April 2026 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

April sees essentially the same amount of money raised as March but with 100+ fewer successful campaigns. To find out why, take a gander at the raw data and let's dive in:

• 152 campaigns
• 21 Backerkit
• 4 Gamefound
• 127 Kickstarter
• $10,391,851.51 raised
• $900,727.16 on Backerkit
• $270,258.78 on Gamefound
• $9,220,865.57 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 2 Actual Plays
• 36 adventures
• 1 advice
• 13 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 platform
• 1 podcast
• 42 supplements
• 35 systems
• 2 translations
• 2 zines
• 56 distinct systems used (16 original)
• 60 campaigns (39.47%) used D&D 5E and raised $5,878,186.03 (56.57% of all money raised in April)
• 41 campaigns used AI in some form (26.98% of total) and raised $196,777.28 (1.89% of all money raised in April)
• 30 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 50% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 20 different countries
• Top 3: 67 in USA, 26 in UK, 12 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Japan, Latvia, Spain, Turkey

Backerkit's April

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in April were:

1. Druskara: A Brutal Fantasy World Setting for Shadowdark RPG by Dungeon Damsel Publishing ($281,337.00 from 1,291 backers)
2. ION Heart Multiplayer - A Lo-Fi Mech TTRPG by Parable Games ($175,289.77 from 1,049 backers)
3. VHS: Very Horror Stories - Rule of Three by Aces Games ($107,867.08 from 476 backers)
4. Imaria: Beyond the Veil by Lynnvander Studios ($66,678.00 from 444 backers)
5. Inkvein - A MÖRK BORG Megadungeon by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($48,306.00 from 838 backers)

Backerkit might seem a bit light on the ground this month, but that's due to Megadungeon Month (which was scheduled from April 7-May 1), which would have technically 'made' most of its money in April but is going to be recorded in May's roundup. May is going to be a doozy for Backerkit, because Pocketopia and Old-School Essentials Month are running concurrently, though the latter will end in June.

Something interesting that I'm noticing is the geographic breakdown of these themed Months. 

Month	% US creators
Zinetopia 2026	58.33%
Orbital Blues Month	83.33%
Megadungeon Month	88.46%
Old-School Essentials Month	88.24%
Pocketopia 2026	42.11%
Overall Backerkit (2026)	66.23%

Months themed around a particular game system heavily feature US-based creators, while those focused around getting a type of game (zines, pocket-sized games) created are more geographically diverse than the general Backerkit population. There's clearly some kind of bias entering the picture here, but whether that's a factor of where specific games tend to be popular or on Backerkit's part in selecting who gets to participate in the first place is unclear.

Gamefound's April

There were 4 campaigns on Gamefound in April:

1. Mythic Battles: The Roleplaying Games by Monolith Board Games ($134,040.38 from 697 backers)
2. Archmage's Gate: A Solo RPG Adventure Gamebook by Archmage Arispen ($92,967.60 from 848 backers)
3. Fabula Ultima - Bestiarium & Deluxe-Edition by Ulisses Spiele ($42,836.81 from 217 backers)
4. Epic Fantasy Battle Maps: 1400 Rpg Maps + 3200 Portraits by Agnesagraphic ($413.99 from 14 backers)

Gamefound is a really strange place for TTRPG projects. The most consistent projects I've seen there over the past 6 months or so are German translations of popular games and AI-driven projects (either map packs or solo games usually). Last year's RPG Party was a very mixed success, with 16 of 22 projects successfully funding. Rascal News talked to Cam Bradley. Gamefound's business manager, about what this year's RPG Party will look like, and it seems that the company is focused on two main things: projects with a physical component (a requirement) and serving as an incubator for up-and-coming talent. I have my doubts about how effective this will be overall (rooted primarily in the volatile costs of producing physical components nowadays and Bradley's shifting of blame for the failed projects from Gamefound onto the creators who displayed "an unwillingness or inability to network"), but it makes sense for them to try to carve out this niche. Kickstarter is where most people go to fund their projects, while Backerkit is leaning ever more heavily on their themed Months and the bundled shipping they are starting to provide for projects associated with said Months, so if Gamefound wants to be a serious alternative they need to find something they're particularly good at. Only time will tell if this will work.

