Mothership Month 2025 and RPG Party are officially done, Mausritter Month is nearing its conclusion, and (sigh) OSE Month 2026 is on the distant horizon. On the plus side, I was referenced in a Rascal article! All in all, an interesting two-year anniversary of this whole project. Here's the raw data, let's get into it:
- 242 campaigns
- 46 Backerkit
- 0 Crowdfundr
- 24 Gamefound
- 172 Kickstarter
- $7,740,735.97 raised
- $1,836,907.08 on Backerkit
- $0.00 on Crowdfundr
- $374,321.14 on Gamefound
- $7,1186,728.47 on Kickstarter
- Types of campaigns
- 22 accessories
- 73 adventures
- 2 advice
- 1 anthology
- 1 audiobook
- 1 book
- 18 campaign settings
- 2 platforms
- 5 reprints
- 62 supplements
- 52 systems
- 3 translations
- 88 distinct systems used (34 original)
- 76 campaigns (31.40%) used D&D 5E and raised $3,428,051.25 (36.48% of all money raised in November)
- 51 campaigns used AI in some form (21.07% of total) and raised $419,589.22 (4.46% of all money raised in November)
- 35 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 46.05% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns
- Campaigns were based in 22 different countries
- Top 3: 114 in USA, 39 in UK, 15 in Canada
- Singleton countries: Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey
Backerkit's November
- Mothership: PROSPERO'S DREAM by Tuesday Knight Games ($445,846 from 5,025 backers)
- Lodestar: A Spacefarer's Manual | Space Fantasy in 5e! by The Dragons Vault ($331,898.43 from 2,909 backers)
- Designers & Dragons: Origins by Evil Hat ($249,015 from 1,556 backers)
- Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds – Carrion Crown by Pinnacle Entertainment Group ($84,631 from 689 backers)
- WRASTLEVANIA by 9th Level Games ($70,690 from 1,040 backers)
Gamefound's November
- HeXXen 1733 - Jäger des Ewigen Eises by Ulisses Spiele ($73,443.87 from 425 backers)
- The Wildsea: Tigers on the Wire by Mythworks ($56,189.15 from 990 backers)
- Ambition by The Press Betwixt ($38,592.03 from 199 backers)
- The Table of Adventure: The Official Dungeons and Dragons Game Table by Game Theory Tables ($31,571.01 from 9 backers)
- Trenchcoat Raccoons: A Chaotic, Fail-Forward Heist RPG by OneShot TPK ($30,325.05 from 551 backers)
Kickstarter's November
- Obojima Tales From Yatamon by 1985 Games ($859,145 from 7,167 backers)
- Bastions & Guildhalls: A Modular Map Maker by Czepeku ($536,354 from 11,431 backers)
- GHOST IN THE SHELL ARISE - Tabletop Roleplaying Game by Mana Project Studio ($498,868 from 3,216 backers)
- Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart by Dungeon Dudes ($448,956 from 3,713 backers)
- Mega Dungeon: The Mines of Silverdeep by Dungeon in a Box ($415,575 from 1,857 backers)
November 2023 vs 2024 vs 2025
|
|
2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign count
|
|||
| Backerkit |
10 | 29 | 46 |
| Kickstarter | 164 | 150 | 172 |
| Money pledged | |||
| Backerkit total | $1,256,857.98 | $2,601,889.34 | $1,836,907.08 |
| Backerkit average | $125,685.80 | $89,720.32 | $39,932.76 |
| Backerkit median | $58,370.49 | $25,602.00 | $15,695.93 |
| Kickstarter total | $9,018,619.50 | $8,957,845.53 | $7,186,728.47 |
| Kickstarter average | $54,991.58 | $59,718.97 | $41,783.31 |
| Kickstarter median | $6,189.33 | $5,382.44 | $5,768.63 |
| AI | |||
| Campaign count | 29 | 37 | 51 |
| Money pledged | $375,584.36 | $362,118.92 | $419,589.22 |
| D&D 5E | |||
| Campaign count | 67 |
76 | 76 |
| Money pledged | $5,824,894.60 | $2,343,963.24 | $3,428,051.25 |
- Although Kickstarter and Backerkit are obviously competitors for users and money, there is no clear evidence that they are actually taking anything from each other. Backerkit's fortunes have largely risen (both in campaigns and money raised) while Kickstarter's fortunes are mixed (more campaigns, less money)
- "More campaigns, less money" is really the name of the game: from Backerkit to Kickstarter, from AI campaigns to D&D 5E projects, there's more stuff out there than ever and less money to go around. What's important to note, though, is that these are all successful projects. So even though there's less money on the whole (and on average and on median), more people than ever are (in theory) able to make the stuff they want to make.
