July TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective

We're so back (and by "back" I mean releasing this retrospective almost a month late).

No preamble this time, here's July's data.

• 158 campaigns
• 14 Backerkit
• 1 Crowdfundr
• 143 Kickstarter
• $5,453,795.93 raised
• $978,983.04 on Backerkit
• $2,183.00 on Crowdfundr
• $4,472,629.89 on Kickstarter
• Types of campaigns
• 13 accessories
• 49 adventures
• 1 audiobook
• 7 campaign settings
• 1 fundraising
• 1 LARP
• 1 reprint
• 57 supplements
• 24 systems
• 1 zine
• 42 distinct systems used (12 original)
• 76 campaigns (48.10%) used D&D 5E and raised $1,544,866.12 (28.33% of all money raised in July)
• 43 campaigns used AI in some form (27.22% of total)
• These campaigns raised $157,621.97 (2.89% of all money raised in July)
• 31 of these were D&D 5E campaigns, accounting for 40.79% of all 5E crowdfunding campaigns

Backerkit's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit in July were:

1. Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure 5E+DCC by Goodman Games ($654,928 from 5,231 backers)
2. Eldritch Automata by Gehenna Gaming ($138,411 from 1,454 backers)
3. Trickerion - The Role-playing Game by Shadowlands Games ($55,321.94 from 535 backers)
4. Grimwild by Oddity Press ($41,830 from 590 backers)
5. The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow for Liminal Horror by Space Penguin Ink LLC ($22,295 from 502 backers)

Not much I want to comment on here, though I will return to Eldritch Automata at the end of the article for an interesting comparison between crowdfunding platforms.

Crowdfundr's July

There was one single TTRPG crowdfunding campaign on Crowdfundr in July: BANNERS: A New RPG by John Wick ($2,183 from 192 backers).

Kickstarter's July

The top 5 crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter in July were:

1. DC20 by The Dungeon Coach ($2,235,231 from 20,685 backers)
2. The Official Role-Playing Game of the PLANET OF THE APES by Magnetic Press Play ($324,681 from 1,971 backers)
3. Bria's Mythical Menagerie - Creature-Collecting for 5e by Grant Mielke ($208,793 from 1,968 backers)
4. Castles & Crusades Reforged by Stephen Chenault ($169,613 from 1,373 backers)
5. Helluva Town - A Cartoon Gangster RPG by Acheron International ($138,293 from 1,920 backers)

I have to say, I was utterly shocked when I saw the DC20 campaign at the beginning of July. Here was something I hadn't heard even a whisper of, knew nothing about the people involved with it, but raised nearly half of what MCDM RPG (now Draw Steel) did. Just a reminder of how big this space is, when even monumentally successful crowdfunding campaigns don't break through to certain corners.

Backerkit vs Kickstarter

July gave an interesting opportunity to directly observe some differences between Backerkit and Kickstarter through 2 campaigns: Eldritch Automata and Oracle Monster Generator. Both of these were alternately on both platforms, though in opposite orders.

Let's start with Eldritch Automata. The first iteration of this came to Kickstarter on January 2, 2024 and raised $37,372 from 453 backers out of a goal of $65,000. As far as I can tell (I didn't back it so I don't have access to all of the updates), the campaign failed to reach its funding goal on February 1 and the creators behind it decided to relaunch the campaign "following some tweaks, improvements, and reassessment of our goals and budget." According to the linked post, this primarily involved figuring out how to lower printing costs, creating a quickstart, and getting more promo material (art/interviews/articles/actual plays) together.

