November TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 We're riding this wave of productivity folks! The November data are (yes, I am one of those pedants who insists [correctly] that "data" be used as the plural noun it is) here:

• 180 campaigns
• 29 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 150 Kickstarter
• $11,564,515.87 raised
• $2,601,889.34 on Backerkit
• $4,781.00 on Crowdfundr
• $8,957,845.53 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 45 adventures
• 2 advice
• 6 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 2 platforms
• 1 reprint
• 44 supplements
• 62 systems
• 1 zine
• 79 distinct systems used (32 original)
• 76 campaigns (42.22%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,343,963.24 (20.27% of all money raised in November)
• 37 campaigns used AI in some form (20.56% of total) and raised $362,118.92 (3.13% of all money raised in November)
• 27 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 35.53% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's November

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in November were:

1. Ars Magica Definitive Edition by Atlas Games ($841,123 from 5,046 backers)
2. The Darkest Woods by Monte Cook Games ($305,125 from 2,025 backers)
3. The Between by The Gauntlet ($289,681 from 3,528 backers)
4. Trail of Cthulhu 2nd Edition by Pelgrane Press ($227,288.91 from 2,210 backers)
5. Slayers Survival Kit and Hunter's Journal by Evil Hat Games ($162,327 from 2,047 backers)

Crowdfundr's November

Cezar Capacle is single-handedly holding down the TTRPG presence on Crowdfundr with his Everspark: epic fantasy quests with the freedom you always wanted campaign ($4,781 from 287 backers).

Kickstarter's November

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in November were:

1. Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork by Chris Birch, Modiphius ($2,961,490.79 from 16,495 backers)
2. Grim Hollow: Transformed by Ghostfire Gaming ($904,004 from 5,205 backers)
3. Mythic Carpathia & City of My Nightmares for the Vaesen RPG by Free League ($530,853.48 from 5,728 backers)
4. Mycologist's Primer by Double Proficiency by Hunters Books ($502,925 from 6,648 backers)
5. Conan: The Hyborian Age - The Roleplaying Game by Monolith Board Games SARL ($458,548 from 3,207 backers)

Big Picture

I've recently become interested in the divide between money raised and number of backers for crowdfunding campaigns. While these two aspects of a successful campaign are obviously pretty tightly correlated, there is some interesting variance at the top end of the range.

For those not especially well-versed in statistical analysis, the equation shown on the graph (y = 0.0063x² + 75.111x) is technically a pretty good model for the relationship between number of backers and money raised (an R-squared value of 0.9596, on a scale from 0 to 1, is pretty good). Most of that explanatory power seems to come from the lower end of the scale, with campaigns in the hundreds of backers clustering around the line quite closely, while more successful campaigns (such as the labeled Conan, Ashes Without Number, Grim Hollow, and Mycologist's Primer) tend to deviate from the 'expected' trend by a decent margin.

What this trendline does display relatively well is the tendency of success to beget more success. Even though the polynomial component of the equation is quite small, they represent that as campaigns accumulate more backers, they tend to attract increased attention and gain even more backers. And not only are there more backers, but with more backers there's a greater chance of getting backers who are willing to back at higher levels.

This also tracks with the commonly accepted wisdom that you get 1/3 of your backers during the first 48 hours, 1/3 during the final 48 hours, and the remaining 1/3 during the rest of the campaign. Performing well at launch means that people who find the campaign during that middle period see a healthy campaign that might meet some stretch goals if they back it, and doing well in the middle means that people who have been on the fence about backing are perhaps more likely to finally get in on a great campaign in its final stretch.

But beyond the raw numbers, I want to think about what the difference in funds raised and number of backers means. More money raised obviously means greater resources that the artists have available to them, but in my experience the campaigns with the most money have also made the biggest promises: lots of stretch goals, more writers and artists, fancy versions of books, extra physical rewards, etc. All of these cost money, and though they're factored into the various pledge tiers/overall goal they still result in less money overall going to the people actually making stuff. This is why companies can have wildly successful crowdfunding campaigns and still need to rely on crowdfunding to make their ambitious projects: so much crowdfunding money goes into delivering on all of the extra stuff beyond the basic game that helped drive the success of the project in the first place. I don't pretend to know how much by any means, but given the common cautionary tales against scope creep in TTRPG projects I imagine that it represents a significant time and resource suck.

Backers, on the other hand, represent your audience (an arguably greater marker of success). Every backer on a project is someone who will potentially play your game and come back again for more. I am convinced that this is the main thing that accounts for D&D's continued dominance of the TTRPG space: a dedicated audience who can be relied upon to return again and again. Without offering commentary upon the quality of the game itself, I just don't think that you can say that its design or play culture or art or whatever is better by orders of magnitude than any other game in the space. People know what they like and they will return to it. Crowdfunding campaigns offer this same possibility, a way to cultivate and grow an audience who will hopefully return for future endeavors.

