May 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

April showers bring May flowers, and April crowdfunding successes bring minor May slumps it would seem. Check the raw data to confirm my summaries:

• 164 campaigns
• 23 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 140 Kickstarter
• $7,228,432.90 raised
• $727,356.92 on Backerkit
• $505.00 on Crowdfundr
• $6,500,570.98 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 18 accessories
• 34 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 anthology
• 1 audiobook
• 12 campaign settings
• 1 reprint
• 64 supplements
• 31 systems
• 1 zine
• 56 distinct systems used (17 original)
• 79 campaigns (48.17%) used D&D 5E and raised $3,093,350.95 (42.79% of all money raised in May)
• 44 campaigns used AI in some form (26.83% of total) and raised $441,459.48 (6.11% of all money raised in May)
• 35 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 44.30% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 17 different countries
• Top 3: 84 in USA, 20 in UK, 11 in Canada
• Singleton countries: Austria, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Vietnam

Backerkit's May

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in May were:

1. Call of the Sea: The Everhart Expedition by Shadowlands Games ($168,971.44 from 1,295 backers)
2. Liminal Horror Deluxe Edition by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($143,496 from 1,683 backers)
3. Tome of Intangible Treasures 2 - A Hunter's Guide to Rituals by Lone Colossus Games ($64,210 from 743 backers)
4. Midnight Muscadines - The Cozy-Dark TTRPG of Magical Jams by Pandion Games ($50,190 from 720 backers)
5. Grimwild: Expanded Hardcover Print Run by Oddity Press ($47,225 from 597 backers)

I would not call this a bad month for Backerkit by any means, but this marks the first time that a month in 2025 didn't outraise its 2024 counterpart (just about $8,000 less this year than last). And this is despite having more campaigns this time around than in May 2024! All told though, this does follow a broad pattern of a minor mid-year slump that was evident last year.

Crowdfundr's May

Crowdfundr revives itself every once in a while, and this time it was with 1 campaign: Cat by John Wick...by John Wick ($505 from 26 backers).

Kickstarter's May

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in May were:

1. Realm Brew: Magnetic Map Tiles for D&D by The Shop of Many Things ($1,492,062 from 8,417 backers)
2. Zaman's Guide to the End of Time (And How to Fix It) by Loot Tavern ($830,853 from 6,737 backers)
3. Pocket RPG. Play DnD Anytime. Anywhere. Magnetic. Patent Pe. by Pocket RPG ($612,821 from 2,847 backers)
4. Humblewood: Beyond the Canopy by Hit Point Press ($558,096 from 5,022 backers)
5. The Kingdom of Keshanar: Ancient Egypt 5e Setting & Campaign by David Dean Hadden ($404,008 from 2,627 backers)

I can never tell whether really successful D&D crowdfunding campaigns take air away from smaller indie game crowdfunders or benefit from their absence in the first place. This month in particular, every single one of the top 5 campaigns were about D&D in some way (if not a supplement/campaign setting for it, then an accessory explicitly enhancing the play experience). Were they so successful because they took away attention from other campaigns or did they receive increased attention because of the lack of other campaigns? As always, it's basically impossible to tell but there are two tangential pieces of evidence that suggest the former.

First, there were more campaigns this May than last year (140 vs 133) yet less money raised ($6,500,570.98 vs $7,238,839.84), meaning more competition for eyes and less money available. This also manifested in lower average and median money raised in May 2025.

Second, system diversity. May 2024 saw 61 distinct systems (26 original) while this month saw 56 distinct systems (17 original). Of the pre-existing (non-original) systems, 25 were used in only 1 campaign (true for both years). D&D accounted for 59 campaigns in 2024 (39.07%) and 79 in 2025 (48.17%). Some of this can presumably be chalked up to survivor bias (I'm not keeping track of campaigns that didn't meet their funding goals because even my neuroses have their limits, so it's possible that any number of original/non-D&D campaigns failed to fund [though this would be further evidence toward my overall point]), but even so we're seeing a decrease in non-D&D crowdfunders and a more than corresponding increase in D&D crowdfunders between May 2024 and 2025.

What's the overall takeaway? Hard to say. It's something that I'll be interested in tracking over time (basically whether a rising tide floats all boats or whether D&D crowds out other systems) because to say anything meaningful these have to be long-term trends and not monthly blips.

May 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 18 (2024) - 23 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 133 (2024) - 140 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $735,159.58 (2024) - $727,356.92 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $7,238,839.84 (2024) -  $6,500,570.98 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 34 (2024) - 44 (2025)
• Money: $251,400.35 (2024) - $441,459.48 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 59 (2024) - 79 (2025)
• Money: $4,936,605.69 (2024) - $3,093,350.95 (2025)

I've mentioned most of this already, but I always find it helpful to have it laid out in a separate section.

The primary point to draw attention to: the D&D 5E money raised in May 2025 looks a little low, but this doesn't take into account most of the Accessory category of campaigns. Since they aren't usually system-specific (nor indeed engaged with mechanics at all), I don't categorize them with any system. But if you were to add the top 1 and 3 campaigns from Kickstarter this month (both explicitly referencing D&D in their title and body text) to the D&D 5E money, you'd see that May 2025 basically evens out to May 2024's D&D money raised. Were there D&D-related accessories in May 2024 that should raise that money too? Absolutely, but they were nowhere near the top 5 campaigns that time around and therefore won't affect the total all that much.