Weekend Update: 2/28/2026
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. DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for…
When we played Tomb of Horrors, the first session, they moved slowly and methodically, ten-foot-poling every corridor but eventually got their asses handed to them and retreated out to forward camp. The next IRL day they realized this dungeon doesn’t play nice and so neither should they.
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Final day of #ZineTopia @backerkit.com! Get Tales from the Cockpit, a Lost & Found solo game of a giant robot, its many pilots, and the passage of time! There are also stranded pilots, mecha mechanics, heists, dream hackers, and fleeing starships in the add-ons!! www.backerkit.com/c/projects/s...
27.02.2026 13:22 — 👍 7 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 1I missed my post on Monday because I'm on a business trip. These disruptions will continue to be part of my reality, but at least I can take a moment to explain.
25.02.2026 18:39 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0As much as I'm being glib, I have always honestly believed that reading games closely not only can teach you a lot, but is a prerequisite to figuring out if the things you may then learn in play are about the game or about you and your group.
25.02.2026 14:41 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0It's weird to say this but I'm glad the discourse has caught up with my strangely heterodox opinion 'reading is good and helps you learn things'.
25.02.2026 14:32 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Just seen that “AI is punk” take and… gosh. Was not aware that “counter-culture” in 2026 meant participating in a trillion dollar industry pushed by the world’s most valuable companies and the world’s most powerful nation.
21.02.2026 10:04 — 👍 1239 🔁 266 💬 57 📌 28
Weekend Update: 2/21/2026
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. DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for…
www.cnn.com/2026/02/20/p...
Huge news not only for trade and supply chain analysts (i.e. me) but anyone who buys imported goods in the US (i.e. everyone). Should also kill the idea that the administration ever had a mandate on trade.
The month of chaos begins! Travelling to London tomorrow.
20.02.2026 13:04 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Apropos of absolutely nothing, while I enjoy reading many of the long threads on here no amount of eyeballs will convince me to jump on that train. I write better in paragraphs and I'm at my best with 2000 word mini-essays.
19.02.2026 22:22 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I didn't mean to imply that they were related, and it's my own awkward text that's at fault for that. Rather, The Forge was a very influential place to discuss self-publishing games... there was a lot of momentum at the time which was not related to the OGL at all.
19.02.2026 22:13 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Completely agree there on both points.
19.02.2026 21:50 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0My opinion there is equally as non-falsifiable as any opinion about a world that doesn't exist. But given how much effort was being placed in self-publishing RPGs (hence the Forge, BTRC, RPGNow, etc), if WotC didn't produce a license someone else would have.
19.02.2026 21:49 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0For sure. All I'm saying is that 2000-2003 was a time when a lot of things happened very quickly in the hobby. The OGL was one of them. Everything Rob points out about what the OGL enabled is true! At the same time, I don't believe that a world in which the OGL never happened would be a worse one.
19.02.2026 21:49 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Right, BTRC went PDF only in 2003, that's my goof. I still think the existence of the OGL causing these things is a non-falsifiable claim; if needing a legal document was truly the obstacle there were other solutions. I'm also uncertain how specific anecdotes stack against the d20 boom/bust.
19.02.2026 21:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Interesting thread. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be completely convinced about the positive effects of the OGL, especially given the timing. The Forge started in 1999, RPGNow in 2001. BTRC started in 2003, arguably the first PDF-only TTRPG designer. Did the OGL create growth or just capture it?
19.02.2026 19:45 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0The only reason I didn't fall in love with RIFTS in high school was that we actually tried to use the rules, and it went incredibly poorly. As an adult I did run some Savage RIFTS and was fairly pleased at how much of the 'bonkers' it preserved from the original.
19.02.2026 19:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Pre-Ryan-Dancey, D&D worked to split up its own fan base among incompatible worlds and sub-worlds. Post-Ryan-Dancey, D&D consolidated its fan base—and a fair portion of everyone else's fan base to boot. 1/2
18.02.2026 18:04 — 👍 34 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0Ten promising Zine Month projects still looking for that final push over the finish line. Check it out.
18.02.2026 15:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Sometimes you give Dancey the benefit of the doubt because OGL created an industry boom in the '00s.
But you have to remember he did it for Machiavellian reasons, and successfully killed any number of young RPG publishers.
Late-era capitalism is probably the theme the runs through his history.
I just backed Murker of Mörks! Omni-Compatible Borg Adventure! on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/art...
17.02.2026 20:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Is Tunnels & Trolls actually the second-ever RPG? I have a whole box on that in Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories, and it turns out that the answer is pretty arbitrary and depends on your criteria.
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One of the famous Massachusetts W-towns, along with Wayland and Weston. "Sure, we believe in equal rights...over there, not in here."
16.02.2026 18:55 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0To be perfectly honest, I think my favorite games in the past few years have been made by designers or firms big enough to lavish huge swathes of time and effort to the game, while not being big enough to have an accountant who will tell them the odds of the game bankrupting them.
16.02.2026 17:31 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0As I contemplate writing more TTRPG business posts, I feel the need to state outright: How good a game is has almost no effect on how much money it makes, and how big a company is has almost no effect on how good their games are. The main reason players should care about revenue is game survival.
16.02.2026 17:31 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 1My last Cannibal Halfling post has been read by several thousand people, which means I'm Being Perceived. Here I try to reflect on that a bit.
16.02.2026 15:54 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
It was a balmy 40 degrees in Boston today, meaning I was able to take a 20 mile ride on my newest project bike. 'Newest' is extremely relative: The frame is, from all I've been able to research, going to turn 40 before I do.
14.02.2026 20:28 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
This is a special message to King Coal and his fossil fuel executive sponsors.
The fossil fuel industry knew 114 years ago, what we all know today.
These executives are all accomplices in the deliberate destruction of the world headed by King Coal.
Weekend Update: 2/14/2026
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. DriveThruRPG Top Sellers for…
