September 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

If you're not already aware, the Kickstarter workers' union is currently on strike but have not called for a boycott of the site. To find out what you can do, please check out the corresponding part of their website.

Now on to the TTRPG stuff (which of course wouldn't be possible without the incredible labor of the workers at all of these sites)! As always, raw data is available.

• 140 campaigns
• 14 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 3 Gamefound
• 123 Kickstarter
• $4,085,057.66 raised
• $1,617,387.33 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $9,174.10 on Gamefound
• $2,458,495.73 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 10 accessories
• 3 Actual Plays
• 41 adventures
• 1 advice
• 4 campaign settings
• 2 fundraising
• 3 reprints
• 42 supplements
• 33 systems
• 1 translation
• 59 distinct systems used (14 original)
• 51 campaigns (36.43%) used D&D 5E and raised $815,352.14 (19.96% of all money raised in September)
• 40 campaigns used AI in some form (28.57% of total) and raised $227,946.95 (5.58% of all money raised in September)
• 25 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 49.02% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 16 different countries
• Top 3: 73 in USA, 23 in UK, 8 each in Canada and Italy
• Singleton countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Greece, New Zealand, Portugal

Backerkit's September

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in September were:

1. Cypher: Faster. Easier. And Even Better! by Monte Cook Games ($1,025,264 from 5,576 backers)
2. Ways and Means: A Heart Sourcebook by Rowan, Rook and Decard ($295,760.49 from 2,795 backers)
3. Nightfell The Witches' Path by Grim Moon Studio ($99,694.52 from 1,088 backers)
4. Deadlands Classic 20th Anniversary Reprint & AudioBook by World's Largest RPGs ($74,142 from 808 backers)
5. Monster Kingdoms by Onyx Path ($43,991 from 766 backers)

When it's not a peak time of year for Backerkit (basically Zine Month through Pocketopia or February to May this year), the platform really operates on something of a feast or famine model. When the big players in the space (Monte Cook Games and Rowan, Rook and Decard, for example) show up, they tend to run up the numbers both for their own projects and everyone else's, to a lesser extent. You can really see this impact in the median amount of money raised within a month, as that statistic is more resilient to outlier data points than averages are. While this is evidence that a rising tide does indeed lift all ships, it's also not the best thing to have the success of your project be somewhat tied to the mere coincidence of a bigger project funding at the same time. Especially when there is no actual guarantee that this will happen, it's just that more eyes tend to be on the platform and therefore more people have the chance to see your project.

Gamefound's September

The 3 campaigns on Gamefound in September were:

1. Kaliban Uniwersum by Wydawnictwo Hengal ($8,599.09 from 97 backers)
2. Modern RPG Battle Maps for Every Scenario – TTRPGs & VTT by Agnesagraphic ($297.94 from 15 backers)
3. 360 Western Battle Maps For TTRPG and VTT by Agnesagraphic ($277.07 from 14 backers)

Not much to talk about for September, but watch this space: there's a big wave of TTRPG campaigns coming on Gamefound in October.

Kickstarter's September

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in September were:

1. Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 by Black Book Editions ($285,844.39 from 2,960 backers)
2. Wares Blade by LionWing Publishing ($237,751 from 2,549 backers)
3. Aetherial Expanse: Dreams of the Drowned God by Ghostfire Gaming ($235,321 from 2,250 backers)
4. Skullduggery: The 5E Urban Fantasy Companion by Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse ($231,236 from 2,127 backers)
5. Another Adventure Double Feature! by Olivier Revenu ($144,254.21 from 1,755 backers)

Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 is a fascinating project, if only because it just goes to show that there are cottage industries based around 'fixing' ponderous trad games that aren't D&D. I'm sure that this is not news to many people (clearly this particular project has been around long enough to get a second edition), but it's an insight into a side of the TTRPG field that I simply don't normally get. This effort at least makes more sense with a game like Shadowrun, as the world that the game lays out is considerably more idiosyncratic than the broad make-it-yourself fantasy worlds that D&D typically trades in. That is to say, if you find the world of Shadowrun particularly fascinating and dynamic, I completely understand the impulse to make the game system lighter and easier to run (whereas the same impulse for D&D just makes me feel like you'd probably just have a better time running a different game since many people don't exactly use published D&D settings).

September 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 12 (2024) => 14 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 101 (2024) => 123 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $1,454,136.46 (2024) => $1,617,387.83 (2025)
• Average campaign: $121,178.04 (2024) => $115,527.70 (2025)
• Median campaign: $45,192.50 (2024) => $13,990.60 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $2,296,019.12 (2024) =>  $2,458,495.73 (2025)
• Average campaign: $22,732.86 (2024) => $19,987.77 (2025)
• Median campaign: $3,967.00 (2024) => $4,658.00 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 31 (2024) => 40 (2025)
• Money: $215,538.99 (2024) => $227,946.95 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 50 (2024) => 51 (2025)
• Money: $1,168,288.21 (2024) => $815,352.14 (2025)

We're seeing something of a return to form for everything except the money raised by D&D 5E projects this month. Probably the most interesting stat to hone in on is the median Kickstarter money raised, which is the highest it's been thus far this year. This speaks to a slight slump in the highest-earning campaigns and a slight bump for the lowest-earning ones, which to me seems like a good thing. We should all be hoping for a higher floor for crowdfunding, as that helps more art get made on the whole. Do I think this speaks to any kind of significant trend? Absolutely not. I would need to see evidence of that over the course of months if not years, and the median Kickstarter money raised by this point last year is actually higher than it is this year. Does that feel particularly worrying? I'd say: not really? Given all the economic fuckery over the past 9 months, I'm actually surprised the 2025 numbers aren't lower. Kickstarter is well on its way to undershoot the TTRPG money it made last year, Backerkit looks like it may fall just beneath its 2024 amount, and both platforms have not yet seen smash hits like they got last year (Cosmere RPG and Draw Steel! nee MCDM RPG, respectively). I have no real conclusion to draw here other than to say: everything appears to be leveling off unless you're already a 'big' company. And if you're not? Well, I hope that a couple thousand US dollars is enough to fund your project.

