I’ve personally used Kickstarter to help fund games from a few different RPG houses (Gallant Knight Games, Barrel Rider Games, NorCal Mythos, to name a couple) for various games. Has anyone else done so as well? Not sure how long (meaning too lazy to look up) Kickstarter’s been around, but thinking like the last 5 years or so (or more). If so, what have you thought of what you bought, and would you recommend? Lately, I’ve gotten into this mode of going for the smaller publishing houses.
Currently waiting on:
Brindlewood Bay, which I think is going to be great fun for one-shots at gamedays, etc.
Mothership and Hull Breach, an awesome space horror system.
Backed and liked:
SJGames’ pdfs of GURPS expansions and Pyramid issues, which are always worthwhile resources to have around. Under $5 each, and they’ve used stretch goals to beef up the number of features in each one.
Timewatch. A few years back, but this is a brilliant Gumshoe game of time travel investigations.
Less thrilled with the Quest RPG calendars. I backed '22 and '23. The '23 calendar ks campaign happened early in '22, and I probably wouldn’t have backed again if it had been later. By last summer, I was losing daily interest in the calendar, or forgetting to do it for weeks at a time. Partly, the linear nature caught up with it, but the adventure itself just wasn’t particularly compelling. But '23 just showed up, and it’s space opera instead of fantasy, so I’ll give it another shot.
Disappointed in The Fantasy Trip. This is also a few years back now, but I went all in on this one and kinda regretted it. TFT was my first RPG, but I still have all the original material and this ended up offering nothing new in terms of improvements. Their high-tier rewards were padded with a lot of useless crap: There were literally boxes of boxes; folders to hold character sheets; multiple copies of the same rules in different formats, etc. Once you broke down the huge box, there wasn’t much of substance at the heart of it.
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I’ve had more sour experiences than decent ones and refuse to use the platform for the most part. I did back Convictor Drive recently but that was hard pressed for me to do as I did not want to give Kickstarter any money but supporting the company doing the RPG won out.
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My Starforged books and cards came in the mail yesterday, early Christmas for me. Starforged is a sci-fi adaption of the Ironsworn engine and is a solo game that has a lot of support in the Solo RPG communitity.
And, I backed the Cha’alt trilogy of game books via Kickstarter (gonzo fantasy/sci-fi.)
I also back a lot of smaller titles at the PDF only level. My success to failure ratio has been very high with KS, so over all I am rather pleased with it. I think I have had only three fails, all of them due to post kickstarter traumatic events (two complete mental break downs and one open heart surgery + almost fatal/never completely recovered covid.) For one of them, the dude is still slogging away at it at a glacial pace after all the funds are long gone (it has been ten years.)
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Just minis. I got into the Bones II kickstarter with Reaper, and the Color mini printing with Hero Forge.
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Ironsworn: starforged
Besm 4e, first kickstarter not the new expansions one
Talespire
that’s about it for successful P&P Kickstarters, I had 3 or 4 failed ones I pledged.
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I backed my first KS in 2012, I think. An expansion for Arc Dream’s Godlike ((Supers in World Ward II)). I continued over the years: a friend’s fantasy heartbreaker, Numenera, more from Monte Cook, TFT (Which I love) and related projects, Lots of D&D 5th 3rd party stuff more recently.
Since the start of the end times (Technically November, 2016, but it really ramped up in early 2020), I have spent the vast majority of my disposable income on KS and other crowdfunded projects. I haven’t been to a theater in almost three years; no bookstores; no dining out… Just work, then back to the bunker, rinse and repeat. As a result, 2020, 2021, and 2022 have each had as many or more projects as 2012-2019 total.
I regret very little of it. Maybe one or two disappointing offerings, and two or three that never came to fruition. The majority (esp the last three years), have been small companies, and more and more PDF-only rewards.
Just yesterday, I combed through my DriveThruRPG notifications and downloaded about 25 neglected projects to clear my inbox.
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Let’s see . . .
Pinebox Middle School & The Horror Companion Double Feature
Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds – Curse of the Crimson Throne
Rifts® for Savage Worlds: Atlantis Rising
Tales from the Trail
Pathfinder for Savage Worlds
All for Savage Worlds. All really good. All but one from Pinnacle - the producers of Savage Worlds. I’m not a huge fan of the whole concept of Kickstarting projects, but Pinnacle has been awesome with it, and obviously, I keep on spending my money on them.
