December 2023 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only addition this month is tracking what campaigns feature AI.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 119 campaigns
• 7 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 112 Kickstarter
• $3,178,874.35 raised
• $116,631.00 on Backerkit
• $3,062,243.35 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 9 accessories
• 40 adventures
• 10 campaign settings
• 35 supplements
• 24 systems
• 24 distinct systems used
• 48 campaigns (40.34%) used D&D 5E and raised $999,475.20 (31.44% of all money raised in December)
• 32 campaigns featured AI
• 24 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 50% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's December

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

• The Seeker's Guide to Enchanting Emporiums (~$628,000 from 6759 backers) by Eldermancy
• The Electric State Roleplaying Game (~$419,000 from 5715 backers) by Free League
• Amsel Suite : The Game Master's Swiss Army Knife (~$364,000 from 6224 backers) by Ollam Technologies
• Mythic Bastionland RPG - Before Into the Odd (~$338,000 from 5213 backers) by Chris McDowall
• Knock! Issue Four (~$141,000 from 3347 backers) by Olivier Revenu

Overall, an interesting bunch of highly successful campaigns! Still largely dominated by D&D (outperforms the next best by over $200,000) and sequels to preexisting games/products (I'm including Knock! Issue 4 here), but this is more or less to be expected. The most interesting factor here is the big dip in money ($9,018,619.50 vs $3,062,243.35) and campaigns (164 vs 112) from November to December. I'm inclined to attribute this to holiday fatigue (as I certainly wouldn't really want to be running a campaign in the leadup to Christmas) and money being spent in other places (such as on gifts for family/friends), but these are complete speculation.

Backerkit's December

The top 3 TTRPG campaigns were:

• Grand Guignol & Harvest ($46,160 from 858 backers) by Possum Creek Games
• Deck of Many Insults ($27,902 from 1417 backers) by Loke Battle Mats
• Star Crossed: Love Letters ($22,717 from 786 backers) by Bully Pulpit Games

HUGE dropoff in money ($1,256,857.98 vs $116,631.00) but not in campaigns (10 vs 7) between November and December. None of the 3 campaigns mentioned above would have cracked the top half of last month's campaigns. This time around, it seems like there's a lack of big company names (Possum Creek and Bully Pulpit are big for indies, but don't compare to Monte Cook or Goodman Games) to drive traffic and money to Backerkit.

Crowdfundr's December

Literally nothing. Probably won't be much until Zine Month 2024/Tabletop Nonstop in February. Time will tell if Crowdfundr will become any kind of major player in this space.

Graph Time

Once again, we must ask: is D&D 5E a sure bet? The average money raised by a 5E campaign in December 2023 was $2934.00, not far off from the median value of $2868.75. Once again, there was a big outlier campaign so I'm excluding that from the jump. 

But the bigger question I have is: does using AI have a significant impact on the results?

This graph shows the difference in money raised between the groups of 5E campaigns using AI vs not (once again, the most successful campaign has been removed for ease of visualization, but the statistics are calculated still involving it). The average AI campaign raised $5,226.51 while the average non-AI campaign raised $36,418.29 ($10,708.13 without the most successful campaign). But even with the most successful campaign included, there is not a significant difference between the two averages (two-tail paired t-test p-value was 0.224, way over the significance cut-off of 0.05), meaning that we can't say for sure whether AI helps or hurts a 5E campaign.

No big takeaways this month, but stay tuned for a big 2023 retrospective.