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.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: June, 2023Tag Archives: crowdfunding
Crowdfunding Carnival: April, 2023
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.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: April, 2023
Zine Month 2023 Round Up #2
A ride or die Filipino adventure where the indigenous magic and monsters still dominate the archipelago. A seaside vacation meant to both help your health and help you find love, provided you can solve the murder. Living a version of your life affected by ADHD. It’s down to the wire, but there’s still time to check out another batch of Zine Month creations!
Crowdfunding Carnival: March, 2023
Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for March! It’s a bit of a weird time, early March. ZineQuest is ‘finished’, but with campaigns starting as late as yesterday there’s still a bit of backlog to dig through. Meanwhile, the bigger, more traditional campaigns are starting to spin up, but they’re often lost in the shuffle.
The campaigns we’re covering this month reflect that reality. There are 25 Zine campaigns here, which I will do my best to sell to you in a sentence or two. I didn’t have to have a hard cutoff like in the middle of the month, but most of the Zines that didn’t make the cutoff were just material for 5e that I don’t have the energy to care about. Such is life.
Here at the beginning of March it’s also worthwhile to reflect on ZineQuest as it is now, here in 2023. Based on numbers, there’s no doubt in my mind that this year was a return to form compared to the misstep of moving the event to August. That said, there’s an enthusiasm gap that seems to have formed between 2021 and now, and it’s in large part due to what happened in 2022. The number of people tracking and providing data on ZineQuest has withered significantly, meaning I don’t have a project count, funding level, or success rate easily at hand to compare to last year or the year before. Based on our August 2022 coverage, this year was significantly better than last year’s Kickstarter’s outing, but I don’t know how it compares to the combined total of the 2022 events, and that’s important because of what happened to Zine Month.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: March, 2023Zine Month 2023 Round Up #1
A map for every adventure and an adventure for every map. The horror of magical academia. Making sacrifices to a river spirit. Last of Us a la Twin Peaks. Tracking down an entity that consumes time itself. Another February, another month of roleplaying game zines, and I’m back for more Zine Month spotlights!
Crowdfunding Carnival: February, 2023
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!
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: February, 2023Crowdfunding Carnival: January, 2023
Happy new year! First month of the year, first week of the month, that means it’s time for a Crowdfunding Carnival! We’re in the post-holiday doldrums, for sure, and between the solstice season behind us and ZineQuest ahead of us, there aren’t many games being crowdfunded right now. Fear not! I did find a few. At the same time, there’s a whole new year ahead of us, like a blank character sheet. Now seems like a great time not only to look at the games which ran out of the 2023 starting gate, but also at what I think 2023 will bring for RPG crowdfunding in general.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: January, 2023Crowdfunding Carnival: December, 2022
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.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: December, 2022Crowdfunding Carnival: October, 2022
Welcome back to the Crowdfunding Carnival! It’s actual carnival season here in the northeast, with a lot of state fairs happening in the month of October due to the fall harvest. If you’re not into fair food, rickety rides, and farm animals, though, we still have plenty of entertainment coming out of crowdfunding sites as the days get shorter.
October is kind between GenCon and the holiday season, so we’re a little short on product announcements in the hobby as a whole. There’s definitely still action in the crowdfunding space though; last week I reviewed Rae Nedjadi’s Apocalypse Keys, which is being crowdfunded with the help of publisher Evil Hat as we speak. As of this writing there’s a little less than a week to go, so click through if you’re interested.
Beyond the games, there’s also some moves happening in the crowdfunding business. Some are large, some relatively small, but all worth examining. Let’s take a look.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: October, 2022Crowdfunding Carnival: September, 2022
It’s September! A slight bite in the air, days shortening, and the kids are off to school. Quick, go look for crowdfunding campaigns now that you have a spare moment! September marks a change in the season but also a change in focus among RPG crowdfunding coverage as ZineQuest 4 wraps up. ZineQuest 4 puts the bow on what was a really messed up year in RPG crowdfunding, so I’m going to talk about that a bit. Beyond that, there are some ZineQuest campaigns which are still trying to finish off strong, and of course there are plenty of full-sized campaigns across Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Gamefound, and Backerkit.
Continue reading Crowdfunding Carnival: September, 2022
Cannibal Halfling Gaming 