Shadowdark Setting Looks Set To Be 2025's First Million Dollar TTRPG Crowdfunder

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Just launched today, the new Western Reaches setting for the Arcane Library's popular Shadowdark roleplaying game (which itself raised $1.3M in 2023) has flown past half a million dollars in the first few hours, and looks certain to join the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club imminently!

[[Edit/Update--and it's done it! $1M less than 12 hours into the Kickstarter campaign!]]

2025 has been quiet so far this year on the million-dollar crowdfunding front. This new setting is a sandbox environment with new classes and ancestries, and various areas such as the Gloaming Forest, Djurum Desert, and Myre Swamp. It comes in two 200-page digest-sized hardcovers. Also included are new issues of the game's Cursed Scroll zine. The full core set will cost you $129, or $149 for a premium version, with fulfillment expected in December 2025.

At $670K at the time of writing, just 3 hours into the campaign, The Western Reaches is already the 7th most first-day funded TTRPG ever, having just passed 2024's Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. It looks set to pass 6th place very soon, which is 2023's Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms - A 5e Tome. Only five TTRPG crowdfunders (so far!) have ever hit the million-dollar mark on the first day. You can see the full ranking at the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club.

The Western Reaches are an unexplored land of fragile civilizations, majestic landscapes, and forgotten horrors that lurk in the dark.

In the Reaches, you could play as:

• A painted witch from the steppes hunting for the secrets to deeper magic
• An armored knight from the City of Masks guarding frontier villages from attack
• A silent monk from the mountains searching for the assassin who killed his teacher
• A scarred pit fighter from the desert looking to make her fortune outside the arena
• A quick-witted explorer from the jungle who can find any artifact for the right price
• A seafaring warrior from the northern isles who fights for the glory of the Old Gods

This sandbox setting is fast, elegant, and flexible in the signature Shadowdark style. You don't have to memorize lore; you'll discover it as you go. The world moves and grows with you as you explore it.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, once you've found your engine of choice, there's no

Kelsey addressed this a bit in her livestream yesterday, in the form of advice for people launching their own products:

1. She had a certain degree of prominence -- thanks to her adventure writing -- for years. Although she was a highly successful 5E adventure writer (I first heard about Shadowdark when I went to her site to buy more of her adventures, although I wasn't interested in this pre-release product she was talking about), she'd also been praised by Bryce Lynch in the OSR space, which instantly puts her on a lot of folks' radars.
2. She's on YouTube doing more than ads. She does in-depth adventure design clinics and walkthroughs, etc. So when she does use the channel to say "hey, I've got a product," it doesn't come off as an ad, but instead she's talking to people who are already interested in what she has to say.
3. Likewise, she has a newsletter that she works hard, she says, to make be one that people want to open and read, and which isn't just ads for her stuff. Free adventures and monsters go a long way.
4. And then, just be the nicest person you can within the industry. She specifically called out Sean McCoy of Tuesday Knight Games, who could easily just sit on his throne of Mothership revenue, but instead quietly works to lift up other creators constantly.

Yeah. That’s awesome. She’s kicking ass and taking names. Good for her.

As @darjr alludes to, a lot of her critics not only don't do any of the above list, they often do the opposite.

Why is the antisocial jerk's game not taking off? I don't know; it's a mystery!

Sure. And what about the other people doing the work, doing good work, and being good people, who still don’t find success?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sure. And what about the other people doing the work, doing good work, and being good people, who still don’t find success?

And that's the other thing: A large part of success is always luck and timing, which no one likes to talk about.

She went live with Shadowdark at the same moment that WotC decided to try and set the OGL on fire and a lot of people were suddenly open to new choices at the moment she was offering one.

If the Shadowdark Kickstarter had happened three months earlier, I think it's likely it would have been a modest success, but nothing like what we saw.

 

[overgeeked]

And that's the other thing: A large part of success is always luck and timing, which no one likes to talk about.

She went live with Shadowdark at the same moment that WotC decided to try and set the OGL on fire and a lot of people were suddenly open to new choices at the moment she was offering one.

If the Shadowdark Kickstarter had happened three months earlier, I think it's likely it would have been a modest success, but nothing like what we saw.

Exactly. DCC RPG and Pathfinder and SWADE and so many other sold out of a year’s supply of books in a few weeks or days. Shadowdark was the first D&D-like Kickstarter after (or during?) the OGL scandal. That got a lot of eyes on the project. Plus her years of hard work and following.

Preparation and timing are what most people call luck. If she hadn’t put in the work and been ready to capitalize on the timing, she would have failed. But the timing was a large part of it, I think.

 

[Arilyn]

Just how it goes. There's a ton of novelists, movie makers, painters, etc. who work hard, create amazing pieces and remain in obscurity. You just can't enter creative fields assuming financial success. Work hard, do what you love creatively, and you'll be happy, even if all you make off it is some coffee money.

