Crowdfunding began to change the RPG world in 2012, when Monte Cook Games campaigned Numenera. At the time Monte Cook was best known for his work at Wizards of the Coast, and a new game with new mechanics in an unfamiliar science-fantasy setting was not what one would call a sure bet. On Kickstarter, though, the project gathered more than half a million dollars and made it clear that the DIY financing opportunities presented by crowdfunding were very real and very useful. Fourteen years later, crowdfunding is both an enabling technology for hundreds if not thousands of creators and is the way many RPG creators are able to get their games made at all.

Like most of the hobby, all crowdfunding is not created equal. In 2016 the first RPG Kickstarter crested a million dollars, and then in 2024 the first RPG Kickstarter exceeded ten million dollars. While Numenera went on to have a long sales cycle after its crowdfunding, more and more companies are building their revenue around Kickstarter; many crowdfunded games will earn 80% or more of their revenue from crowdfunding and provide little to no sales tail (what I call the “Kickstarter Thud”). And these two phenomena are encroaching on each other, with new creators often leveraging massive YouTube audiences into equally massive crowdfunding campaigns which then melt into the hobby with little fanfare.