January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 1: Platforms

It's finally here - the big mondo six-month data dump looking at the state of TTRPG crowdfunding in 2024. There's so much to talk about here that I will be splitting this up into three parts.

Part 1 (what you're reading now) will focus on three crowdfunding platforms: Backerkit, Crowdfundr, and Kickstarter. I am seeking to answer the question: do campaigns perform significantly better on any of these platforms?

Part 2 (coming sometime next week) will focus on comparing the performance of D&D 5E campaigns to non-D&D campaigns, seeking to answer the question: do 5E projects do better than non-5E projects?

Part 3 (coming whenever I get around to it) will look at hyper-successful campaigns (ones that raised over $100,000 dollars) as well as some fun details hiding in the data. I haven't decided yet what I will focus on but some options are:

• What days of the week do campaigns start on? What days do they end on?
• What dates of the month do campaigns start on? What dates do they end on?
• Are types of campaigns (full systems, adventures, supplements, etc) more likely to be found on different platforms?

With that out of the way, here is the raw data for your perusal.

Big picture statistics for January-June:

• 1030 campaigns
• 83 Backerkit
• 21 Crowdfundr
• 926 Kickstarter
• $34,355,742.53 raised
• $9,424,858.60 on Backerkit
• Average campaign raised $113,552.51
• Median campaign raised $8,826
• $54,187.64 on Crowdfundr
• Average campaign raised $2,580.36
• Median campaign raised $1,852
• $24,876,696.29 on Kickstarter
• Average campaign raised $26,864.68
• Median campaign raised $3,851.50
• Types of campaigns
• 87 accessories
• 258 adventures
• 10 advice
• 1 art
• 1 artbook
• 2 audiobooks
• 1 bundle
• 38 campaign settings
• 6 fundraising
• 6 reprints
• 320 supplements
• 297 systems
• 3 zines
• 370 distinct systems used (220 original)
• 353 campaigns (34.27%) used D&D 5E and raised $12,042,894.81 (35.05% of all money raised)
• 189 campaigns used AI in some form (18.35% of total)
• These campaigns raised $1,279,904.72 (3.73% of all money)
• 121 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 34.28% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit from January-June 2024 were:

1. The MCDM RPG by MCDM Productions ($4,600,520 from 30,177 backers)
2. Outgunned Adventure by Two Little Mice ($517,371.40 from 3,490 backers)
3. The Covens of Midnight - A Tarot-Based GM-less RPG by Crossed Paths Press ($425,908.06 from 4,504 backers)
4. Knights of Dust and Neon by Monte Cook Games ($372,670 from 2,403 backers)
5. HOLLOWS - TTRPG Boss Fights Done Right by Rowan, Rook and Decard ($319,492.24 from 2,843 backers)

The breakdown of Backerkit's 83 projects are as follows:

• 8 accessories
• 23 adventures
• 3 campaign settings
• 2 fundraisers
• 19 supplements
• 28 systems

Though Backerkit seems to not have captured a wide audience yet, what it has done quite successfully is attract indie publishers who bring their own supporters to the platform in droves. I'm not familiar with Two Little Mice or Crossed Paths Press, but MCDM Productions, Monte Cook Games, and Rowan, Rook and Decard are some of the most well-known names in the indie game and it's therefore no surprise they're on the top 5 list. (In fact Two Little Mice and Rowan, Rook and Decard share the distinction of having two projects in the top 10 most successful with Memento Mori - A Roleplaying Game of Dreams and Corruption and Dagger in the Heart, respectively.)

What does this mean for the long-term success of the platform? Well, it's already doing quite well considering that it has raised more than a third of what Kickstarter has with less than 10% of the projects, but there's one big caveat here: half of that money came from one project (The MCDM RPG). That project's success is the clear result of Matt Colville's longtime YouTube audience and previous successful forays into publishing D&D 5E content and not anything intrinsic to Backerkit. Indeed, even though the project brought 30,000+ people to the platform, it's not clear whether those people have stuck around to browse other projects on Backerkit like people seem to do on Kickstarter. I have no specific data to back this supposition up, but I believe that discoverability remains fairly low on Backerkit in general. Take a look at the other projects in the top 5 list here - none of them come even close to cracking the top 5 of Kickstarter's most successful projects in the same timespan. Backerkit clearly isn't going anywhere, but it's going to take some time before the average TTRPG player thinks of them in the same way they do of Kickstarter.

Crowdfundr's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Crowdfundr from January-June 2024 were:

1. Return to Perinthos: A Memorial Book Fundraiser in the Memory of Jennell Jaquays by Violet Ballard ($12,075 from 291 backers)
2. Bahía Gris, un juego en solitario de pesca y enigmas con un toque de horror by ¡Rol o Barbarie! ($6,789.61 from 452 backers)
3. No-Tell Motel: A Single Player Murder Mystery RPG by Ken Lowery ($5,425 from 192 backers)
4. Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid by TTRPGKids ($4,340 from 153 backers)
5. Beth and Angel Make a Campaign by Beth and Angel ($3,297 from 177 backers)

The breakdown of Crowdfundr's 21 projects are as follows:

• 3 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 campaign setting
• 3 supplements
• 10 systems
• 2 zines

There's not much to say here that I haven't already said in previous posts. Despite my personal appreciation of Crowdfundr for being where I've run both of my own crowdfunding campaigns (one successful and one not, for the record), there's just not enough eyes there to support many TTRPG projects.

One indicator of this is that Crowdfundr TTRPG projects don't tend to overfund by much. The average Crowdfundr project funds by ~367% while the average Backerkit and Kickstarter projects fund by ~1408% and ~1533%, respectively. This despite the average Crowdfundr project goal being $1008.22 compared to Backerkit's $17,958.52 and Kickstarter's $3,344.23. (These statistics are obviously heavily skewed since I only record data on successfully funded projects, but I think that the comparison works regardless.) Crowdfundr campaigns just seem to more or less vanish once they get funded rather than building much in the way of momentum. No idea why this happens, but it seems to be the case. And given the almost complete dropoff in TTRPG Crowdfundr projects since they first made a push to be a home for them in early 2023, it seems that other people have identified similar issues as I've observed.

