Tag Archives: rpg discourse

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 7/24/2021

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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 7/24/2021

  1. Blaster: Volume 3
  2. M20 Technocracy Reloaded
  3. The Starship Warden
  4. Trails of Ash and Bone
  5. WFRP: The Horned Rat

Top News Stories

ICv2 Sales Figures for Spring: ICv2’s RPG industry sales summary for spring of 2021 was released this week. D&D was first, surprising nobody, but in a fairly significant upset, R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk unseated Pathfinder for the slot. The remainder of the top 5 went to Pathfinder, Free League’s Alien, and the most eyeroll-inducing category ever, D&D Third Party.

D&D Side Materials De-Canonized: According to this piece quoting Jeremy Crawford, Dungeons and Dragons video games, novels, and comic books are no longer considered ‘canon’. While in some cases this isn’t much of a change – Eberron stories weren’t even canon to each other until explicitly referenced in a text – it’s a significant change for settings like the Forgotten Realms which have often advanced the timeline via such material.

Discussion of the Week

Do mechanics or setting support genre? Twitter got all in a tizzy this week as someone stated that running a horror game is dependent on the setting material, not mechanics. Inevitably, others jumped in to defend the opposite tack. The answer, like in most of these “debates”, is that it depends, and both can be important. Only Sith and Twitter deal in absolutes. Like many of these snippy debates, it’s likely best that I don’t include a link to anyone.

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

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 7/10/2021

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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 7/10/2021

  1. WFRP – The Horned Rat
  2. Trinity Continuum: Under Alien Skies
  3. Trails of Ash and Bone
  4. Soulbound: Steam and Steel
  5. SCP the Tabletop RPG

Top News Stories

A Tale of Two Cons: Essen Spiel, one of if not the largest board game trade show in the world, has officially announced they are mandating either proof of immunization or wearing a mask to attend the con. At nearly the same time, Gen Con, one of if not the largest role-playing game trade show in the world, has lifted their mask mandate. Although we in the US are celebrating easy access to vaccines and a drop in case numbers, the pandemic is not over, and the risk of Gen Con becoming a superspreader event is not overstated. Good on the Essen Spiel staff for putting the health and safety of their attendees first.

Discussion of the Week

Why Dungeons?: We know the RPG form has bloomed fractally into a million different genres, moods, and ways to play, but modern TTRPGs started with some dungeons, and some dragons. And out of the two of those, only one is guaranteed to show up. This Reddit thread has some interesting discussions on early RPG history, roots of the dungeon in Tolkien, and some later attempts to ‘explain’ dungeon ecology, like Earthdawn.

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

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 7/3/2021

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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 7/3/2021

  1. Trails of Ash and Bone
  2. Soulbound: Stars and Scales
  3. Soulbound: Steam and Steel
  4. SCP the Tabletop RPG
  5. Mythic Babylon

Discussion of the Week

Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: RPGs are a game of information asymmetry, and generally the GM knows when things might go bad. This comes through in a common refrain: Are you sure you want to do that? Over on Reddit there was a lively discussion about the worst (best?) occurrences that came from a player being faced with the dreaded question and still answering ‘yes’.

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

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 6/26/2021

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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 6/26/2021

  1. Trails of Ash and Bone
  2. Mythic Babylon
  3. SCP the Tabletop RPG
  4. Pathfinder for Savage Worlds Core Rules
  5. Galder’s Gazetteer

Top News Stories

Queer Games Bundle 2021 on Itch.io Nearing Its End: The QGB “is a direct action that you can take right now to support queer people in a life changing way”, a games bundle specifically for supporting actual queer creators. There are 195 creators behind the bundle’s 236 items, each of whom will get a share of the profits. While the majority of the items in question are video games and are thus usually beyond our purview here at CHG, there are still 40+ tabletop offerings between the physical games, books, and misc. categories. At the $60 price tag, that’s at most $1.50 a game – and then you get a bunch of free video games! There is also a Pay What You Can version of the Bundle for $10-20 for those who want to support creators but can’t afford the full price themselves. The Bundle runs for about another week.

Premium Color Books Sale at DriveThruRPG: As we previously reported, the costs to print premium color books from DriveThruRPG are going to be going up starting on July 1st, in some cases significantly. In an effort to drive sales before the price increases have a chance to discourage buyers, DTRPG is having a sale through June 30th wherein participating products are marked down 25% from their current price. Included offerings that we have taken a look at include Aberrant 2e, Comrades, and Five Torches Deep.