And by all accounts, this strategy succeeded massively! The relaunched campaign (on Backerkit) vastly exceeded the stated goal of $10,000 and ended up at over double the original Kickstarter goal. Based on a casual perusal of the Backerkit page, I can see evidence of the work they did: a free quickstart document, far more art, links to Actual Plays, etc. The one thing that isn't clear: how exactly did they reduce the goal by such a significant amount? It doesn't seem like the scope of the project changed and the pledge tiers stayed more or less the same. I suspect that they reduced the target goal primarily to build momentum for the campaign, given that they already had something of a built-in audience from the unsuccessful campaign earlier in the year. To be clear, I don't think this is bad or wrong by any means, but it behooves us to properly examine how certain games break through and become successful. In this case, the team made some very smart decisions between the first and second campaigns that paid off, but these decisions come with literal price tags: commissioning art, getting people to do an AP, reducing the crowdfunding campaign goal. Anyone looking to revamp a flagging crowdfunding campaign would do well to look to Eldritch Automata for inspiration, but make sure that you understand what those choices entail.

The other example, Oracle Monster Generator, had the reverse timeline: a highly successful Backerkit campaign ending in June followed by a less successful (but still funded) Kickstarter campaign in July. The reasons for this are, in many ways, both more and less clear than for Eldritch Automata:

I find it really fascinating that there is a sizeable number of people who seemingly just don't want to go to Backerkit for crowdfunding campaigns. To compare the numbers, the original Backerkit campaign raised $103,096 from 1,454 backers while the Kickstarter campaign raised $31,999 from 463 backers. This suggests that if the original campaign had been on Kickstarter they could have raised nearly 33% more money at least! Obviously this is pure speculation considering that the Kickstarter campaign wasn't really crowdfunding (there was already a finished product that might have been in people's hands, greatly enhancing the faith in potential backers that they would actually get something if they backed it), but the numbers are startling nevertheless.

There aren't many widely applicable lessons to draw here since these two examples had almost exactly opposite experiences, but even so these are really interesting direct comparisons that you normally can't get.

January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 3: $100,000+ Campaigns and Fun Stuff

Closing out the half year review, here's part 3. Check out parts 1 and 2 and the raw data if you haven't already.

$100,000+ Campaigns

As you've probably already suspected, most TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns don't necessarily make that much money. I already showed that in Part 2, with the median project across all platforms across all six months making $4,120.80. But what's the distribution of money raised across all these campaigns, you ask?

Distribution of US Dollars raised across 1030 campaigns:

• <$1,000: 155 campaigns
• $1,000-6,000: 458
• $6,000-11,000: 142
• $11,000-16,000: 63
• $16,000-21,000: 38
• $21,000-26,000: 19
• $26,000-31,000: 8
• $31,000-36,000: 10
• $36,000-41,000: 11
• $41,000-46,000: 9
• $46,000-51,000: 10
• $51,000-56,000: 5
• $56,000-61,000: 4
• $61,000-66,000: 6
• $66,000-71,000: 6
• $71,000-76,000: 4
• $76,000-81,000: 3
• $81,000-86,000: 4
• $86,000-91,000: 3
• $91,000-96,000: 4
• $96,000-100,000: 1
• $100,000+: 67

It's stark, honestly, to see the long tail trailing off towards the $100,000+ category. Out of 1030 campaigns, only 67 make it into the six-figure category. 755 (fully 3/4 of all campaigns) make $11,000 or less!

And the disparity in total money raised across these campaigns is stark too.

Proportion of total money raised:

• Campaigns that raised less than $100,000
• 963 campaigns (93.5% of campaigns)
• $11,641,364.54 (34% of total money)
• D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 22 campaigns (2.1% of campaigns)
• $7,321,232.25 (21% of total money)
• Non-D&D campaigns that raised more than $100,000
• 45 campaigns (4.4% of campaigns)
• $15,393,145.74 (45% of total money)

Ultimately, 6.5% of all campaigns in the first half of 2024 raised almost 2/3 of the money in the same time period.

Fun Stuff

Full disclosure, most of this is entirely stats about when campaigns start and end.