Kickstarter's Half-year

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter from January-June 2024 were:

1. Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment ($1,583,605 from 7,427 backers)
2. Erevan's Guide to Death and Beyond - A 5e Tome by Archvillain Games ($1,223,471 from 6,953 backers)
3. The Field Guide to Floral Dragons by Hit Point Press ($1,116,593 from 12,613 backers)
4. Monsters of Drakkenheim - 5E Monsters with Lore Lairs & Loot by Dungeon Dudes ($1,065,710 from 8,078 backers)
5. Legend in the Mist RPG by Amít Moshe / Son of Oak Game Studio ($855,686 from 8,156 backers)

The breakdown of Kickstarter's 926 projects are as follows:

• 79 accessories
• 231 adventures
• 9 advice
• 1 art
• 1 artbook
• 2 audiobooks
• 1 bundle
• 32 campaign settings
• 4 fundraisers
• 6 reprints
• 294 supplements
• 257 systems
• 1 zine

Ah Kickstarter, it seems that you have quietly left behind the crypto and blockchain controversies of 2023 in favor of a pretty heinous AI policy that no one seems to care much about. To be clear, the text of the policy isn't the objectionable part; it's the complete lack of enforcement. In December, I took a brief look at the AI explanation sections of many Kickstarter projects and found some interesting trends. What I didn't delve into is the laughable state of the answers to the questions that Kickstarter requires.

Let's examine this project, for example. The two questions that need to be answered are:

• What parts of your project will use AI generated content? Please be as specific as possible.
• Do you have the consent of owners of the works that were (or will be) used to produce the AI generated portion of your projects? Please explain.

And how does this project answer them?

Pictured: one answered question and one sidestepped question

Most projects have some variation of this for the second question: "Well we paid Midjourney/Dall-E/Adobe Firefly and have full permission from them to use the images." Well that's fucking nice and all, but that's not the question. The question is whether you had permission from the original artists to use their art to train these programs, and the answer is quite transparently that you absolutely did not. And yet despite this, Kickstarter allows these projects to exist and proliferate. It seems clear to me that Kickstarter doesn't actually care about the ethics behind AI (nor the staggering environmental cost of generative AI) and is perfectly happy to take the money generated by a bunch of grifters (and yes, they are grifters considering that they are knowingly lying for one of the two questions they have to answer in order to get their projects posted).

Some Fun Graphs

With that rant out of the way, let me present you now with some fun graphs! For any visually impaired readers, I will do my best to explain the content of the graphs below the images (unfortunately Blogger's alt-text function for images isn't the best).

Campaign count is on the left vertical axis, money raised is on the right vertical axis

Total campaigns and US dollars raised, January-June 2024

• January: 75 campaigns; $5,410,045.27
• February: 232 campaigns; $3,376,005.35
• March: 267 campaigns; $5,866,948.48
• April: 145 campaigns; $6,529,324.42
• May: 151 campaigns; $7,973,999.42
• June: 160 campaigns; $5,199,419.59

Campaign count is on the left vertical axis, money raised is on the right vertical axis

Backerkit campaigns/money raised vs Kickstarter campaigns/money raised

• January
• Backerkit: 4 campaigns; $4,608,855.66
• Kickstarter: 71 campaigns; $801,189.61
• February
• Backerkit: 12 campaigns; $884,266.93
• Kickstarter: 214 campaigns; $2,468,976.14
• March
• Backerkit: 21 campaigns; $939,594.09
• Kickstarter: 232 campaigns; $4,897,291.24
• April
• Backerkit: 8 campaigns; $845,617.27
• Kickstarter: 137 campaigns; $5,683,707.15
• May
• Backerkit: 18 campaigns; $735,159.58
• Kickstarter: 133 campaigns; $7,238,839.84
• June
• Backerkit: 20 campaigns; $1,411,365.07
• Kickstarter: 139 campaigns; $$3,786,692.31

June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

Incredibly, this post is actually coming out shortly after the month it's covering has ended (primarily because I want to make a big half-year retrospective later this month and I'm leaving for vacation in a few days). But since we're halfway through 2024, I want to take a moment to review my methodology (such as it is) for this project.

1. Looking across Kickstarter, Backerkit, and Crowdfundr, I'm collating successful crowdfunding campaigns that have ended in a given month.
2. I'm ignoring dice and miniature campaigns since I'm personally less interested in those things.
3. Non-USD currencies are converted to USD on the day that I collect the information of a successful campaign.
4. I'm tracking if (Kickstarter) campaigns use AI at any point of the process, although this is self-reported and therefore somewhat unreliable.

All that said, take a look at what we got for June.