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haven’t done this in a few years. very good idea!
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Oh, wow! I guess if you are going to have failures, those are at least pretty legit. Kudos though to dude trying to get the game done, even a decade on.
I haven’t had a personal bad buy yet. But then, I’ve gone with mainly “established” ‘small’ RPG companies that I’ve been able to watch actual plays of, so I am already a little familiar with the system going in to it. LOL YouTube has been a godsend in that regard. I think the only ‘regrets’ I have were not getting in on the Alien RPG or Mork Borg (if unfamiliar, Victory Condition Gaming has actual plays of both on YouTube), but hey, not a big deal.
Not saying I am either necessarily, but I’ve also been very picky about what I’ve backed. Those I have backed have stayed in open contact after the funding closed, and at times it seemed I was getting updates on one of them every ten minutes. I think the best one is I had funded into a card game that was coming over literally on the boat from China in the hauling containers and the ship had a bunch slide off into the ocean en route, so there had to be a rerun of the cards because there was no way to see what had been lost until it got back to port in China. And yes, in the update they posted, there were pics of the boat showing some obvious empty spaces there shouldn’t have been.
I’m more “Hey that looks neat” back project “Now, what exactly did I just back?”
I’ve found many interesting items that way. And sure, a few duds… but even the duds have utility, and I feel good because I gave something to someone who had the nerve to do what I never have: put themselves out there.
There was one… early days of the pandemic… the guy was a teacher and out of work. Had a setting idea he was releasing on PDF. So sure, why not? It was a low buy-in, so why not?
Overall, I think that’s what I go there for. To be a small part of contributing to our hobby.
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Backwards chronologically (the last four in the list were pre-COVID):
Cowboy Bebop RPG
Pinebox Middle School (Savage Worlds)
Horror Companion (Savage Worlds)
Kids on Bikes 2e
Holler (Savage Worlds)
Ironsworn: Starforged
Coyote & Crow
Twilight: 2000
Interface Zero 3.0 (Savage Worlds)
Crystal Heart (Savage Worlds)
Savage Worlds Adventure Edition
Rifts (Savage Worlds)
I was thinking that it was almost alll Savage Worlds, but I guess it’s just mostly Savage Worlds. Thus far, most have delivered on time. Four just finished, one is slightly behind schedule, and one is in the mail after a few months delays in printing and shipping (but the pdfs were on time).
Only one is significantly delayed - probably by about 2 years. The author has been fairly good about posting occasional updates and has had some medical issues, so I’m not calling this one a loss, yet. Some of the updates have been, “I didn’t like the way this particular rule/feature/bit of fluff was panning out, so I scrapped that part and have to rewrite that chapter and all the other sections that will be affected by it [about a year after it was supposed to be delivered]”, so that’s been frustrating.
Overall, I don’t regret any of the ones that I backed, but I think I’m going to cut back on what I back for a while. I’m spending way too much money on games I will likely never get to play due to lack of time and groups to play with.
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Only a couple. My big KS dollars have gone into a couple of the big minis packages. So many of the RPG projects are either 5e based (and my group doesn’t do 5e) and/or very niche, in niches that aren’t my bag. I was in on the 7th Sea 2 John Wick meltdown, and while the rulebook was cool in some ways, it was rather disappointing in others. One other RPG I recall KSing sounded much more interesting than the actual product; it wasn’t bad but went in a different direction than I had hoped or desired. But that’s kinda how it goes with RPGs anyway.
Feng Shui 2 should have been my first RPG KS, but I was ignorant about KS back then and just ended up buying the book upon release. Our group had a lot of fun with FS, and have really enjoyed the new version.
Adventure 2d edition (pulp action) is the one RPG KS I’m looking forward to the most. (I also put in for the same company’s Aether - steampunk-pulp, same system.)
The guy in my regular group who runs TORG has KS’d every TORG Eternity piece they put up, and they’ve all been pretty good. (Our group did some playtesting for the original TORG game back in the day.)