For a rather remarkable example of what an audience can do for you, take a look at The Between from The Gauntlet. Not only did it raise the third most money on Backerkit (and ninth most overall) in November, it broke Backerkit records with a 48-hour, 1300-person, backer train-powered extension to its original length. (For those unaware, Backerkit now has an Overtime Mode where campaigns can extend beyond their original endtime if people keep a 10-minute timer going by backing the campaign.) Not only did this raise an additional $48,000 for the campaign, it really demonstrated its wide-ranging appeal and dedication from a potentially worldwide community of players. You see, the backer train only keeps going in 10-minute increments, resetting every time someone makes a new pledge, so that means that at least one person was backing every ten minutes across 2 full days. Unless people were staying up specifically to keep it going, you've got to imagine that this is the result of international community interest in the game and The Gauntlet writ large. Over a third of the overall backers either backed or increased their pledge during that time! I don't think it's a stretch to say that much of this success can be attributed to the strength of and engagement in the Gauntlet Discord server, which has also produced projects like Sprigs and Kindling, a fanzine for Carved From Brindlewood games. This kind of work takes time and effort (and usually a lot of volunteer labor), but if it's coming from a genuine place then it can really pay off.

The tension here is that you can't build an audience without the money to actually make your games, and without the money to actually make your games it's often quite hard to build an audience. And even when you do start to build your audience, if you're reliant on platforms like Kickstarter or Backerkit to maintain those audiences, then how much are they really your audience? Will they follow you from one platform to another? From Kickstarter to Backerkit? From Twitter to Bluesky? How easy is it for them to do that? Will they follow you from the game they're familiar with to a new one that you're interested in making? These are questions that people who make money from their art have grappled with since professional artists first came to be, but in this increasingly precaritized hypercapitalist world that we live in they take on even greater significance. How can we build communities around our art when the people in those communities are also supposed to be our customers? I know that I don't have the answer to that, and if anyone does please let me know.

October TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

As it's now December, it seems the perfect moment to release the October data! What's the opposite of striking while the iron is hot? Whatever it is, I'm doing it.

• 189 campaigns
• 23 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 166 Kickstarter
• $7,781,327.26 raised
• $1,262,228.19 on Backerkit
• $0 on Crowdfundr
• $6,519,099.07 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 56 adventures
• 3 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 11 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 2 platforms
• 58 supplements
• 39 systems
• 1 translation
• 65 distinct systems used (17 original)
• 82 campaigns (43.39%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,693,794.03 (21.77% of all money raised in October)
• 41 campaigns used AI in some form (21.69% of total)
• These campaigns raised $143,749.67 (1.85% of all money raised in October)
• 30 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 36.59% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's October

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in October were:

1. Welcome to Night Vale Roleplaying Game by Renegade Game Studios ($529,977 from 6,654 backers)
2. The Expanse Roleplaying Game: Transport Union Edition by Green Ronin Publishing ($360,727 from 2,364 backers)
3. Worldographer 2025 by Inkwell Ideas ($93,560 from 877 backers)
4. High School Cthulhu - Roleplaying Game by Gear Games ($60,883.09 from 696 backers)
5. Netcrawl by Horse Shark Games ($44,290 from 386 backers)

Kickstarter's October

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in October were:

1. Ember by Foundry Virtual Tabletop ($710,981 from 3,808 backers)
2. PIRATE BORG: Down Among the Dead by Limithron ($621,486 from 5,202 backers)
3. The Broken Empires RPG™: Sim-Lite d100 Skills-Based TTRPG by Evil Baby Entertainment ($487,707 from 3,987 backers)
4. Root: The Roleplaying Game-Ruins and Rolls by Magpie Games ($385,728 from 3,928 backers)
5. Enter The Labyrinth: 5E TOV Expansion and Adventure Path by Kobold Press ($348,048 from 3,171 backers)

Big Picture

I've become interested in the 'big' indie D&D publishers, the people who make multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars when running Kickstarters but tend to focus primarily on D&D. They're obviously hugely successful, make nowhere near the money that Wizards of the Coast does, and were facing a uniquely precarious position with the whole OGL fiasco of early 2023. How are they doing now? What are they up to?

Take Kobold Press, for instance. Their in-house system Tales of the Valiant was created in response to the OGL fiasco of early 2023, and judging by their latest products they have been focused on supporting said system ever since it was created. That said, their four Kickstarter campaigns created since launching Tales of the Valiant have emphasized the compatibility between Tales of the Valiant (TOV) and 5E. Rather than create an alternative to 5E, they have a parallel product. And that makes sense, because in my mind Kobold Press is a studio that makes cool D&D monsters and adventures.

Back when there was the threat that Wizards of the Coast would try to take huge cuts from anyone other than them making money from D&D, it was a great idea to make something similar enough to 5E that they could keep doing what they do best without paying the literal price for doing so. But now that the threat has passed, they have this thing that's part of their brand that they sort of don't need anymore (except that WotC could always try something fucked up again, so it's good insurance I guess). Is anyone coming to Kobold Press specifically for Tales of the Valiant? 10,057 people backed the original Kickstarter campaign for the Player's Guide and Monster Vault, and 5,711 people backed the Game Master's Guide Kickstarter.

Their 5E and TOV adventure path Kickstarter that ended in October raised money and had backer numbers in keeping with both their pre- and post-TOV campaigns, but they're quite consistently still advertising both systems in their Kickstarter campaign titles. I would be very curious what conversations have been had about fully abandoning 5E, but I imagine that unless there's a specific downside to sticking with it they're unlikely to do it fully.

The Temple of Inexhaustible Charity

The Great Vault of Yre from Kill Six Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan

 

In the Capital, there is a temple. An unassuming facade of simple limestone blocks sets it apart from the ornamented marble cornices of the Temple of the Full Moon or the ebon sleekness of the Temple of the Lost Moon, but the supplicants that walk through its gates each day dwarf the worshipers of every other temple combined. For this is the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity, hoard of the God of Mercy and repository of the world's wealth.