August 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 A bit of bad news before I get to the meat of the retrospective: the search function for successful Kickstarter campaigns simply...stopped working this month.

All three of the campaigns picture funded in the last week of May 2024

As such, I have been forced to switch my methods from the more reliable "looking through successful campaigns from the past day or so" to the far less reliable "looking at campaigns about to end and hoping that I don't take too long between checking so I don't miss anything." I've potentially missed a few campaigns here and there this month, but I definitely got most of them. That said, it's deeply frustrating to have to be so "on" (even more so than usual for this project) so if you get anything out of this series I have a small favor to ask of you: go to Kickstarter Support and report a bug about this search function. I've already done so and they've told me that they're working on it, but if more people do so then perhaps they'll make it a bit higher priority. It's certainly not the biggest problem in the world (hell, it's not even the biggest problem with Kickstarter), but I would greatly appreciate the minute or two it would take for you to help get this tool back up and running properly.

That said, here's the raw data for August 2025! Let's get into it:

• 143 campaigns
• 17 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 4 Gamefound
• 122 Kickstarter
• $3,153,588.22 raised
• $1,351,822.34 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $98,847.93 on Gamefound
• $1,702,917.95 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 15 accessories
• 41 adventures
• 1 advice
• 5 campaign settings
• 2 fundraising
• 48 supplements
• 30 systems
• 1 translation
• 54 distinct systems used (16 original)
• 59 campaigns (41.26%) used D&D 5E and raised $875,395.60 (27.76% of all money raised in August)
• 42 campaigns used AI in some form (29.37% of total) and raised $167,835.73 (5.32% of all money raised in August)
• 28 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 47.46% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 16 different countries
• Top 3: 69 in USA, 25 in UK, 9 in Australia
• Singleton countries: Belgium, Hong Kong, Norway, Vietnam

Backerkit's August

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in August were:

1. Drakonym - A Narrative-First Dragonbonding TTRPG by Crossed Paths Press ($446,418.93 from 2,487 backers)
2. Vaults of Vaarn Second Edition by Vaults of Vaarn ($271,815.81 from 3,371 backers)
3. Monsters of Murka Trilogy: Ratified & Radified by Action Fiction ($269,058 from 1,382 backers)
4. Memento Mori: The Old City by Two Little Mice ($147,390.39 from 1,189 backers)
5. SHIVER Corporate: A Corporate Horror Comedy TTRPG by Parable Games ($86,921.15 from 646 backers)

It's fairly unusual to have new systems be really successful on any of the platforms I look at, so it's nice that in August the most successful campaign was (seemingly) original. Additionally, it's quite heartening to see something like Vaults of Vaarn 2e be so successful on Backerkit. None of the three of these games are exactly 'for' me, but it's nice to know there are thriving subcultures out there that are supporting games that aren't just from WotC, Paizo, or the couple most successful indie publishers. Granted, Crossed Paths Press, Two Little Mice, and Parable Games run some of the most consistently successful Backerkit TTRPG campaigns so it's not like they're exactly scrappy underdogs, but it remains a sign of a healthy (consumer) ecosystem that it's not only people like Exalted Funeral or Brandon Sanderson who can consistently bring out backers.

Gamefound's August

The 4 campaigns on Gamefound in August were:

1. Pendragon - Das Artus-Rollenspiel by Ulisses Spiele ($87,579.50 from 427 backers)
2. Dragons! Dragons! Dragons! for 5e by Deimos Infinitum Publishing ($5,622.35 from 68 backers)
3. The Ronin's Daughter by Brick By Brick Games ($4,994.42 from 117 backers)
4. After the Fall: 700 Post-Apocalyptic Battle Maps by Agnesagraphic ($651.66 from 15 backers)

There's not much to say here other than I have a personal beef with Agnesagraphic (or Agnieszka Polanowska on Kickstarter) for forcing me to log so many AI slop map projects. I really thought I was safe on a new platform but here she is...

Kickstarter's August

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in August were:

1. Dragonbane RPG Miniatures — Northern Beasts by TitanforgeGames ($357,301 from 2,154 backers)
2. Three New Battlezoo Secret Tomes for Shadowdark! by Roll For Combat ($282,772 from 1,953 backers)
3. Pets & Sidekicks: Companions for D&D, Level Up A5E, and ToV by Morrus ($111,744.36 from 1,571 backers)
4. The Ultimate Customizable Adventure Notebook for TTRPGs! by Oddities Chest ($108,574 from 1,007 backers)
5. UNDERISLES: Roleplaying with Sign Language by Hatchlings ($77,800 from 1,015 backers)

Kickstarter money seems to have rebounded from last month's unexpected lull, but it's all looking quite same-y. D&D 5E, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Tales of the Valiant - it's all just variations on the same theme. Very happy to see UNDERISLES in the top 5 as both a successful game for a small team and just something other than the standard fantasy adventure stuff (even if it's still a fantasy adventure game).

August 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 20 (2024) => 17 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 121 (2024) => 122 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $1,580,419.62 (2024) => $1,351,822.34 (2025)
• Average campaign: $79,020.98 (2024) => $79,518.96 (2025)
• Median campaign: $15,903.00 (2024) => $10,588.00 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $18,711,813.48 (2024) =>  $1,702,917.95 (2025)
• Average campaign: $154,643.09 (2024) => $4,054.74 (2025)
• Median campaign: $4,239.00 (2024) => $2,893.91 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 29 (2024) => 42 (2025)
• Money: $215,538.99 (2024) => $167,835.73 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 49 (2024) => 59 (2025)
• Money: $1,956,290.32 (2024) => $875,395.60 (2025)

Things look better for the state of crowdfunding now than they did last month: still a drop in money raised but not the 50-66% reduction across the board. It might look really bad for Kickstarter, but you have to remember that August 2025 saw the Cosmere RPG campaign raise $15M, so that money is an outlier among outliers. If you take that one campaign out, you're left with Kickstarter raising ~$3.6M in August 2024. It still represents slightly more than a 50% drop year-to-year, though.