• 160 campaigns
• 20 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 139 Kickstarter
• $5,199,419.59 raised
• $1,411,365.078 on Backerkit
• $1,362.21 on Crowdfundr
• $3,786,692.31 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 11 accessories
• 42 adventures
• 1 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 6 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 56 supplements
• 42 systems
• 66 distinct systems used (27 original)
• 69 campaigns (43.13%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,893,054.82 (36.41% of all money raised in June)
• 34 campaigns used AI in some form (21.25% of total)
• These campaigns raised $215,853.36 (4.15% of all money raised in June)
• 28 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.58% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's June

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in June were:

1. Outgunned Adventure by Two Little Mice ($517,371.40 from 3,490 backers)
2. HOLLOWS - TTRPG Boss Fights Done Right by Rowan, Rook and Decard ($319,492.24 from 2,843 backers)
3. Ashes - A Souls Like GM-Less RPG Gamebook by Crossed Paths Press ($116,651.10 from 1,229 backers)
4. The Oracle Monster Generator for Fantasy RPGs by Nord Games ($103,096 from 1,454 backers)
5. Big Bad Con 2024 by Big Bad Con ($80,710 from 547 backers)

This month marks the first time that an explicitly fundraising campaign (as opposed to campaigns that create a product of some sort) has cracked the top 5 in a month. These are, admittedly, relatively rare campaigns in the TTRPG space and they're almost always to fund the operations of conventions. Big Bad Con is the definite leader in the space, comfortably outpacing last year's fundraising total of $58,870. While not a particularly large con when compared to your PAXes or GenCons (GensCon?), the community support they receive and COVID safety protocols they have in place make them particularly notable among their peers. Full disclosure, Big Bad Con 2023 was my first (and thus far only) con attended, I intend to return this coming year, and I have not been asked in any way to talk them up here (I'm just a fan).

Crowdfundr's June

Cezar Capacle is practically keeping Crowdfundr's TTRPG page going all by himself, with his Wraithhound campaign not only the sole successful project in June, but the only successful project on the platform since the end of March.

I'm going to get into this more in a few weeks with the half-year wrap-up, but I think it's time to call it a wrap on Crowdfundr for TTRPG projects. Based on what I've seen, projects just don't do very well there. It's probably a combination of lack of audience and platform visibility, but campaigns just don't seem to make much more than their base funding (if that). I like Crowdfundr a lot, their staff were very helpful during Tabletop Nonstop, but I cannot in good conscience recommend that any TTRPG creators use the platform moving forward.

Kickstarter's June

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in June were:

1. Erevan's Guide to Death and Beyond - A 5e Tome by Archvillain Games ($1,223,471 from 6,953 backers)
2. Blade Runner RPG: Replicant Rebellion & Asset Pack by Free League ($438,693.01 from 5,283 backers)
3. 13th Age Second Edition | Storytelling Action Fantasy by Pelgrane Press ($374,268 from 3,172 backers)
4. Advanced Player's Guide 2 and Bestiary 2 by Shane Hensley ($151,020 from 1,572 backers)
5. An Adventure Double Feature by The Merry Mushmen! by Olivier Revenu ($137,202.89 from 1,965 backers)

As is often the case, the top earners on Kickstarter this month provided support for many large pre-existing systems (5e, Blade Runner RPG, 13th Age, Savage Worlds, and Old School Essentials, in order). This is expected: companies and systems with large built-in audiences are going to do the best when it's all about how many eyes you can get your product in front of. There's not much to say here except for the perennial question: do relatively large companies like Free League and Pelgrane Press actually need to do crowdfunding campaigns? I don't pretend to have intimate knowledge of their finances, and obviously the profit incentive encourages them to do splashy campaigns with stretch goals that get their audience's attention, but as always I wish that things were different. I wish that crowdfunding platforms could be used primarily by and for people who truly couldn't make their project happen without the money raised. But we live in this world. And at a bare minimum, thank god that none of these large indie companies (featured here at least) have ever flirted with AI.

The thinnest of silver linings, but I'll take it nonetheless.

Review: Haunted Heist

What is it?

Haunted Heist is a game by Daniel Carter-Hope and Paul Williams of Red Mug Games, the games arm of the UK-based Evil Hypnotist Productions indie film studio. I was given a digital review copy of the game by Red Mug Games but have received no other compensation as part of the request to review it.

The pitch: players take on the role of deceased criminals under the guidance of a Game Medium (GM) to embark upon a heist that would otherwise be impossible by living human standards. The overall tone is comedy/horror.

The art communicates this endearing sort of horror atmosphere, akin to Disney's Haunted Mansion or The Nightmare Before Christmas, quite well, but unfortunately, as my players pointed out after we finished playing, the tones of the game clash discordantly at times. Some of the potential outcomes of actions (mostly the horrific and instantaneous death of unfortunate bystanders) really don't feel like they fit with what the game bills itself as. For example, one of the stronger abilities of the Possessor includes this detail: "Strong possibility the target will suffer a fatal stroke/heart attack/aneurysm when the possession ends." This is an awfully specific manner of death, one that has the potential to really upset some players given the relative prevalence of these health conditions in real life, and it's just not that funny either when it comes right down to it. Head exploding: high funny potential. Fatal aneurysm: less so. If you bring this game to the table, take the temperature of your players to understand what kind of bloody slapstick they have an appetite for.

How does it work?

Players have a resource called Spirit Level (SL) that they can spend on various spectral powers based on the type of ghost they are (Haunter, Poltergeist, Possessor). If they run out of SL, they vanish until the GM can reconnect with them. Action success is determined by rolling 2d6 and checking the table for the outcome (5-9 is a partial success, to give an idea of what to expect).

The GM's actions mainly involve predicting the result of dice rolls. When any player rolls for an Action, the GM predicts the outcome, and if they're correct they get a sizable benefit. Similarly, when it comes time to resummon ghosts, the ghost's player rolls a d6 and the GM predicts the result. If they're correct, the ghost returns with full SL, and if they're wrong they can try again next Turn with the ghost predicting their own number.

The game also operates on a ticking clock, with the GM keeping track of Turns in each Round with a 6-sided die. Every ghost gets one action per Turn, the Round advances after 6 Turns. The more time you take, the more likely the heist is to end in failure with the ghosts abandoning their jobs to take care of Unfinished Business or the GM's Debt causing their grisly demise.

How did it go?