Kickstarter's April

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in April were:

1. Heliana & Ryoko's Guide to Mythozoology by DnD Shorts ($4,360,638.00 from 18,220 backers)
2. When Society Collapsed: Dam Nation - A Tabletop RPG by Luke Humphris ($817,977.00 from 5,587 backers)
3. Public Access Analog Horror Mystery TTRPG by The Gauntlet Gaming Community ($564,982.00 from 7,189 backers)
4. Fomoria - Epic Folk Horror Roleplaying by Johan Nohr ($314,299.83 from 3,191 backers)
5. Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game by IDW Games ($251,676.00 from 2,428 backers)

The overwhelming lesson from this April on Kickstarter is that it literally pays to have an audience/community. This is certainly not news to anyone, but just look at the top 5 from this month: DnD Shorts and Luke Humphris both have 550K+ YouTube channels, The Gauntlet is a thriving design community that also facilitates play of its own games, Johan Nohr is an indie TTRPG legend (and Tania Herrero, the other designer, is a well-known and award-winning designer herself), and Godzilla is...Godzilla.

In fact, it's notable that the hugely successful, decades-spanning IP tie-in game barely cracked the top 5. You can probably attribute that to the difficulty of turning the general Godzilla fan onto this specific TTRPG adaptation, as opposed to the other 4 projects on here, whose audiences are all specifically based in TTRPGs.

Does this mean that there is no benefit to Kickstarter as a platform? Absolutely not, you still benefit immensely from discoverability, but you can't rely on it. Don't be dependent on the platform - make them dependent on your ability to bring people in who otherwise might not come around.

April 2024 vs 2025 vs 2026

	2024	2025	2026
Campaign count
Backerkit	8	51	21
Kickstarter	137	150	127
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$845,617.27	$2,180,147.02	$900,727.16
Backerkit average	$105,702.16	$42,747.98	$42,891.77
Backerkit median	$66,034.46	$7,565.50	$10,209.76
Kickstarter total	$5,683,707.15	$7,745,262.30	$9,220,865.57
Kickstarter average	$41,486.91	$51,635.08	$72,605.24
Kickstarter median	$5,094.00	$3,841.24	$4,716.00
AI
Campaign count	33	49	41
Money pledged	$310,089.95	$213,130.42	$196,777.28
D&D 5E
Campaign count	70	82	60
Money pledged	$2,486,126.48	$2,136,602.54	$5,878,186.03

As always, it's fascinating to see how outliers influence the data. For example, Kickstarter's total money raised has gone up year-over-year, but most of that growth can be attributed to just a couple of campaigns.

• April 2024 had 1 big Kickstarter campaign: Monsters of Drakkenheim - 5E Monsters with Lore Lairs & Loot by Dungeon Dudes, raising $1,065,710.00 from 8,078 backers
• April 2025 had 2 big Kickstarter campaigns:
• ALIEN RPG - Evolved Edition and Rapture Protocol by Free League, raising $2,407,782.82 from 11,741 backers
• Shadowdark RPG: The Western Reaches Setting by The Arcane Library, raising $2,405,108.00 from 12,923 backers
• April 2026 had 1 big Kickstarter campaign: Heliana & Ryoko's Guide to Mythozoology by DnD Shorts, raising $4,360,638.00 from 18,220 backers

If you take out these top-performing campaigns you end up with the following money raised:

• April 2024: $4,617,997.15
• April 2025: $2,932,371.48
• April 2026: $4,860,227.57

This is obviously not to say that the money raised on Kickstarter in April hasn't been increasing year-over-year. I'm simply pointing out how much of that increase is consistently (and increasingly) concentrated in just a few projects. I began this project because I wanted to know how much money was actually being raised in TTRPG crowdfunding, but increasingly I find it necessary to contextualize where the money is actually going since the numbers alone can't tell the whole story.

March 2026 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

Zine events are done, which means it's time for big-huge crowdfunders to sweep in again (as though they were even really taking a break during February). Check out the raw data for March and let's dive in.

• 267 campaigns
• 31 Backerkit
• 1 Gamefound
• 235 Kickstarter
• $10,661,503.30 raised
• $3,489,278.13 on Backerkit
• $23,469.04 on Gamefound
• $7,148,756.13 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 18 accessories
• 1 Actual Play
• 47 adventures
• 2 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 12 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 LitRPG
• 1 magazine
• 1 'offload'
• 4 reprints
• 86 supplements
• 87 systems
• 5 zines
• 124 distinct systems used (58 original)
• 66 campaigns (24.72%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,250,503.58 (21.11% of all money raised in March)
• 54 campaigns used AI in some form (20.22% of total) and raised $374,649.11 (3.51% of all money raised in March)
• 27 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.91% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 20 different countries
• Top 3: 148 in USA, 39 in UK, 20 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Denmark, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan
• (Kickstarter is taking a some strong geopolitical stance in its designation of what gets the 'country' treatment it would seem)

Backerkit's March

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in March were:

