December 2024 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

Turns out that "New year, new me" is proving true so far, because this blog post is coming shockingly on time. As always, the raw data is free for you to peruse, and here are the hits:

• 166 campaigns
• 35 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 130 Kickstarter
• $4,113,487.12 raised
• $1,898,104.11 on Backerkit
• $1,912.00 on Crowdfundr
• $2,213,471.01 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 14 accessories
• 65 adventures
• 1 advice
• 7 campaign settings
• 1 reprint
• 60 supplements
• 18 systems
• 49 distinct systems used (11 original)
• 73 campaigns (43.98%) used D&D 5E and raised $917,977.49 (22.32% of all money raised in December)
• 37 campaigns used AI in some form (22,29% of total) and raised $145,101.71 (3.53% of all money raised in December)
• 28 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 38.36% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's December

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in December were:

1. Household - Welcome to the Garden by Two Little Mice ($556,463.21 from 3,438 backers)
2. Mothership: WAGES OF SIN by Tuesday Knight Games ($483,428 from 6,018 backers)
3. Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God for Exalted 3E RPG by Onyx Path ($160,095 from 1,931 backers)
4. The Cyberpunk Set - Official RPG Battle Maps and MUCH more! by Loke Battle Mats ($115,421 from 1,273 backers)
5. Interloper: Sandbox Mystery Module for Mothership RPG by Silverarm ($86,088 from 1,836 backers)

The big story for Backerkit in December was Mothership Month, which raised $1,001,068 (52.74% of the money raised on the platform that month). Now I'm usually a pretty cynical person in these retrospectives (see my paragraphs on paragraphs bemoaning companies turning these democratizing platforms into glorified presale stores), but this time I feel only good things about this. I would certainly say that a significant factor in the success of Mothership Month is certainly that Mothership is a popular system and Sean McCoy in particular is a well-known and well-liked member of the indie TTRPG community, but those facts in and of themselves are largely the product of community building work that is evident in the support that the participating campaigns received. This is also clear in the number of backers that WAGES OF SIN received, dwarfing the people-power support that the only two more financially successful campaigns received this month. Genuinely, Backerkit is innovating in some great ways that have real potential to benefit large and small creators alike.

Crowdfundr's December

In my rush to praise Cezar Capacle last month, I forgot that there is another consistently hosting TTRPG campaigns on Crowdfundr: John Wick. He's back this time around with Wicked Dungeons ($1,912 from 92 backers).

Kickstarter's December

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in December were:

1. DC Heroes Role-Playing Game 40th Anniversary by Cryptozoic Entertainment ($519,226 from 1,879 backers)
2. Rifts® for Savage Worlds: Europa by Shane Hensley ($141,636 from 1,389 backers)
3. Monstrous Menagerie II: Hordes & Heroes: D&D & Level Up A5E by Morrus ($129,118.98 from 1,772 backers)
4. Advanced Kinks and Cantrips by Stellara Books ($127,336 from 2,158 backers)
5. Pico: Tiny Bugs, Big World 🐛🐝 by Mythworks ($112,532 from 2,003 backers)

The change from November to December is a stark one. As I pointed out this time last year, I generally attribute the decrease in money raised on crowdfunding sites in December to people just spending their money on other things around the holidays, but the change was much more dramatic this time around. Last year, campaigns in December raised about a third of the money that was raised in November ($3,062,243.35 vs $9,018,619.50). This time around, campaigns in both months raised less than last year's counterparts, and December campaigns raised just under 25% of what those in November did ($2,213,471.01 vs $8,957,845.53). This is in spite of a smaller decrease in campaigns than last year:

• November 2023: 164 campaigns
• December 2023: 112 campaigns
• November 2024: 150 campaigns
• December 2024: 130 campaigns

Some of this can assuredly be chalked up to Backerkit's rise in popularity and success: this time last year, 29 campaigns raised only $116,631.00, while this year 35 campaigns raised over 16x that amount. But that doesn't satisfy me completely; something feels like it's shifting and I don't know what that is. Since I only started this project in November 2023, I don't have data for the entirety of 2023 to compare to 2024 and can't speak about long term trends really at all.

Speaking of long term trends...

The next update will be a doozy: the complete 2024 retrospective. I genuinely don't know how I'm going to put that together since my half-year recap took up three separate fairly long posts. I've been toying around with putting together a kind of semi-official report and sharing that on itch, but I want to make sure that people who aren't complete sickos like me can actually get access to some of the more significant results. Rest assured, something will be shared on this blog, I just don't know what yet.