I played this game with a group of three players about a week ago using the "End of the Pier" adventure summary from the book itself: "Magic isn't real... or is it? Down-on-his-luck hypnotist Derek Beige has the whole town under his thrall, but for what nefarious purpose?" With this summary, I spun up the Great Bosinski Game Medium, another 'psychic' conman who had been operating just fine in Mortecambe Bay until Derek Beige showed up. Using the spirits of Gem "Knock" _____, Spinnin' Sid, and Frozen Freddie, we were all set up to steal Derek Beige's platinum pocketwatch and break his terrible power.

It was right here, shortly after character creation, that everything started to go off the rails. And not in the fun heist way.

What happened?

Let me be clear: much of this was my fault. In my revision of the rules before starting, I missed the instructions to organize the game in three phases: Character Manifestation, Planning, and Heist. As a result, I skipped the Planning Phase and had the players jump into exploring the town as they tried to figure out how to take down Derek Beige. As a result, scenes were not so much pulse-pounding heist action as they were pulse-neutral information gathering, it was unclear when abilities could be used effectively, and everyone (including myself) left the game feeling a little frustrated.

A compounding factor on top of the initial error had to do with pacing. The game operates on a ticking clock in theory, but in practice we didn't even get all the way through a single Round. My players took about 2 hours to do character creation and play 5 Turns (15 actions), at the end of which we felt like we had just about resolved the problem of Derek Beige. This meant that we took an average of about 24 minutes per Turn and 8 minutes per action, which feels pretty fast for many storygames. But even so the game didn't feel particularly urgent or that we were on a time limit. This probably would have been mitigated with an actual Planning Phase as the players would have known more or less where they were heading.

Stuff I liked

Before going to the larger lessons learned here, I wanted to share bits and bobs that I particularly liked from the game:

• I like the positioning of the GM as a player in the world and the explicit ticking clock that triggers certain events, and I really loved the thematic resonance of trying to psychically predict dice outcomes
• The sample characters and their accompanying art give a good sense of the tone the game wants to live in: comedically gruesome and pretty absurd
• The Grave Consequences table, while not always giving the most actionable or impactful results, has a clear voice with a dry sense of humor that is pretty fun and funny to read
• Heist locations are all evocative and feel quite different from each other, but I would appreciate a better sense for how some of them would actually be used in a heist

So what do you do when you play a game wrong?

I'm not really sure, honestly. I only found my mistake in the rules upon rereading the text in preparation for writing this review. If I had just brought this game to the table because I thought it was fun, I probably would have just written it off after it didn't really work in play and never given it another thought. This speaks to a challenge that game designers face when working on their art: how do you ensure that something important doesn't get missed when people are learning how to play?

Ignoring the reality that you can never be 100% sure of this, one solution is to integrate the most important components throughout the rules. It's easy to miss a single reference to something important (as I did with the Planning Phase), it's harder to miss multiple references to a specific component that all feed into each other. These could be in the text of other rules, play examples, flowcharts, you name it; the important thing is that anything that is crucial to understanding how to play the game should be as inescapable as possible.

That is ultimately my biggest criticism of this game: its component parts don't quite gel together into the most harmonious whole. My experience playing it was frustrating, but that was partially due to one specific mistake I made before the game even started. I had an okay time playing, but neither I nor my players ever really found a groove where the game just worked for us.

Will I play this game again? Probably not. Will I be thinking about my favorite parts of the game (GM as diegetic character, ticking clock, psychically predicting dice)? Absolutely.

May TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

 

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only things that have been added this time around are some median metrics for various variables (campaign type, platform, AI campaign performance).

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 151 campaigns
• 18 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 133 Kickstarter
• $7,973,999.42 raised
• $735,159.58 on Backerkit
• $0 on Crowdfundr
• $7,238,839.94 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 18 accessories
• 34 adventures
• 1 artbook
• 8 campaign settings
• 3 reprints
• 49 supplements
• 38 systems
• 61 distinct systems used (26 original)
• 59 campaigns (39.07%) used D&D 5E and raised $4,936,605.69 (61.91% of all money raised in May)
• 34 campaigns used AI in some form (22.52% of total)
• These campaigns raised $251,400.35 (3.15% of all money raised in May)
• 22 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 37.29% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's May

The top 5 campaigns on Backerkit in May were:

1. Scions of the Dark Goddess - A new modern era Call of Cthulhu campaign by Shadowlands Games ($259,427.26 from 2,585 backers)
2. Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern by Evil Hat ($202,090 from 4,519 backers)
3. Knight: An Avalon RPG by Antre Monde Editions ($94,006.15 from 846 backers)
4. Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron by The World Anvil Publishing ($46,997.90 from 499 backers)
5. HEROIC the Role Playing Game by ZEG Media ($21,786.78 from 410 backers)

Kickstarter's May

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in May were:

1. Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game by Cryptozoic Entertainment ($1,631,479 from 7,681 backers)
2. The Field Guide to Floral Dragons by Hit Point Press ($1,163,164 from 13,210 backers)
3. Delve - a Guide to Dungeons for 5E & Shadowdark RPG by Bob World Builder ($387,779 from 6,588 backers)
4. Lairs & Legends 2 - The Definitive 5e Resource Anthology by The DM Lair ($298,492 from 2,055 backers)
5. Worlds at a Glance: 5E tools to describe towns, shops & NPCs by Nathan Horn ($298,105 from 3,082 backers)

Big Picture

One somewhat troubling aspect of May crowdfunding is the surprising capture of money by D&D 5E campaigns. 5E has always (unsurprisingly) been a significant moneymaker in the crowdfunding space and has had the most products using its system consistently since I started tracking these stats, but 5E campaigns have never gotten this big (61.91%) of the market share in that time.

What I find really fascinating is that the percentage of D&D 5E projects in terms of quantity doesn't change all that much, with the exception of an obvious dip in February and March that coincides with ZineQuest/ZineMonth. But even then that doesn't necessarily equate to a relative drop in percentage of money raised. In fact, the only significant drop in percentage of money raised is in January, and that's almost entirely due to the success of the MCDM RPG in that same timeframe.