The Root of Evil

At the heart of the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity's mission is the simple belief that money is the root of all evil. If we follow that to its logical end, argues the temple's priests, only those of unimpeachable morality can be trusted to handle it properly. Thus, the founding of the temple, a place where the evils of money can be locked away and tended only by those who can be trusted with the onerous task.

But the temple is not just a repository of wealth, it is also the conduit by which it flows amongst the world. For while a world without evil is desirable, no one has yet found a way to conduct the business of empire or commerce (the degree of difference between the two is much debated) without filthy lucre changing hands. Bowing to this necessity, the temple's founder, Propter Rex, proposed that priests of the God of Mercy handle the actual accounting of all money stored within the vaults of the project, a way to maintain day-to-day business without sullying the soul with precious metals and gems.

The temple's mission was met with initial resistance, but early adopters discovered that conducting business under the eye of an accountant-priest was considerably easier than transporting huge quantities of gold and silver from place to place. Not only that, but once the temple began to fill its subterranean vaults with deposits and donations, it was able to extend credit and offer loans to rich and poor alike. The material itself would stay in the vaults, of course, but the money is as good as yours. Low interest rates and deadlines placed far in the future ensure that the burden isn't onerous, but rest assured: the temple will see its offer repaid in full.

Factional Conflict

Behind the sandstone walls and carefully balanced scales of the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity, tension simmers between four factions of priests:

• Incrementalists, led by the aging High Enumerator Propter Rex VI, believe that the current path is the correct one. The wealth of the world is slowly but surely coming under the temple's purview. Some precious metals yet grace the walls of the temples of other gods, but since they are also under the care of pious individuals and not being used for commerce, that is of no particular concern. It has only been 378 years since the temple's founding after all, and saving mortality's souls is not a quick or easy task.
• Tokenists, led by Dinessa, the Enumerator of Ardz (a city renowned for its artisans and craftspersons, and the site of the first satellite branch of the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity), believe that it is not enough to seal away precious metals. Rather, they argue, all objects that inspire greed in the mortal heart must be removed from public life. It is a testament to their rising power that precious gemstones have recently been added to the vaults in addition to the traditional precious metals that coinage is made from, but they are not willing to stop their. The temple in Ardz has recently begun to store artwork for 'safekeeping,' issuing tokens of ownership in return to ensure that proper records are kept. News of this has just recently reached the Capital, and many priests are waiting with bated breath to see how the High Enumerator plans to respond.
• Purifiers, led by Plated Jailer Hart, believe that the accumulation of evil in the temple's vaults threatens the souls of all who live near them. Proponents of radical action, they have seized upon the idea of completely destroying their accumulated wealth in secret while running business as usual. Those outside the priesthood, they reason, never see or touch or taste the money that they already spend on a daily basis, so why risk keeping it around in the first place? The ultimate end of this argument, however, will inevitably bring them into conflict with those who wish to use gold, silver, and gems as decoration, but Purifier priests insist that that is a problem for the future.
• Unifiers have emerged naturally within the last few decades from innovations in magical communication. Telepathic connections between the central temple and extended branches has long been utilized, but permanent connection between itinerant accountant-priests on assignment to far away lands is a recent innovation. An emergent collective consciousness has recently begun to stand on its many feet, and its members have begun to posit that even the need for locking away tainted metal would be eliminated should everyone in the world be equally pure and moving in agreement with each other. Without an identified public face, Unifiers remain a political minority within the temple, but they are increasing their numbers as they spread the telepathic connection both within the temple and beyond it.

Adventure Hooks

The Temple of Inexhaustible Charity may seem like an unwelcome dash of modernity to many vaguely medieval fantasy campaigns, but remember that banks were an innovation of the Early Renaissance and predate things like rapiers by a good 100+ years. In any case, the Temple is a great source of its own internal quests and as an issuer of classic hooks:

• A merchant caravan has gone missing, and with it High Accountant Vessina, a likely contender to replace the aging High Enumerator. The Temple of Inexhaustible Charity is willing to pay (through their own system, of course) through the nose to recover her safe and sound. Should she belong to a particular faction within the Temple, though, another one (or more) may have equal incentive to keep her lost.
• Dragon hoards are dangerous to liberate, but represent a literal treasure trove of gold and jewels that the Temple needs to complete its mission. Enterprising adventurers seeking to slay a dragon may find the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity an eager partner, willing to outfit them in armor, weapons, and information in return for a cut of the loot.
• A wandering priest bequeathed you the gift of telepathy, but your dreams are suddenly full of a cacophony of voices urging you to spread it to the rest of your party.
• The evil contained in the Temple's vaults has broken out due to a mistake from a new member of the Cupric Jailers. In an unusual breach of their own secrecy, the Temple of Inexhaustible Charity has brought you in to slay the vile creatures spontaneously manifesting in their halls. But during the job, one member of your party sees something they've been looking for their whole life suddenly within their grasp...

Sources

The idea of this was inspired in primarily by the Inexhaustible Treasury of the Three Stages School of Buddhism, which I learned of in Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber. It was also, as the opening picture suggests, somewhat inspired by the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons.

September TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

The September data dump is here!