Campaign Length

Distribution of campaign lengths:

• 1-3 days: 6 campaigns
• 4-6: 15
• 7-9: 21
• 10-12: 21
• 13-15: 132
• 16-18: 47
• 19-21: 87
• 22-24: 85
• 25-27: 40
• 28-30: 453
• 31-33: 53
• 34-36: 18
• 37-39: 5
• 40-42: 12
• 43-45: 12
• 46+: 23

It's no surprise to me that the largest categories of campaign length generally fall on the 2, 3, and 4 week marks, but I do find it interesting that more people prefer a roughly 2-week campaign to anything between that and a month in length.

Start and End Days

Campaigns have very clear start day preferences: people don't like to launch campaigns on the weekend.

• Sunday: 29 campaigns
• Monday: 103
• Tuesday: 383
• Wednesday: 183
• Thursday: 204
• Friday: 98
• Saturday: 30

End day preferences are less clear.

• Sunday: 92 campaigns
• Monday: 89
• Tuesday: 134
• Wednesday: 124
• Thursday: 285
• Friday: 198
• Saturday: 108

It makes sense that these are a little more evenly distributed: I imagine few people are thinking about what day they want a campaign to end on. The broad frequency of the middle of the week tracks though; considering that so many campaigns last 7/14/21/28 days give or take, campaigns will tend to end on the day of the week that they started on or a few days later.

Start and End Dates

I will not be including the histograms for these data, as they will be too complicated and lengthy to write out, but I will share some interesting tidbits.

Most common date for a campaign to start: the 1st (118 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to start: the 24th (8 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to start: the 13th

Most common date for a campaign to end: the 2nd (65 campaigns)

Least common date for a campaign to end: the 24th (18 campaigns)

Median date for a campaign to end: the 15th

And that's it...for now

That's all folks! At least, for the first six months of data. As I write this, it is August 1st, 2024, which means I have another month of data to look at. See you back here in a few weeks or so!

January-June TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective Pt 2: ~D&D~

As promised, here is part 2 of the half-year crowdfunding retrospective. Check out part 1 and the raw data if you haven't already.

Warning: actual statistics contained in this article. Proceed cautiously.

D&D vs Non-D&D Projects (Averages)

Something I've long been interested in since before starting this project is how D&D crowdfunding projects fare compared to non-D&D projects. I'm well aware of high-profile high-earning projects based on 5e and on other systems (original ones, PBTA, Year Zero, Forged in the Dark, etc), but what do the data say?

Average USD raised by all campaigns, D&D projects, non-D&D projects, and AI projects

• January (75 projects)
• All: $72,133.94
• D&D: $11,479.53
• Non-D&D: $117,272.10
• AI: $5,961.51
• February (232 projects)
• All: $14,551.75
• D&D: $10,399.54
• Non-D&D: $15,904.18
• AI: $6,770.67
• March (267 projects)
• All: $21,973.59
• D&D: $27,805.14
• Non-D&D: $19,941.38
• AI: $4,479.97
• April (145 projects)
• All: $45,029.82
• D&D: $34,497.92
• Non-D&D: $54,591.68
• AI: $9,396.67
• May (151 projects)
• All: $52,807.94
• D&D: $84,426.41
• Non-D&D: $33,088.90
• AI: $7,394.13
• June (160 projects)
• All: $32,496.37
• D&D: $27,751.97
• Non-D&D: $36,003.11
• AI: $6,348.63
• Total (1030 projects)
• All: $33,355.09
• D&D: $34,115.85
• Non-D&D: $32,958.42
• AI: $6,771.98

In all honesty, this figure does not tell us all that much. Without multiple years of data, we can't be sure whether the variability seen from month-to-month is expected or not. The most important information I can share is the statistical analysis of D&D 5e vs non-D&D projects and AI vs non-AI projects.

The tests used here are two-sample t-tests assuming unequal variance. To break this down:

• t-test: statistical test used to determine whether the response of a sample or samples is statistically significant
• two-sample: this t-test compares the average of two populations to see if they are statistically different from each other
• unequal variance: the two samples are not the same size and are not assumed to have the same variation

The null hypothesis (expectation that I tested) was that there is no difference between the average money raised by projects using D&D 5e and projects that don't. As we know from above, the average D&D project raised more money ($34,115.85) than the average non-D&D project ($32,958.42). But the difference between these averages is only $1,157.43 (not that much considering there are projects raising millions of dollars). So what does the t-test say?

