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