Dark Alliance lands with a thud: The new Dungeons and Dragons digital title, Dark Alliance, has premiered to mixed reviews and disappointment. One Youtube review called it “truly, truly awful”, while the linked article calls it an “Icewind Fail”. While there’s a smattering of at least somewhat positive reviews out there (PCGamer liked it), the overall consensus is that it failed to live up to expectations; those who were able to get past the underlying gameplay issues were still disappointed to discover that it doesn’t particularly resemble Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, which many fans of the earlier game were looking forward to.

PAX West Returns To In-Person: East didn’t make it, being converted to an online event on July 15th-18th, but this week ReedPop announced that PAX West 2021 will officially be a convention in realspace, September 3rd – 6th. Tickets go on sale within the next two weeks. How successful the con will be will depend on a lot of factors, as the pandemic and vaccination efforts are still ongoing and comfort levels vary, but of particular interest to our readers is that this probably means PAX Unplugged (scheduled for December 10th-12th) is a go. Fingers crossed. Get vaccinated.

Discussion of the Week

Ernie Gygax interviewed about the New TSR: If you wanted to know if the venture is worthwhile, the answer is no (and as the link may imply, it’s getting no more oxygen than that). Spencer, though, the author of the link, has a Kickstarter live, called Nova. Instead of wasting any energy on Ernie Gygax, check it out (and check out our review for his systems reference document LUMEN, which Nova uses for rules).

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

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 6/19/2021

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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 6/19/2021

  1. Mythic Babylon
  2. Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
  3. Star of Alladore
  4. Pathfinder for Savage Worlds Core Rules
  5. Galder’s Gazetteer

Top News Stories

Exandria Unlimited: The Critical  Role fanbase is abuzz about the new mini-campaign kicking off next week, Exandria Unlimited. It’s also hard not to notice that new faces Aimee Carrero, Robbie Daymond, and of course Game Master Aabria Iyengar all provide a needed shot in the arm to the diversity of the CritRole crew (not to mention that they’re all incredibly talented). Excitement aside, an eight episode mini-campaign might be the entry many people (including some Cannibal Halflings) need to CritRole’s intimidating back catalog. Exandria Unlimited kicks off next Thursday, June 24th. 

Discussion of the Week

Intentionality in Game Design: There was a fair amount of back-and-forth (or was it subtweeting? Might have been subtweeting) about the notion of ‘intention’ in design. Intention ends up being whether or not game mechanics and other game elements drive the game’s specific experience and are included in the game for a specific reason. This sounds like a good thing, but the majority of games are intended for broad experiences, and in most art forms, “knowing what you’re doing” doesn’t necessarily produce good art. Jared Sinclair has a good mini-thread on this; “allow the art to create itself” is good advice for writer’s block or blank-page syndrome across media. Both sides of the conversation have interesting points, though neither directly engaged the other (which might be for the best).

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

Articles, Level One Wonk

The Trouble With Finding New Systems

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Your campaign is ending. It’s been a good time but the story is coming to an end, and your players are looking to the next big adventure. You want to switch it up, and they’re on board. What do you do?

There’s a whole lot of game systems out there, and you probably could run a fun game with any of them. That said, you’re not picking a system because it meets the low bar of “could be fun”. You want a system that will make your game better because it’s there, either because it makes it easier to have fun or it helps you do a fun thing you wouldn’t otherwise be able to or would have thought to do.

Continue reading The Trouble With Finding New Systems →
Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 5/29/2021

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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 5/29/2021

  1. Five Parsecs from Home
  2. WFRP: The Horned Rat
  3. Galder’s Gazetteer
  4. Children of the Blood
  5. Dune: Adventures in the Imperium

Top News Stories

Risus is for Sale: S. John Ross is seeking offers for the entirety of Risus, the “Anything RPG” which has served as a delightful entry in the annals of rules-light gaming for many people, including myself. Ross includes a number of buyer-friendly stipulations in the sale, including permission to use the references to works he’s not selling that are made in Risus materials in perpetuity, and up to a year of forwarding service on the Risus website to give the buyer time to establish their own webspace. There is a small catch, in that the purchase will include accepting existing liabilities from a successfully funded Kickstarter that has only been partially delivered. Even so, if you’re looking for a rules-light platform to launch your gaming company dreams, it might be time to crack your piggy bank open.

Discussion of the Week

Unloved Games: A discussion on r/RPG centers around two pages worth of Unloved Games that are actually off the radar. As the Reddit discussion illuminates, people are too used to “unloved” suggestions that are altogether too popular for the title.

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

What Does The Game Bring To The Table?