I plan on putting together a larger mid-year retrospective post in July once the June data come in, but what I have currently suggest that this might be a broader cycle that is only interrupted by a post-Christmas slump in spending and the concerted efforts of ZineQuest/ZineMonth.

April TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only things that have been added this time around are some median metrics for various variables (campaign type, platform, AI campaign performance).

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 145 campaigns
• 8 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 137 Kickstarter
• $6,529,324.42 raised
• $845,617.27 on Backerkit
• $0 on Crowdfundr
• $5,683,707.15 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 14 accessories
• 41 adventures
• 2 advice
• 1 art pack
• 6 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising campaign
• 2 reprints
• 46 supplements
• 32 systems
• 56 distinct systems used (19 original)
• 70 campaigns (48.28%) used D&D 5E and raised $2,486,324.42 (38.08% of all money raised in April)
• 33 campaigns used AI in some form (22.76% of total)
• These campaigns raised $310,089.95 (4.75% of all money raised in April)
• 23 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 32.86% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Big Takeaways

Since this post is coming late anyways, I'm going to eschew the usual breakdown by platform and look at a few pieces of the bigger picture.

Growth of AI

Unfortunately, April was the biggest month for projects using AI since I began tracking these data. The number of campaigns has stayed largely the same (19 in January, 35 in February, 34 in March, 33 in April), but the $310,089.95 raised by AI campaigns in April is a high water mark. This was mostly driven by one very successful campaign (The Captain's Logbook: 5E High Seas Adventure & Shipbuilding) as shown by the low average ($9,396.67) and median ($3,425.78) amount raised by these campaigns. Still, the general upward trend of funds raised by AI TTRPG campaigns is troubling to me personally.

Dropoff in Original Systems

There is usually a glut of campaigns using original systems every month that was absent in April. In March, 81 projects used original systems (30.34% of all campaigns) compared to only 19 in April (13.10% of all campaigns). Comparatively, D&D 5E was used in 69 projects in March (25.84%) and 70 in April (48.28%). I don't see the decrease in original systems a problem per se, but I do find it interesting that the perennial stable of 5E projects seem largely independent of the overall amount of crowdfunding campaigns.

Backerkit's Seeming Identity Crisis

I know I said I wouldn't get into individual platform minutia, but this seems worthy of commentary: Backerkit has consistently struggled to break through to a wide audience of people for their TTRPG campaigns. There aren't that many on the platform from month to month compared to Kickstarter, but they do fairly well on average. In April, for example, there were only 8 projects, but the average ($105,702.16) and median ($66,034.46) amounts raised are considerably higher than Kickstarter's ($41,486.91 average, $5,094.00 median). The platform continues to perform well for companies/people with large pre-existing audiences who will hear about the campaign regardless, but it appears to have trouble attracting the critical mass of people (both project creators and backers) who need to fill out the platform ecosystem and make it a real Kickstarter competitor.

It's (Not) Dangerous to Go Alone: Death of the Author

Welcome to the (much delayed) second entry in It's (Not) Dangerous To Go Alone, my ongoing series about playing and critiquing solo TTRPGs!

 

When Samantha Leigh reached out to ask if I wanted to review their latest game, Death of the Author, I was an immediate and enthusiastic yes. I love solo games, I really admire Samantha's work, and the premise of the game was fascinating: a game about "a Character who attempts to gain control over their story, despite the wishes of their Author." Compelling stuff!

So I sat down with a Necronomicon deck of tarot cards that a friend gave me this past Christmas and about an hour later I had played through all five chapters of the game. I created a Character so obsessed with avoiding death that they began manipulating cancer cells to achieve eternal life, a Friend who betrayed me after seeing what I planned to do to their ailing great-uncle, and a Foe who tried to stall my research in undergrad and continued to stalk me even after their initial failure.

But the most interesting outcome was how the confrontation with the Author went. Throughout the game, your Character has the ability to change their story by altering the tarot cards drawn during various scenes, each time drawing the attention and ire of the Author. The Author retaliates by drawing Major Arcana cards, trying to steal your victory from you by altering the story to subvert your desires. But in my game, the Author was not an all-powerful force of nature; he was a puddle of nerves, afraid of where his own story was going and uncomfortable with what was being revealed about himself by him writing it. His interjections into the story weren't in the form of acts of God but warnings to the Character about pursuing this path, pleas to turn back, feeble attempts to dissuade them from their research. In the end, the Character stood over their Author, barely even sparing them a glance before walking out of the story (and beyond their influence) forever. They did not achieve their original goal, but they had still essentially defeated their creator.

Now a large part of this outcome depended on the deck of tarot cards I was using, and not just the value of the cards that were drawn. As I said, this was a Necronomicon-themed deck filled with Lovecraftian monstrosities, so the genre and tone of the game was basically set from the jump. On top of that, all the Major Arcana cards represented fears of some sort (fear of death, of madness, and of science being the Character, Friend, and Foe cards respectively), so the Author that the deck conjured up did not feel like a godlike figure of power but rather a sniveling puke of a man afraid of his story, his characters, and what they said about him. How to square this, then, with a game that is supposed to be about fighting for control?

The deck is quite horrific but set the scene beautifully.

Well it can't be. Not really. Because this game is less about fighting against a malicious tyrant trying to force you to conform than it is about bracing yourself against the relentless onslaught of the tyranny of chance. As Cezar Capacle recently pointed out in a post about how to make our cognitive biases work for us, we're wired to find patterns in a set of random data and create stories to explain it. It's arguably how reading tarot works in the first place, and it's the basic function of any solo game with a randomizer. This story might have an Author, but that Author is subject to the rules of the game the same as the Character is. More, even, as the Character always has the player on their side; the tenor of the Author depends largely on the cards you draw, which are then open to interpretation and pattern-creation by the player. The Author you end up with is the Author that you create to fit the story you're in, not the other way round.

