August 2026 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

I feel like I say this every month, but this month is one of the stranger on record for TTRPG crowdfunding. There was an 11-day period (August 4-14) where 11 massively successful campaigns ended with US$7,837,170.24 pledged (82.66% of all money pledged in August). What's more, there was a full week (7/28-8/4) when all 11 of them were live and, theoretically, competing. But we'll circle back to that later. Check out the raw data and let's dive in!

August 2026 featured:

95 campaigns

• 19 on Backerkit
• 2 on Gamefound
• 74 on Kickstarter

$9,481,624.46 raised

• $5,623,032.44 on Backerkit
• $721,475.32 on Gamefound
• $3,137,116.70 on Kickstarter

Types of campaigns

• 11 accessories
• 22 adventures
• 1 advice
• 4 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 playtest
• 30 supplements
• 24 systems
• 1 zine

39 distinct systems used (18 original)

• 42 campaigns (44.21%) used D&D 5E and raised $4,241,011.95 (44.73% of all money raised in August)

26 campaigns used AI in some form (27.37% of total) and raised $125,859.41 (1.33% of all money raised in August)

• 20 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 47.62% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Campaigns were based in 13 different countries

• Top 3: 49 in USA, 19 in UK, 7 in Canada
• Singleton countries: Australia, Belgium, Hong Kong, Netherlands

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in August were:

1. Dungeons and Daddies: Not a BDSM Sourcebook by Dungeons and Daddies ($3,111,193 from 17,102 backers)
2. Deathbringer TTRPG by Professor DM by Roll For Combat ($1,326,922 from 7,737 backers)
3. The Ghost in the Shell: Tabletop Roleplaying Game by Mantic Games ($495,723.24 from 4,035 backers)
4. DCC RPG Book of Funnels by Goodman Games ($277,992 from 3,125 backers)
5. Merryshire Detective Club by Pelgrane Press ($85,787.60 from 935 backers)

The 2 campaigns on Gamefound in August were:

1. DC Justice League Unlimited Roleplaying Game by D20 Culture ($718,411.63 from 2,801 backers)
2. MythWatch by Mythemakers ($3,063.69 from 28 backers)

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in August were:

1. Seven-Part Pact by Steve Jackson Games ($1,068,197 from 5,795 backers)
2. Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster by Mike Shea ($464,986 from 8,946 backers)
3. Kinks & Cantrips: Adventures in Subspace by Stellara Books ($272,411 from 2,666 backers)
4. Limithron's Pirate Map Collection by Limithron ($265,993 from 2,363 backers)
5. Terra Mortis | Solo Post-Apocalyptic Deckbuilding RPG by Lion Banner Games ($219,714 from 1,613 backers)

August 2024 vs 2025 vs 2026

	2024	2025	2026
Campaign count
Backerkit	20	17	19
Kickstarter	121	122	74
Money pledged
Backerkit total	$1,580,419.62	$1,351,822.34	$5,623,032.44
Backerkit average	$79,020.98	$79,518.96	$295,949.08
Backerkit median	$15,903.00	$10,588.00	$30,566.00
Kickstarter total	$18,711,813.48	$1,702,917.95	$3,137,116.70
Kickstarter average	$154,643.09	$13,958.34	$42,393.47
Kickstarter median	$4,239.00	$3,364.00	$3,300.00
AI
Campaign count	29	42	26
Money pledged	$145,005.70	$167,835.73	$125,859.41
D&D 5E
Campaign count	49	59	42
Money pledged	$1,956,290.32	$875,395.60	$4,241,011.95

Promised I'd circle back didn't I?

Seeing the data from these past few years should provide some context for how strange this month was. A sizable decrease in the number of campaigns (the lowest number for Kickstarter since January 2025, lowest for Backerkit since this past January) and yet an equally sizable increase in money funded, compared to both last month and last August. August 2024 obviously stands apart from this, but that's when the Cosmere RPG finished (something of a Crowdfunders Georg). Also, as an aside, that's when the Neopets RPG ended. That shit raised the 4th-highest amount of money that month. Good thing that people learned their lesson and didn't give a bunch of money to an IP-based project without much evidence to back up the grand promises made.