1. Pumpkin Spice - A Magical Cozy RPG by Acheron Games ($1,531,175.72 from 10,948 backers)
2. Numenera: The Amber Archive by Monte Cook Games ($767,026 from 3,880 backers)
3. Blades '68 by Evil Hat ($507,901 from 6,667 backers)
4. Legends of Akeroth - JRPG Inspired TTRPG by Crossed Paths Press ($272,032.53 from 1,543 backers)
5. Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook REFORGED! by Troll Lord Games ($107,081 from 1,090 backers)

Gamefound's March

There was one campaign on Gamefound in March: The Dawnless Necropolis: A Dark Medieval Gamebook by Last Dawn Press ($23,469.04 from 244 backers)

Kickstarter's March

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in March were:

1. Dragonbane Trudvang – The Legend Returns by Free League ($1,144,797.64 from 5640 backers)
2. Monsters & More! A Nimble TTRPG Reprint & Expansion by Nimble Co. ($1,065,804 from 6277 backers)
3. Altheya: The Dragon Empire – A High-Fantasy 5E Setting by Roll & Play Press ($934,715.49 from 5845 backers)
4. Temeraire: The Roleplaying Game by Magpie Games ($514,632 from 4022 backers)
5. Ariadne's Book of Legends - D&D beyond 20th level! by Ariadne's Codex of Strings ($410,051 from 3330 backers)

March 2024 vs 2025 vs 2026

	2024	2025	2026
Campaign count
Backerkit	21	34	31
Kickstarter	232	254	235
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$939,594.09	$1,918,365.98	$3,489,278.13
Backerkit average	$44,742.58	$56,422.53	$112,557.36
Backerkit median	$15,100.00	$4,654.00	$6,684.00
Kickstarter total	$4,897,291.24	$2,283,379.13	$7,148,756.13
Kickstarter average	$21,109.01	$8,989.68	$30,420.24
Kickstarter median	$2,956.05	$2,320.09	$2,373.00
AI
Campaign count	34	47	54
Money pledged	$152,318.82	$399,981.45	$374,649.11
D&D 5E
Campaign count	69	73	66
Money pledged	$1,918,554.37	$815,507.09	$2,250,503.58

In every sense (money raised, number of successful campaigns, etc.), March was an unmitigated success for TTRPG crowdfunding. Despite a slight decrease in the number of March 2026 campaigns compared to last year, both Backerkit and Kickstarter saw massive increases in the money pledged to projects that they hosted. Things are looking up! There's not even a 'but' coming!

.

.

.

No seriously! Just good stuff this month! No but!

.

.

.

Okay, but...I'm still not wild about how much a 'successful' month depends on there being a handful of individually successful crowdfunding campaigns. I've talked before about the remarkable stability of the money pledged to the median campaign, and this is both a blessing and a curse.

There are two different pieces of conventional wisdom that should impact this measurement:

1. A rising tide raises all boats: the presence of hugely successful projects should drive eyes to the platforms they're hosted on and benefit other creators
2. This town ain't big enough for the both of us: the presence of hugely successful projects will take away money and attention from smaller creators

Are either of these things happening? The median money pledged stat suggests that they aren't (or that if they are, they're canceling each other out). When money comes in for big projects, it seems to largely stay in those projects. When big projects aren't happening, people who turn out for them seem to largely stay home.

What does this mean for people seeking to launch projects? Wellllllllllll...it's hard to draw any definitive conclusions, but it seems that you don't need to be all that concerned about some big project coming in and taking all your thunder. For better or worse, you're probably going to raise the money you're going to raise. The bigger question is how running alongside some behemoth project is going to affect you psychologically, as your ability to relentlessly self-promote has at least some impact on the ultimate outcome. If you get discouraged because it feels like the air is getting sucked out of the room, that's likely going to matter a lot more than the 5E splatbook du jour raising $200K in .5 seconds. Not to say that there is no material impact there, just that there's probably less than you might think.

This of course all has yet to be put to the statistical test, so stay tuned for whenever that comes.

February 2026 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

February is always such an interesting (or alternately for the purposes of this project: exhausting) month due to the sheer volume of projects that happen despite it being shorter than all other months. This time around is no exception! Here's the raw data, let's dig in.