Any misfortune that happens in this game is created by random chance and what the player brings to the table rather than by someone with their own ideas about what your Character should be doing. You could almost say that this game is a better simulation of real life than it is a character in a story since things tend to actually happen for a reason in stories (even if those reasons aren't necessarily nice or good). In this game, the characters and Author alike are swept along by the whims of the tarot deck, with only the player to steer the ship through the treacherous waters.

Pictured: your average Death of the Author player.

So does the game deliver on its premise? Are you playing "a Character who attempts to gain control over their story, despite the wishes of their Author"? Well, yes and no. The prompts in the early access version of the game that I played almost leave too much open to interpretation and don't try to force the Character in the direction that the Author wants enough. Indeed, it's never set out what exactly it is that the Author wants for the Character in the first place. I rarely felt like I was butting up against invisible walls or the dreaded railroad of the authoritarian GM. But in the end I had a fascinating relationship with my Author that probably couldn't have happened with a more heavy-handed approach to the game!

My best advice to people interested in this game:

• The Author is only as rough as you make them, so if you want the experience promised by the game you've got to be willing to get in the mud and put your Character through it.
• The tarot deck you use is going to influence you more than you might think, so be careful what you pick. I know that my next playthrough will probably be with my Mystical Cat deck and I'm sure that experience will be wildly different.
• Don't let the cognitive biases get you down; put them to work and enjoy the ride.
  

 

 

Death of the Author comes to Backerkit on May 14.

March TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only things that have been added this time around are some median metrics for various variables (campaign type, platform, AI campaign performance).

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 267 campaigns
• 21 Backerkit
• 14 Crowdfundr
• 232 Kickstarter
• $5,866,948.48 raised
• $939,594.09 on Backerkit
• $30,063.15 on Crowdfundr
• $4,897,291.24 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 20 accessories
• 73 adventures
• 1 advice
• 10 campaign settings
• 2 fundraising campaigns
• 66 supplements
• 93 systems
• 2 zines
• 129 distinct systems used (81 original)
• 69 campaigns (25.84%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,918,554.37 (32.70% of all money raised in March)
• 34 campaigns used AI in some form (12.73% of total)
• These campaigns raised $95,239.73 (1.62% of all money raised in March)
• 15 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 21.74% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Adventures On the Purple Planet...and Beyond! by Goodman Games ($294,820 from 1,859 backers)
2. Dagger in the Heart by Rowan, Rook, and Decard ($219,802.07 from 2,575 backers)
3. Battlezoo Ancestries: Classic Creatures for 5E and Pathfinder 2e by Roll For Combat ($90,435 from 993 backers)
4. The Bird Oracle by Shing Yin Khor ($83,902 from 913 backers)
5. Perfect Draw! A Card Game Anime Roleplaying Game by Double Summon Games ($45,161.01 from 1,413 backers)

March was a respectable showing for Backerkit, bringing in just under $1 million dollars. Over a third of that ($380,505) can be attributed to Goodman Games' Purple Planet event, combining 9 projects across 8 publishers into one big push for funding. This is, by all accounts, quite successful overall, with all 9 projects getting fully funded and then some. Certainly it was most successful for Goodman Games, which received 85.85% ($326,680) of the money, raising the question: who's getting the best deal from this arrangement? The other participants are presumably much smaller than Goodman Games and benefitting from the increased exposure that a larger company can give them, but Goodman Games receives the lion's share of the money. I'm absolutely not suggesting impropriety here (that could only happen if Goodman Games was demanding some kind of licensing fee for participating in this event, which is not happening), but it makes me wonder: what is the best way to collaborate across artists and companies? Do smaller creators benefit most from working with other similar-sized creators, or from riding the drafts behind a larger entity?

Crowdfundr's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Bahía Gris, un juego en solitario de pesca y enigmas con un toque de horror by ¡Rol o Barbarie! ($6,789.61 from 452 backers)
2. No-Tell Motel: A Single Player Murder Mystery RPG by Ken Lowery ($5,425 from 192 backers)
3. Beth and Angel Make a Campaign by Beth and Angel ($3,297 from 177 backers)
4. Teldramir: The Northern and Southern Stillwilds by Adam Ma ($3,125 from 60 backers)
5. Random Realities: 60+ oracle results on every single page to aid any solo RPG! by Cezar Capacle ($1,934.72 from 97 backers)

Crowdfundr closes out March still riding the end of ZineMonth, albeit pretty successfully. Bahía Gris is the big winner here, but barely scratches the money made by some of the lowest-funded campaigns on other platforms. Still, it's really interesting that a campaign leading with a Spanish title tops the chart here considering how much English-speakers dominate the TTRPG crowdfunding sphere. We also have some RPGLATAM projects successfully funded this month with Random Realities and From Midgard to Eternity, both solo TTRPG projects.

Kickstarter's March

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Legend in the Mist RPG by Amít Moshe / Son of Oak Game Studio ($855,686 from 8,156 backers)
2. The Tomb of Gyzaengaxx: Adventure & Campaign Setting by Gooey Cube ($635,750 from 2,964 backers)
3. Veil of the Eternal Night - Gothic Horror for 5e & MythCraft by Grant Mielke ($454,638 from 2,803 backers)
4. Vampire: The Masquerade - CHAPTERS (Definitive Edition) by Flyos Games ($392,676.74 from 3,953 backers)
5. The Map Library – A Huge Box Set of RPG Battle Maps by Roll & Play Press ($340,838.58 from 3,028 backers)

The top 5 campaigns on Kickstarter in March are interesting, as it's mostly well-established systems that are making more money than the biggest campaign from February. We're probably still seeing the knockdown effects from ZineQuest/ZineMonth with larger indie campaigns (Legend in the Mist excepted) perhaps not having launched until the beginning of March and thus likely to end sometime in April.

