Tag Archives: RPG

PLANET FIST Review – Nano-Powered Narrative Wargaming

I toss down a disc of nanobots that quickly assembles itself into a squad beacon, sending its beam of light up from the balcony of the building I’m in and into the sky, before looking through the scope of my sniper rifle. A squadmate, Ultra Rare, is trying to 1v1 an assault trooper using only her knuckleblades, and I sigh wistfully; we used to be an item before I accidentally got her demoted. I fire a shot, miss terribly, and am immediately targeted by the assault trooper’s team and ripped to shreds by machine gun fire.

Reassembled in orbit, switching from a force recon loadout to that of an engineer, I crash onto the balcony in a drop pod next to the beacon and the nanodust that was the smear I left behind. I exchange greetings and a salute with another squadmate – “Butler.” “Setback.” – who walked into the room while I was dead, and I look down into the courtyard. An enemy mech is literally stomping all over an allied squad – what a bunch of blueberries. I raise my anti-materiel rifle and blast off one of its arms – and am splattered across the wall behind me by the weapons in its other one. 

I’m considering another drop pod, when suddenly I schlorp back together, on the ground next to Goblin, who apparently got splattered as well at some point. Between us is a spent revive grenade, and standing over us is Butler. More salutes, more greetings. “Setback. Goblin.” “Butler.”

Just another day on PLANET FIST.

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Give us more devastating games

What do you do?

The call to action within a tabletop RPG implies freedom. When all is said and done, when the cards are down, the GM asks the players ‘what do you do?’ and they go forth as they see fit. Not bound by rules or procedures, only by their imagination of the game world; the rules are there to help explain what happens, not to limit what can be done. This is the siren’s song of the roleplaying game, the freedom to do, and to be, whatever and whoever you want. There are many roads to a roleplaying game, and most traditional games (and many popular non-traditional ones) are built around this question. There is another question, though, that a game can ask, and for me, games which ask this second question have been the ones providing the most affecting, engrossing experiences.

How do you feel?

While games don’t literally ask this question outright (with a few exceptions), it is the key to another layer of character development, of narrative, even of mere in-game consequences. Once a game makes you think about how your character is feeling, you’re inhabiting that character on a whole other level. The problem with this should essentially go without saying: Rules can’t make you feel things. Game procedures can’t make you feel things. If a game wants to make you feel things, and more specifically feel the things your character would feel, the designer has to be a lot more inventive in how they go about this task than they would be, say, determining the probability that you hit a target with an arrow. But there are designers who have succeeded in this, delivering gut punches, heart wrenching decisions, and a sprinkling of light trauma. To them, I have only one thing to say: I want more of it.

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Weekend Update: 11/18/2023

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 11/18/2023

  1. D&D: Chains of Asmodeus
  2. Delta Green: God’s Teeth
  3. Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Settler’s Guide Book
  4. The One Ring™Tales from the Lone-lands
  5. Cyberpunk RED

Top News Stories

Dicebreaker announces Tabletop Awards finalists: Dicebreaker has announced the finalists in their Tabletop Awards, with the winners to be announced at PAX Unplugged later this year. Dicebreaker’s entrant in the tabletop awards space has been somewhat controversial, both due to who the winners have been and the somewhat loose standards of their ‘Rising Star’ categories. Nonetheless, the ‘Best Roleplaying Game’ category has some solid picks in it, including larger games Fabula Ultima and Blade Runner, and indies like Women Are Werewolves and This Discord Has Ghosts In It. Speaking of the last title, Will Jobst is also in the running for Designer of the Year.

Winners for The Awards 2023 announced: In contrast to the rather mainstream Dicebreaker award picks, The Awards, an indie RPG award whose two directives are ‘make weird shit’ (to designers) and ‘recognize twenty things’ (to the judges) have announced their winners for 2023. The whole list is fascinating, and includes higher profile work like FIST, Wildsea, and CBR+PNK. Check out the whole list in one easier to read format on Reddit. Let’s hope The Awards gets themselves a bit more organized off Twitter; their website is linked on Reddit but hasn’t been updated since June.

Discussion of the Week

You absolutely CAN play long campaigns with less crunchy systems, and you should: This is a canard I hear even from my own group, none of whom have less than fifteen years of gaming experience. There’s this belief that for a game to continue to be interesting after months or years of play, there needs to continue to be a stream of mechanical widgets you can engage with. As long as the group still has stories to tell the campaign can keep going; you don’t even necessarily need much or any advancement to keep things interesting!

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.

Crowdfunding Carnival: November, 2023

Happy day after Halloween! Whether you had too many pumpkin beers, too much candy, or just stayed up too late doing the Monster Mash, it’s time for a little…post-holiday drop, let’s say. Luckily for you, I had no Halloween plans other than finding and cataloging some really phenomenal crowdfunding campaigns to help you start your November. On the big game side we have Southeast Asian tactics, dystopian game shows, and Ninja Turtles. On the indie side, Halloween is clearly sticking around with some witches, ghosts, cute cultists, and a big freaking multiverse to tie it all together.

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Table Fiction: DIE: Lenny’s Halloween Party Pt 2

When the football players show up, it’s clear Lenny’s Halloween Party will be a success. That doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly, though, and especially not for Donnie. Be sure to read part 1 if you haven’t already, and then check out DIE on Cannibal Halfling Radio for another story. If you’re more interested in commentary than characters, though, be sure to check out Seamus’s In-Depth Review.

[Content Warning: This section of the story contains some mild sexual content, and casual homophobia like any of you who went to high school in 2003 probably heard regularly.]

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Eat the Reich (Backerkit Preview)

The date: 1943. The location: Nazi occupied Paris. Your assignment: to climb into a pressurized steel coffin. Survive a drop from a few thousand feet. Make your way to the Eiffel tower, where the Fuhrer’s airship is docked and drink all of the party leader’s blood.

Relevant note: you are a vampire.

Sometimes you need a self respecting monster (or six) to take care of the scummier ones.

A backer preview of Eat the Reich released in October 2023 (fittingly on Friday the 13th). It is an RPG written by Grant Howitt (the creator of the Honey Heist), illustrated by Will Kirkvy and published by Rowan, Rook and Decard (the publishers of DIE RPG), and it is a completely, totally and 100% unapologetically anti-fascist joyride.

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Weekend Update: 10/21/2023

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 10/21/2023

  1. Delta Green: God’s Teeth
  2. Cities Without Number
  3. Traveller: Adventure Class Ships
  4. Cyberpunk Red
  5. Fabula Ultima Atlas: High Fantasy
Continue reading Weekend Update: 10/21/2023

DIE the RPG: In-Depth Review

You’re dragged into a treacherous fantasy world made from your own fears, doubts and desires. There’s only one way to escape – but with limitless adventure within your grasp, would you even want to? You might very well have heard our first experience with DIE the RPG, based on the comic of the same name, when we featured it on Cannibal Halfling Radio: Now Playing! Jay, Evelyn, Fitz, and Max came back together to play one more roleplaying game and found themselves in the Fields of the Lost, facing down their own troubles. Well, last weekend I grabbed the d20 of the Master myself and ran a marathon session, ten hours long, and it was just as much of an emotional rollercoaster. With the book in hand and experience on both sides of the screen, let’s dive in for a proper review!

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