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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 1: Platforms

It's finally here - the big mondo six-month data dump looking at the state of TTRPG crowdfunding in 2024. There's so much to talk about here that I will be splitting this up into three parts.

Part 1 (what you're reading now) will focus on three crowdfunding platforms: Backerkit, Crowdfundr, and Kickstarter. I am seeking to answer the question: do campaigns perform significantly better on any of these platforms?

Part 2 (coming sometime next week) will focus on comparing the performance of D&D 5E campaigns to non-D&D campaigns, seeking to answer the question: do 5E projects do better than non-5E projects?

Part 3 (coming whenever I get around to it) will look at hyper-successful campaigns (ones that raised over $100,000 dollars) as well as some fun details hiding in the data. I haven't decided yet what I will focus on but some options are:

• What days of the week do campaigns start on? What days do they end on?
• What dates of the month do campaigns start on? What dates do they end on?
• Are types of campaigns (full systems, adventures, supplements, etc) more likely to be found on different platforms?

With that out of the way, here is the raw data for your perusal.

Big picture statistics for January-June:

• 1030 campaigns
• 83 Backerkit
• 21 Crowdfundr
• 926 Kickstarter
• $34,355,742.53 raised
• $9,424,858.60 on Backerkit
• Average campaign raised $113,552.51
• Median campaign raised $8,826
• $54,187.64 on Crowdfundr
• Average campaign raised $2,580.36
• Median campaign raised $1,852
• $24,876,696.29 on Kickstarter
• Average campaign raised $26,864.68
• Median campaign raised $3,851.50
• Types of campaigns
• 87 accessories
• 258 adventures
• 10 advice
• 1 art
• 1 artbook
• 2 audiobooks
• 1 bundle
• 38 campaign settings
• 6 fundraising
• 6 reprints
• 320 supplements
• 297 systems
• 3 zines
• 370 distinct systems used (220 original)
• 353 campaigns (34.27%) used D&D 5E and raised $12,042,894.81 (35.05% of all money raised)
• 189 campaigns used AI in some form (18.35% of total)
• These campaigns raised $1,279,904.72 (3.73% of all money)
• 121 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 34.28% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit from January-June 2024 were:

1. The MCDM RPG by MCDM Productions ($4,600,520 from 30,177 backers)
2. Outgunned Adventure by Two Little Mice ($517,371.40 from 3,490 backers)
3. The Covens of Midnight - A Tarot-Based GM-less RPG by Crossed Paths Press ($425,908.06 from 4,504 backers)
4. Knights of Dust and Neon by Monte Cook Games ($372,670 from 2,403 backers)
5. HOLLOWS - TTRPG Boss Fights Done Right by Rowan, Rook and Decard ($319,492.24 from 2,843 backers)

The breakdown of Backerkit's 83 projects are as follows:

• 8 accessories
• 23 adventures
• 3 campaign settings
• 2 fundraisers
• 19 supplements
• 28 systems

Though Backerkit seems to not have captured a wide audience yet, what it has done quite successfully is attract indie publishers who bring their own supporters to the platform in droves. I'm not familiar with Two Little Mice or Crossed Paths Press, but MCDM Productions, Monte Cook Games, and Rowan, Rook and Decard are some of the most well-known names in the indie game and it's therefore no surprise they're on the top 5 list. (In fact Two Little Mice and Rowan, Rook and Decard share the distinction of having two projects in the top 10 most successful with Memento Mori - A Roleplaying Game of Dreams and Corruption and Dagger in the Heart, respectively.)

What does this mean for the long-term success of the platform? Well, it's already doing quite well considering that it has raised more than a third of what Kickstarter has with less than 10% of the projects, but there's one big caveat here: half of that money came from one project (The MCDM RPG). That project's success is the clear result of Matt Colville's longtime YouTube audience and previous successful forays into publishing D&D 5E content and not anything intrinsic to Backerkit. Indeed, even though the project brought 30,000+ people to the platform, it's not clear whether those people have stuck around to browse other projects on Backerkit like people seem to do on Kickstarter. I have no specific data to back this supposition up, but I believe that discoverability remains fairly low on Backerkit in general. Take a look at the other projects in the top 5 list here - none of them come even close to cracking the top 5 of Kickstarter's most successful projects in the same timespan. Backerkit clearly isn't going anywhere, but it's going to take some time before the average TTRPG player thinks of them in the same way they do of Kickstarter.

Crowdfundr's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Crowdfundr from January-June 2024 were:

1. Return to Perinthos: A Memorial Book Fundraiser in the Memory of Jennell Jaquays by Violet Ballard ($12,075 from 291 backers)
2. Bahía Gris, un juego en solitario de pesca y enigmas con un toque de horror by ¡Rol o Barbarie! ($6,789.61 from 452 backers)
3. No-Tell Motel: A Single Player Murder Mystery RPG by Ken Lowery ($5,425 from 192 backers)
4. Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid by TTRPGKids ($4,340 from 153 backers)
5. Beth and Angel Make a Campaign by Beth and Angel ($3,297 from 177 backers)

The breakdown of Crowdfundr's 21 projects are as follows:

• 3 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 campaign setting
• 3 supplements
• 10 systems
• 2 zines

There's not much to say here that I haven't already said in previous posts. Despite my personal appreciation of Crowdfundr for being where I've run both of my own crowdfunding campaigns (one successful and one not, for the record), there's just not enough eyes there to support many TTRPG projects.