That said, the average Kickstarter campaign raised more money in March ($21,109.01) than in January ($11,435.03) or February ($11,487.04) while the median campaign raised less ($2,956.05 vs $4,190.04 and $3,701.65, respectively). I'll be very curious to see how these numbers compare to April's, by which time any ZQ/ZiMo effects should be well and truly over.

February 2024 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only additions this month is tracking when campaigns begin and how long they run for.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 232 campaigns
• 12 Backerkit
• 5 Crowdfundr
• 215 Kickstarter
• $3,374,090.03 raised
• $884,266.93 on Backerkit
• $20,109.28 on Crowdfundr
• $2,469,713.82 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 16 accessories
• 47 adventures
• 5 advice
• 1 audiobook
• 1 bundle
• 4 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising campaign
• 78 supplements
• 78 systems
• 1 zine
• 108 distinct systems used (55 original)
• 54 campaigns (23.28%) used D&D 5E and raised $568,095.60 (16.84% of all money raised in February)
• 35 campaigns featured AI (15.09% of total)
• These campaigns raised $236,973.58 (7.02% of all money raised in February)
• 21 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 38.89% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's February

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide 5E by Kobold Press ($461,868 from 5711 backers)
2. Vault 5e: Crafting & Alchemy by Cubicle 7 Games ($159,284.21 from 1973 backers)
3. Tomb of a Thousand Doors: A Mausritter Megadungeon by Matthew Morris ($94,305 from 1336 backers)
4. Battle for the Realm (5e) by Midnight Tower ($86,882.76 from 1371 backers)
5. Level Up: A5E Gate Pass Gazette Annual 2023 by Morrus ($72,695.11 from 901 backers)

ZineQuest and ZineMonth always bring a mind-boggling amount of TTRPG projects to Kickstarter and 2024 was no exception. Three times as many campaigns ended in February as did in January, and that's with fewer days to actually work with. Interestingly, the average Kickstarter campaign raised about the same amount of money between the two months ($11,435.03 in January vs $11,487.04 in February) but the median amount was nearly $500 higher in January ($4,190.04 vs $3,701.65).

One effect that ZineQuest/Month may have had, though, is tamping down the higher-profile indie campaigns. As you can see, the top 5 campaigns in February are unusually D&D 5E heavy and also primarily from well-established companies in that sphere as well (Kobold Press, Cubicle 7 Game, Morrus). From completely anecdotal evidence, this is likely because larger indie creators tend to not launch campaigns during ZineQuest/Month to allow smaller creators better access to the money and energy that these events create.

Backerkit's February

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. The Covens of Midnight - A Tarot-Based GM-less RPG by Crossed Paths Press ($425,908.06 from 4504 backers)
2. Memento Mori - A Roleplaying Game of Dreams and Corruption by Two Little Mice ($230,847.67 from 1630 backers)
3. Can You See Them? A Scenario Book for the Horror RPG. by DMDave Publishing ($105,076 from 1095 backers)
4. Punk is Dead - a Mörk Borg compatible songwriting TTRPG by Critical Kit Ltd ($91,416.03 from 1422 backers)
5. Advanced Rules by RV Games ($7,781 from 295 backers)

Unfortunately we cannot make the same comparisons between January and February for Backerkit for two reasons: 1) there were only 4 campaigns in January; and 2) one of those campaigns was MCDM RPG. As such, the 'average' campaign in January raised $1,152,213.92, while the median campaign raised $3,777.61. Compare this to the average ($73,688.91) and median ($6,662.59) campaign in February. These are just not comparable numbers.

Most notable in February's numbers, I would say, is the vast gulf between the top 4 campaigns and everything else. Covens of Midnight and Memento Mori hold the distinction of being original systems with glossy production values, while Can You See Them? and Punk is Dead are both supplements for fairly popular systems (Year Zero Engine and Mörk Borg, respectively), but all 4 are operating in (or close to) the six-figure realm. This is several orders of magnitude higher than the fifth spot game, which is also a supplement for a very popular game (Mothership). I have to wonder if this is due to Backerkit's baffling ranking system, which seems to push already successful and popular campaigns to the top of the Tabletop/Role-Playing categories (sometimes even putting already finished campaigns above ones that are still running).

Crowdfundr's February

The top (and only) 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

1. Return to Perinthos: A Memorial Book Fundraiser in the Memory of Jennell Jaquays by Violet Ballard ($11,590 from 277 backers)
2. Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid by TTRPGKids ($4,340 from 153 backers)
3. ARKYVR by Alewood Games ($2,200 from 86 backers)
4. The H.O.M.E. Handbook - A Tiny Supers Expansion by Gallant Knight Games ($1,852 from 114 backers)
5. Glaive-Guisarme-Glaive: Historical-ish Wargaming by Chris Longhurst ($127.28 from 8 backers)

Crowdfundr is back babyyyyyyyy! And it even has enough successful campaigns to fill out a top 5! Unfortunately this is still a marked decrease from last year's Tabletop Nonstop event, which had 10 successful campaigns end in February. There's also a pretty steep dropoff from the top-performing campaign to the other four, and that's with the significant social media attention that Jennell Jaquays' unfortunate passing received in the broader TTRPG community. I really wish that Crowdfundr was performing better, as I have had a pretty good experience running campaigns on the platform, but I'm struggling to understand what exactly it's bringing to the table that would really entice people to choose it over Kickstarter or Backerkit.

ZineQuest/Month retrospective

In the big picture, what does the glut of TTRPG campaigns for ZineQuest/Month do for the space? Well, the main thing is the influx of creatives inspired to actually make something and crowdfund it, because the money surprisingly stays fairly consistent.

