July 2025 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

I talked back in the March about how the top fell off of Kickstarter TTRPG campaigns, with a decrease in money raised from February to March 2025 and a huge decrease compared to March 2024 largely driven by fewer high-grossing campaigns. Well, we're seeing something similar happen here in July 2025 except it's happening across the board and to a much greater degree. Take a look at the raw data, and let's get into it.

• 146 campaigns
• 17 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 3 Gamefound
• 126 Kickstarter
• $2,053,031.64 raised
• $445,168.07 on Backerkit
• $0.00 on Crowdfundr
• $52,681.29 on Gamefound
• $1,555,182.28 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 15 accessories
• 33 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 1 book
• 1 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 67 supplements
• 26 systems
• 1 translation
• 60 distinct systems used (12 original)
• 59 campaigns (40.41%) used D&D 5E and raised $553,001.66 (26.94% of all money raised in July)
• 50 campaigns used AI in some form (34.24% of total) and raised $244,932.90 (11.93% of all money raised in July)
• 33 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 55.93% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
• Campaigns were based in 16 different countries
• Top 3: 63 in USA, 22 in UK, 13 in Italy
• Singleton countries: Mexico, Sweden, Turkey

Backerkit's July

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in July were:

1. Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack REFORGED! by Troll Lord Games ($131,023 from 1,147 backers)
2. Last Train to Bremen by Possum Creek Games ($72,690 from 1,334 backers)
3. Fragged Kingdom 2 | ttRPG by Wade D ($60,697.17 from 736 backers)
4. TAZ - A Roleplaying Game of Post-Cyberpunk Resistance by Mana Project Studio ($53,417.48 from 516 backers)
5. Folk Hero - a solo mode and sourcebook for the Punk is Dead TTRPG by Critical Kit Ltd ($31,213.11 from 546 backers)

Hard to say what happened in July, the month with the least amount of money raised on Backerkit since this past January. Part of it is undoubtedly a certain lack of high-profile campaigns on the platform, but perhaps the larger part is that it's also the month with the fewest campaigns since January as well. Kickstarter, as a larger platform with (presumably) more users always has a lot of campaigns going at once. People go there to check out what's new because there's always something new (maybe not in precisely the area that you care about, but there's something). In June 2025, on the other hand, there was almost a full week at the end of the month (6/25-6/30) where no new TTRPG projects were launched. Things picked up again in the beginning of July with fairly regular launches, but this kind of lull in activity either creates or is emblematic of an environment where people aren't checking in regularly to see the churn of projects starting and projects ending. Kickstarter is a platform where people go to discover new projects all on their own; Backerkit seems like a platform where people still have to be funneled in from elsewhere. In specific instances where this isn't the case (Mothership Month in Nov-Dec 2024, Pocketopia in Mar-Apr 2025), you end up with more projects on the platform and fairly high average/median money raised.

Beyond this, the most interesting thing to me on Backerkit this past month was seeing what might be part of the first major wave of Draw Steel content. Both campaigns in question (Ratcatcher Magazine for DRAW STEEL - Issue 01 and Raiders of Ivywatch—A Draw Steel Adventure) didn't raise much money, and they're far from the first ones I've seen, but there are a couple more currently live and the final pdf just became available for backers. We're a little over a year-and-a-half out from the original record-breaking Backerkit campaign, and now that it's about to enter the wider ecosystem I'm very interested to see how it will be received (especially in the world of crowdfunding).

Gamefound's July

There were only 3 campaigns on Gamefound in July:

1. Kryształy Czasu by Dark Rabbit ($46,797.02 from 246 backers)
2. Minerim GDR by Mist_games ($5,670.27 from 54 backers)
3. 450 Steampunk Battle Maps for TTRPG and VTT by Agnesagraphic ($214 from 9 backers)

Not much to say here other than I have learned that Kryształy Czasu is a classic Polish TTRPG dating back to the early 90s. A whole world of TTRPGs outside of the Anglosphere? It's more likely than you'd think!