• 113 campaigns
• 12 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 101 Kickstarter
• $3,750,155.58 raised
• $1,454,136.46 on Backerkit
• $0 on Crowdfundr
• $2,296,019.12 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 28 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 5 campaign settings
• 1 platform
• 40 supplements
• 26 systems
• 48 distinct systems used (17 original)
• 50 campaigns (44.25%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,168,288.21 (31.15% of all money raised in September)
• 31 campaigns used AI in some form (27.43% of total)
• These campaigns raised $215,538.99 (5.75% of all money raised in September)
• 20 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's September

The top 5 Backerkit campaigns in September 2024 were:

1. Old Gods of Appalachia: Deeper Still by Monte Cook Games ($803,832 from 5,211 backers)
2. So You've Met A Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings ($284,129 from 4,108 backers)
3. Fiendish Forge (5e) - Fearsome Bosses, Monstrous Items by Io Publishing ($127,211 from 1,141 backers)
4. Get It At Sutlers: A Troika Adventure Generator by Melsonian Arts Council ($61,136.10 from 1,046 backers)
5. Storypath Ultra Core Manual by Onyx Path ($58,525 from 1,261 backers)

A real smattering of systems here: D&D, Cypher, Troika, Storypath, Thousand Year Old Vampire (if you can call that a system per se). Some things that jump out at me immediately:

• Not exactly a surprise that the Old Gods of Appalachia supplement did well given that it's based on a popular podcast, created by a big indie publisher, and following an incredible crowdfunding success for the original book.
• What is a little surprising is the difference in money raised between the two: $2,097,820 from 15,064 backers for the original vs what we see here for the first official supplement. I would normally expect some dropoff between the two (not everyone needs or wants a supplement after all), but the reduction by roughly two-thirds in terms of money and backers is substantial
• Tim Hutchings might be one of the only people in the TTRPG space who embarks upon such ambitious projects as this 'all by himself.' (As he says on the page, there were plenty of people who contributed some writing, but the bulk of it is his work.) To me, this is the peak of what crowdfunding is for: ambitious works of art that truly couldn't be achieved in any other way.
• Finally, this is the first time I've seen something Troika-related raise so much money! It's genuinely nice to see it pop up from time to time, considering that it came out around the same time as Mothership 0e and Cairn but seems to see far less attention.

Kickstarter's September

The top 5 Kickstarter campaigns in September 2024 were:

1. Monster Trainer's Handbook: 5e Campaign Supplement & Setting by Dungeon in a Box ($401,323 from 2,675 backers)
2. Fantasy+, the Future of TTRPG Audio by Monument ($359,100 from 1,670 backers)
3. Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies, Vol. 1 by Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse ($232,336 from 3,376 backers)
4. The City of Arches - A High-Fantasy 5e RPG City Sourcebook by Mike Shea ($202,890 from 4,371 backers)
5. 7th Sea: The Price of Arrogance by Agate ($173,300 from 1,490 backers)

A lot of D&D in the top 5 list, but I want to focus in on the official D&D product tie-in for a moment. For those who don't know, Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! is a 2023 television production born from the collaboration between Wizards of the Coast and Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse, a retailer of premium D&D (and some Pathfinder) products founded by Matthew Lillard and four friends. Now this does not seem like a huge company (the website only lists the five founders and a "Social Media Goblin, Art Director" in the Founders & Staff section), but it strikes me as odd to need to crowdfund the official tie-in book for an official D&D TV show when some of the producers of the TV show are making the book and also there are a lot of celebrities (of both the real and the niche internet micro- variety) attached to the project. But this is just an example of the precarity that is normalized in the TTRPG space at the moment: big companies will support 'sure things' like the show itself (which I don't actually imagine is even a sure thing, considering that it's unclear whether the show is coming back for a second season, but is certainly in line with WotC's glitzy D&D TV line-up last year) but will pawn off the risk of making the tie-in book on the smaller partner, which in turn defrays the risk by running a glorified pre-order campaign on Kickstarter.

And unfortunately, it seems they might have been right to do so! Though the campaign raised 6 figures on Kickstarter, that's a drop in the bucket for the overall revenue of Wizards of the Coast ($5.9 billion in 2022) and probably not worth the time and energy it would take them to make. Kicking that over to a junior partner though (especially one already heavily dependent on the D&D brand and glossy premium content market) makes a lot of sense since it will continue to advance their market dominance and potentially drive eyes to the show itself. I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw this point made originally (I think it was about Avatar Legends) but we really have to remember who is benefitting from branded tie-in IP Kickstarters: investors and companies.

Crowdfunding games based on popular IP (which usually must be done because those games are given to smaller companies to make) foists the job of investing onto the consumer rather than on the company. Assuming that they have some kind of licensing agreement, and I cannot imagine a world where they don't, Wizards of the Coast (and Hasbro above them, and the stockholders above them) will reap profits from Faster, Purple Worm! Everybody Dies, Vol. 1 until it stops being printed, but you (as a hypothetical person who backed the Kickstarter) stop receiving benefits when the rewards are shipped to your house. In fact, you're accepting all of the risk because no one is even legally obligated to provide you a finished product when you back a Kickstarter campaign. This makes complete sense when it's an individual person's passion project, but is completely ludicrous when applied to Beadle & Grimm's!