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Most of my Kickstarter RPG backings I’ve only had a little time to skim through. A5E and Fairy Princesses I devoured as best I could, very pleased with them. And I’m looking forward to diving into the others.
- Dr Dhrolin’s Dictionary of Dinosaurs
- Apocalypse Keys
- Starlight Arcana: A 5e Astral Supplement & Campaign
- Dungeon Delver’s Guide: A Sourcebook for D&D 5E and A5E
- The Session Zero System
- Abyss of Hallucinations Vol. 2 - A MÖRK BORG Setting
- BLADE RUNNER – The Roleplaying Game
- Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game
- Planebreaker—Explore the Planes for 5e
- Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
- Pretty Fairy Princesses: An Unapologetically Dainty RPG
- Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game
- The Devil Made Us Do It
- Incantations
- ARC: Doom Tabletop RPG
- Pandora: Total Destruction
- Coyote & Crow the Role Playing Game
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I really wanted to back this, but my hours had been cut back at my job and couldn’t justify it. Would be curious what you think once you get a chance to take a better look at it. Alien is another I kind of wish I had backed.
I’ve backed a bunch of random stuff, for TTRPG’s:
- Stars Without Number
- Worlds Without Number
- Torchbearer 2nd Edition
- Dyson’s Book of Swords
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I’m a Superbacker on Kickstarter (235 projects backed to date).
Shadows of Esteren was my first backed TTRPG in 2012. I highly recommend anything from them (Jim Searcy/Studio Agate).
Also backed Monte Cook’s entire Numenera/Cypher System line. I like his ideas, though I don’t use the Cypher System itself. Ran their Predation setting using Genesys rules and it was a huge hit.
Same for all the Earthdawn 4e books-loved that setting since getting the original boxed set decades ago.
Snagged Storm Hollow and No Thank You Evil since at the time my girls were getting into the 4-6 year old range so primed to start gaming.
Dragon Kings, Sovereign Stone, and others for connections to nostalgia like Dark Sun, Mystara, and Dragonlance.
I backed games like Good Society (one of the cards in that game, Edith, is based on my oldest daughter), Coyote and Crow, Limitless Heroics, Sina Una, etc. to support diversity in gaming and alternate rule systems. They’re all great games.
Beowulf, Age of Heroes is an awesome 2-player game and I highly recommend anything from Jon Hodgson.
Humblewood was another solid project that set me to recommending all things from Hit Point Press.
If you made it this far, my biggest advice is do not treat Kickstarter or any crowdfunding like a store. You are not buying a product, you are supporting a creator. If you just want to buy the product and not risk losing your money, buy the final released product. Look at the pitch. If it’s selling something too good to be true, delivering way more for way less, and/or in short timeframes then check out the creator. No history of delivery means they are probably in over their heads.
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I’m not at superbacker level (only backed 16), but totally get where you are coming from. Most that I’ve backed have multiple Kickstarts under their belt and have a working knowledge on how to get the product done and sent on time. My experience (so far) with first timers or only a small handful under their belts have been positive, but I’m more of the thinking that as long as I get it (and there’s communication from the creator) I can be reasonable and wait. I really only had serious issues with one, but it couldn’t be helped as the product was coming (literally!) on a boat from China and it had some containers fall off en route, so there had to be a complete reprint and all that. Even got to see pics of the boat in one of the updates. But yeah, if I am backing it, I like the game concept and think the creator is worth supporting, otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Not sure that I’ve ever thought of crowdfunding as a “store,” and wouldn’t put out an amount I was afraid to lose. I guess I do look at it as a store in the sense of “what’s out there that looks like it may be interesting,” but it’s the “non-game” information provided that really determines if I back. I have ended up backing several Gallant Knight Games was involved with either directly or indirectly because I have learned (through experience on KS and watching actual plays and interviews on YouTube on Victory Condition Gaming) that by the time they hit funding period, the vast majority of the leg work is done and they just have to polish it up and send it to the printer. Having said that, I’ve funded first timers as well. I guess my OP was more to get an idea what people have been backing as a back door way of asking what people are picking up as I am always looking for an interesting game, and if they’ve had any bad experiences. Thanks so much for the comment. It’s truly appreciated.