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Over the last week or so there appeared the most recent incarnation of a frequent discourse, one about the quality of games correlating with their likelihood of success. Now, that’s bluntly and hilariously untrue, which is clear to anyone who has ever enjoyed a niche of anything in their life. In tabletop RPGs, though, it appears, from certain lenses, to even be anti-true. Games which make choices actively hostile to such simple traits as being able to play them still become sales successes, often becoming more successful than the indie games which old guard designers seem to snark at between requests for employment. Ultimately that’s not because TTRPG purchasers are irrational (I mean, they are, but not for the reasons we’re talking about here), but rather because they’re buying games for different reasons.

Continue reading What Does The Game Bring To The Table? →
Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 5/22/2021

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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 5/22/2021

  1. Children of the Blood
  2. Galder’s Gazetteer
  3. Dune: Adventures in the Imperium
  4. Worlds Without Number
  5. Stars Without Number: Revised

Top News Stories

D&D had its best year ever: Wizards of the Coast has reflected on D&D’s 2020 performance, calling it the ‘best year ever’ for the brand. D&D sales grew 33% year-over-year, for the seventh consecutive year of growth. In addition to being impressive performance for any entertainment brand, 2020 in particular illustrates the strength of D&D (and to a lesser extent the hobby) in the face of the complications brought about by COVID-19.

Discussion of the Week

Twitter Main Character the First: Game Designers Age Out: Two designers best known for work they had done in the 1990s made, according to our crack analyst team, “really dumb” statements. Fortunately, they can be safely ignored, along with anything they post.

Twitter Main Character the Second: The Critical Role Brigade: Quote-tweeting someone exposes them to all of your followers. Now for me, with not even 200 followers on my main, that doesn’t matter, but when you have 170,000 followers and your most popular work is known for toxic fans? Don’t do that. Critical Role shouldn’t be considered above reproach anyway, but when those who have gained influence use that influence poorly, it doesn’t reflect well on the brand.

Alcohol and Networking in the Games Industry: Another topic that came up on Twitter this week was the role of alcohol in networking. Having business meetings while drinking is de rigueur across many industries (I have some tales about the energy industry from my day job life) but it has negative consequences, including edging out non-drinkers or those not comfortable in bar-type settings, as well as creating a degree of permission for bad behavior. At least in the energy industry few ‘real’ meetings happen at a bar, game designers and freelancers may not be so lucky when their local con is the only opportunity to get an in-person meeting with companies they want to work for. Cons should work on having more sober networking options, but game industry types should also reflect on the “bar-con” practice and consider stepping away.

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

Articles, Weekend Update

Weekend Update: 5/8/2021

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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 5/8/2021

  1. Dune: Adventures in the Imperium
  2. Worlds Without Number
  3. Yogg-Sothoth’s Children, a Korean Call of Cthulhu supplement
  4. Hard Wired Island
  5. Stargrave: Science Fiction Wargames in the Ravaged Galaxy

Top News Stories

Big Bad Con to be Held Online: With the pandemic nowhere near ‘over’, the announcement that Big Bad Con would be held online this year was not surprising, but potentially sad for those eagerly awaiting the return of in-person events. That said, kudos to the con organizers for making the health and safety of their attendees a priority.

Apple Lawyers call Itch games ‘Unspeakable Content’: The Epic Games/Apple Lawsuit, already arguably a farce, has now featured the lawyer for Apple calling some games on Itch, which is accessible through Epic Games, “both offensive and sexualized”. In response, Itch stated (possibly joking) on their Twitter account that the adult content tag would be renamed ‘unspeakable games’, in response to another particularly hyperbolic statement.

Discussions of the Week

The Slow Weird Return to In-Person Play: Speaking of pandemic, the Indie Game Reading Club has posted Paul Beakley’s meditation on all the things that make playing online great…and how odd it’s going to feel when we return to our normal tables. As someone who’s run an online group for over a decade…there’s nothing saying you can’t keep it going even after this is all over!

Fair Pay is Still a Debate Apparently: The discussion of freelancer pay bubbled back to the discourse surface after a Kickstarter campaign advertised a stretch goal for paying their freelancers five cents a word instead of the original three. While this was rightly met with condemnation, the broader discussion melted down in the face of, well, Twitter. None of the longer threads are really worth linking, but the Cannibal Halfling position is straightforward: Freelancers should be paid more, 10 cents per word is, while not necessarily ‘enough’, at least a starting point, and royalty and profit-sharing models, while not a panacea, should become more widely discussed and offered, especially in the small press world.

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