Now please do not imagine that this is me defending capitalism and saying that everything would be better if companies just started doing investment correctly again like they did in some mythical beforetimes, I just think that it's indicative of how big companies move nowadays. They farm out projects to smaller players, rely on their precarity to dictate whatever terms they want to them, and cut them loose whenever they like. Consider what Warner Bros did to whole movies that they had ready to be released, or what continues to happen to streaming exclusive shows on Netflix and Paramount+ and HBO. And those were projects that they already owned! I completely understand why individuals or companies would want to work on popular IP on a personal, creative, and financial level, I just worry about the kind of precedent it sets for everyone else in this artform.

August TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

Buckle up folks, August's data has an outlier in it - a big one.

• 141 campaigns
• 20 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 121 Kickstarter
• $20,184,787.10 raised
• $1,580,419.62 on Backerkit
• $0 on Crowdfundr
• $18,604,367.48 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 29 adventures
• 3 advice
• 2 audiobooks
• 14 campaign settings
• 2 platforms
• 1 podcast
• 1 reprint
• 39 supplements
• 34 systems
• 55 distinct systems used (21 original)
• 49 campaigns (34.75%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,956,290.32 (9.69% of all money raised in August)
• 29 campaigns used AI in some form (20.57% of total)
• These campaigns raised $145,005.70 (0.72% of all money raised in August)
• 17 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 34.69% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's August

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in August were:

1. Our Golden Age: An Ultraviolet Grasslands RPG []equel by Exalted Funeral ($489,412 from 4,071 backers)
2. ION Heart - A Lo-Fi Solo Mech TTRPG by Parable Games ($275,913.96 from 3,097 backers)
3. Nimble 5e: A Fast, Tactical, 5e Compatible, RPG by Nimble Co. ($265,912 from 4,290 backers)
4. Faerie: A Realm Wanderer's Guide | Feudal Fey Expansion for 5e! by The Dragons Vault ($218,167.88 from 2,547 backers)
5. Rifts® for Savage Worlds - Core Reprint by Pinnacle Entertainment Group ($64,855 from 416 backers)

Backerkit's top 5 list has more Dungeons & Dragons in it than usual, but Nimble 5e is the one that catches my eye a bit. Originally Kickstarted back in November 2023, the project raised $17,815 from 1,762 backers. At the time, it was just a small rules booklet of suggested tweaks to the existing 5e ruleset, but the more recent Backerkit campaign has ballooned to the classic 3-book set that has served WotC so well in the past. It raised nearly 15 times as much money from close to 2.5 times the number of backers, showing (perhaps) the value of building an audience with a smaller project first.

This campaign has also benefitted from two other factors, though.

Firstly, a well-established ecosystem of D&D YouTubers who shouted out the project when it first came around on Kickstarter and again on Backerkit. Some of these are featured on the campaign pages, some have been shared on NimbleCo's Twitter, and I'm sure there are many more. This is very similar to the success of DC20 back in June and July, except that The Dungeon Coach (DC20's designer) is a YouTuber in his own right with almost 66K subscribers.

Secondly, the fairly new Cross-Collab feature on Backerkit that allows two campaigns to offer incentives for people who back both (assuming both campaigns succeed). Unbeknownst to me, there has already been an appearance of this feature in TTRPG crowdfunding back in June: MAZES City of Skull x Vast Grimm Horde: No Safe Haven. This time around, it's Nimble 5e and Faerie: A Realm Wanderer's Guide. But how much of a benefit does this provide? 815 backers chose to back both, accounting for 32% of Faerie's support and 19% of Nimble 5e's. Conversely, 55-56 backers chose to back both MAZES and Vast Grimm Horde, accounting for 11% and 10% of their respective support. There's obviously no way of knowing who would have backed both campaigns without the cross-collab incentive in either case, but for all four campaigns this is not an insignificant amount of money. If the average pledge is indicative in any way for these cross-collab backers, they represent:

• $50,513.70 for Nimble 5e
• $69,812.90 for Faerie: A Realm Wanderer's Guide
• $5,657.28 for MAZES City of Skull
• $4,742.79 for Vast Grimm Horde

Now there's a decent possibility that cross-collab backers might have given less money to each campaign than the 'average' backer since they're paying for two things at once, but the reverse argument could be advanced as well based on the logic that anyone who can afford to back two large campaigns at once might have the disposable income to give a lot to both. Either way, I'll be keeping my eye out for future Cross-Collabs to see how this gets used in the future.

Kickstarter's August

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in August were:

1. Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere® RPG by Brotherwise Games ($15,149,874 from 55,106 backers)
2. Moonsoon by Arcane Minis ($465,775 from 3,344 backers)
3. Neopets - Tabletop Roleplaying Game Official TTRPG by Geekify Inc ($410,786 from 7,114 backers)
4. Iron Kingdoms: Strangelight Workshop (5e) by Steamforged Games Ltd ($255,049.77 from 2,022 backers)
5. Berserkr by Slightly Reckless Games ($193,105.89 from 2,435 backers)

The Cosmere® RPG has not only become the highest funded TTRPG Kickstarter, it's the highest funded tabletop game Kickstarter period (beating out Frosthaven and Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, both smash hit sequels to already smash hit board games) and the third-highest funded Kickstarter of all time (only a cool $26M short of the highest funded Kickstarter of all time, Brandon Sanderson's Four Secret Novels campaign). This in and of itself is fine, a lot of interesting designers got to work on the system, but I'm not wild about one of the biggest authors in the world crowdfunding a game based on his novels as though he can't make it happen any other way. I know that Brotherwise Games are the ones actually making and distributing it, but c'mon. These people are the "official games partner for Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere® universe," made an official Dragon Prince tie-in game, and worked with Patrick Rothfuss in one of their previous boardgames.