I said last month that July was an outlier for TTRPG crowdfunding, but with this month adding another data point it's looking increasingly like this might be a new normal. Money is simply down across the board for these crowdfunders, even (or perhaps especially) for the previously quite reliable 5E campaigns. We're not cratering out by any means. (The one real benefit of the Kickstarter search function breaking is that I'm getting a much better sense for how many campaigns fail to fund, and it's not all that many.) But the constantly precarious state of crowdfunding feels like it's getting more precarious.

It takes three data points to set a pattern, so who's to say: maybe September will exceed our wildest expectations (and to be perfectly honest there are already a couple very successful campaigns that have either finished or are close to finishing as I'm writing this), but this month and the last have really shown me how unreliable this environment is.

A Blog Post 1 Year in the Making

 

Last summer (2024), I completed my third rewatch of the incredible show of Gravity Falls and I found myself struck by something going into the 3-part "Weirdmageddon" finale: the entire show has been taking place under the looming specter of the Pines siblings going home at the end of summer.

Upon this realization, I felt a little odd. That is, after all, the premise of the whole show. It's referenced many times throughout its two-season run, whether it's Mabel wanting a summer romance or Dipper feeling compelled to solve Gravity Falls' mysteries before he has to leave. But it doesn't feel particularly urgent until the end of Episode 37 "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future" when (spoilers for a 10-year old show) Mabel tries to create an endless summer and inadvertently releases Bill Cipher into our reality.

Why does Mabel do this? Well, for a constellation of reasons, but primarily because the summer is about to end and all her friends (including her twin brother) are seemingly about to abandon her on her birthday of all days. It's been a wonderful summer, but the prospect of it ending so badly almost retrospectively taints it for her to the point of it all being for nothing. Worse than nothing even, because she had something so good and then would have lost it.

So what does this have to do with TTRPGs? I felt like there was something there but wasn't sure at the time, so I wrote the reminder you see at the top of this post to make myself return to the idea at a later date. Then that date came and went. And went. And went. Until I could barely even see it in the rearview as I drove out of Gravity Falls with Dipper and Mabel.

At some point, I decided that I would simply revisit it in a year's time. It'll make for a funny bit, I thought, a blog post about time-limited games that itself is time-limited. Then today came and I actually deleted that reminder because I felt that I had nothing to say. A whole year to think of the perfect blog post and what did I have to show for it? A masterpiece of theory? An incredible bit of advice? Something even halfway funny or thoughtful or interesting? No!!!!!

But then I restored the reminder and chose to write this anyways, because I realized that this post was never about having the perfect thing to say. It was about deadlines, procrastination, and time, both in-game and out.

So what would it mean to have a game on a timer? The Cross Stitch by Ben Mansky is a MÖRK BORG adventure where the players are stuck in a 30-minute timeloop that resets in real time. 60 Minutes to Curtain, a LARP I just wrote for Dice Exploder's 1 Hour or Less Jam, is about a community theater group having just 60 minutes to get their show ready for opening night. OMEN by Spencer Campbell is a one-shot game about a world ticking ever closer to its doom via a dwindling dice pool that gets rolled at the beginning of the session and never refreshes; when it's gone, so is everything else.

Games on timers are nothing new, but they are often short. The games mentioned above take only one session to play (maybe two in the case of The Cross Stitch); what would a whole campaign on a timer look like?

In many ways, grand TTRPG campaigns of the sort imagined by many a Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun player are already on a timer. How long until the players' schedules make it so that the game ends by default, in a whimper and not a bang as weeks since playing become months and months become years? How long until some thoughtless comment or action from the real world causes two or more of the players to cease speaking to each other? How long until a major life event (a child's birth, a new job, a family tragedy) makes it impossible for one or more players to devote 4 hours a week every week to Faerun or Eberron or your DM's homebrew world that's definitely not Middle Earth mashed up with whatever other fantasy series they were reading most recently?

Truly, the longer a campaign goes the more likely something like this will happen - and while the same is true for non-trad games, it is definitely trad games that tend to have the longest running campaigns and therefore fall afoul of these pitfalls most often. And I challenge any players of those campaigns to turn down the promise that was made to Mabel: a chance to keep playing, forever, in a perfect game where your friends will never be sidetracked by other things going on in their lives.

So I want to see games that face this grim reality head on, much like Mabel must do to save her brother and everyone else in Gravity Falls. What would it be like to have a game where one of the rules is that you can only play during the summer? What would it be like to have in-game and out-of-game time pass at the same rate, with telegraphed calendar events in-game barreling toward you at a seemingly breakneck pace? What would it be like to play a game you know will end on a specific day and time (either in-game or out-of-game)?

Ultimately what I'm really asking is, what choices would you make in those games, knowing those things? What choices would your characters make if they knew the same things you knew?

I think it would look a lot like it did in Gravity Falls: it wouldn't feel like it mattered, right up until it did.

July 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

I talked back in the March about how the top fell off of Kickstarter TTRPG campaigns, with a decrease in money raised from February to March 2025 and a huge decrease compared to March 2024 largely driven by fewer high-grossing campaigns. Well, we're seeing something similar happen here in July 2025 except it's happening across the board and to a much greater degree. Take a look at the raw data, and let's get into it.

• 146 campaigns
• 17 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 3 Gamefound
• 126 Kickstarter
• $2,053,031.64 raised
• $445,168.07 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $52,681.29 on Gamefound
• $1,555,182.28 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 15 accessories
• 33 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 1 book
• 1 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 67 supplements
• 26 systems
• 1 translation
• 60 distinct systems used (12 original)
• 59 campaigns (40.41%) used D&D 5E and raised $553,001.66 (26.94% of all money raised in July)
• 50 campaigns used AI in some form (34.24% of total) and raised $244,932.90 (11.93% of all money raised in July)
• 33 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 55.93% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 16 different countries
• Top 3: 63 in USA, 22 in UK, 13 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Mexico, Sweden, Turkey

Backerkit's July

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in July were:

1. Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack REFORGED! by Troll Lord Games ($131,023 from 1,147 backers)
2. Last Train to Bremen by Possum Creek Games ($72,690 from 1,334 backers)
3. Fragged Kingdom 2 | ttRPG by Wade D ($60,697.17 from 736 backers)
4. TAZ - A Roleplaying Game of Post-Cyberpunk Resistance by Mana Project Studio ($53,417.48 from 516 backers)
5. Folk Hero - a solo mode and sourcebook for the Punk is Dead TTRPG by Critical Kit Ltd ($31,213.11 from 546 backers)

Hard to say what happened in July, the month with the least amount of money raised on Backerkit since this past January. Part of it is undoubtedly a certain lack of high-profile campaigns on the platform, but perhaps the larger part is that it's also the month with the fewest campaigns since January as well. Kickstarter, as a larger platform with (presumably) more users always has a lot of campaigns going at once. People go there to check out what's new because there's always something new (maybe not in precisely the area that you care about, but there's something). In June 2025, on the other hand, there was almost a full week at the end of the month (6/25-6/30) where no new TTRPG projects were launched. Things picked up again in the beginning of July with fairly regular launches, but this kind of lull in activity either creates or is emblematic of an environment where people aren't checking in regularly to see the churn of projects starting and projects ending. Kickstarter is a platform where people go to discover new projects all on their own; Backerkit seems like a platform where people still have to be funneled in from elsewhere. In specific instances where this isn't the case (Mothership Month in Nov-Dec 2024, Pocketopia in Mar-Apr 2025), you end up with more projects on the platform and fairly high average/median money raised.

Beyond this, the most interesting thing to me on Backerkit this past month was seeing what might be part of the first major wave of Draw Steel content. Both campaigns in question (Ratcatcher Magazine for DRAW STEEL - Issue 01 and Raiders of Ivywatch—A Draw Steel Adventure) didn't raise much money, and they're far from the first ones I've seen, but there are a couple more currently live and the final pdf just became available for backers. We're a little over a year-and-a-half out from the original record-breaking Backerkit campaign, and now that it's about to enter the wider ecosystem I'm very interested to see how it will be received (especially in the world of crowdfunding).

Gamefound's July

There were only 3 campaigns on Gamefound in July:

1. Kryształy Czasu by Dark Rabbit ($46,797.02 from 246 backers)
2. Minerim GDR by Mist_games ($5,670.27 from 54 backers)
3. 450 Steampunk Battle Maps for TTRPG and VTT by Agnesagraphic ($214 from 9 backers)

Not much to say here other than I have learned that Kryształy Czasu is a classic Polish TTRPG dating back to the early 90s. A whole world of TTRPGs outside of the Anglosphere? It's more likely than you'd think!

Kickstarter's July

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in July were:

1. Land of Eem: Beginners RPG for Kids + Underlands Expansion by Exalted Funeral ($227,887 from 1,809 backers)
2. Fantasy World Creator: Chronicles by GAME START ($173,044 from 1,014 backers)
3. Echoes in the Deep - A Fateforge Tale: Advanced Solo TTRPG by Adeliane ($84,222 from 1,053 backers)
4. SideQuest Volume 1: A Collection of 5e Solo Adventure Shorts by Obvious Mimic ($74,074.38 from 1,860 backers)
5. CBR+PNK: OVERLOAD by Mythworks ($67,095 from 1,465 backers)

After several banner months in April-June, July is a real outlier for Kickstarter. It's the lowest amount raised in a month since January, which was also uncharacteristically thin on the ground. By this point in 2024, Kickstarter TTRPG campaigns had raised ~$3.5M more than the current count with only 2 more campaigns (1069 in 2024 vs 1067 in 2025). I really have no explanation here beyond the relative absence of big players this past July. No big D&D 5E campaigns (as in huge campaign settings or supplemental sourcebooks), relatively few big indie publishers beyond those present in the top 5 campaigns above; there was only 1 additional campaign beyond those 5 that even raised more that $50,000 and that was a Swedish AP publishing the adventures they've played since it began in June 2017. There haven't been any big economy-related fuck-ups shake-ups in the last few months and US tariffs remain in flux, but this has also been true for the last few months and therefore doesn't really explain this sudden drop (both month-to-month and year-to-year).

It's a real mystery, and it just goes to remind us that models and trends have excellent explanatory power in hindsight and incredibly limited predictive power.

July 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 14 (2024) => 17 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 143 (2024) => 126 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $978,983.04 (2024) => $445,168.07 (2025)
• Average campaign: $69,927.36 (2024) => $26,186.36 (2025)
• Median campaign: $12,716.00 (2024) => $10,395.00 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $4,472,629.89 (2024) =>  $1,555,182.28 (2025)
• Average campaign: $31,277.13 (2024) => $12,342.72 (2025)
• Median campaign: $4,435.00 (2024) => $3,126.00 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 43 (2024) => 50 (2025)
• Money: $157,621.97 (2024) => $244,932.90 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 75 (2024) => 59 (2025)
• Money: $1,541,340.98 (2024) => $553,001.66 (2025)

Two things to note here:

First, I remain impressed that the median money raised by campaigns is so resilient to reductions by 1/2 to 1/3 of overall money raised. It really continues to show that there is a solid (and quite low) floor of small campaigns that make up the vast majority of TTRPG crowdfunding projects. As always, you can't necessarily rely on these things (because I've had a project fail that was looking to raise less than the July 2025 Kickstarter median), but setting your sights in the low thousands of dollars for a first crowdfunding attempt is a reasonable goal, even if you're going to have to work quite hard to get that much.

Second, it remains deeply concerning to me how much AI slop continues to fill the space. I recently had to switch up my methodology for keeping track of projects on Kickstarter (because the search for successful projects now only returns things from mid-2024), and that meant combing through all the projects set to end in the next few days' time. Now that I'm seeing all of those, I'm realizing that there are even more AI projects that don't fund successfully. It's not that many more (and I'm considering sticking to this methodology so that I can potentially see what percentage of projects fund at all), but there are still more out there and it fucking sucks.

Let me just say this now: I know for a fact that my 50% success rate (1 yes, 1 no) with crowdfunding my games has made me happier than any of the loser slop-merchants I now duly record on the daily. I may have made less money, but I'm a better artist, a better gamer, and, quite frankly, a better person than any of you.