• 231 campaigns
• 71 Backerkit
• 1 Gamefound
• 159 Kickstarter
• $2,610,858.67 raised
• $666,832.71 on Backerkit
• $22,562.00 on Gamefound
• $1,921,463.96 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 14 accessories
• 2 Actual Plays
• 53 adventures
• 7 campaign settings
• 2 fundraising
• 3 LitRPGs
• 1 platform
• 2 reprints
• 67 supplements
• 75 systems
• 1 translation
• 4 zines
• 119 distinct systems used (63 original)
• 64 campaigns (27.71%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,152,107.23 (44.13% of all money raised in February)
• 46 campaigns used AI in some form (19.91% of total) and raised $239,894.59 (9.19% of all money raised in February)
• 28 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 43.75% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 21 different countries
• Top 3: 122 in USA, 30 in UK, 17 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland

Backerkit's February

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in February were:

1. Old-School Adventures & Pinball Crawl Classics! by Goodman Games ($187,677 from 2,063 backers)
2. Bloodpunk: Night Before the White Wake - Adventure and VTT by DRS Publishing ($73,215.22 from 543 backers)
3. Level Up: A5E Gate Pass Gazette Annual 2025 by EN Publishing ($29,086.04 from 468 backers)
4. Triple-O: the player character emulator by Cezar Capacle ($26,234.92 from 1,005 backers)
5. DedBoi - an investigative solo TTRPG by Critical Kit Ltd ($24,113.43 from 657 backers)

Gamefound's February

There was one campaign on Gamefound in February: Astromythos by jsideriadis ($22,562 from 193 backers)

Kickstarter's February

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in February were:

1. Eternal Ruins: The Roleplaying Game by Mythworks ($295,166 from 3,208 backers)
2. Night Hunters: Gothic Horror for TOV and 5E D&D by Kobold Press ($223,878 from 1,934 backers)
3. Dungeon, Inc. by Olivier Revenu ($149,746 from 2,583 backers)
4. Tainted Grail TTRPG: Life and Death in Avalon by Jim Searcy ($103,710 from 940 backers)
5. REALM: The Soul Searchers Protocol by Jonathan Matteson ($102,420 from 2,583 backers)

February 2024 vs 2025 vs 2026

	2024	2025	2026
Campaign count
Backerkit	12	19	71
Kickstarter	214	202	159
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$884,266.93	$1,194,103.59	$666,832.71
Backerkit average	$73,688.91	$62,847.56	$9,392.01
Backerkit median	$6,662.59	$7,653.65	$4,233.00
Kickstarter total	$2,468,976.14	$2,936,765.97	$1,921,463.96
Kickstarter average	$11,537.27	$14,538.45	$12,084.68
Kickstarter median	$3,768.33	$3,116.00	$3,483.00
AI
Campaign count	35	39	46
Money pledged	$236,973.58	$197,675.97	$239,894.59
D&D 5E
Campaign count	57	58	64
Money pledged	$592,773.60	$1,773,005.23	$1,152,107.23

We are gathered here today to honor the memories of ZineQuest/ZineMonth/ZineTopia -- not because they're dead but because they might as well be in many regards. Let me be clear: I am not saying they're bad initiatives or that they shouldn't happen again. But we should all be honest with ourselves that they just don't really mean much anymore from even a marketing perspective.

I've said previously that I don't want to get too hung up on the money raised by crowdfunding projects as the sole, or even primary, metric of success, and that remains true. But I can't ignore that by that metric, this year's zine-themed initiatives have fared considerably worse thus far than those of previous years. ZineTopia, Backerkit's official foray into the zine space, more than tripled the number of successful projects (an unalloyed good!) yet raised the least money in February since 2024. When I talked about ZineTopia and general month fatigue back in October 2025, I was primarily concerned that Backerkit was going to become a gatekeeper obstructing people's participation in their February initiative, which I am glad to say hasn't happened. But the result has highlighted the platform's seeming dependence on high-profile campaigns from established creators. By and large, it seems that larger creators genuinely respected the ZineTopia initiative (or that Backerkit was enforcing its primacy behind the scenes) and yet that initiative was responsible for just over 50% ($343,710.45 by my data, $357,613 by the official page) of Backerkit's February total. The rest? That came mostly from the top 3 campaigns I listed above (all of which began before ZineTopia started). Even Kickstarter saw a dip in February metrics despite the continued presence of successful campaigns from indies like Mythworks and established companies like Kobold Press, suggesting that even the most successful campaigns are suffering from a general malaise. I can't say whether this is due to crowdfunding oversaturation, worsening economies the world over (but especially the US), some secret third thing, or a combination therein (the most likely answer I'd say).

So what are we to do with all this? It's really difficult to say. I really appreciate that ZineMonth is a community-organized initiative that lives outside of a crowdfunding platform, but it just doesn't have much of an ability to break outside of the existing indie TTRPG field. ZineQuest doesn't seem to be giving the same benefits it once did, and ZineTopia is a troubling indicator of future success (or lack thereof) of themed Months for Backerkit. The main hopeful statistic I can see in this is that the median campaign still raises ~$3K-$4K whether it's on Backerkit or Kickstarter (the median across all February campaigns was $3,868.00), and this has been stable for a number of months, if not years. Yes, the February median fell by quite a bit year-over-year for Backerkit, but that's just reflective of more, smaller projects getting on the platform. Crowdfunding campaigns just have to get increasingly realistic: there's no real evidence of a rising tide that's lifting all ships, but there is at least a consistent water level that should hopefully keep you from getting stranded on the rocks.

