The RPG theory ship sails on unbidden, even as RPG networks of practice seem to be drifting apart. In November, there was a great post over on The Dododecahedron which bucked the trend and pulled theory work from outside of the author’s primary discipline, the OSR. Starting from a description written by Vincent Baker about the PbtA ‘conversation’, Dododecahedron author Rowan describes OSR play as an onion with four concentric layers: Character on the outside, then working inward to Mechanics, Procedures, and finally Adventure. Adventure is in the middle as the diegetic ‘fiction’ that the players are engaging with is the source of truth for OSR play. From there are Procedures, which describe the rules for how to go about play; that is to say, what travel looks like, or when random encounters occur, or how to track consumables. The next layer out is Mechanics, which describe the “rules” as most RPGs understand them; this is where initiative, ability checks, and all those specific bits live. Finally on the outside is Character, where elements like attributes, experience points, and skill ratings, all the things that make characters unique, sit.
Continue reading Coring the Onion: OSR structuralism and non-OSR gamesTag Archives: RPG
The Endie Awards 2025 – Seamus Edition
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!
Weekend Update: 12/6/2025
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.
Continue reading Weekend Update: 12/6/2025
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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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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System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Base Building
If any one topic is ‘the core’ of this System Hack, this would be it. Base building is the underlying gameplay loop of RimWorld and it is also a topic du jour in RPG circles, with the (admittedly poorly detailed) stronghold building from the D&D days of yore coming back into focus as more gamers want broader storyline opportunities. For our purposes, of course, if we’re making a colony sim we need to make a colony. But what exactly is the best way to do that?
Base building from my perspective is sandwiched between two examples which effectively bracket the space we have to work in. On the heavy end is RimWorld itself, a computer-assisted colony manager where everything is measured out in five foot squares and the player has complete power to place elements as they want them, as long as everything fits. On the light end is the new generation of stronghold building rules, most effectively typified by Free League’s games, notably Forbidden Lands and Twilight:2000. These games add a strong layer atop their roleplay frameworks, but the actual mechanical existence of a Forbidden Lands stronghold is merely a list of buildings with requirements and effects. We know the first item is too much, but we know the second is not enough. So what will base building in our System Hack actually look like?
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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 gamingWeekend Update: 11/8/2025
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.
Continue reading Weekend Update: 11/8/2025
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 