One indicator of this is that Crowdfundr TTRPG projects don't tend to overfund by much. The average Crowdfundr project funds by ~367% while the average Backerkit and Kickstarter projects fund by ~1408% and ~1533%, respectively. This despite the average Crowdfundr project goal being $1008.22 compared to Backerkit's $17,958.52 and Kickstarter's $3,344.23. (These statistics are obviously heavily skewed since I only record data on successfully funded projects, but I think that the comparison works regardless.) Crowdfundr campaigns just seem to more or less vanish once they get funded rather than building much in the way of momentum. No idea why this happens, but it seems to be the case. And given the almost complete dropoff in TTRPG Crowdfundr projects since they first made a push to be a home for them in early 2023, it seems that other people have identified similar issues as I've observed.

Kickstarter's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter from January-June 2024 were:

1. Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment ($1,583,605 from 7,427 backers)
2. Erevan's Guide to Death and Beyond - A 5e Tome by Archvillain Games ($1,223,471 from 6,953 backers)
3. The Field Guide to Floral Dragons by Hit Point Press ($1,116,593 from 12,613 backers)
4. Monsters of Drakkenheim - 5E Monsters with Lore Lairs & Loot by Dungeon Dudes ($1,065,710 from 8,078 backers)
5. Legend in the Mist RPG by Amít Moshe / Son of Oak Game Studio ($855,686 from 8,156 backers)

The breakdown of Kickstarter's 926 projects are as follows:

• 79 accessories
• 231 adventures
• 9 advice
• 1 art
• 1 artbook
• 2 audiobooks
• 1 bundle
• 32 campaign settings
• 4 fundraisers
• 6 reprints
• 294 supplements
• 257 systems
• 1 zine

Ah Kickstarter, it seems that you have quietly left behind the crypto and blockchain controversies of 2023 in favor of a pretty heinous AI policy that no one seems to care much about. To be clear, the text of the policy isn't the objectionable part; it's the complete lack of enforcement. In December, I took a brief look at the AI explanation sections of many Kickstarter projects and found some interesting trends. What I didn't delve into is the laughable state of the answers to the questions that Kickstarter requires.

Let's examine this project, for example. The two questions that need to be answered are:

• What parts of your project will use AI generated content? Please be as specific as possible.
• Do you have the consent of owners of the works that were (or will be) used to produce the AI generated portion of your projects? Please explain.

And how does this project answer them?

Pictured: one answered question and one sidestepped question

Most projects have some variation of this for the second question: "Well we paid Midjourney/Dall-E/Adobe Firefly and have full permission from them to use the images." Well that's fucking nice and all, but that's not the question. The question is whether you had permission from the original artists to use their art to train these programs, and the answer is quite transparently that you absolutely did not. And yet despite this, Kickstarter allows these projects to exist and proliferate. It seems clear to me that Kickstarter doesn't actually care about the ethics behind AI (nor the staggering environmental cost of generative AI) and is perfectly happy to take the money generated by a bunch of grifters (and yes, they are grifters considering that they are knowingly lying for one of the two questions they have to answer in order to get their projects posted).

Some Fun Graphs

With that rant out of the way, let me present you now with some fun graphs! For any visually impaired readers, I will do my best to explain the content of the graphs below the images (unfortunately Blogger's alt-text function for images isn't the best).

Campaign count is on the left vertical axis, money raised is on the right vertical axis

Total campaigns and US dollars raised, January-June 2024

• January: 75 campaigns; $5,410,045.27
• February: 232 campaigns; $3,376,005.35
• March: 267 campaigns; $5,866,948.48
• April: 145 campaigns; $6,529,324.42
• May: 151 campaigns; $7,973,999.42
• June: 160 campaigns; $5,199,419.59

Campaign count is on the left vertical axis, money raised is on the right vertical axis

Backerkit campaigns/money raised vs Kickstarter campaigns/money raised

• January
• Backerkit: 4 campaigns; $4,608,855.66
• Kickstarter: 71 campaigns; $801,189.61
• February
• Backerkit: 12 campaigns; $884,266.93
• Kickstarter: 214 campaigns; $2,468,976.14
• March
• Backerkit: 21 campaigns; $939,594.09
• Kickstarter: 232 campaigns; $4,897,291.24
• April
• Backerkit: 8 campaigns; $845,617.27
• Kickstarter: 137 campaigns; $5,683,707.15
• May
• Backerkit: 18 campaigns; $735,159.58
• Kickstarter: 133 campaigns; $7,238,839.84
• June
• Backerkit: 20 campaigns; $1,411,365.07
• Kickstarter: 139 campaigns; $$3,786,692.31

June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

Incredibly, this post is actually coming out shortly after the month it's covering has ended (primarily because I want to make a big half-year retrospective later this month and I'm leaving for vacation in a few days). But since we're halfway through 2024, I want to take a moment to review my methodology (such as it is) for this project.