When comparing the average of 353 D&D projects to 675 non-D&D projects, the p-value (chance that the observed difference between the populations could have occurred by chance) was 0.9013. This means that although the observed difference in the average money raised by D&D vs non-D&D projects was not 0, there is about a 90% chance that the difference in money raised is essentially the product of random chance. Statistically speaking, there is no evidence that projects using D&D are more successful than non-D&D projects, and vice versa.

Compare this to the analysis of AI vs non-AI campaigns. The average project using AI raised considerably less money ($6,771.98) than projects that didn't use AI ($39,329.18). But is this difference significant?

Yes! When comparing the average of 189 AI projects vs 841 non-AI projects, the p-value was 0.000001774 (a 0.0001774% chance that the observed difference occurred by chance). The difference in average money raised between AI and non-AI projects is significant. However, we cannot say definitively that the use of AI is the driving force behind this significant result. The correlation is strong, but there could be any number of confounding variables associated with the use of AI. For example, use of AI could heavily correlate with lower quality products or poorly advertised campaigns or lazy ideas or lack of originality...the list goes on. If this was the case (and there's basically no way to test this), then it's not technically the use of AI itself that is driving the difference.

D&D vs Non-D&D Projects (Medians)

One metric we can use to further examine the differences here is looking at the median amount of money raised. Whereas averages are heavily impacted by outliers (looking at you MCDM RPG), median values can give us a good idea of the distribution of money raised by various categories of campaigns.

• January
• All: $4,016.43
• D&D: $3,367.38
• Non-D&D: $5,157.00
• AI: $3,805.52
• February
• All: $3,875.61
• D&D: $3,031.00
• Non-D&D: $3,978.00
• AI: $3,701.65
• March
• All: $3,025.60
• D&D: $2,592.03
• Non-D&D: $3,334.27
• AI: $1,669.64
• April
• All: $5,425.73
• D&D: $3,481.15
• Non-D&D: $2,364.00
• AI: $3,425.78
• May
• All: $7,055.91
• D&D: $8,868.50
• Non-D&D: $6,199.92
• AI: $3,779.22
• June
• All: $4,342.50
• D&D: $4,140.50
• Non-D&D: $4,342.50
• AI: $3,332.00
• Total
• All: $4,120.80
• D&D: $3,433.30
• Non-D&D: $4,516.00
• AI: $3,262.55

Now these data come with a BIG caveat: it's very difficult to compare medians between groups. There are no statistical tests to say whether the difference is statistically significant, and you could have samples with exactly the same median that have wildly different qualities that are hugely relevant (variance, size, average, mode, etc). That said, there are interesting things to be said when comparing the median and average of the same population.

For example, the medians of all categories of projects across all months are considerably lower than the averages. This tells us that even though the average amount of money raised is fairly high, that metric is consistently being pulled up by a few high-earning projects. In theory, an average should be right in the middle of the population, but here we're seeing that when you count the (for example) 73rd project in April when the projects are all arrayed from least to most money raised, that project raised $5,425.73, almost nine times less than the average of $45,029.82. Since this pattern is consistent across all timeframes and categories, this tells us that the majority of projects earn far less money than the average would suggest.

I don't know a way to verify this, but I suspect that this is part of the reason that there isn't a significant difference in money raised by D&D vs non-D&D projects: the average just doesn't represent a strong middle of the actual population. This is somewhat borne out by the median money raised by D&D ($3,433.30) vs non-D&D ($4,516.00) projects. Even though there are fewer D&D projects overall, they have a larger proportion of projects that raise fairly little money and potentially a larger proportion of projects that raise a lot of money.

On that subject, stay tuned for part 3 where I'll delve into those projects that make a lot of money, along with some random for-fun statistics.

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.