November TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 We're riding this wave of productivity folks! The November data are (yes, I am one of those pedants who insists [correctly] that "data" be used as the plural noun it is) here:

• 180 campaigns
• 29 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 150 Kickstarter
• $11,564,515.87 raised
• $2,601,889.34 on Backerkit
• $4,781.00 on Crowdfundr
• $8,957,845.53 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 45 adventures
• 2 advice
• 6 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 2 platforms
• 1 reprint
• 44 supplements
• 62 systems
• 1 zine
• 79 distinct systems used (32 original)
• 76 campaigns (42.22%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,343,963.24 (20.27% of all money raised in November)
• 37 campaigns used AI in some form (20.56% of total) and raised $362,118.92 (3.13% of all money raised in November)
• 27 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 35.53% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's November

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in November were:

1. Ars Magica Definitive Edition by Atlas Games ($841,123 from 5,046 backers)
2. The Darkest Woods by Monte Cook Games ($305,125 from 2,025 backers)
3. The Between by The Gauntlet ($289,681 from 3,528 backers)
4. Trail of Cthulhu 2nd Edition by Pelgrane Press ($227,288.91 from 2,210 backers)
5. Slayers Survival Kit and Hunter's Journal by Evil Hat Games ($162,327 from 2,047 backers)

Crowdfundr's November

Cezar Capacle is single-handedly holding down the TTRPG presence on Crowdfundr with his Everspark: epic fantasy quests with the freedom you always wanted campaign ($4,781 from 287 backers).

Kickstarter's November

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in November were:

1. Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork by Chris Birch, Modiphius ($2,961,490.79 from 16,495 backers)
2. Grim Hollow: Transformed by Ghostfire Gaming ($904,004 from 5,205 backers)
3. Mythic Carpathia & City of My Nightmares for the Vaesen RPG by Free League ($530,853.48 from 5,728 backers)
4. Mycologist's Primer by Double Proficiency by Hunters Books ($502,925 from 6,648 backers)
5. Conan: The Hyborian Age - The Roleplaying Game by Monolith Board Games SARL ($458,548 from 3,207 backers)

Big Picture

I've recently become interested in the divide between money raised and number of backers for crowdfunding campaigns. While these two aspects of a successful campaign are obviously pretty tightly correlated, there is some interesting variance at the top end of the range.

For those not especially well-versed in statistical analysis, the equation shown on the graph (y = 0.0063x² + 75.111x) is technically a pretty good model for the relationship between number of backers and money raised (an R-squared value of 0.9596, on a scale from 0 to 1, is pretty good). Most of that explanatory power seems to come from the lower end of the scale, with campaigns in the hundreds of backers clustering around the line quite closely, while more successful campaigns (such as the labeled Conan, Ashes Without Number, Grim Hollow, and Mycologist's Primer) tend to deviate from the 'expected' trend by a decent margin.

What this trendline does display relatively well is the tendency of success to beget more success. Even though the polynomial component of the equation is quite small, they represent that as campaigns accumulate more backers, they tend to attract increased attention and gain even more backers. And not only are there more backers, but with more backers there's a greater chance of getting backers who are willing to back at higher levels.

This also tracks with the commonly accepted wisdom that you get 1/3 of your backers during the first 48 hours, 1/3 during the final 48 hours, and the remaining 1/3 during the rest of the campaign. Performing well at launch means that people who find the campaign during that middle period see a healthy campaign that might meet some stretch goals if they back it, and doing well in the middle means that people who have been on the fence about backing are perhaps more likely to finally get in on a great campaign in its final stretch.

But beyond the raw numbers, I want to think about what the difference in funds raised and number of backers means. More money raised obviously means greater resources that the artists have available to them, but in my experience the campaigns with the most money have also made the biggest promises: lots of stretch goals, more writers and artists, fancy versions of books, extra physical rewards, etc. All of these cost money, and though they're factored into the various pledge tiers/overall goal they still result in less money overall going to the people actually making stuff. This is why companies can have wildly successful crowdfunding campaigns and still need to rely on crowdfunding to make their ambitious projects: so much crowdfunding money goes into delivering on all of the extra stuff beyond the basic game that helped drive the success of the project in the first place. I don't pretend to know how much by any means, but given the common cautionary tales against scope creep in TTRPG projects I imagine that it represents a significant time and resource suck.

Backers, on the other hand, represent your audience (an arguably greater marker of success). Every backer on a project is someone who will potentially play your game and come back again for more. I am convinced that this is the main thing that accounts for D&D's continued dominance of the TTRPG space: a dedicated audience who can be relied upon to return again and again. Without offering commentary upon the quality of the game itself, I just don't think that you can say that its design or play culture or art or whatever is better by orders of magnitude than any other game in the space. People know what they like and they will return to it. Crowdfunding campaigns offer this same possibility, a way to cultivate and grow an audience who will hopefully return for future endeavors.

For a rather remarkable example of what an audience can do for you, take a look at The Between from The Gauntlet. Not only did it raise the third most money on Backerkit (and ninth most overall) in November, it broke Backerkit records with a 48-hour, 1300-person, backer train-powered extension to its original length. (For those unaware, Backerkit now has an Overtime Mode where campaigns can extend beyond their original endtime if people keep a 10-minute timer going by backing the campaign.) Not only did this raise an additional $48,000 for the campaign, it really demonstrated its wide-ranging appeal and dedication from a potentially worldwide community of players. You see, the backer train only keeps going in 10-minute increments, resetting every time someone makes a new pledge, so that means that at least one person was backing every ten minutes across 2 full days. Unless people were staying up specifically to keep it going, you've got to imagine that this is the result of international community interest in the game and The Gauntlet writ large. Over a third of the overall backers either backed or increased their pledge during that time! I don't think it's a stretch to say that much of this success can be attributed to the strength of and engagement in the Gauntlet Discord server, which has also produced projects like Sprigs and Kindling, a fanzine for Carved From Brindlewood games. This kind of work takes time and effort (and usually a lot of volunteer labor), but if it's coming from a genuine place then it can really pay off.

The tension here is that you can't build an audience without the money to actually make your games, and without the money to actually make your games it's often quite hard to build an audience. And even when you do start to build your audience, if you're reliant on platforms like Kickstarter or Backerkit to maintain those audiences, then how much are they really your audience? Will they follow you from one platform to another? From Kickstarter to Backerkit? From Twitter to Bluesky? How easy is it for them to do that? Will they follow you from the game they're familiar with to a new one that you're interested in making? These are questions that people who make money from their art have grappled with since professional artists first came to be, but in this increasingly precaritized hypercapitalist world that we live in they take on even greater significance. How can we build communities around our art when the people in those communities are also supposed to be our customers? I know that I don't have the answer to that, and if anyone does please let me know.