The Awards Design Diary #5: Pulling It All Together

This will be the last Design Diary for The Awards 2026 before we actually get off the ground, and it's mostly an excuse to share our INCREDIBLE new visual identity by Jack Panic of DNGN CLUB. When I approached him a few months ago about making the banner, logo, and winner's badges for The Awards 2026, I told him that I wanted them to "feel retro, shooting for grainier 80s/90s/00s aesthetics over polished 50s/60s nostalgia" and oh my gosh did he deliver.

It's grainy. It's colorful. It sort of feels like it's a little out of focus and you can't quite trust your eyes. So it's perfect!

With The Awards 2026 officially beginning on April 1st, I just wanted to pull together everything I've been talking about and noodling on. Starting with judges!

Judges

The Awards 2026 is looking for 12 judges, at least 50% of which will be POC and 50% of which will be of marginalized genders. If we don't get enough applicants to make that happen at first, then we'll keep applications open until we do. To demonstrate our commitment to this, for the first time we will be making our judges' identities known once they have been chosen.

These judges will each be assigned ~2/3 of the eventual submissions to read through and vote on (though they can of course read all of them, and are encouraged to do so). This process will happen over the course of 3 months, from June-August. Once all votes are in, ~50 finalists will be chosen and judges will be added to a shared Discord server where they can discuss their thoughts. Over the course of the next 6-8 weeks (September-October), they will develop their ideas about what should become a recipient of An Award and eventually vote on the winners.

Finally, they will appear in a livestream (as they are able) in late October/early November announcing the winners of The Awards 2026 and share their reasons as to why each of the 20 winners were deemed as such.

Submissions

Submissions to The Awards 2026 must adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Be published between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025.
2. No AI or LLM was used to generate any part of the submission (writing, art, video, voice, etc.)
3. Did not raise over $100,000 in any crowdfunding campaign

Beyond this, each submitter is limited to 2 submissions of 50 pages of material, whichever limitation comes first. Judges are not obligated to read more than 50 pages of material per submitter.

A submitter is here defined as the primary designer of the work submitted, so it is possible that individual people could appear on more than 2 submissions. So long as nothing is submitted in a way that seems intended to specifically subvert the submission limits, this is allowed.

All material tangentially connected to TTRPGs is eligible for submission: original systems, hacks of existing systems, adventures, supplements, video essays, podcasts, artwork, etc. It is up to the judges to decide how best to evaluate these disparate mediums against each other.

All submitters will be invited to contribute their submissions to a winner's package, wherein the 20 winners of The Awards 2026 will receive digital copies of all opted-in submissions. The decision to contribute submissions to this package will not be shared with the judges, and thus will not impact their deliberation in any way.

All submitters will be notified whether or not their submission(s) were voted as finalists, though this information will not be shared publicly. This is primarily to let people know whether to tune in to the winner announcement livestream, as well as a chance to gather information about who to credit in the event of their winning and how to pronounce winners' names.

January 2026 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

2026 is off to kind of a strange start, in ways both good and bad. Good: solid funding numbers, solid numbers of campaigns. Bad: AI slop, removing Crowdfundr from examination (it hasn't had an actual campaign in months). Check out the raw data if you want, and let's dive in.

• 90 campaigns
• 10 Backerkit
• 1 Gamefound
• 79 Kickstarter
• $4,019,799.97 raised
• $2,956,743.28 on Backerkit
• $28,448.46 on Gamefound
• $1,034,608.23 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 15 accessories
• 22 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 1 campaign setting
• 2 reprints
• 33 supplements
• 14 systems
• 1 translation
• 1 zine
• 26 distinct systems used (8 original)
• 38 campaigns (42.22%) used D&D 5E and raised $657,446.68 (16.36% of all money raised in January)
• 41 campaigns used AI in some form (45.56% of total) and raised $225,000.64 (5.60% of all money raised in January)
• 23 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 60.53% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 13 different countries
• Top 3: 42 in USA, 19 in UK, 5 in each of Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands
• Singleton countries: Denmark, France, Norway, Spain, Vietnam

Backerkit's January

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in January were:

1. Draw Steel: Crack the Sun by MCDM Productions ($2,617,323 from 9,590 backers)
2. Toon the Cartoon Roleplaying Game Second Edition by Steve Jackson Games ($142,690 from 3,181 backers)
3. Ultimate Toolbox by World's Largest RPGs ($90,475 from 837 backers)
4. Somnus Domina 2025 : Three 5th Edition Splash Books by Nat19 ($55,163.69 from 520 backers)
5. Crush Your Game Nights! AtR goes VTT on Roll20 by Rusted Portal Games ($20,867 from 14 backers)