Die mad about it.

June 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 
Pride Month is over, so it's time to see what the gayest month of the year yielded for TTRPGs (the gayest medium of them all?). One thing it certainly has yielded: a new platform to analyze! Gamefound is not new on the scene, but I wasn't previously aware of how many TTRPGs are on it. I'm curious to see where this goes!

As always, the raw data is free for you to peruse.

• 159 campaigns
• 21 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 7 Gamefound
• 131 Kickstarter
• $8,2275,903.08 raised
• $3,243,137.69 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $499,147.52 on Gamefound
• $4,533,617.87 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 19 accessories
• 1 Actual Play
• 48 adventures
• 2 advice
• 10 campaign settings
• 41 supplements
• 34 systems
• 2 translations
• 2 zines
• 61 distinct systems used (21 original)
• 65 campaigns (40.88%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,717,489.68 (32.84% of all money raised in June)
• 41 campaigns used AI in some form (25.79% of total) and raised $544,766.14 (6.58% of all money raised in June)
• 29 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 44.62% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 17 different countries
• Top 3: 78 in USA, 21 in UK, 12 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Denmark, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Norway, Turkey

Backerkit's June

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in June were:

1. The World's Largest Dungeon by World's Largest RPGs ($1,021,783 from 2,435 backers)
2. City State of the Invincible Overlord by Goodman Games ($597,530 from 2,478 backers)
3. Outgunned Superheroes by Two Little Mice ($572,395.39 from 3,533 backers)
4. Invisible Sun: Electric and Indigo by Monte Cook Games ($300,613 from 2,014 backers)
5. Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts by Evil Hat ($248,637 from 4,732 backers)

Backerkit's June has some high highs and a low low. A high? The highest-grossing campaign on the platform since the MCDM RPG campaign in December 2023/January 2024. Another high? A very successful Blades in the Dark campaign that saw more backers than any other Backerkit campaign this month!

A low? The City State of the Invincible Overlord campaign, the intellectual property of Robert Bledsaw II, a man who posted (by all accounts, I have not seen them myself) stunningly racist and anti-semitic things on Facebook in 2020 causing longtime collaborators to cut ties with Judge's Guild (his company and the original publisher of the adventure, though it was his father who authored the adventure). On top of that, in 2010, shortly after Bledsaw took over the company in 2008, they ran a Kickstarter campaign for an updated version of this same adventure, raising ~$85K and failing to deliver on that product for over a decade.

This is all relevant because around the time that Bledsaw II showed his whole ass on Facebook, Goodman Games were in talks to create their own adaptation of this classic adventure. Despite all that happened and despite issuing a statement and video about how abhorrent they found the behavior, behind the scenes they proceeded with their adaptation. All of this under the condition that Judge's Guild use any money they receive from it to reimburse the 965 backers they swindled in 2010.

All the information in the previous paragraph came from the first statement Goodman Games put out after announcing the new crowdfunding campaign. And you know it's a good sign when you have to specify "first" there. Because in their second statement they make several clarifications to clear things up.

The money going to the 2010 backer refunds comes from the royalties that Judge's Guild would receive, seemingly 10% of the overall money raised. Therefore, if the campaign had raised more than $850,000 then any excess royalties would simply go to Judge's Guild (aka the Nazis). Speaking from the other side of the campaign, we now know they did not raise this much money. Some $59,753 worth of 2010 backers will see that money (assuming they request the refund, which they have to do manually). So hooray, the Nazis didn't make any money! What a thing to celebrate, considering that they could have guaranteed the Nazis didn't make any money by simply not running the campaign.

There's a lot of talk in the two statements about how good and noble the original adventure designers were, and I have no reason to disbelieve that. There's also a lot of talk about how important the original adventure is to TTRPG history, and I have no reason to disbelieve that either. But neither of those points seem like reason enough to potentially enrich a Nazi and his Nazi company (that have been removed from DriveThru RPG btw, so someone at least knows to not give them money).

Gamefound's June

The top 5 campaigns on Gamefound in June were:

1. Das Schwarze Auge - Das Aventurische Lexikon by Ulisses Spiele ($410,513.78 from 1,214 backers)
2. THE ADVENTURER'S TAROT & COMPENDIUM FOR 5E D&D by Weird Works ($43,060.48 from 556 backers)
3. The Dark Carnival by Storytellers Forge ($14,991 from 121 backers)
4. Liminal Horror by Wydawnictwo Hengal ($10,447.52 from 125 backers)
5. Sirensong: A 5E Supplement & Campaign + Tarot Deck by Kelfecil's Tales ($9,829.08 from 103 backers)

Gamefound is a moderately strange crowdfunding platform for TTRPGs. A brief perusal of its highest grossing projects immediately reveals that it's primarily a platform for board games. Even the structure of its campaign pages reflects this:

Screenshot from "Das Schwarze Auge - Das Aventurische Lexikon" page

It's not that counting the number of players or play time for a TTRPG is a bad thing, they're just not metrics that I usually see front and center in this way. Board games, on the other hand, typically put this kind of information somewhere on the side of the box. I actually think that these are not bad things to track for people potentially interested in a game, whether board or tabletop, it's just surprising for them to be so prominent here.

Another oddity: Gamefound seems to be Poland's favorite TTRPG crowdfunding site. 7 of the 18 TTRPG campaigns either currently funding or that funded in 2025 are from Polish creators, and only 3 of the campaigns are based in the US.

A final oddity (more of a screaming frustration for me personally in the context of this project really): Gamefound is seemingly allergic to telling me when campaigns started and finished. They love to say how long a game took to reach its funding goal! They love to say what date it funded on! But the HATE to give a start or end date!!! I have to work backwards from the funded date and the time it took to fund to figure out when it started (not too big of a deal), and then just CROSS MY FINGERS that the people running a campaign posted an update when the campaign ends! And if it's a Polish campaign, that means I'm bouncing back and forth between the campaign page and Google Translate to copy and paste updates in Polish to figure out which one even IS the campaign end update!!!!

It's fine.

