: October, 2021Tag Archives: Opinion
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.
Under Hollow Hills Review
How much changes in a decade? A couple years ago I went to my tenth college reunion. I was struck by how different things were; how my old fraternity was simply not familiar any more, and how my favorite late night food spots gave me significantly more indigestion. I couldn’t help but notice, also, how much was exactly the same. The city of Pittsburgh was still the same idiosyncratic mix of rust belt and academic, and the campus very much elicited all the memories I had from being in that place. Ten years seems like both enough time for something to change completely and yet not change at all. And so it is with Powered by the Apocalypse.
It hasn’t been exactly ten years since the start of Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA), Apocalypse World was released in 2010. That said, as the game scooped up awards through 2010 and 2011, we could say that it’s roughly the 10th anniversary of PbtA as a phenomenon. By the end of the 2011 awards season the momentum had built, and Dungeon World, the game that arguably sent PbtA into the next tier of indie phenomena, came out in 2012. No matter your exact accounting, though, 2021 is the perfect time to reflect on a decade of PbtA because the Bakers have released a new PbtA game.
Continue reading Under Hollow Hills ReviewWeekend 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.
Solitaire Storytelling: Bucket of Bolts
Busted, rusted, set adrift, cloaked in cloth and grime.
This old ship lies still—a relic
from a different time.
Lift the dust sheets, one by one, pry the broken latch.
Up the ladder, flaking paint,
up towards the hatch.
Crank it open, hit the switch, dim lights flicker on.
Yellowed bulkheads, fraying wires—
captains, dead and gone.
In the cockpit, fire it up—engine’s thrumming roar.
Creaking, lurching up towards
shining stars once more.
Solitaire Storytelling: A Visit to San Sibilia
My Visit to San Sibilia – A Cartographer’s Journal by Campbell McNevin – Day One
What surprisingly good fortune! The last thing I remember from last night, having had perhaps one libation too many, was staggering home in a foul mood after a series of less-than-civil conversations at the Cartographers Guild biennial convention in Paris. Yet here I stand in the light of day, only slightly under the weather, in the strange city of San Sibilia!
Continue reading Solitaire Storytelling: A Visit to San Sibilia
Kickstarter Wonk: September, 2021
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for September! We’re nearly ¾ of the way through this weird-ass year, and the desire for more escapism hasn’t abated. While we might *still* be gaming on Zoom, designers from all over the world are ready to serve up new twists. Whether it’s magical realist convenience stores, fantasy adventure insects, or just a nice blimp, Kickstarter (and a new upstart) have what you need to keep your mind off (waving hands) all of this.
Continue reading Kickstarter Wonk: September, 2021
Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Review
RPG licensing. RPG licensing never changes. In some ways it’s amazing that it took until 2021 to get an honest Fallout tabletop RPG, given the original game’s mechanical dalliance with GURPS and other design elements borrowed heavily from pen and paper games of the time. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until Fallout 4 that the series turned back to its roots and, with the help of Modiphius, got an official licensed port. Fallout the Role-Playing Game leans heavily on the most recent iteration of the video game series; both the mechanics and the setting borrow heavily and almost exclusively from Bethesda’s Fallout 4 for source material. Comparing this game to a Bethesda game ends up being quite apt, though; like most of the modern software titles released by this game’s licensor, Fallout the Role-Playing Game shows a lot of promise and appears at first glance to be ported well into its new mechanics…but in reality it’s hampered by a raft of grave unforced errors in editing and product management. So is it endearingly buggy, or is it hopeless? Let’s take a look.
Continue reading Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Review
Building Characters From Archetypes
Everyone knows what a character class is. From D&D to Diablo and from Final Fantasy to Facebook personality tests, the notion of starting your RPG adventure with a Fighter, Thief, Mage, or Cleric has transcended D&D and TTRPGs in general to become a nerd pop culture staple. In the modern TTRPG hobby, though, classes are but one way to present a set of archetypes from which to build a character.
Continue reading Building Characters From Archetypes
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