Gamefound's January

There was only 1 campaign on Gamefound in January: Cthulhu 2050: Whispers Beyond The Stars by OtherWorlds ($28,448.46 from 653 backers)

Kickstarter's January

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in January were:

1. The Thundercats Roleplaying Game is Here! by Dynamite Toys & Games ($307,397 from 2,517 backers)
2. The Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table: NOW ADJUSTABLE⬆🤯⬇ by Wyrmwood Gaming ($162,066 from 803 backers)
3. 2D6 Void - A Classic Sci-fi Dungeon Crawler - Solo Play by Toby Lancaster ($91,687.10 from 1,241 backers)
4. Enchanted Trinkets Complete: 500+ Magic Items for D&D 5E by Morrus ($38,470.85 from 729 backers)
5. Arathi Sector by Castle Grief ($35,882 from 683 backers)

January 2024 vs 2025 vs 2026

	2024	2025	2026
Campaign count
Backerkit	4	6	10
Kickstarter	71	62	79
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$4,608,855.66	$199,232.66	$2,956,743.28
Backerkit average	$1,152,213.92	$33,205.44	$295,674.33
Backerkit median	$3,777.61	$3,231.00	$18,863.55
Kickstarter total	$801,189.61	$354,795.72	$1,034,608.23
Kickstarter average	$11,284.36	$5,722.51	$13,096.31
Kickstarter median	$4,045.68	$3,294.00	$3,438.50
AI
Campaign count	19	28	41
Money pledged	$113,268.66	$130,553.04	$225,000.64
D&D 5E
Campaign count	32	37	38
Money pledged	$367,344.91	$176,170.54	$657,446.68

January 2026 was an unexpectedly strong showing for both Backerkit and Kickstarter compared to the frankly abysmal numbers from January 2025. Backerkit's success was primarily (but not entirely) fueled by another strong showing from the MCDM team with their first major follow-up to Draw Steel, as the other 9 January 2026 Backerkit campaigns collectively raised more than last year's total ($339,420.28 sans MCDM's campaign).

Kickstarter also saw their strongest January in years, topping even 2024 in both money raised and number of successful campaigns. Unfortunately, January 2026 was the first time when campaigns using AI accounted for more than 50% of the successful TTRPG campaigns on the platform. 41 projects using AI isn't anywhere near a high water mark within a given month, but  51.9% of successful projects is the highest I've seen so far. Money-wise, AI campaigns also raised more than the past 2 years in raw amount, but only accounted for 21.75% of Kickstarter money raised.

This made me think: does anything in particular explain/predict how successful AI campaigns will be on the whole? I looked at a couple of different predictor variables (number of AI campaigns, number of non-AI campaigns, number of total campaigns, total money raised) and largely came up blank. There's no evidence to suggest, for example, that a rising tide (overall money raised) lifts all ships equally. But if you look at the relationship between the percentage of AI campaigns and the percentage of money raised by AI campaigns, something emerges.

Slight positive relationship between % of AI Kickstarter campaigns and % of AI Kickstarter money raised
(y = 0.5436x - 0.0686, R² = 0.3507)

Yes, you're seeing that right: there is a very weak association that AI does better when it occupies more of the market on Kickstarter. This equation explains very little of the variance (only ~35% in fact), but it agrees with what feels true to me: the slop produced by AI can only really compete with real creativity if it is collectively flooding the zone with shit. When everything looks too smooth and shiny, it's easier to ignore it and just accept it as the norm.

Now I'm the first to admit that this is not a strong result. Any statistician will tell you that this R² is, in fact, dogshit and that you can't draw meaningful conclusions from it. Based on these data, AI is far more likely to underperform than anything else, given that ~2/3 of the data points fall beneath the trendline. If there is any particular silver lining to be taken from all this, it's that the presence of AI campaigns seems to overall be independent of the money going to real artists. I have yet to find evidence that it's a zero-sum game, so I wouldn't stress too much over whether there's a bunch of AI campaigns already in the field or not.

December 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

Another year gone, and a rather strange December for TTRPG crowdfunding closes it out. Here's the raw data; let's dive in.