Combine this with the Neopets project, a joke of a campaign that features barely a single specific mechanic on the page (aside from "it started as D&D 5e but now it's something else that still uses a d20"), and we're in for a rough time of it folks. Crowdfunding seems to be rapidly becoming an easy cashgrab for lazy projects with a brandname attached or a glorified pre-sale storefront for projects that would have been pretty successful regardless. I hope there's enough room left for everyone else.

July TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

We're so back (and by "back" I mean releasing this retrospective almost a month late).

No preamble this time, here's July's data.

• 158 campaigns
• 14 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 143 Kickstarter
• $5,453,795.93 raised
• $978,983.04 on Backerkit
• $2,183.00 on Crowdfundr
• $4,472,629.89 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 13 accessories
• 49 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 7 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 LARP
• 1 reprint
• 57 supplements
• 24 systems
• 1 zine
• 42 distinct systems used (12 original)
• 76 campaigns (48.10%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,544,866.12 (28.33% of all money raised in July)
• 43 campaigns used AI in some form (27.22% of total)
• These campaigns raised $157,621.97 (2.89% of all money raised in July)
• 31 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.79% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in July were:

1. Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure 5E+DCC by Goodman Games ($654,928 from 5,231 backers)
2. Eldritch Automata by Gehenna Gaming ($138,411 from 1,454 backers)
3. Trickerion - The Role-playing Game by Shadowlands Games ($55,321.94 from 535 backers)
4. Grimwild by Oddity Press ($41,830 from 590 backers)
5. The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow for Liminal Horror by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($22,295 from 502 backers)

Not much I want to comment on here, though I will return to Eldritch Automata at the end of the article for an interesting comparison between crowdfunding platforms.

Crowdfundr's July

There was one single TTRPG crowdfunding campaign on Crowdfundr in July: BANNERS: A New RPG by John Wick ($2,183 from 192 backers).

Kickstarter's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in July were:

1. DC20 by The Dungeon Coach ($2,235,231 from 20,685 backers)
2. The Official Role-Playing Game of the PLANET OF THE APES by Magnetic Press Play ($324,681 from 1,971 backers)
3. Bria's Mythical Menagerie - Creature-Collecting for 5e by Grant Mielke ($208,793 from 1,968 backers)
4. Castles & Crusades Reforged by Stephen Chenault ($169,613 from 1,373 backers)
5. Helluva Town - A Cartoon Gangster RPG by Acheron International ($138,293 from 1,920 backers)

I have to say, I was utterly shocked when I saw the DC20 campaign at the beginning of July. Here was something I hadn't heard even a whisper of, knew nothing about the people involved with it, but raised nearly half of what MCDM RPG (now Draw Steel) did. Just a reminder of how big this space is, when even monumentally successful crowdfunding campaigns don't break through to certain corners.

Backerkit vs Kickstarter

July gave an interesting opportunity to directly observe some differences between Backerkit and Kickstarter through 2 campaigns: Eldritch Automata and Oracle Monster Generator. Both of these were alternately on both platforms, though in opposite orders.

Let's start with Eldritch Automata. The first iteration of this came to Kickstarter on January 2, 2024 and raised $37,372 from 453 backers out of a goal of $65,000. As far as I can tell (I didn't back it so I don't have access to all of the updates), the campaign failed to reach its funding goal on February 1 and the creators behind it decided to relaunch the campaign "following some tweaks, improvements, and reassessment of our goals and budget." According to the linked post, this primarily involved figuring out how to lower printing costs, creating a quickstart, and getting more promo material (art/interviews/articles/actual plays) together.

And by all accounts, this strategy succeeded massively! The relaunched campaign (on Backerkit) vastly exceeded the stated goal of $10,000 and ended up at over double the original Kickstarter goal. Based on a casual perusal of the Backerkit page, I can see evidence of the work they did: a free quickstart document, far more art, links to Actual Plays, etc. The one thing that isn't clear: how exactly did they reduce the goal by such a significant amount? It doesn't seem like the scope of the project changed and the pledge tiers stayed more or less the same. I suspect that they reduced the target goal primarily to build momentum for the campaign, given that they already had something of a built-in audience from the unsuccessful campaign earlier in the year. To be clear, I don't think this is bad or wrong by any means, but it behooves us to properly examine how certain games break through and become successful. In this case, the team made some very smart decisions between the first and second campaigns that paid off, but these decisions come with literal price tags: commissioning art, getting people to do an AP, reducing the crowdfunding campaign goal. Anyone looking to revamp a flagging crowdfunding campaign would do well to look to Eldritch Automata for inspiration, but make sure that you understand what those choices entail.

