Step right up, step right up! The Crowdfunding Carnival is continuing for March, and we’ve got a doozy of a month to look at. In the wake of Zine Month, where are all those dollars going? And how was Zine Month, anyway? Seamushitthegames but I’ll be hitting the numbers, comparing Zine Month with ZineQuests of years past and seeing if we can’t draw a few conclusions.
Like last month, the quantitative part of the Crowdfunding Carnival comes from a start-of-month snapshot done the Monday before the article goes live. While this can’t capture every campaign that goes down over the timeframe, it at least gives us an idea of where the funding needles are pointing for Kickstarter, Gamefound, and Indiegogo. And for March, the needles are pointing up. There is about $400,000 more funding in play at the start of March than there was at the start of February, and over twice as many projects. And while this snapshot doesn’t give us a whole story, both Zine Month and some general pickup coming out of the post-holiday slump can share the credit for this uplift.
Step right up, step right up! We’re changing the focus of Kickstarter Wonk and needed an equally dorky name! That’s right, Crowdfunding Carnival is the new, improved, and expanded version of Kickstarter Wonk, looking further across the crowdfunding world to bring you the latest and greatest in homegrown and original TTRPGs. For this kickoff article, though, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the TTRPG crowdfunding landscape and why it looks the way it looks.
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for December! I don’t know what it is about timing at this time of year. Several great campaigns are ending today or ended yesterday, not really giving enough time for readers to grace them with their clicks. On the other hand, it seems like everyone is rushing to get a campaign wrapped before the holidays…and some of these campaigns needed to bake a little longer. No matter. I read a lot, but these seven I will stand behind as new games you should definitely check out. Onward!
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for November! There’s a whole bunch going on here as the year gets darker, and it’s a perfect time to stay in and play some games. This is also where the spooky games ended up: we have sea shanty poltergeists, food horror, and even a game where all women are werewolves! In addition, though it’s not a new game and as such isn’t included below, the new box set of Mothership has also gone live on Kickstarter and it looks sick. Even though it doesn’t quite fall in the bounds of a Kickstarter Wonk selection, it’s still definitely worth noting. As far as what does fall in those bounds, we have 8 (plus one) really neat games to check out this month. Grab your dice, pencils, and tarot cards!
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for October! It’s not exactly that spooky in here. I mean, there’s a bit of grimdark, and some goblins, but overall things are light, bright, and colorful. And there are several games about food. Overall though it’s a great crop, with eight games and an honorable mention zine that should make it into your campaign. Ready? Onward!
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for September! We’re nearly ¾ of the way through this weird-ass year, and the desire for more escapism hasn’t abated. While we might *still* be gaming on Zoom, designers from all over the world are ready to serve up new twists. Whether it’s magical realist convenience stores, fantasy adventure insects, or just a nice blimp, Kickstarter (and a new upstart) have what you need to keep your mind off (waving hands) all of this.
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for August! Now, you might be looking down the headings and notice we only have seven games and an honorable mention. Well, that’s because, whether you know it or not, you got way more Kickstarter content this month than usual! Check out my preview of Dreampunk, which is still live for another ten days…really neat game using imagery cards to drive play through a dream world. Then you can read Seamus’s quickstart review of Avatar Legends, the new game from Magpie Games! That brings us up to nine, but you can count Avatar Legends twice if you also read the Meet the Party Seamus put together. Beyond those, though, all eight below are all worth checking out, and should help you ease the pain of missing this year’s superspreader event GenCon.
Welcome to Kickstarter Wonk for July! Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of games being campaigned out there this summer. You may be wondering why I don’t have ten this month, if there were more than ten to choose from. Well, I see two potential reasons. First, even with the delays from COVID, we’re entering GenCon season. GenCon season means people worried about *selling* games are running to Kickstarter, producing dozens of campaigns with that two-character automatic disqualification: 5E. Don’t get me wrong, these games might be perfectly fine, but they aren’t original games, so they fall outside my criteria. Beyond that, a number of the games out in the Kickstarter aether this month were… well, not great. I’m going to tend to not cover games which use some of their precious campaign wordcount to tell me they “use a dice-rolling mechanic”. Oh brother. Fear not, though! These eight campaigns are worth reading. Are they worth spending your hard-earned cash? You’ll only know if you read past the jump.
Welcome to June! 2021 is heating up, at least if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, but in the RPG space it’s heating up all over! I had way more than 10 games to read this month, and several I had to check out less than 24 hours before this went live! Designers are wild out here! These ten games represent a potent intersection of design, marketing, and yes, hype, on Kickstarter, and there’s no better way to start your hot nerd summer than by checking them out.
Welcome back to Kickstarter Wonk! We’re all getting ready for vaccine summer, and it looks like the designers are too! We have another full ten-pack of Kickstarter campaigns here, including a number of first-timers who are putting forth really solid stuff. I’ve already put forth more money than I was planning to on several of the campaigns below, and I have a feeling after you read you may do the same. Keep a tight hold on your wallet, and let’s dive in.
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 