July TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

We're so back (and by "back" I mean releasing this retrospective almost a month late).

No preamble this time, here's July's data.

• 158 campaigns
• 14 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 143 Kickstarter
• $5,453,795.93 raised
• $978,983.04 on Backerkit
• $2,183.00 on Crowdfundr
• $4,472,629.89 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 13 accessories
• 49 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 7 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 LARP
• 1 reprint
• 57 supplements
• 24 systems
• 1 zine
• 42 distinct systems used (12 original)
• 76 campaigns (48.10%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,544,866.12 (28.33% of all money raised in July)
• 43 campaigns used AI in some form (27.22% of total)
• These campaigns raised $157,621.97 (2.89% of all money raised in July)
• 31 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.79% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in July were:

1. Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure 5E+DCC by Goodman Games ($654,928 from 5,231 backers)
2. Eldritch Automata by Gehenna Gaming ($138,411 from 1,454 backers)
3. Trickerion - The Role-playing Game by Shadowlands Games ($55,321.94 from 535 backers)
4. Grimwild by Oddity Press ($41,830 from 590 backers)
5. The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow for Liminal Horror by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($22,295 from 502 backers)

Not much I want to comment on here, though I will return to Eldritch Automata at the end of the article for an interesting comparison between crowdfunding platforms.

Crowdfundr's July

There was one single TTRPG crowdfunding campaign on Crowdfundr in July: BANNERS: A New RPG by John Wick ($2,183 from 192 backers).

Kickstarter's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in July were:

1. DC20 by The Dungeon Coach ($2,235,231 from 20,685 backers)
2. The Official Role-Playing Game of the PLANET OF THE APES by Magnetic Press Play ($324,681 from 1,971 backers)
3. Bria's Mythical Menagerie - Creature-Collecting for 5e by Grant Mielke ($208,793 from 1,968 backers)
4. Castles & Crusades Reforged by Stephen Chenault ($169,613 from 1,373 backers)
5. Helluva Town - A Cartoon Gangster RPG by Acheron International ($138,293 from 1,920 backers)

I have to say, I was utterly shocked when I saw the DC20 campaign at the beginning of July. Here was something I hadn't heard even a whisper of, knew nothing about the people involved with it, but raised nearly half of what MCDM RPG (now Draw Steel) did. Just a reminder of how big this space is, when even monumentally successful crowdfunding campaigns don't break through to certain corners.

Backerkit vs Kickstarter

July gave an interesting opportunity to directly observe some differences between Backerkit and Kickstarter through 2 campaigns: Eldritch Automata and Oracle Monster Generator. Both of these were alternately on both platforms, though in opposite orders.

Let's start with Eldritch Automata. The first iteration of this came to Kickstarter on January 2, 2024 and raised $37,372 from 453 backers out of a goal of $65,000. As far as I can tell (I didn't back it so I don't have access to all of the updates), the campaign failed to reach its funding goal on February 1 and the creators behind it decided to relaunch the campaign "following some tweaks, improvements, and reassessment of our goals and budget." According to the linked post, this primarily involved figuring out how to lower printing costs, creating a quickstart, and getting more promo material (art/interviews/articles/actual plays) together.

And by all accounts, this strategy succeeded massively! The relaunched campaign (on Backerkit) vastly exceeded the stated goal of $10,000 and ended up at over double the original Kickstarter goal. Based on a casual perusal of the Backerkit page, I can see evidence of the work they did: a free quickstart document, far more art, links to Actual Plays, etc. The one thing that isn't clear: how exactly did they reduce the goal by such a significant amount? It doesn't seem like the scope of the project changed and the pledge tiers stayed more or less the same. I suspect that they reduced the target goal primarily to build momentum for the campaign, given that they already had something of a built-in audience from the unsuccessful campaign earlier in the year. To be clear, I don't think this is bad or wrong by any means, but it behooves us to properly examine how certain games break through and become successful. In this case, the team made some very smart decisions between the first and second campaigns that paid off, but these decisions come with literal price tags: commissioning art, getting people to do an AP, reducing the crowdfunding campaign goal. Anyone looking to revamp a flagging crowdfunding campaign would do well to look to Eldritch Automata for inspiration, but make sure that you understand what those choices entail.

The other example, Oracle Monster Generator, had the reverse timeline: a highly successful Backerkit campaign ending in June followed by a less successful (but still funded) Kickstarter campaign in July. The reasons for this are, in many ways, both more and less clear than for Eldritch Automata:

I find it really fascinating that there is a sizeable number of people who seemingly just don't want to go to Backerkit for crowdfunding campaigns. To compare the numbers, the original Backerkit campaign raised $103,096 from 1,454 backers while the Kickstarter campaign raised $31,999 from 463 backers. This suggests that if the original campaign had been on Kickstarter they could have raised nearly 33% more money at least! Obviously this is pure speculation considering that the Kickstarter campaign wasn't really crowdfunding (there was already a finished product that might have been in people's hands, greatly enhancing the faith in potential backers that they would actually get something if they backed it), but the numbers are startling nevertheless.

There aren't many widely applicable lessons to draw here since these two examples had almost exactly opposite experiences, but even so these are really interesting direct comparisons that you normally can't get.