1. Looking across Kickstarter, Backerkit, and Crowdfundr, I'm collating successful crowdfunding campaigns that have ended in a given month.
2. I'm ignoring dice and miniature campaigns since I'm personally less interested in those things.
3. Non-USD currencies are converted to USD on the day that I collect the information of a successful campaign.
4. I'm tracking if (Kickstarter) campaigns use AI at any point of the process, although this is self-reported and therefore somewhat unreliable.

All that said, take a look at what we got for June.

• 160 campaigns
• 20 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 139 Kickstarter
• $5,199,419.59 raised
• $1,411,365.078 on Backerkit
• $1,362.21 on Crowdfundr
• $3,786,692.31 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 42 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 6 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 56 supplements
• 42 systems
• 66 distinct systems used (27 original)
• 69 campaigns (43.13%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,893,054.82 (36.41% of all money raised in June)
• 34 campaigns used AI in some form (21.25% of total)
• These campaigns raised $215,853.36 (4.15% of all money raised in June)
• 28 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.58% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's June

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in June were:

1. Outgunned Adventure by Two Little Mice ($517,371.40 from 3,490 backers)
2. HOLLOWS - TTRPG Boss Fights Done Right by Rowan, Rook and Decard ($319,492.24 from 2,843 backers)
3. Ashes - A Souls Like GM-Less RPG Gamebook by Crossed Paths Press ($116,651.10 from 1,229 backers)
4. The Oracle Monster Generator for Fantasy RPGs by Nord Games ($103,096 from 1,454 backers)
5. Big Bad Con 2024 by Big Bad Con ($80,710 from 547 backers)

This month marks the first time that an explicitly fundraising campaign (as opposed to campaigns that create a product of some sort) has cracked the top 5 in a month. These are, admittedly, relatively rare campaigns in the TTRPG space and they're almost always to fund the operations of conventions. Big Bad Con is the definite leader in the space, comfortably outpacing last year's fundraising total of $58,870. While not a particularly large con when compared to your PAXes or GenCons (GensCon?), the community support they receive and COVID safety protocols they have in place make them particularly notable among their peers. Full disclosure, Big Bad Con 2023 was my first (and thus far only) con attended, I intend to return this coming year, and I have not been asked in any way to talk them up here (I'm just a fan).

Crowdfundr's June

Cezar Capacle is practically keeping Crowdfundr's TTRPG page going all by himself, with his Wraithhound campaign not only the sole successful project in June, but the only successful project on the platform since the end of March.

I'm going to get into this more in a few weeks with the half-year wrap-up, but I think it's time to call it a wrap on Crowdfundr for TTRPG projects. Based on what I've seen, projects just don't do very well there. It's probably a combination of lack of audience and platform visibility, but campaigns just don't seem to make much more than their base funding (if that). I like Crowdfundr a lot, their staff were very helpful during Tabletop Nonstop, but I cannot in good conscience recommend that any TTRPG creators use the platform moving forward.

Kickstarter's June

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in June were:

1. Erevan's Guide to Death and Beyond - A 5e Tome by Archvillain Games ($1,223,471 from 6,953 backers)
2. Blade Runner RPG: Replicant Rebellion & Asset Pack by Free League ($438,693.01 from 5,283 backers)
3. 13th Age Second Edition | Storytelling Action Fantasy by Pelgrane Press ($374,268 from 3,172 backers)
4. Advanced Player's Guide 2 and Bestiary 2 by Shane Hensley ($151,020 from 1,572 backers)
5. An Adventure Double Feature by The Merry Mushmen! by Olivier Revenu ($137,202.89 from 1,965 backers)

As is often the case, the top earners on Kickstarter this month provided support for many large pre-existing systems (5e, Blade Runner RPG, 13th Age, Savage Worlds, and Old School Essentials, in order). This is expected: companies and systems with large built-in audiences are going to do the best when it's all about how many eyes you can get your product in front of. There's not much to say here except for the perennial question: do relatively large companies like Free League and Pelgrane Press actually need to do crowdfunding campaigns? I don't pretend to have intimate knowledge of their finances, and obviously the profit incentive encourages them to do splashy campaigns with stretch goals that get their audience's attention, but as always I wish that things were different. I wish that crowdfunding platforms could be used primarily by and for people who truly couldn't make their project happen without the money raised. But we live in this world. And at a bare minimum, thank god that none of these large indie companies (featured here at least) have ever flirted with AI.

The thinnest of silver linings, but I'll take it nonetheless.