Kickstarter's July

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in July were:

1. Land of Eem: Beginners RPG for Kids + Underlands Expansion by Exalted Funeral ($227,887 from 1,809 backers)
2. Fantasy World Creator: Chronicles by GAME START ($173,044 from 1,014 backers)
3. Echoes in the Deep - A Fateforge Tale: Advanced Solo TTRPG by Adeliane ($84,222 from 1,053 backers)
4. SideQuest Volume 1: A Collection of 5e Solo Adventure Shorts by Obvious Mimic ($74,074.38 from 1,860 backers)
5. CBR+PNK: OVERLOAD by Mythworks ($67,095 from 1,465 backers)

After several banner months in April-June, July is a real outlier for Kickstarter. It's the lowest amount raised in a month since January, which was also uncharacteristically thin on the ground. By this point in 2024, Kickstarter TTRPG campaigns had raised ~$3.5M more than the current count with only 2 more campaigns (1069 in 2024 vs 1067 in 2025). I really have no explanation here beyond the relative absence of big players this past July. No big D&D 5E campaigns (as in huge campaign settings or supplemental sourcebooks), relatively few big indie publishers beyond those present in the top 5 campaigns above; there was only 1 additional campaign beyond those 5 that even raised more that $50,000 and that was a Swedish AP publishing the adventures they've played since it began in June 2017. There haven't been any big economy-related fuck-ups shake-ups in the last few months and US tariffs remain in flux, but this has also been true for the last few months and therefore doesn't really explain this sudden drop (both month-to-month and year-to-year).

It's a real mystery, and it just goes to remind us that models and trends have excellent explanatory power in hindsight and incredibly limited predictive power.

July 2024 vs 2025

• Number of campaigns
• Backerkit: 14 (2024) => 17 (2025)
• Kickstarter: 143 (2024) => 126 (2025)
• Money
• Backerkit: $978,983.04 (2024) => $445,168.07 (2025)
• Average campaign: $69,927.36 (2024) => $26,186.36 (2025)
• Median campaign: $12,716.00 (2024) => $10,395.00 (2025)
• Kickstarter: $4,472,629.89 (2024) =>  $1,555,182.28 (2025)
• Average campaign: $31,277.13 (2024) => $12,342.72 (2025)
• Median campaign: $4,435.00 (2024) => $3,126.00 (2025)
• AI
• Count: 43 (2024) => 50 (2025)
• Money: $157,621.97 (2024) => $244,932.90 (2025)
• D&D 5E
• Count: 75 (2024) => 59 (2025)
• Money: $1,541,340.98 (2024) => $553,001.66 (2025)

Two things to note here:

First, I remain impressed that the median money raised by campaigns is so resilient to reductions by 1/2 to 1/3 of overall money raised. It really continues to show that there is a solid (and quite low) floor of small campaigns that make up the vast majority of TTRPG crowdfunding projects. As always, you can't necessarily rely on these things (because I've had a project fail that was looking to raise less than the July 2025 Kickstarter median), but setting your sights in the low thousands of dollars for a first crowdfunding attempt is a reasonable goal, even if you're going to have to work quite hard to get that much.

Second, it remains deeply concerning to me how much AI slop continues to fill the space. I recently had to switch up my methodology for keeping track of projects on Kickstarter (because the search for successful projects now only returns things from mid-2024), and that meant combing through all the projects set to end in the next few days' time. Now that I'm seeing all of those, I'm realizing that there are even more AI projects that don't fund successfully. It's not that many more (and I'm considering sticking to this methodology so that I can potentially see what percentage of projects fund at all), but there are still more out there and it fucking sucks.

Let me just say this now: I know for a fact that my 50% success rate (1 yes, 1 no) with crowdfunding my games has made me happier than any of the loser slop-merchants I now duly record on the daily. I may have made less money, but I'm a better artist, a better gamer, and, quite frankly, a better person than any of you.

Die mad about it.