I'm evildmguy, and I'm a recovering KS TTRPG backer. Well, no, I have backed recently, so I guess I'm off the wagon.
Of 132 backings, most gaming adjacent if not direct TTRPGs, 17 haven't delivered. That number is partially deceitful as seven are not late yet. That gives me a 7.6% failure rate on KS however I do expect one, Mycologist's Primer, to arrive. Of the remaining, two are my fault for not tracking this better until now, so my actual rate is 5.3%, which I find acceptable.
Realm Works is my biggest disappointment. Funded in 2013 but officially declared vaporware in 2019. No more updates but it was in an unusable state for me.
Never Ending Dungeon is my weirdest. Funded in August of 2021, we got monthly updates through August of 2024, when it was declared dead. It's a complex story. They changed focus at least once, if not twice, which caused delays. They ran out of money but were able to get a government grant, which turned out to be a "farce." They were backed by Spellarena, which also had issues. Out of the blue, two weeks ago, they said they were back. They had to go dark due to legal reasons about the grant and Spellarena but somehow came back and want to finish it. They went back to the original idea and released a beta. It needs a lot of work so I will see if it finishes.
I backed a creator for three projects of maps to use for my remote covid games. None of them every arrived. No idea what happened or why I was stoopid enough to keep backing them. That is my biggest mea culpa on KS.
At the moment, I have eight projects that aren't at deadline yet, although a few are this month. If all of them died, I would be at a 12.8% failure rate which would make me try to give up KS as best as I could. That won't happen, though, because one is ENWorld, which has never failed.
I'm spoiled by ENWorld/ENPublishing in how the do a KS. The PDF is ready to go and ships at the end of the KS, with physical coming along later, if they have a physical with it. The only one from them I had trouble with wasn't due to them. It was the Voidrunners boxed set but that was all shipping issues not from them and I have since received the replacement copy.
I really like a lot of ideas that creators have and got pulled into backing when I wanted that topic at that moment, or within a few weeks. This is why I was behind on checking on them because I didn't need it anymore so forgot to check up on it. I am getting better about that and the long term ones I backed, up to a year out, I'm ready for it.
I have listened to several KS people talk about how funding changed and it sounds like a mess. Ten years ago, creators would ask for what they needed to create or finish the item. Now, a lot of big projects ask for $10k so they can say they made funding in less than an hour, which helps them get the funding they actually need to do the project. A lot of creators are constantly doing projects to keep paying for past projects. It sounds like a nasty loop to be in.
As someone said, when they payoff, though, it's great! I finally got my Dungeon Pop pop up maps and got to use them in an in person weekend game. The oohs and aahs were worth it! Lots of fun! Same for the joy of having rules in a game I'm running, that the players don't know about. It's more about behind the scenes things are going smooth.
Submitted one but it's "only" a year overdue.
Thanks for the discussion!
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