• 178 campaigns
• 63 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 2 Gamefound
• 113 Kickstarter
• $4,021,004.70 raised
• $1,712,583.76 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $20,154.16 on Gamefound
• $2,288,266.78 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 43 adventures
• 9 campaign settings
• 28 Holiday Markets
• 1 magazine
• 1 platform
• 1 podcast
• 3 reprints
• 50 supplements
• 29 systems
• 1 translation
• 1 zine
• 60 distinct systems used (14 original)
• 68 campaigns (38.20%) used D&D 5E and raised $795,500.44 (19.78% of all money raised in December)
• 38 campaigns used AI in some form (21.35% of total) and raised $125,773.25 (3.13% of all money raised in December)
• 25 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 36.76% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 17 different countries
• Top 3: 89 in USA, 30 in UK, 11 in Canada
• Singleton countries: Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore
  

Backerkit's December

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in December were:

1. Twilight Sword by Two Little Mice ($822,492.30 from 5,189 backers)
2. Infernals: Crowned by Hellfire for the Exalted 3E RPG by Onyx Path ($191,285 from 2,126 backers)
3. Mausritter Junk City by Exalted Funeral Press, Games Omnivorous, and Losing Games ($168,735 from 1,956 backers)
4. DCC+5E Crowdfunding Exclusives & Mystery Gifts! by Goodman Games ($66,155 from 570 backers)
5. Loot Tavern Lighting Sale by Loot Tavern Publishing ($46,756 from 355 backers)

Gamefound's December

The 2 campaigns on Gamefound in December were:

1. Vileborn - Das düster-heroische Rollenspiel by Ulisses Spiele ($19,874.72 from 208 backers)
2. 1130+ Fantasy Battle maps for TTRPG and VTTRPG by Agnesagraphic ($279.44 from 7 backers)

Kickstarter's December

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in December were:

1. Life After Everything: Astro Oceans 🌊 Tarot Tabletop RPG by Gifted Ocean ($363,871 from 2,418 backers)
2. Fighting Fantasy - Solo Adventure Gamebooks - Set 2 by Steve Jackson Games ($278,223 from 3,977 backers)
3. Apocalypse World: Burned Over by Vincent Baker ($215,104 from 3,763 backers)
4. The Dungeon Reignited. Set of 2 Book of Battle Mats for RPG by Loke Battle Maps ($168,212 from 1,569 backers)
5. Tome of Mystical Tattoos III for D&D 5e by Karl Nicolas ($152,837.86 from 1,810 backers)

December 2023 vs 2024 vs 2025

	2023	2024	2025
Campaign count
Backerkit	7	35	63
Kickstarter	112	130	113
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$116,631.00	$1,898,104.11	$1,712,583.76
Backerkit average	$16,661.57	$54,231.55	$27,183.87
Backerkit median	$8,599.00	$13,703.65	$5,091.89
Kickstarter total	$3,062,243.35	$2,213,471.01	$2,288,266.78
Kickstarter average	$27,341.46	$17,026.70	$20,250.15
Kickstarter median	$4,507.04	$3,266.92	$3,602.00
AI
Campaign count	32	37	38
Money pledged	$150,217.33	$145,101.71	$125,773.25
D&D 5E
Campaign count	48	73	68
Money pledged	$999,475.20	$917,977.49	$795,500.44

Backerkit has come a long way since December 2023, but it's really interesting to compare its Dec 2024 vs Dec 2025 considering that both Mausritter Month and their Holiday Market happened in 2025. Let's break down the stats of both:

• Mausritter Month
• $323,197.86 pledged (18.87% of money pledged on Backerkit in December)
• 16 projects (all successfully funded)
• $20,199.87 average
• $9,570.55 median
• Holiday Market (TTRPGs only and limited to projects actually providing something gameable and not just merch)
• $261,890.54 pledged (15.29% of money pledged on Backerkit in December)
• 28 projects (no funding goals)
• $9,353.23 average
• $3,255.65 median

Mausritter Month was clearly a success by any metric (all projects funded, pretty good average, really high median), but it notably raised less money from fewer projects than either Mothership Month. Not only that, but you would think that these kinds of initiatives would boost the overall money pledged on Backerkit, but instead there was a slight decrease from 2024 to 2025. It is definitely too early to say that backers are experiencing Month fatigue the same way I am, but these numbers might explain why Backerkit is ramping up their promotional events: they need them to boost otherwise flagging traffic.

I'm going to be getting into it in a 2025 wrap-up post, but this year was not great money-wise for TTRPG crowdfunding. There are more projects than ever and less money to go around, and nothing from the past 6 months suggests that's going to change anytime soon. These promotional events from Backerkit are relatively easy ways to get users on their platform, entice creators to put their campaigns there, and the money that comes from it will keep the floor from falling out of their bottom line. Obviously I can't speak to how healthy their other types of campaigns look, but I can't imagine they're looking all that much better than TTRPGs right now. A combination of US economic uncertainty and tariffs playing havoc with both international shipping and component production is going to make everyone just feel less than great about putting money down on something that isn't a sure bet.