The other example, Oracle Monster Generator, had the reverse timeline: a highly successful Backerkit campaign ending in June followed by a less successful (but still funded) Kickstarter campaign in July. The reasons for this are, in many ways, both more and less clear than for Eldritch Automata:

I find it really fascinating that there is a sizeable number of people who seemingly just don't want to go to Backerkit for crowdfunding campaigns. To compare the numbers, the original Backerkit campaign raised $103,096 from 1,454 backers while the Kickstarter campaign raised $31,999 from 463 backers. This suggests that if the original campaign had been on Kickstarter they could have raised nearly 33% more money at least! Obviously this is pure speculation considering that the Kickstarter campaign wasn't really crowdfunding (there was already a finished product that might have been in people's hands, greatly enhancing the faith in potential backers that they would actually get something if they backed it), but the numbers are startling nevertheless.

There aren't many widely applicable lessons to draw here since these two examples had almost exactly opposite experiences, but even so these are really interesting direct comparisons that you normally can't get.

January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 3: $100,000+ Campaigns and Fun Stuff

Closing out the half year review, here's part 3. Check out parts 1 and 2 and the raw data if you haven't already.

$100,000+ Campaigns

As you've probably already suspected, most TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns don't necessarily make that much money. I already showed that in Part 2, with the median project across all platforms across all six months making $4,120.80. But what's the distribution of money raised across all these campaigns, you ask?

Distribution of US Dollars raised across 1030 campaigns:

• <$1,000: 155 campaigns
• $1,000-6,000: 458
• $6,000-11,000: 142
• $11,000-16,000: 63
• $16,000-21,000: 38
• $21,000-26,000: 19
• $26,000-31,000: 8
• $31,000-36,000: 10
• $36,000-41,000: 11
• $41,000-46,000: 9
• $46,000-51,000: 10
• $51,000-56,000: 5
• $56,000-61,000: 4
• $61,000-66,000: 6
• $66,000-71,000: 6
• $71,000-76,000: 4
• $76,000-81,000: 3
• $81,000-86,000: 4
• $86,000-91,000: 3
• $91,000-96,000: 4
• $96,000-100,000: 1
• $100,000+: 67

It's stark, honestly, to see the long tail trailing off towards the $100,000+ category. Out of 1030 campaigns, only 67 make it into the six-figure category. 755 (fully 3/4 of all campaigns) make $11,000 or less!

And the disparity in total money raised across these campaigns is stark too.

Proportion of total money raised:

• Campaigns that raised less than $100,000
• 963 campaigns (93.5% of campaigns)
• $11,641,364.54 (34% of total money)
• D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 22 campaigns (2.1% of campaigns)
• $7,321,232.25 (21% of total money)
• Non-D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 45 campaigns (4.4% of campaigns)
• $15,393,145.74 (45% of total money)

Ultimately, 6.5% of all campaigns in the first half of 2024 raised almost 2/3 of the money in the same time period.

Fun Stuff

Full disclosure, most of this is entirely stats about when campaigns start and end.

Campaign Length

Distribution of campaign lengths:

• 1-3 days: 6 campaigns
• 4-6: 15
• 7-9: 21
• 10-12: 21
• 13-15: 132
• 16-18: 47
• 19-21: 87
• 22-24: 85
• 25-27: 40
• 28-30: 453
• 31-33: 53
• 34-36: 18
• 37-39: 5
• 40-42: 12
• 43-45: 12
• 46+: 23

It's no surprise to me that the largest categories of campaign length generally fall on the 2, 3, and 4 week marks, but I do find it interesting that more people prefer a roughly 2-week campaign to anything between that and a month in length.

Start and End Days

Campaigns have very clear start day preferences: people don't like to launch campaigns on the weekend.

• Sunday: 29 campaigns
• Monday: 103
• Tuesday: 383
• Wednesday: 183
• Thursday: 204
• Friday: 98
• Saturday: 30

End day preferences are less clear.

• Sunday: 92 campaigns
• Monday: 89
• Tuesday: 134
• Wednesday: 124
• Thursday: 285
• Friday: 198
• Saturday: 108

It makes sense that these are a little more evenly distributed: I imagine few people are thinking about what day they want a campaign to end on. The broad frequency of the middle of the week tracks though; considering that so many campaigns last 7/14/21/28 days give or take, campaigns will tend to end on the day of the week that they started on or a few days later.

Start and End Dates

I will not be including the histograms for these data, as they will be too complicated and lengthy to write out, but I will share some interesting tidbits.

Most common date for a campaign to start: the 1st (118 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to start: the 24th (8 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to start: the 13th

Most common date for a campaign to end: the 2nd (65 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to end: the 24th (18 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to end: the 15th

And that's it...for now

That's all folks! At least, for the first six months of data. As I write this, it is August 1st, 2024, which means I have another month of data to look at. See you back here in a few weeks or so!

January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 2: ~D&D~

As promised, here is part 2 of the half-year crowdfunding retrospective. Check out part 1 and the raw data if you haven't already.

Warning: actual statistics contained in this article. Proceed cautiously.

D&D vs Non-D&D Projects (Averages)

Something I've long been interested in since before starting this project is how D&D crowdfunding projects fare compared to non-D&D projects. I'm well aware of high-profile high-earning projects based on 5e and on other systems (original ones, PBTA, Year Zero, Forged in the Dark, etc), but what do the data say?

