Tell your overdue Kickstarter story

[Corinnguard]

GRENDEL!

You mean the one from the Wayfinder computer game? The bounty hunter with the battle axe?

 

[chuckdee]

You still have to interact with them though, and the point when things have gone pear-shaped enough, its all too attractive to not do that.

At the minimum, I've seen people post up that hey this is going on and they're working through it and then not come back and interact with the post, and still get grace.

 

[Simon The Hunter]

The first KS I ever backed back at the start of 2020, Menagerie of Magic, promised delivery date of Dec 2020, disappeared at the end of 2021 after a lot of poor comms and then some rather nasty backer comments to the creator (which was in very poor form IMHO). Some people got a very poor pdf version, but the hardcopy never eventuated, and the creator closed his shop and disappeared completely.

The infamous Sinclair's Library (PF2e/5e) with Nonats. Mid 2022 start, was running well and then it just died off. Promised delivery of Dec 2022. I personally know some of the creators on this project and they did their job well, but I think there was an over promise by the management, and the project has floundered. I know that a creator is helping to try and finalise some of it in his spare time, and I did receive a pdf of one of the books. The thing that most backers seem peeved about was that Nonats went AWOL (with health issues from what I understand) even though he was the face of the project, has come back, and then disappeared again.

Another one that is floundering is Pixel Dice. Started early 2021, promised Dec 2022, it's still dragging its feet. There have been LOTS of engineering and manufacturing issues and even though there's updates, there have been lots of problems. I was lucky in that I got 2 single d20 dice earlier this year (one of which is now dead and not working) but the set is still yet to be delivered, and a substantial number of backers don't have anything.

There are a couple of others that are running late but they have great communication, so I'm not worried about them. Overall, I've backed 160 projects with only the ones about, 1 fail and 2 others kinda wandering about.

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As an aside, I backed some very nice gemstone dice mid2020. The creator was in China but basing the project through Singapore, and the project looked really nice. At one point there was no communication at all for a few months, and it looked like it was a case of grab the money and run, but then suddenly there was a message that said that the creator had indeed been working on the dice to the point that he was pretty much finished and what had happened was that he was using a third party company to do the Kickstarter updates but that they had gone radio silent and because his English wasn't great and he wasn't getting any updates he just assumed they were handling everything fine until one of his friends showed him what was going on. He ended up getting the friend to update the kickstarter stuff and within a month everyone had their dice. They then had issues with the China delivery company screwing stuff up which put a bunch of orders in limbo. I got my dice; they are really nice.

 

[Muad'dib Pendragon]

Two really stick out for me:

1. Myth & Magic Game Master's Guide and Collector's Complete was to be released in March 2013. Still chaps my hide New Haven Games (Tom Ryan) basically cut and run, yet still sells his stuff on DTRPG without ever having fulfilled the KS.
2. Le Morte d'Arthur & The Arthurian Concordance: due in December 2017 but delayed by Stewart Wieck's untimely passing. Fortunately, the Chaosium team stepped in and are finally fulfilling this.

As others have said, I have since mostly restricted my backing to known companies/individuals. Every once in a while, though, I will take a chance...

After 8 long years, Chaosium finally delivered Le Morte d'Arthur & The Arthurian Concordance. Was it worth the wait? Hmm...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I posted this elsenet a few weeks ago:

• Broken World - an early PbtA post-apoc game based on Dungeon World. I don’t expect to ever see
• $1 pay what you want rpg from jim pinto - he still posts updates.
• Veil Inheritance. At least I got Veil and Veil Cascade. I don’t expect to see. I just hope Fraser’s doing ok.
• Yonder - see above
• Space Seeds from an early ZineQuest. Don’t expect ever
• Stonetop - with the shipping of Urban Shadows 2e, this is now taking top spot of oldest game I actually expect to receive and still want
• For Small Creatures Such as we: solo-drawing game by the same creator as Delve with Becky Chambers style vibes. Still getting updates, creator has a plan for release.
• Unquiet Dark - Brindlewood Bay supplement. Not really interested in this any more
• Sins of the Adventurers - honestly a major impulse buy that I definitely don’t expect to deliver
• Dolmenwood - looking forward to this
• Infinity of Ships - late but not too late and got an update within the past 30 days
• Cairn 2e - expecting early in the new year
• Gardens of Ynn - expecting soon they just charged me shipping
• Perilous Void - Jason Lutes’s giving frequent updates. Excited for it

Backerkit

• Lovecraftesque 2nd Ed - Joshua has been quite communicative. Had a production glitch that seems to have worked out. Looking forward to this one too.
• Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adventure - expecting soon

IndieGoGo - yes I have some stuff still outstanding on that platform. Hopefully not for much longer but…

• Ryne RPG - I barely remember backing this in 2022, but got an update in October 2024 that seems pretty positive. I guess when it comes I’ll be… lukewarm to mildly glad?

FWIW, I'm a Kickstarter superbacker (or at least was for a while), and have backed 118 projects on KS (mostly ttrpgs or related), 5 projects on Backerkit, 3 ttrpgs on indiegogo, and 1 project on gamefound, which did ship. So basically 5 projects that I don't think will ever ship out of roughly 124 total? That doesn't seem so bad.

Different question is - how many projects that I end up getting 3 or 12 or 25 or more months later that I still was excited about? Not so many friends, not so many.
I don't have a metric for that; but it's definitely a reason I reduced my spend in 2024 on crowdfunds - that and lack of job. I have a job now, but I don't see myself going whole hog again like I did in past years.

So, 10 months later, 6 of them have delivered and can be crossed off the list. Also, one that was listed, backed, and delivered in these 10 months (Tacklebox & Better Strangers: Two Card-Based TTRPG).

• Infinity of Ships
• Cairn 2e
• Gardens of Ynn
• Perilous Void (in a campaign as a player with a gm who is using this now!)
• Lovecraftesque 2e (will be running at PineCon in a couple weeks)
• Caverns of Thracia Legendary Adv

Crowdfunds that the creators are still engaged with the communities, and therefore I think might actually show up some day:

• Stonetop. Jeremy is so active on the Stonetop discord.
• Dolmenwood - (it's everywhere but here in America del Norte)
• For Small Creatures such as We - Anna is very much connected to her fans on the Blackwell Games discord
• Ryne had an update just last month and has released to backers the pdf and are working on the print version.

Crowdfunds I have backed since last update, that I am pretty confident will arrive:

• Riverbank RPG - I expect that to land, as Kobold Press is here on the boards, and honestly it only closed 5 months ago.

The rest - I don't care about them.

Also, surprised - not surprised that I've only backed 2 crowdfunds this year.

 

[humble minion]

I saw at least one computer game kickstarter that hung fire in part because they'd made the mistake of offering a t-shirt.

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

And, you know, just sell the dice separately.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

Yeah. You sometimes get problems with printing and/or shipping in physical products anyway, but the more physical add-ons that are with the project, the more likely this is to happen (and gods know that's probably many times more true now), and I've heard too many horror stories of it happening with people who thought it would be easy to handle.

 

[General_Tangent]

The aforementioned Into the Mother lands has all sorts of extras including pins, maps, a comic, dice, and also a stuffed toy of one of the characters.

I'm not surprised it's taking so long to fulfill.

 

[chuckdee]

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

It's one of my red flags of kickstarter project backing.