Everything's fine.

NOW.

In all seriousness, now that I'm on the Gamefound train and catching projects as they're funding, it's actually very easy to figure out when they start and end because the information is there on the page. I just wish that that information stuck around for longer than that 😭

Kickstarter's June

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in June were:

1. Arkand & Book of Magic for Free League's Dragonbane RPG by Free League ($706,763.60 from 5,930 backers)
2. Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game—Voyage of the Unity by Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse ($522,832 from 3,198 backers)
3. 2026 ⚔️ Quest Calendar 📅 by Sundial Games llc ($293,054 from 5,137 backers)
4. ASTRA ARCANUM: The Roleplaying Game by Metis Media ($281,974 from 1,987 backers)
5. Player's Guide 2: New Power for 5E and TOV Players by Kobold Press ($242,248 from 3,269 backers)

Compared to everything I had to say about Backerkit and Gamefound, there isn't much to Kickstarter this June. Oh there's a very successful Free League supplement? Oh there's a very successful Avatar Legends adventure?

Something I did want to talk about, though, is the 2026 ⚔️ Quest Calendar 📅, which used AI in about as close to an 'ethical' way as I can see. I went back and forth on whether to mark it as using AI, but ultimately decided to say that yes, they did. Full disclosure, I was going to mark it as not using AI even as I was writing this post, but upon further reflection felt that it wouldn't be an internally consistent metric if I didn't.

The reason for this decision, ultimately, is that using AI tools in image editing software as they described still benefits from the energy-guzzling maxi-theft training of AI tools. It doesn't sound (nor does it look) like they used generative AI to create images whole cloth, but they are using AI tools in some way, shape, or form as part of their workflow.

I think that this is, again, as close to a defensible use of AI as it currently stands, but given the larger context of the technology it still just leaves too much of a bad taste in my mouth. The well is poisoned, so even tiny sips of the water is going to be an ultimately bad thing.

June 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 20 (2024) => 21 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 139 (2024) => 131 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $1,411,365.07 (2024) => $3,243,137.69 (2025)
• Average campaign: $70,586.25 (2024) => $154,435.13 (2025)
• Median campaign: $20,097.50 (2024) => $14,539.00 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $3,786,692.31 (2024) =>  $4,533,617.87 (2025)
• Average campaign: $27,242.39 (2024) => $34,607.77 (2025)
• Median campaign: $3,721.00 (2024) => $2,931.00 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 34 (2024) => 41 (2025)
• Money: $215,853.36 (2024) => $544,766.14 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 62 (2024) => 59 (2025)
• Money: $1,853,484.49 (2024) => $1,068,273.37 (2025)

The main point of comparison to draw attention to here is that, from 2024 to 2025, average money raised by campaigns has risen for both Backerkit and Kickstarter while median money raised has fallen.

For Backerkit, I believe this is mostly a factor of smaller creators actually using the platform  while bigger players continue to reap the rewards of more eyes on their platform as more people come to use it more regularly.

For Kickstarter, it feels more troubling. When the 'average' campaign raises 10x as much money as the median campaign, it can give a very skewed idea to newer creators of what to expect from Kickstarting their project. Over 50% of successful projects raised less than $3000 USD on Kickstarter in June, and the median value for the year so far is only just above that ($3,017 USD). At some point, crowdfunding begins to feel little different than gambling except stretched out over a much longer (and arguably more stressful) period of time.

May 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

April showers bring May flowers, and April crowdfunding successes bring minor May slumps it would seem. Check the raw data to confirm my summaries:

• 164 campaigns
• 23 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 140 Kickstarter
• $7,228,432.90 raised
• $727,356.92 on Backerkit
• $505.00 on Crowdfundr
• $6,500,570.98 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 18 accessories
• 34 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 anthology
• 1 audiobook
• 12 campaign settings
• 1 reprint
• 64 supplements
• 31 systems
• 1 zine
• 56 distinct systems used (17 original)
• 79 campaigns (48.17%) used D&D 5E and raised $3,093,350.95 (42.79% of all money raised in May)
• 44 campaigns used AI in some form (26.83% of total) and raised $441,459.48 (6.11% of all money raised in May)
• 35 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 44.30% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 17 different countries
• Top 3: 84 in USA, 20 in UK, 11 in Canada
• Singleton countries: Austria, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Vietnam

Backerkit's May

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in May were:

1. Call of the Sea: The Everhart Expedition by Shadowlands Games ($168,971.44 from 1,295 backers)
2. Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($143,496 from 1,683 backers)
3. Tome of Intangible Treasures 2 - A Hunter's Guide to Rituals by Lone Colossus Games ($64,210 from 743 backers)
4. Midnight Muscadines - The Cozy-Dark TTRPG of Magical Jams by Pandion Games ($50,190 from 720 backers)
5. Grimwild: Expanded Hardcover Print Run by Oddity Press ($47,225 from 597 backers)

I would not call this a bad month for Backerkit by any means, but this marks the first time that a month in 2025 didn't outraise its 2024 counterpart (just about $8,000 less this year than last). And this is despite having more campaigns this time around than in May 2024! All told though, this does follow a broad pattern of a minor mid-year slump that was evident last year.

Crowdfundr's May

Crowdfundr revives itself every once in a while, and this time it was with 1 campaign: Cat by John Wick...by John Wick ($505 from 26 backers).

Kickstarter's May

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in May were:

1. Realm Brew: Magnetic Map Tiles for D&D by The Shop of Many Things ($1,492,062 from 8,417 backers)
2. Zaman's Guide to the End of Time (And How to Fix It) by Loot Tavern ($830,853 from 6,737 backers)
3. Pocket RPG. Play DnD Anytime. Anywhere. Magnetic. Patent Pe. by Pocket RPG ($612,821 from 2,847 backers)
4. Humblewood: Beyond the Canopy by Hit Point Press ($558,096 from 5,022 backers)
5. The Kingdom of Keshanar: Ancient Egypt 5e Setting & Campaign by David Dean Hadden ($404,008 from 2,627 backers)

I can never tell whether really successful D&D crowdfunding campaigns take air away from smaller indie game crowdfunders or benefit from their absence in the first place. This month in particular, every single one of the top 5 campaigns were about D&D in some way (if not a supplement/campaign setting for it, then an accessory explicitly enhancing the play experience). Were they so successful because they took away attention from other campaigns or did they receive increased attention because of the lack of other campaigns? As always, it's basically impossible to tell but there are two tangential pieces of evidence that suggest the former.

