Games That Are About Choosing the Pope (To Me)

Me preparing to write this post

As a regular (read: lapsed, queer, nonbeliever) Catholic, I of course felt the Catholicism reenter my body upon hearing of Pope Francis' death, and there is no better way to commemorate the ongoing Papal Conclave (from the Latin cum clave because they are freaks) than to discuss games that are about choosing the Pope (to me).

The Criteria

We doing a three-way factorial analysis babeyyyyy (aka an alignment chart). The are two axes we'll be using are:

The Narrative Axis: the degree to which the game is about choosing a Pope

1. The game is about choosing a new Pope
2. The game is about making a decision of religious importance
3. The game is about making any decision of importance

The Mechanics Axis: the degree to which the game resembles the functioning of the Papal Conclave

1. The decision is made through secret ballot
2. The decision is made democratically
3. The decision is made by any means necessary

Throughout this post, these will be abbreviated to N1/2/3 for the Narrative Axis, and M1/2/3 for the Mechanics Axis.

N1/M1: The Conclave of 1492: A Game of Faith and Power by Shawn Roske

Pretty straightforward: this is a Golden Cobra 2023 submission about the actual historical 1492 papal conclave. Secret ballots, real popes, the whole nine yards. Fun fact: this was the first conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel!

Would that all of our game rooms looked this good

N1/M2: Behold My Grand & Glorious Hat And Weep by Kay Marlow Allen

We're already in questionable territory given that there is no explicit voting in this game, but there is a Pope present and you are given the opportunity to produce an Antipope if you can get enough players to agree with you so it counts. Plus who doesn't like making silly glorious hats?

N1/M3: The (Orc) Pope is Dead by Grant Howitt

In this silly little one-pager, there's no voting to be seen anywhere! A bunch of orc cardinals fight amongst themselves to replace the Orc Pope - hilarity ensues.

N2/M1: ???

Once again in trouble: I could not find a single game about general religious decision-making that was governed by secret ballot. If you know about one, hit me up.

N2/M2: Papatouille by bujold

This game can be best summed up by a potential alternate title that I'm making up: Everyone is (Pope) John. Inspired by the original game by Michael Sullivan, this game sees an older rat (the Father), a younger rat (the Son), and a pigeon (the Holy Spirit/Ghost) take control of a tourist named John who was somehow named Pope. Is this actually democratic? Only in the sense that three people make all the decisions and will eventually need to agree amongst themselves to some extent.

N2/M3: Benediction by Laura op de Beke

Another Golden Cobra 2023 submission, this LARP sees you play as a bunch of nuns awaiting the arrival of a traveling miracle worker. You're not making a decision so much as figuring out how you feel about this strange man coming to see you, but sometimes important decisions can be internal as well as external.

N3/M1: Death Game by Laurie O'Connel

This whole post will have been worth it if only because it made me finally read this game after I backed it last year. Everyone (players and GM alike) submit a possible gimmick for the arena the death game is happening in, and then everyone votes by writing down their pick and giving it to the GM (just like the papal conclave!). On top of that, the GM position rotates whenever a player character dies, with the old GM fleshing out an NPC to enter the game with (just like the pope!).

N3/M2: The Hench Union LARP by Sam Dunnewold

The third and final Golden Cobra submission on the list, but this time from 2021. Here, a bunch of henchfolk and their supervillain boss must come to an agreement about their contract negotiation. What's keeping everyone at the table? Mutually assured destruction via doomsday devices on each side. The henches can vote to set theirs off, while the supervillain can unilaterally detonate theirs at any time (just like the pope!).

N3/M3: Picket Line Tango by Emily Weiss

IDK what to tell you. A murder mystery in space against the backdrop of a union strike? Seems like a game about picking the pope to me!

April 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

So last month I talked about $2.5M that went 'missing' from March TTRPG crowdfunding compared to last year, and it would seem that I've solved the mystery of its disappearance: it just went to April instead. Read on to see the details, or peruse the raw data if you're so inclined. But first, the broad summary:

• 201 campaigns
• 51 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 150 Kickstarter
• $9,925,409.32 raised
• $2,180,147.02 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $7,745,262.30 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 47 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 8 campaign settings
• 1 novel
• 64 supplements
• 66 systems
• 1 translation
• 2 zines
• 91 distinct systems used (48 original)
• 82 campaigns (40.80%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,136,602.54 (21.53% of all money raised in April)
• 49 campaigns used AI in some form (24.38% of total) and raised $213,130.42 (2.15% of all money raised in April)
• 36 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 43.90% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 14 different countries
• Top 3: 101 in USA, 38 in UK, 10 in Australia and Italy
• Singleton countries: Belgium, Poland

Backerkit's April

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in April were:

1. Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage by Troll Lord Games ($601,490 from 2,669 backers)
2. Brambletrek - Tales in the Hundred Acre Woods by Crossed Paths Press ($414,208.69 from 2,709 backers)
3. Dungeon Denizens 2, How To Write Even Better Adventures, & More GM Tools! by Goodman Games ($314,525 from 2,404 backers)
4. RiverBank: A cozy RPG of elegant animals, chaos, & whimsy by Kobold Press ($155,817 from 1,631 backers)
5. Exalted: Essence Player's Guide by Onyx Path ($106,361.01 from 1,438 backers)

Backerkit's trajectory in 2025 continues to improve, with the platform seeing both more campaigns and more money raised each month than the one before it. This was helped in April in large part by Pocketopia, a "celebration of portable easy-to-learn tabletop games." (Though in all fairness since this lasted from March 13 - April 3, so it's sort of more relevant to talk about in March? Look I have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere, and I've opted to take the ones provided to me by the Gregorian calendar.) Pocketopia alone raised $1,068,937 across 61 projects, but removing the strictly boardgame offerings it was responsible $726,234.15 across 34 TTRPG projects (33.32% of April Backerkit money raised and 66.67% of April Backerkit projects) with over half of this money coming from one project (#2 on the list above, Brambletrek).

One other interesting datapoint here is RiverBank, a campaign that has a number of notable firsts for publisher Kobold Press:

• Their first original system (ignoring Tales of the Valiant, which is close enough to their previous 5E content that I'm counting it among it). It promises a sort of Wind in the Willows experience following the madcap adventures of anthropomorphic genteel animals.
• Their first campaign on Backerkit, as opposed to Kickstarter
• Their first campaign in years to not crack $200k (the last one being Book of Ebon Tides in November 2021)

I don't point this out to say that this campaign failed by any means, and I truly wish Kobold Press all the best in their endeavors, but it seems to point to an artistic silo that they find themselves in. By the mere existence of this campaign, they're clearly interested in trying out new things beyond endless iteration on 5E and the like, but their audience very demonstrably was not so interested in this new direction. I will be very interested to see whether they continue to stretch beyond their current comfort zone, or perhaps how often they do so.

Kickstarter's April

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in April were:

1. ALIEN RPG - Evolved Edition and Rapture Protocol by Free League ($2,407,782.82 from 11,741 backers)
2. Shadowdark RPG: The Western Reaches Setting by The Arcane Library ($2,405,108 from 12,923 backers)
3. Professor Primula's Portfolio of Palaeontology by PalaeoGames ($365,894.94 from 3,933 backers)
4. ZAMANORA: Ballad of the Witch by Eren Chronicles ($328,961 from 3,197 backers)
5. The Dark Moon Rises by Archmage Press ($247,450 from 1,789 backers)

It must needs be remarked that it only takes a few successful campaigns to turn a month from "normal" to "remarkable." Case in point: Kickstarter's April, which saw just under half (48.5% to be precise) of its money raised by just two projects. Were it not for both of these projects, Kickstarter would have seen its second month in a row and third month this year where it made less money in 2025 than in 2024 (and that's before we account for inflation - or before somebody accounts for inflation, I have to draw the line somewhere).

This does raise an interesting question though: how many backers (on any TTRPG crowdfunding project) are showing up just for this project and how many are generally interested in TTRPGs? What I mean to say is, to what extent are the backers that come out for IP tie-ins like the ALIEN RPG sticking around on Kickstarter to check out other games? This is the fundamental question, the same one that gets relitigated every time Wizards of the Coast does something that indie designers object to. Does a rising tide lift all boats? Or does it just drown some of us?

The answer to both questions seems to be no. Let's take a look at some statistics: April's average ($51,635.08) and median ($3,841.24) campaign money raised are the highest they've been this year. Both of these stats being higher than the last three months at least shows that small campaigns aren't being hurt by mega-successful ones, but they're also not being helped all that much. April's median is only about $550 more than January's, and that was the worst overall performance Kickstarter has seen in the 1.5 years I've been tracking these stats. So yeah, very little correlation (let alone causation) can be drawn from these data.

April 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 8 (2024) - 51 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 137 (2024) - 150 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $845,617.27 (2024) - $2,180,147.02 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $5,683,707.15 (2024) -  $7,745,262.30 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 33 (2024) - 49 (2025)
• Money: $310,089.95 (2024) - $213,130.42 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 70 (2024) - 82 (2025)
• Money: $2,486,126.48 (2024) - $2,136,602.54 (2025)

There isn't much to talk about here that I haven't already mentioned. As always, I am heartened to see that AI campaigns continue to make very little money compared to non-AI campaigns, but I continue to be concerned about the sheer number of them. At 49 campaigns using AI in some form or another, April is officially the month with the most AI campaigns since I've started tracking the stat. At what point does the slop become so pervasive that it starts to make everyone else feel bad about having their projects on the same site?