 

[overgeeked]

Just how it goes. There's a ton of novelists, movie makers, painters, etc. who work hard, create amazing pieces and remain in obscurity. You just can't enter creative fields assuming financial success. Work hard, do what you love creatively, and you'll be happy, even if all you make off it is some coffee money.

Yeah. I’m very aware. That’s literally my life.

 

[Von Ether]

There’s also quite a few old hands in the OSR space who just don’t get it. They’re not sniping or angry, they just honestly don’t understand why Shadowdark blew up when there are so many other nearly identical OSR/NSR games on the market. Stuff they’ve worked on and championed for years only for a newer product to go stratospheric. I gotta admit I’m in that cohort. I have shelves full of nearly identical books that linger in obscurity. Systems that do things closer to how I like them (the only honest criteria for “better”) with less than 1/100th the love and support Shadowdark gets. I usually buy games, especially in the OSR/NSR space, based on doing something unique and different. I passed on Shadowdark because the only thing I could see it did differently was the torch timer.

A bit adjacent to this is something I seen a few OSR fans (not OSR designers) speak out loud. They felt like they kept the torch burning during the "dark times" (which might be 5e or go all the way back to 3e) and thought they would be seen as mentors, teacher, or even as esteemed geek among geeks when the OSR took off. When the newer generation of "kids" came in, no one seemed to care about their version of the "proper" way to play and used YouTube instead.

"When I came into the hobby, I looked up to my GM. I don't understand why the new players are not the same."

I'd say it's luck and timing on top laying the ground work. Critical Role was not the first streaming game but they put in the work and worked the advantages they had. I give Kelsey and CR major props.

But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some jealousy now and then.

 

[darjr]

Yeah. That’s awesome. She’s kicking ass and taking names. Good for her.

Sure. And what about the other people doing the work, doing good work, and being good people, who still don’t find success?

I don't get your point. There could be lots of reasons. There are plenty of angry people finding success too.

How about pick one and make a thread spotlighting them?

 

[overgeeked]

A bit adjacent to this is something I seen a few OSR fans (not OSR designers) speak out loud. They felt like they kept the torch burning during the "dark times" (which might be 5e or go all the way back to 3e) and thought they would be seen as mentors, teacher, or even as esteemed geek among geeks when the OSR took off. When the newer generation of "kids" came in, no one seemed to care about their version of the "proper" way to play and used YouTube instead.

"When I came into the hobby, I looked up to my GM. I don't understand why the new players are not the same."

I'd say it's luck and timing on top laying the ground work. Critical Role was not the first streaming game but they put in the work and worked the advantages they had. I give Kelsey and CR major props.

But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some jealousy now and then.

I think a good part of it is similar to what 5E did. Bring in new people to the hobby. Because of Stranger Things and Critical Role 5E found wild success by bringing new people into the hobby. Because of the OGL fiasco a lot of disaffected 5E-only people were looking at new stuff and so Kelsey brought new people into the OSR/NSR niche, greatly expanding it.

 

[Nightfly]

There’s also quite a few old hands in the OSR space who just don’t get it. They’re not sniping or angry, they just honestly don’t understand why Shadowdark blew up when there are so many other nearly identical OSR/NSR games on the market. Stuff they’ve worked on and championed for years only for a newer product to go stratospheric. I gotta admit I’m in that cohort.

I actually sympathize with this view, although I think "nearly identical" is a reach. The game that's most like Shadowdark in my eyes is The Black Hack, and those two are not identical. Black Hack has a wonky way of handling armor that never quite clicked with me, and its leveling system is pretty bland compared to Shadowdark's cool talent tables, just to name two examples. So it's not as though Kelsey just repackaged that system -- or any other system -- and made bank off it. Shadowdark is very thoughtfully curated and it's all killer no filler.

There's also the fact that Shadowdark seems more like a complete game to me than some of those others. I dig Black Hack and Cairn, but they sort of feel like pamphlets, things you download for free or for maybe 4 bucks on itch.io. Shadowdark has a vibe of being professional, fleshed out, and polished. That might be more presentation than substance, but presentation matters. Mork Borg didn't invent very much new but the book is absolutely stunning. That counts.

Finally, you have to consider how great Kelsey's marketing has been. She had a large, loyal fanbase from her excellent 5e adventures. She's done an amazing job of using social media and YouTube to get across her vision for Shadowdark to tons of 5e players who otherwise have no interest in the OSR. Gobs of people are buying Shadowdark who might never even have heard of Old School Essentials or Dungeon Crawl Classics.

And of course, success breeds success. One of the main reasons to play Shadowdark instead of another rules-light OSR system is that so many more people are playing Shadowdark already. I'd love to give Black Hack a try but I've never found a game of it.

 

[mamba]

She went live with Shadowdark at the same moment that WotC decided to try and set the OGL on fire and a lot of people were suddenly open to new choices at the moment she was offering one.

I believe this is a major one and many others missed that window, like ToV and SotWW.

It’s either that or the Youtube angle, just creating a product is not enough. It is not a coincidence that the big YTer Kickstarters bring in relatively large amounts of money while experienced creators without that bring in less