Across all platforms in January, the average campaign (excluding MCDM RPG) raised $11,079.28 and the median campaign (including MCDM RPG) raised $4,031.06. In contrast, across all platforms in February, the average campaign raised $14,543.49 and the median campaign raised $3,875.61.

Be aware that the x-axis is not spaced out proportionally

The stacked bar graph above shows that in both January and February, the vast majority of TTRPG campaigns raised $10,000 or less. Interestingly, the first four bins have an almost identical distribution of campaigns relative to the total for each month:

• January (74 campaigns)
• $0-$10,000: 56 (75.7%)
• $10,001-$20,000: 9 (12.2%)
• $20,001-$30,000: 3 (4.1%)
• $30,001-$40,000: 1 (1.4%)
• February (232 campaigns)
• $0-$10,000: 177 (76.3%)
• $10,001-$20,000: 26 (11.2%)
• $20,001-$30,000: 9 (3.9%)
• $30,001-$40,000: 4 (1.7%)

I certainly can't say anything qualitative about ZineQuest/Month, but quantitatively? It has an enormous impact on the money that enters the field, and crucially does not appreciably dilute the amount that any individual (successful) campaign sees.

January 2024 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

For an overview of my methodology, please refer to my original November post. The only additions this month is tracking when campaigns begin and how long they run for.

As always, the raw data are available for you to peruse at your leisure.

The big picture statistics:

• 74 campaigns
• 4 Backerkit
• 0 Crowdfundr
• 70 Kickstarter
• $5,409,307.59 raised
• $4,608,855.66 on Backerkit
• $800,451.93 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 6 accessories
• 21 adventures
• 4 campaign settings
• 25 supplements
• 14 systems
• 27 distinct systems used (11 original)
• 31 campaigns (41.89%) used D&D 5E and raised $363,665.69 (6.72% of all money raised in January)
• 19 campaigns featured AI
• 12 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 38.71% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Kickstarter's January

The top 5 TTRPG campaigns were:

• Setting Guide to Retia - A D&D 5th Edition Handbook (~$156,000 from 1664 backers) by Nat19
• 2D6 Realm - A Classic Overland Crawler Solo Player Game ($90,829.89 from 1593 backers) by Toby Lancaster
• Wayfinder Compass for Paizo's Pathfinder ($79,370.81 from 695 backers) by TYPE40
• Periodic Table of Elementals, by Catilus ($65,648.46 from 1961 backers) by Catilus
• Evolved - Superhero TTRPG - Powered by DCC RPG ($35,907 from 427 backers) by Eric Bloat

Not the most promising start to the year for Kickstarter, especially after declining revenue from the tabletop category for the second year in a row. I highly recommend reading that article in whole, however, as it shows that there were more successfully funded projects this year than ever before (and that revenue from tabletop campaigns is still above what it was pre-pandemic). Take these trends with a grain of salt when applied to TTRPGs though, as it's almost definitely board games that really fuel the money in that field.

The main campaign of note from January is the physical Wayfinder Compass, which started at AU$135 (equivalent to about US$87.50 at the time of writing) and saw all 5 of its Deluxe Wayfinders (AU$1425/US$925) claimed. This kind of luxury item really sets the upper limit of what some hobbyists are willing to spend (living among the 3-book base set of D&D, scrolls of Fall of Magic/City of Winter, Monte Cook's infamous Black Cube, and the rewards offered from the MCDM RPG that will be discussed later in this post). If I may editorialize briefly, I don't really think these kinds of items are necessarily the best for the hobby as a whole (and this comes from someone who was recently gifted both Fall of Magic and City of Winter at my own request). High-priced luxury items are already status symbols of conspicuous consumption, and the more that this industry is pushed toward that level of production value the more smaller creators will get left behind. They also promote a sunk cost fallacy; having invested a considerable amount (both financially and emotionally) in a game, people might feel like they need to get the money's worth out of that game.

To be perfectly clear, I do not blame TYPE40 for wanting to make this product (though I might slightly blame people for backing it) or Heart of the Deernicorn for making their high quality scrolls. I'm simply identifying something that is already troubling as a trend in terms of the pressures it places on smaller artists/games.

Backerkit's January

This is an easy one, as there were only four campaigns in January:

• The MCDM RPG (~$4,600,000 from 30,177 backers) by MCDM Productions
• One Dollar One Shot - Legend of the Silver Colosseum ($3,876 from 748 backers) by Penny Dragon
• The Dead Mines: Reforged ($3,679.22 from 160 backers) by Dragonshorn Studios
• Dead Wedding A Solo 5e Adventure ($780.44 from 116 backers) by Parts Per Million Limited

Weird month for Backerkit. The MCDM RPG leaves everything else in the dust, helped in no small part by the $500 Ajax Edition of the game (all but 2 of the 1874 offered were claimed). But even those expensive options 'only' raised $937,000, meaning $3,663,520 was raised by roughly 28,303 other backers. As I said before, I feel deeply ambivalent/anxious about these luxury offers, but clearly this campaign did not need the luxury option to drive it to success. This game is going to really be the thing to watch as the campaign begins fulfilment. Will it prove a serious challenge to D&D or just be something of a flash in the pan? If I had to guess, I'd say that this is the beginning of another Paizo-esque challenger: an alternative to D&D that will have its set of devoted adherents but will claim a slice of market share several magnitudes smaller than D&D's.

Conclusions

It's hard to draw large conclusions from this set of data. I suspect that January is always a slow month just because people don't have much energy for running crowdfunding campaigns during the holidays and might be putting money into other places in their life. (Many assumptions going into this - that people live in a country that celebrates Christmas, that they celebrate Christmas, that this changes their behavior - but I think they hold up since Kickstarter is mostly a Western platform to begin with.) I don't feel like doing any graphs this month, but the next installment should be fascinating what with ZineQuest/ZineMonth happening.