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Crowdfunding Carnival: January, 2024

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Welcome to the first Crowdfunding Carnival of 2024! We’re just out of the weird, liminal part of December, so excuse me if I’m still a little longwinded and full of cheese. Nonetheless, we have a number of campaigns to talk about, including one very large one.

It is a new year, and Shannon Appelcline released his annual Year in Review over at the Designers and Dragons website (a move from the article’s usual home on RPGnet). While the article covers much of the past year’s news very concisely, I want to call your attention to the top Kickstarters segment about ¾ of the way through the article. The top three campaigns of 2023 were all third party supplements for 5e. Since Crowdfunding Carnival/Kickstarter Wonk began six years ago, there were only two years where the majority of the top 5 best funded campaigns weren’t 5e supplements, 2018 and 2022. Even more damning, the only supplements in these lists which I still hear people discuss in social media in any fashion were all authored by the company which is currently running the largest campaign in this article. At least this new one isn’t (technically) D&D.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: December, 2023

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Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for December! Well, folks, we made it. It’s nearly the end of 2023, and the holiday season is now upon us. It’s time to look back on the year, look forward to the next, and light lights to guard against the darkness of winter.

It’s also time for statistics! This year as part of Crowdfunding Carnival, I went into the archives and did retrospectives of the Kickstarter Wonk articles from 2018, the start of the series. With over 100 campaigns reviewed, I was able to collect some interesting data and reflect on the nature of RPG Kickstarters based both on trends within the sample as well as some reflection on what was included in my sample and what was not. While I don’t think anything I learned is particularly earth-shattering, it’s always nice to get a little quantitative nugget among the highly qualitative world of writing about games.

First, though, let’s talk about what’s campaigning now. The holiday season is when you want to finish, not start your campaigns, but there are at least a few that are worth highlighting.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: November, 2023

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Happy day after Halloween! Whether you had too many pumpkin beers, too much candy, or just stayed up too late doing the Monster Mash, it’s time for a little…post-holiday drop, let’s say. Luckily for you, I had no Halloween plans other than finding and cataloging some really phenomenal crowdfunding campaigns to help you start your November. On the big game side we have Southeast Asian tactics, dystopian game shows, and Ninja Turtles. On the indie side, Halloween is clearly sticking around with some witches, ghosts, cute cultists, and a big freaking multiverse to tie it all together.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: October, 2023

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Welcome to Crowdfunding Carnival for October! We’ve got some horror games this month, appropriate for Halloween. We also have Tarot, Cryptids, and badgers and coyotes! The magic of RPGs only gets more magical with every new and offbeat game I see. As usual, we’ll check in with those major publishers, see what the indies are bringing forth, and then finally take a look back at the Kickstarters from five years ago.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: August, 2023

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Welcome back to Crowdfunding Carnival! While I’m not in Indianapolis this month, I’m still working to sift through all the cash-in board games and sexy elf minis to bring you the best in RPG crowdfunding from Kickstarter, Crowdfundr, Backerkit, and Gamefound. It’s Kickstarter and Backerkit that are really carrying the month this month, and I have ten campaigns that I’m excited to talk about.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: June, 2023

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Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for June! This month I’m trying something a little different, though the outcome will likely be similar to how the series has always gone. On Kickstarter, there is a pretty significant bifurcation between small independent outfits and larger, established companies, both in terms of overall success as well as campaign size. Now, as much as they don’t need the help, big campaigns are important to the hobby and are driving more of the self-sustaining fanbases across the RPG landscape. Still, listing them alongside a one, two, or three person effort seems a bit disingenuous. As such, I’m going to be breaking out the ‘big campaigns’ from established names (and serial crowdfunders) and then keeping the ‘indies of note’ in their own section. Whichever sort of campaign you’re looking for, you should be able to find it more easily now. Beyond that, there’s still half a year left in our first five year retrospective, and as more articles were written, 2018 kept on getting more interesting. To start, though, let’s talk about three campaigns from existing companies; we have entries from Steve Jackson Games, Evil Hat Productions, and Kobold Press.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: April, 2023

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Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival! It’s April, which means two things. First, we’re done with ZineQuest for real; there are no more event stragglers (though an odd zine will pop up from time to time) and we’re back to “normal” campaigns. Second, April is my birthday month. Readers, I’m feeling old, I’m feeling it in my bones. Looking at campaigns this month has gotten me all crotchety. I will admit, I’m turning 36 and that’s not actually old; I’d still be ‘the kid’ in many gaming groups I’ve played with in the past. What has happened, though, is that in advance of my birthday a lot of the Kickstarter campaigns have got me complaining. Nothing makes you feel older than complaining about stuff you have no control over.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there aren’t that many interesting campaigns live right now in the wake of ZineQuest. There are plenty of 5e filler modules, which I don’t care about, and a lot of model files for semi-pornographic minis, which is weird and a bit disconcerting. In my usual market, though, new original RPGs, there are only a few of interest and weirdly a bumper crop of ones I can’t bring myself to be interested in or write about. It’s made me realize it may be another good time to go over the crowdfunding market, and ways that the crowdfunding market could be more useful for project backers.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: February, 2023

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Welcome back to the Crowdfunding Carnival! Now, it’s Thursday, which is a little unusual. I did this, though, for you, dear readers. You see, yesterday was the first day of ZineQuest, and a veritable torrent of zines hit my inbox around the time this article would have otherwise gone to post. That just won’t do, so I held off to pick through the wreckage for you. So now we have over 40 zines, and it’s been just one day! There are some other games too, and of course our second installment of the Crowdfunding Carnival/Kickstarter Wonk fifth anniversary retrospective. Onward!

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Crowdfunding Carnival: December, 2022

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And the crowdfunding feels like a Carnival!

The games draw you in like a beer

And the folks at the bar, who put bread in my jar

They said ‘this month’s intro got real weird’

It’s December, usually a low time for crowdfunding. People have shifted their discretionary budgets towards holiday gifts, holiday travel, and anything else they need for this season’s set of traditions around turning on all the lights and screaming to beat back the coming solstice darkness. Even so! There are a number of interesting crowdfunding projects on at least two crowdfunding services which are worth a closer look.

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Crowdfunding Carnival: August, 2022

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Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for August! You know what time it is, it’s…well, you might not know what time it is, because while yes, it’s ZineQuest, 2022 is both the first and last year ZineQuest will take place in August. It’s ultimately a little confusing, which may be why Kickstarter moved next year’s ZineQuest back to February before this one even happened! Nevertheless, it’s happening, and there are a lot of zines to go through, just like every year.

Because it’s August it’s GenCon, which means that usually crowdfunding channels are a bit quiet as many designers and publishers look to the con for promotion. This does seem to be true this year, though there are major campaigns on each of the competing platforms which are worth a look.

The big news under the carnival tent, though, is ZineQuest. It is day three as of this writing, and the initial flood of projects looking to start strong on August first are already out in the world. How are things going?

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