Anyways, like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this was driven by a legendary run of massive campaigns all ending in an 11-day period. All but one of the campaigns that raised more than US$100K ended in this stretch of time. But even more specific than that 11-day period was the two days of August 13th and 14th, when five campaigns ended that raised US$6,280,027.24 (66.23% of all money pledged in August).

Although this is very much not the norm (especially because these campaigns weren't even part of some promotional Month), these campaigns provide a little insight into the typology of highly successful TTRPG campaigns, which I have created three categories for (well, four , but the fourth doesn't really count): External Audience, Intellectual Property, and Known Entity.

• External Audience campaigns feature popular artists who have not previously been involved in making TTRPGs deciding to publish something. They are almost always involved in the field in some way  They benefit enormously from having large fanbases who are already interested in supporting them, which should translate to more backers and more high-dollar backers (I do not have the empirical data to back this up, but it just tracks). In August 4-14, this was:
• The Dungeons & Daddies podcast making a 5E supplement/campaign setting out of their highly successful podcast
• Professor Dungeon Master (who I shan't link to), a YouTuber with 157K subscribers at time of writing, making a game
• Intellectual Property campaigns are exactly what they sound like: licensed TTRPGs of existing media. Similarly to External Audience campaigns, these benefit from a large audience predisposed to be interested in the game, but crucially they can't usually be as effectively targeted by the creators. I don't think the Ghost in the Shell mangaka, publisher, or anime studio is really putting out a call to go back the TTRPG adaptation (but I could be wrong). In August 4-14, this was:
• The Ghost in the Shell: Tabletop Roleplaying Game
• Children of Time: The Roleplaying Game
• (worth saying that the only other US$100K+ game in August was DC Justice League Unlimited Roleplaying Game, another IP campaign)
• Known Entity campaigns are the broadest category as they rely on the previous success of the game system, designer/publisher, or both. Even though this is something of a catch-all category, it highlights that monetary success in crowdfunding rarely comes out of nowhere. In August 4-14 this was:
• DCC RPG Book of Funnels (popular system, well-known publisher)
• Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster (third in a series of GM advice books)
• Seven-Part Pact (Jay Dragon + Steve Jackson, plus years of public playtesting and positive reviews)
• The Wildsea: Sourdown (popular system, well-known publisher)
• Terra Mortis | Solo Post-Apocalyptic Deckbuilding RPG (something of an outlier, but previous successful campaigns including a US$100K+ one must have built an audience)

You might be wondering what the fourth type is, but I think you already know: it's D&D 5E. The reason I don't really consider this to be a real type of mega-successful campaign is because it's nowhere near as diagnostic as the other types. There are far, far more D&D 5E crowdfunding campaigns that make less than US$1000 than there are US$100K+.

Eagle-eyed readers have doubtless already noticed that these categories are by no means mutually exclusive. The Dungeons & Daddies campaign was a D&D 5E book (and Professor DM's game is basically just a type of D&D given that it's clearly marketed to that audience). Children of Time is being made by Rowan, Rook, & Decard, very much an indie TTRPG Known Entity. You could easily make the case that Jay Dragon brought her own External Audience to Steve Jackson Games (though that's iffy given that Jay is an actual designer rather than YouTuber or podcaster). In fact, when these conditions align you usually get a sort of force multiplier that increases the overall success.

None of this is intended to discount the work that went into the design of any of these games; I'm mostly trying to dig into how it was possible that so much money was raised by these campaigns in largely overlapping time periods without backers feeling exhausted. These categories, I hope, help point out how the audience for these campaigns did not overlap (though I am of course sure that there are many people out there who backed several of these) and examine how fragmentary/siloed the TTRPG field is.

When you boil it right down, these categories are mostly just different ways of saying that something made money because it was already popular (and because the people behind it possess the monetary/cultural capital needed to make and run a professional campaign). But there is value to separating out these different classes of popularity, and in pointing out that capital alone (see: IP games) does not necessarily result in the greatest success. Rather (and this is a conclusion I often return to in these roundups), it is the cultivation of a TTRPG-specific audience that most consistently results in the success of individual campaigns, and that is something that relies on a lot of (ultimately harder) work being done before and between campaigns.