First, there were more campaigns this May than last year (140 vs 133) yet less money raised ($6,500,570.98 vs $7,238,839.84), meaning more competition for eyes and less money available. This also manifested in lower average and median money raised in May 2025.

Second, system diversity. May 2024 saw 61 distinct systems (26 original) while this month saw 56 distinct systems (17 original). Of the pre-existing (non-original) systems, 25 were used in only 1 campaign (true for both years). D&D accounted for 59 campaigns in 2024 (39.07%) and 79 in 2025 (48.17%). Some of this can presumably be chalked up to survivor bias (I'm not keeping track of campaigns that didn't meet their funding goals because even my neuroses have their limits, so it's possible that any number of original/non-D&D campaigns failed to fund [though this would be further evidence toward my overall point]), but even so we're seeing a decrease in non-D&D crowdfunders and a more than corresponding increase in D&D crowdfunders between May 2024 and 2025.

What's the overall takeaway? Hard to say. It's something that I'll be interested in tracking over time (basically whether a rising tide floats all boats or whether D&D crowds out other systems) because to say anything meaningful these have to be long-term trends and not monthly blips.

May 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 18 (2024) - 23 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 133 (2024) - 140 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $735,159.58 (2024) - $727,356.92 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $7,238,839.84 (2024) -  $6,500,570.98 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 34 (2024) - 44 (2025)
• Money: $251,400.35 (2024) - $441,459.48 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 59 (2024) - 79 (2025)
• Money: $4,936,605.69 (2024) - $3,093,350.95 (2025)

I've mentioned most of this already, but I always find it helpful to have it laid out in a separate section.

The primary point to draw attention to: the D&D 5E money raised in May 2025 looks a little low, but this doesn't take into account most of the Accessory category of campaigns. Since they aren't usually system-specific (nor indeed engaged with mechanics at all), I don't categorize them with any system. But if you were to add the top 1 and 3 campaigns from Kickstarter this month (both explicitly referencing D&D in their title and body text) to the D&D 5E money, you'd see that May 2025 basically evens out to May 2024's D&D money raised. Were there D&D-related accessories in May 2024 that should raise that money too? Absolutely, but they were nowhere near the top 5 campaigns that time around and therefore won't affect the total all that much.

Games That Are About Choosing the Pope (To Me)

Me preparing to write this post

As a regular (read: lapsed, queer, nonbeliever) Catholic, I of course felt the Catholicism reenter my body upon hearing of Pope Francis' death, and there is no better way to commemorate the ongoing Papal Conclave (from the Latin cum clave because they are freaks) than to discuss games that are about choosing the Pope (to me).

The Criteria

We doing a three-way factorial analysis babeyyyyy (aka an alignment chart). The are two axes we'll be using are:

The Narrative Axis: the degree to which the game is about choosing a Pope

1. The game is about choosing a new Pope
2. The game is about making a decision of religious importance
3. The game is about making any decision of importance

The Mechanics Axis: the degree to which the game resembles the functioning of the Papal Conclave

1. The decision is made through secret ballot
2. The decision is made democratically
3. The decision is made by any means necessary

Throughout this post, these will be abbreviated to N1/2/3 for the Narrative Axis, and M1/2/3 for the Mechanics Axis.

N1/M1: The Conclave of 1492: A Game of Faith and Power by Shawn Roske

Pretty straightforward: this is a Golden Cobra 2023 submission about the actual historical 1492 papal conclave. Secret ballots, real popes, the whole nine yards. Fun fact: this was the first conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel!

Would that all of our game rooms looked this good

N1/M2: Behold My Grand & Glorious Hat And Weep by Kay Marlow Allen

We're already in questionable territory given that there is no explicit voting in this game, but there is a Pope present and you are given the opportunity to produce an Antipope if you can get enough players to agree with you so it counts. Plus who doesn't like making silly glorious hats?

N1/M3: The (Orc) Pope is Dead by Grant Howitt

In this silly little one-pager, there's no voting to be seen anywhere! A bunch of orc cardinals fight amongst themselves to replace the Orc Pope - hilarity ensues.

N2/M1: ???

Once again in trouble: I could not find a single game about general religious decision-making that was governed by secret ballot. If you know about one, hit me up.

N2/M2: Papatouille by bujold

This game can be best summed up by a potential alternate title that I'm making up: Everyone is (Pope) John. Inspired by the original game by Michael Sullivan, this game sees an older rat (the Father), a younger rat (the Son), and a pigeon (the Holy Spirit/Ghost) take control of a tourist named John who was somehow named Pope. Is this actually democratic? Only in the sense that three people make all the decisions and will eventually need to agree amongst themselves to some extent.

N2/M3: Benediction by Laura op de Beke

Another Golden Cobra 2023 submission, this LARP sees you play as a bunch of nuns awaiting the arrival of a traveling miracle worker. You're not making a decision so much as figuring out how you feel about this strange man coming to see you, but sometimes important decisions can be internal as well as external.

N3/M1: Death Game by Laurie O'Connel

This whole post will have been worth it if only because it made me finally read this game after I backed it last year. Everyone (players and GM alike) submit a possible gimmick for the arena the death game is happening in, and then everyone votes by writing down their pick and giving it to the GM (just like the papal conclave!). On top of that, the GM position rotates whenever a player character dies, with the old GM fleshing out an NPC to enter the game with (just like the pope!).

N3/M2: The Hench Union LARP by Sam Dunnewold

The third and final Golden Cobra submission on the list, but this time from 2021. Here, a bunch of henchfolk and their supervillain boss must come to an agreement about their contract negotiation. What's keeping everyone at the table? Mutually assured destruction via doomsday devices on each side. The henches can vote to set theirs off, while the supervillain can unilaterally detonate theirs at any time (just like the pope!).

