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?