There's another angle to many of these programs, which is you both give and receive a limited license to all existing content within the program. This makes them an even worse deal, because a) you actually lose your own republishing and removal rights, and...

Natalie Ash (she/her)@thenatalieash.bsky.social · 3d ago

I was looking at a "Community Content" program on DriveThruRPG and it provoked some thoughts on copyright and licenses and who community content programs are for, because I don't think most of them are FOR third-party and homebrew publishers.

In perhaps not my greatest moment, I literally yelled "do you have any idea what n value you're talking about?" when another player in the game complained about the dice bot producing what he perceived as an unlikely result.

Josh Sawyer@jesawyer.bsky.social · 4d ago

Many people don't understand probability very well and many of them are resistant to having it explained to them. This leads some designers to creating mechanics that work like the player's instinctive (read: fucking wrong) understanding of probability, further confusing everyone.

Cyberpunk has fumbles and crits on a 1 and 10 (respectively) of a d10. Slapstick does not even begin to describe.

Flintlock. Why do all these nerds follow me? I'm not a nerd.@flintlock.bsky.social · 3d ago

A lot of designers don't seem to realise that "5% chance of fumble" is slapstick levels. (If you want your game even vaguely heroic 99-100 at the *most*)

Weekend Update: 9/26/2026 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.

Weekend Update: 9/26/2026

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.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

I feel this, because every design idea I enjoy noodling on is something I haven't and often would not want to bring to the table. One reason that, despite having half a dozen design documents and drafts, I've never successfully designed a game.

Gila RPGs@gilarpgs.bsky.social · 6d ago

A rather eye opening bit of reflection tonight as I word vomit onto this PbtA / FitD document.

Losing the tracks on railroading An interesting thing I’ve noticed in the last few years is that another RPG term has been experiencing linguistic drift. I talked about this a little in the context of the term ‘heartbreaker’ a while back, and now the term that we’re seeing shift is ‘railroading’.…

Losing the tracks on railroading

An interesting thing I’ve noticed in the last few years is that another RPG term has been experiencing linguistic drift. I talked about this a little in the context of the term ‘heartbreaker’ a while back, and now the term that we’re seeing shift is ‘railroading’. At first I was thinking about this in terms of linguistic precision (and as such risking becoming an old man yelling at a metaphorical cloud), but the more I thought about it the more interesting I realized the implications were of the drift.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

This is a great story. Prodigy was also my first ISP, back in 1994 or so. I was both too young and too introverted for RPGs at the time, but still got in a good amount of early internet trouble.

Shawn Connolly@divinecoffeebinge.bsky.social · 7d ago

I wanna tell you a story about why I find this clip so goddamn delightful. We gotta go back to like 1990 (I think, mmmmmmaybe '89). I'm 13 years old. AOL hasn't started mailing CD-ROMs yet, but my parents have subscribed us to a service called Prodigy/ This is early Internet. (1/x)

Lessons learned I've started running Urban Shadows recently, and it's one of only a few games I've decided to run again in the last few years. How can I do games better a second time, and will I be revisiting more games now?

Lessons learned

I've started running Urban Shadows recently, and it's one of only a few games I've decided to run again in the last few years. How can I do games better a second time, and will I be revisiting more games now?

newwonkmedia.com

I project (or just hope?) that the cultural distaste for minimalist games with maximalist art is going to help bring back maximalist games that look like phone books. GURPS is back baby! All aboard THE CRUNCH TRAIN

Colin Speirs 🌧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿@dampscot.bsky.social · last wk.

One of these days, the universe of RPGs is going to collapse in on itself in a pinpoint singularity, collapsed to destruction under the critical mass of "Borg" games

Out of the shelf and onto the table The thing that separates the TTRPG hobby from most others is commitment. The oft-stated platonic ideal of TTRPG gameplay, the long-running campaign, requires you and three to five other people to carve out time on at least a monthly (and preferably more…

Out of the shelf and onto the table

The thing that separates the TTRPG hobby from most others is commitment. The oft-stated platonic ideal of TTRPG gameplay, the long-running campaign, requires you and three to five other people to carve out time on at least a monthly (and preferably more frequent) basis for possibly years in order to play through a game of typical length. Although one-shots certainly exist, as well as con games where you need only bring yourself, fact is that if we talk about how mainstream RPGs are designed, the campaign is how they’re meant to be used.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

What I try to make clear to my non-energy industry friends is that it all comes down to *money*. Of course US refineries could process lighter crude, but when those big hydrocrackers and VDUs sit idle the accountants count that as them "losing money".

Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you have ever wondered about the apparent illogic of the U.S. exporting 2 barrels of crude oil for every 3 barrels it imports, here's a brief explainer. It has to do with our refineries coming from one era and set of assumptions and our domestic crude coming from another.

Try to remember The time between Labor Day and the Autumnal Equinox is a bit liminal no matter how old you are, but at the beginning of adolescence it was both my time to look forward towards school but also, perhaps more importantly, look back towards camp.

Try to remember

The time between Labor Day and the Autumnal Equinox is a bit liminal no matter how old you are, but at the beginning of adolescence it was both my time to look forward towards school but also, perhaps more importantly, look back towards camp.

newwonkmedia.com

♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️🔥♥️ ITS HERE!!!!! This book is about how game design on a whole, counterintuitively, became less imaginative because of Dungeons & Dragons. We often talk about Dungeons & Dragons as the ultimate fantasy. A pure domain of imagination where absolutely anything is possible.

Weekend Update: 9/12/2026 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.