N3/M3: Picket Line Tango by Emily Weiss

IDK what to tell you. A murder mystery in space against the backdrop of a union strike? Seems like a game about picking the pope to me!

April 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

So last month I talked about $2.5M that went 'missing' from March TTRPG crowdfunding compared to last year, and it would seem that I've solved the mystery of its disappearance: it just went to April instead. Read on to see the details, or peruse the raw data if you're so inclined. But first, the broad summary:

• 201 campaigns
• 51 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 150 Kickstarter
• $9,925,409.32 raised
• $2,180,147.02 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $7,745,262.30 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 47 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 8 campaign settings
• 1 novel
• 64 supplements
• 66 systems
• 1 translation
• 2 zines
• 91 distinct systems used (48 original)
• 82 campaigns (40.80%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,136,602.54 (21.53% of all money raised in April)
• 49 campaigns used AI in some form (24.38% of total) and raised $213,130.42 (2.15% of all money raised in April)
• 36 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 43.90% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 14 different countries
• Top 3: 101 in USA, 38 in UK, 10 in Australia and Italy
• Singleton countries: Belgium, Poland

Backerkit's April

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in April were:

1. Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage by Troll Lord Games ($601,490 from 2,669 backers)
2. Brambletrek - Tales in the Hundred Acre Woods by Crossed Paths Press ($414,208.69 from 2,709 backers)
3. Dungeon Denizens 2, How To Write Even Better Adventures, & More GM Tools! by Goodman Games ($314,525 from 2,404 backers)
4. RiverBank: A cozy RPG of elegant animals, chaos, & whimsy by Kobold Press ($155,817 from 1,631 backers)
5. Exalted: Essence Player's Guide by Onyx Path ($106,361.01 from 1,438 backers)

Backerkit's trajectory in 2025 continues to improve, with the platform seeing both more campaigns and more money raised each month than the one before it. This was helped in April in large part by Pocketopia, a "celebration of portable easy-to-learn tabletop games." (Though in all fairness since this lasted from March 13 - April 3, so it's sort of more relevant to talk about in March? Look I have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere, and I've opted to take the ones provided to me by the Gregorian calendar.) Pocketopia alone raised $1,068,937 across 61 projects, but removing the strictly boardgame offerings it was responsible $726,234.15 across 34 TTRPG projects (33.32% of April Backerkit money raised and 66.67% of April Backerkit projects) with over half of this money coming from one project (#2 on the list above, Brambletrek).

One other interesting datapoint here is RiverBank, a campaign that has a number of notable firsts for publisher Kobold Press:

• Their first original system (ignoring Tales of the Valiant, which is close enough to their previous 5E content that I'm counting it among it). It promises a sort of Wind in the Willows experience following the madcap adventures of anthropomorphic genteel animals.
• Their first campaign on Backerkit, as opposed to Kickstarter
• Their first campaign in years to not crack $200k (the last one being Book of Ebon Tides in November 2021)

I don't point this out to say that this campaign failed by any means, and I truly wish Kobold Press all the best in their endeavors, but it seems to point to an artistic silo that they find themselves in. By the mere existence of this campaign, they're clearly interested in trying out new things beyond endless iteration on 5E and the like, but their audience very demonstrably was not so interested in this new direction. I will be very interested to see whether they continue to stretch beyond their current comfort zone, or perhaps how often they do so.

Kickstarter's April

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in April were:

1. ALIEN RPG - Evolved Edition and Rapture Protocol by Free League ($2,407,782.82 from 11,741 backers)
2. Shadowdark RPG: The Western Reaches Setting by The Arcane Library ($2,405,108 from 12,923 backers)
3. Professor Primula's Portfolio of Palaeontology by PalaeoGames ($365,894.94 from 3,933 backers)
4. ZAMANORA: Ballad of the Witch by Eren Chronicles ($328,961 from 3,197 backers)
5. The Dark Moon Rises by Archmage Press ($247,450 from 1,789 backers)

It must needs be remarked that it only takes a few successful campaigns to turn a month from "normal" to "remarkable." Case in point: Kickstarter's April, which saw just under half (48.5% to be precise) of its money raised by just two projects. Were it not for both of these projects, Kickstarter would have seen its second month in a row and third month this year where it made less money in 2025 than in 2024 (and that's before we account for inflation - or before somebody accounts for inflation, I have to draw the line somewhere).

This does raise an interesting question though: how many backers (on any TTRPG crowdfunding project) are showing up just for this project and how many are generally interested in TTRPGs? What I mean to say is, to what extent are the backers that come out for IP tie-ins like the ALIEN RPG sticking around on Kickstarter to check out other games? This is the fundamental question, the same one that gets relitigated every time Wizards of the Coast does something that indie designers object to. Does a rising tide lift all boats? Or does it just drown some of us?

The answer to both questions seems to be no. Let's take a look at some statistics: April's average ($51,635.08) and median ($3,841.24) campaign money raised are the highest they've been this year. Both of these stats being higher than the last three months at least shows that small campaigns aren't being hurt by mega-successful ones, but they're also not being helped all that much. April's median is only about $550 more than January's, and that was the worst overall performance Kickstarter has seen in the 1.5 years I've been tracking these stats. So yeah, very little correlation (let alone causation) can be drawn from these data.

April 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 8 (2024) - 51 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 137 (2024) - 150 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $845,617.27 (2024) - $2,180,147.02 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $5,683,707.15 (2024) -  $7,745,262.30 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 33 (2024) - 49 (2025)
• Money: $310,089.95 (2024) - $213,130.42 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 70 (2024) - 82 (2025)
• Money: $2,486,126.48 (2024) - $2,136,602.54 (2025)

There isn't much to talk about here that I haven't already mentioned. As always, I am heartened to see that AI campaigns continue to make very little money compared to non-AI campaigns, but I continue to be concerned about the sheer number of them. At 49 campaigns using AI in some form or another, April is officially the month with the most AI campaigns since I've started tracking the stat. At what point does the slop become so pervasive that it starts to make everyone else feel bad about having their projects on the same site?