Average USD raised by all campaigns, D&D projects, non-D&D projects, and AI projects

• January (75 projects)
• All: $72,133.94
• D&D: $11,479.53
• Non-D&D: $117,272.10
• AI: $5,961.51
• February (232 projects)
• All: $14,551.75
• D&D: $10,399.54
• Non-D&D: $15,904.18
• AI: $6,770.67
• March (267 projects)
• All: $21,973.59
• D&D: $27,805.14
• Non-D&D: $19,941.38
• AI: $4,479.97
• April (145 projects)
• All: $45,029.82
• D&D: $34,497.92
• Non-D&D: $54,591.68
• AI: $9,396.67
• May (151 projects)
• All: $52,807.94
• D&D: $84,426.41
• Non-D&D: $33,088.90
• AI: $7,394.13
• June (160 projects)
• All: $32,496.37
• D&D: $27,751.97
• Non-D&D: $36,003.11
• AI: $6,348.63
• Total (1030 projects)
• All: $33,355.09
• D&D: $34,115.85
• Non-D&D: $32,958.42
• AI: $6,771.98

In all honesty, this figure does not tell us all that much. Without multiple years of data, we can't be sure whether the variability seen from month-to-month is expected or not. The most important information I can share is the statistical analysis of D&D 5e vs non-D&D projects and AI vs non-AI projects.

The tests used here are two-sample t-tests assuming unequal variance. To break this down:

• t-test: statistical test used to determine whether the response of a sample or samples is statistically significant
• two-sample: this t-test compares the average of two populations to see if they are statistically different from each other
• unequal variance: the two samples are not the same size and are not assumed to have the same variation

The null hypothesis (expectation that I tested) was that there is no difference between the average money raised by projects using D&D 5e and projects that don't. As we know from above, the average D&D project raised more money ($34,115.85) than the average non-D&D project ($32,958.42). But the difference between these averages is only $1,157.43 (not that much considering there are projects raising millions of dollars). So what does the t-test say?

When comparing the average of 353 D&D projects to 675 non-D&D projects, the p-value (chance that the observed difference between the populations could have occurred by chance) was 0.9013. This means that although the observed difference in the average money raised by D&D vs non-D&D projects was not 0, there is about a 90% chance that the difference in money raised is essentially the product of random chance. Statistically speaking, there is no evidence that projects using D&D are more successful than non-D&D projects, and vice versa.

Compare this to the analysis of AI vs non-AI campaigns. The average project using AI raised considerably less money ($6,771.98) than projects that didn't use AI ($39,329.18). But is this difference significant?

Yes! When comparing the average of 189 AI projects vs 841 non-AI projects, the p-value was 0.000001774 (a 0.0001774% chance that the observed difference occurred by chance). The difference in average money raised between AI and non-AI projects is significant. However, we cannot say definitively that the use of AI is the driving force behind this significant result. The correlation is strong, but there could be any number of confounding variables associated with the use of AI. For example, use of AI could heavily correlate with lower quality products or poorly advertised campaigns or lazy ideas or lack of originality...the list goes on. If this was the case (and there's basically no way to test this), then it's not technically the use of AI itself that is driving the difference.

D&D vs Non-D&D Projects (Medians)

One metric we can use to further examine the differences here is looking at the median amount of money raised. Whereas averages are heavily impacted by outliers (looking at you MCDM RPG), median values can give us a good idea of the distribution of money raised by various categories of campaigns.

• January
• All: $4,016.43
• D&D: $3,367.38
• Non-D&D: $5,157.00
• AI: $3,805.52
• February
• All: $3,875.61
• D&D: $3,031.00
• Non-D&D: $3,978.00
• AI: $3,701.65
• March
• All: $3,025.60
• D&D: $2,592.03
• Non-D&D: $3,334.27
• AI: $1,669.64
• April
• All: $5,425.73
• D&D: $3,481.15
• Non-D&D: $2,364.00
• AI: $3,425.78
• May
• All: $7,055.91
• D&D: $8,868.50
• Non-D&D: $6,199.92
• AI: $3,779.22
• June
• All: $4,342.50
• D&D: $4,140.50
• Non-D&D: $4,342.50
• AI: $3,332.00
• Total
• All: $4,120.80
• D&D: $3,433.30
• Non-D&D: $4,516.00
• AI: $3,262.55

Now these data come with a BIG caveat: it's very difficult to compare medians between groups. There are no statistical tests to say whether the difference is statistically significant, and you could have samples with exactly the same median that have wildly different qualities that are hugely relevant (variance, size, average, mode, etc). That said, there are interesting things to be said when comparing the median and average of the same population.

For example, the medians of all categories of projects across all months are considerably lower than the averages. This tells us that even though the average amount of money raised is fairly high, that metric is consistently being pulled up by a few high-earning projects. In theory, an average should be right in the middle of the population, but here we're seeing that when you count the (for example) 73rd project in April when the projects are all arrayed from least to most money raised, that project raised $5,425.73, almost nine times less than the average of $45,029.82. Since this pattern is consistent across all timeframes and categories, this tells us that the majority of projects earn far less money than the average would suggest.

I don't know a way to verify this, but I suspect that this is part of the reason that there isn't a significant difference in money raised by D&D vs non-D&D projects: the average just doesn't represent a strong middle of the actual population. This is somewhat borne out by the median money raised by D&D ($3,433.30) vs non-D&D ($4,516.00) projects. Even though there are fewer D&D projects overall, they have a larger proportion of projects that raise fairly little money and potentially a larger proportion of projects that raise a lot of money.

On that subject, stay tuned for part 3 where I'll delve into those projects that make a lot of money, along with some random for-fun statistics.