Which brings me to the Holiday Market. I personally don't like it. It makes complete sense for Backerkit and the creators involved, but any move by a crowdfunding platform towards becoming a sales platform just doesn't make me feel good. Especially because the whole premise was that anything you 'back' will ship within just a few weeks and (theoretically) arrive in time for Christmas. So these aren't even campaigns for reprints! It's just a promotional 'preorder' event, even more so than many 'crowdfunding' campaigns are these days! Again, makes complete sense for creators to participate since it's an easy way to sell some extra inventory you might have lying around, but that just seems like something that doesn't belong on a crowdfunding platform.

There's not really a bigger conclusion to draw from this in the end, at least not yet. My brain is pretty goopy just from general post-holiday post-New-Year post-travel stuff, so I'm really saving up anything particularly relevant for the full year review coming sometime soon.

The Awards 2026 Design Diary #4: Gaming Like It's 2024-2025

 As I mentioned in the previous Design Diary, The Awards 2026 will be picking up where we left off: in June 2024.

 

Despite this announcement appearing in the fourth installment of this series, it was actually one of the first decisions I made when I set out to bring back The Awards and was based on three rationale.

Rationale #1: Fighting the Hype Cycle

As someone who has made a hobby out of tracking TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns, I suspect few people are as aware of the hype cycles that this field runs on. There are nigh uncountable numbers of hugely successful, $100,000+ projects that seem to essentially disappear once their campaigns end. Not in the sense of them being scams and not delivering on the promised material, but in the sense that the hobby's collective attention just kind of moves off of them. And this makes sense given that any crowdfunding campaign is going to have a lag time between collecting the money and actually making the thing they want to make. Hell, there's even a lag time between the campaign ending and collecting the money that was pledged. So what tends to happen is that buzzy games generate a lot of hype, possibly a lot of money, and then 6-18 months later (if backers are lucky) the product actually arrives. But what's happened in the interim? Why, 20-50 equally buzzy games have shown up, gotten a lot of attention, and raised a whole bunch of money themselves. By the time your big crowdfunded game actually shows up, it's quite possible you've completely forgotten about it between other projects you've backed and the games that you're actually playing. I know that this happens to me with some frequency, at least.

So how do The Awards propose to combat this? Well, since we took 2025 off, it seems only good and right to pick up where we left off and see what great stuff was made from June 2024-May 2025. By focusing on games that have been out for nearly 1-2 years, we're hopefully getting some more mature and field-tested games, things that have been in people's hands that the judges might have even played already. We're also pushing back against the hype cycle by bringing these """""older""""" games back into the public eye when we announce the winners, hopefully giving them another boost of attention beyond what they might have received when first released.

Rationale #2: Fairness

This is a fairly minor reason, but the eligibility window for The Awards in the past has unfairly impacted any games released in May (and also April a little). I don't know how many games were released on, say, May 31, 2024, but those games would only have been eligible for The Awards 2024 and would have required their designers to already know of this whole endeavor (a tall order to be sure). By giving The Awards a year's lag time, designers get a lot more time to even hear about The Awards, let alone submit their games for consideration.

On top of this, and this ties into Rationale #1 a bit, the distance of a year also gives designers some needed perspective to figure out what games they want to submit. Recency bias is a hell of a thing, and newly released games could easily be seen as far better or far worse than they actually are. Anyone interested in submitting to The Awards can now really take a hard look at their catalog from June 2024-May 2025 and figure out how to put their best foot forward.

Rationale #3: The Bit

This comes last because it's the weakest rationale, but commitment to the bit is absolutely central to The Awards. Just look at our name, for God's sake. Now the bit here isn't specifically that we're behind the times or anything, it's that we're different from those other award shows.

 

Yes, we're straying hard into "not like other girls" territory (explicitly so just a sentence ago!) but it feels relevant and important here. I'm not trying to say that we're better than other award shows, but it behooves us to set ourselves apart from them. I covered this to some degree back in Design Diary #1, but I'm looking for The Awards to have a coherent and distinct identity, and having a more retrospective approach to our submissions just makes The Awards stand out from our peers and be that much more memorable.

Closing Thoughts 

Now all that said, The Awards is nothing if not ever-changing. This year's experiment could prove disastrous: designers might have no desire to submit their """"""older"""""" stuff, the general TTRPG public might have no interest in what was the best of 2024-2025, the sun could collapse in on itself ~4-5 billion years early...

All things that are equally likely to happen as a result of these decisions I'm making right now!

But barring that last item in that list, The Awards can always change and adapt. It could be that The Awards 2027 will bring us back up to speed and current events! Either way, I'm excited about the retrospective focus of The Awards 2026, and I hope you all are too!