- Backerkit's average/median money pledged dropping precipitously from 2023 to 2025 strikes me as largely a good thing. It means that more people are using the platform to fund smaller projects, rather than it being primarily for larger companies/creators (which was definitely the case in November 2023).
- AI use in TTRPG crowdfunding projects continues to depress me, but I take some solace that the average money pledged has dropped by over $4k from 2023 to 2025 ($12,951.18 to $8,227.24). I hate that the number of projects has increased by 75%, but at least they're making 36.5% less money on average.
Mothership Month 2025 and RPG Party Debrief
So at the end of all this, the important question to ask is: was it all worth it? For Backerkit? Almost certainly. It drives attention and money their way and gives them great PR for future themed Months. For the creators who participated? Definitely! They get to make what they wanted to make, and for all my complaining about hegemony last month I don't really believe that anyone involved in Mothership Month 2024 or 2025 secretly didn't want to make something for Mothership. (That concern is, again, reserved for the pipeline that initiatives like Mothership Month, Mausritter Month, and now OSE Month create to receiving broader Backerkit resources.) For backers? It's great for the ones who like Mothership, and, though we already knew this, that's clearly a large audience.
The main people I'm concerned about are those who fall outside of the in-group here. Creators who don't make stuff for Backerkit-approved OSR games. People trying to find time to get their smaller projects visible to a wider audience. People who might have, for instance, submitted their project to Gamefound's RPG Party.
This initiative mostly coincided with Mothership Month and Mausritter Month and made some big promises, like free ad money (based on follower count), workshops with industry veterans from Chaosium and Magpie Games, and marketing boosts from DTRPG. In the end, of the 23 featured campaigns, 17 were successful and raised $246,746.54 from $3,788 backers. Most of these projects were fairly modest in scope (with the exception of a project with an outlier goal of $69,000 that did not fund) and had professional-looking pages with videos and a decent amount of art.
Can you attribute the 6 failed campaigns to Mothership/Mausritter Month? No, I'd attribute it more to the lack of visibility both on and outside of Gamefound. But I also can't rule out the attention that the themed Months on another platform received. An end of year goal of mine will be to try to disentangle the effect that initiatives like Pocketopia, RPG Party, Mothership Month, etc. have on projects that are not included in their orbits. Do they reduce the money other projects receive? The backers? Can you even determine this? Do they seem to affect other platforms? Here's to finding out!
I said in the intro to this section that my feelings on these themed Months have changed a little, and they have. What I realized is that I have strayed a bit close to the capitalist event horizon in focusing so much on the money raised by all these projects. And while that unfortunately does matter, I've slightly lost sight of the continued increase in projects that get funded at all, which these Months and Topias and Parties seem to only be helping. I continue to have concerns about the hegemonic positions of crowdfunding platforms and whether smaller creators are getting the attention, money, and support that I truly think they deserve, but the fact remains that there are more games getting made than ever. And to slightly misquote Marge Simpson: I just think that's neat.
Except games that use AI. Fuck you, go to hell, jump in a lake that you drained for your shitty plagiarism machines you fucking vultures.
No comments:
Post a Comment