Weekend Update: 9/12/2026

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.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

I'm listening to Iowa by Slipknot and it's really throwing me that this is 25 years old. Next up on your local classic rock radio station, it's People = Shit...

I was in a fraternity full of CompSci majors at Carnegie Mellon. I knew like twenty-five of that guy.

David J Prokopetz@prokopetz.bsky.social · 3w ago

"Guy who's above average at a very specific type of analytic intelligence and concludes on this basis that he's the only conscious person in a world of meat robots" is a classic villainous archetype because if you ever went to college you probably knew like five of that guy.

System Hack: Dreadship There’s an old axiom, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Even in creative pursuits this still sometimes comes to pass, where the only way to press forward on multiple ideas is to combine them into a single much wilder idea. Such was my solution to a constraint presented…

System Hack: Dreadship

There’s an old axiom, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Even in creative pursuits this still sometimes comes to pass, where the only way to press forward on multiple ideas is to combine them into a single much wilder idea. Such was my solution to a constraint presented by my gaming group’s annual “Beach Weekend”, our excursion to Delaware to play RPGs and drink beer for three days straight that’s been going on (mostly) uninterrupted since 2012.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

Hitting the ground A word of advice: Don’t wait to take any of your company-issued PTO until the end of September.

Hitting the ground

A word of advice: Don’t wait to take any of your company-issued PTO until the end of September.

newwonkmedia.com

True story: "I know that corporation name is in one of the sourcebooks but you're going to have to change it at least a little." "Why?" "It's the name of one of my real life clients."

Jason Morningstar@jmstar.bsky.social · 4w ago

Grasping for a bland, soul-sucking corporate health care name for a project and they are all taken. Commcare, Dignitas, Aurora Health, Honor Health, Decision Health, all names I came up with and thought "that sounds sufficiently bad" and all are real.

What GIF pops up when you type your name?

Key & Peele: A-A-Ron Classroom Skit

ALT: Key & Peele: A-A-Ron Classroom Skit

static.klipy.com

🏳️‍⚧️”Fall Futch”🦾@faefutchauntie.bsky.social · 4w ago

What GIF pops up when you type your name?

September's #ttrpg Crowdfunding Carnival with @levelonewonk.bsky.social: enough major campaigns that there's a new member of the million dollar club, and indies ranging from small-unit tactics to spacefaring civilizations to bowls of temporal soup! cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2026/09/03/c...

Crowdfunding Carnival: September, 2026

Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for September! Even though I didn’t get the summer off, I can sympathize with not wanting to go back to school as we head towards Labor Day here in the states. Turn…

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

Jenga A short and late post this week; let's talk about all the literal (and figurative) falling block towers.

Jenga

A short and late post this week; let's talk about all the literal (and figurative) falling block towers.

newwonkmedia.com

For multiple reasons I'm decently well-traveled in the US. Possible upgrades are Maryland and West Virginia, which were part of my GAP/C&O bike trip and might qualify for 'stayed a while'.

Seamus Conneely of Cannibal Halfling Gaming@cannibalhalfling.bsky.social · last mo.

Delaware gets the Stayed A While label by the sheer number of visits via TTRPG Beach Weekends. The Florida visits are... quite old, and the foray into the Midwest was for GenCon 2014. Virginia may deserve Stayed A While, actually, there was a week-long summer camp plus a few standalone visits.

If half as much effort went into tackling bad driving as does berating cyclists for just existing, I would wager on fewer people dying due to traffic violence.

I feel like the kids who did poorly in science and history class are trying to get revenge on the kids who did well at science and history class and now we’re all going to die

Autumn always seems to be when the year really speeds up. From D2R2 last weekend to a new bike build and new fiction direction, the remainder of 2026 looks packed and it'll go fast.

Approaching the autumn superhighway

As summer wraps up, I get this distinct feeling that the remainder of the year accelerates; autumn rushes by you and all of a sudden it’s December and time to think about an entire new year that will also go too quickly. I don’t think it’s just me, but in the last couple of years I’ve had a headline event every month from August to December and that certainly makes the back half of the year feel faster.

newwonkmedia.com

You know, I'd heard Queen Elizabeth was sort of a LARPer. But Sir Thomas More published poems in a parlor game text? Shakespeare used a gameplay narrative as a source for Measure for Measure? What??? Here's a 🧵 ...

The Data on Million-Plus RPG Crowdfunding Campaigns Crowdfunding began to change the RPG world in 2012, when Monte Cook Games campaigned Numenera. At the time Monte Cook was best known for his work at Wizards of the Coast, and a new game with new mechanics in an unfamiliar science-fantasy setting…

The Data on Million-Plus RPG Crowdfunding Campaigns

Crowdfunding began to change the RPG world in 2012, when Monte Cook Games campaigned Numenera. At the time Monte Cook was best known for his work at Wizards of the Coast, and a new game with new mechanics in an unfamiliar science-fantasy setting was not what one would call a sure bet. On Kickstarter, though, the project gathered more than half a million dollars and made it clear that the DIY financing opportunities presented by crowdfunding were very real and very useful.

cannibalhalflinggaming.com

I've been faced with the somewhat unique split of having to either write an article-length post about roleplaying games for @cannibalhalfling.bsky.social or write a similar-length post for work, using virtually the same structure. I guess it shouldn't be surprising which is keeping my attention.

Down with the sickness Got sick this weekend, unusually and surprisingly. There's no post this week, but I'll be back at it in another day or two.

Down with the sickness

Got sick this weekend, unusually and surprisingly. There's no post this week, but I'll be back at it in another day or two.

newwonkmedia.com