Tell your overdue Kickstarter story

We're putting together a potential article on overdue (or failed!) crowdfunding projects.

So, tell us your story. Which crowdfunders are overdue, and by how much? What was the original estimated delivery date? We've set up a survey with which you can provide us information, and we'll be using that survey to put together an article in early 2026.

We have set a 1-year limit on this--to keep this down to a reasonable list, only crowdfunders which are a year or more overdue, please! That's a year or more past the estimated delivery date listed on the crowdfunding page.

Also, please note that this is for tabletop roleplaying game projects only.

Use the link below to fill out the short survey. It should only take a couple of minutes. Please note that if you include anything in the additional comments box, you may be quoted in the article.

Overdue Crowdfunder Survey

Please tell us about your overdue crowdfunder. Note that for the purposes of this survey, a crowdfunder's fulfillment must be at least a full year overdue.

docs.google.com

Note--this thread was originally started in late 2024, but the survey has been created as of 20 December 2025 for an article due to be published in early 2026.

 

[MNblockhead]

Those are good points. Let me go into it a bit deeper.

I was heavily invested in Hero Lab and worked as a contractor for Lone Wolf, putting in two PF1 books data into Hero Lab. When RW was announced, I was happy about that. I like LW, was active on the message boards, and to date am the only person to create a framework for HLC, Alternity. I invested at a high tier to get alpha access to RW because LW could do little wrong for me at this point.

The early versions of RW were what I wanted. It was fast, it allowed me to use during a session, which was part of the claim, and it gave me some fascinating insights into faction relationships to PCs and other areas. I could track what I had told the PCs but keep notes for the session. I even got the player add on and gave all my players a code, so they could see revealed notes.

I don't remember which update it was but at some point, it wasn't fast anymore. Creating a new NPC, location, or something was too slow during the game. I had to write everything down and enter it later. Now I'm doing double the work, which isn't what I wanted. About this time, rob explained that his vision for this was always about being ninety five percent prepared ahead of time and a session is clicking what was learned, not taking notes. It could be that I projected what I wanted but I didn't remember that. rob was making something for what he wanted and did. It probably worked for Hero Lab, so why not RW?

After that point, all I saw were failures of what I wanted, not a success. I don't know if it was or not. The player updates were not real time. Not only that but it couldn't update the players without shutting the program down and syncing with the server. My install couldn't host things, it all went back to the LW servers, so I was at their mercy. No API support, although I could be wrong on that. Not sure if we ever got custom calendars or many other things the core of us wanted and were discussing in the forums. On top of that, long silences from rob and LW. Later, it was explained that he had health issues but he took two or three years to tell us, burning any sympathy he might have otherwise had.

I guess you could say I fell in love with Hero Lab and LW but then fell out of love due to RW and Hero Lab Online. I don't think I ever got my KS worth of functionality and was something I barely used a year after I first got it. I thought it was going to support my ad lib style of running games and once that didn't happen, RW didn't have anything for me anymore. I agree, it had functionality and abilities that many current systems don't. I have looked a lot for something like it but nothing comes close.

Thanks for the discussion!

Thanks for the context. I came at it for completely different direction. I never heard of the company and was just searching for TTRPG world building tools and after some research I chose RealmWorks. I came into it expecting it to be a prep tool. It was great for the worldbuilding aspect of the hobby. At the time I was spending more time building and tweaking my world and adventures than actually running games. When I did run games, however, it DID help me run them smoother BECAUSE of all the content I had preentered. The hyperlinking, search and filters, ability to launch encounters in HeroLab, and the great game history timeline that would auto-build as you marked things done or encountered, revealing content to the players. Also, the "fog of world" map tools were great for in-person games played with a horizontal display and miniatures.

I think this is a good example of how Kickstarters can create expectations and lead to bad will when the scope and implementation don't meet those expectations. I've certainly had this experience and it has always happened when I've backed software projects. It is one reason I no longer back software projects on Kickstarter. That and because I find software projects are far more susceptible to delays and failures. I would only back a software project to support an effort that had some charitable goal and not something like a game I'm hoping to play in next couple of years.

The one recent exception was the Ember world for Foundry VTT. But I felt pretty confident in the developers (the Foundry VTT team) and also was doing it more to support Foundry and I was (an am in the middle of) a multi-year campaign, so was not expecting to even attempt to run Ember until well after the release date.

 

[MNblockhead]

I’m 6 pages in and what stands out to me is the “mental illness” being used for failed crowdfunders by the creator. Whether it’s true or not, a person can’t help but wonder if it’s thrown out there for sympathy sake to diffuse the negative comments in the crowdfunded update and give them more time.

Sometime the pressures of Kickstarter itself leads to mental health issues. I try to default to sympathy. It is just another risk I accept when backing a project by a solo creator or small team. I've had some projects that I thought for sure were going to fail when it became clear that the creator took on more then they could handle, but somehow powered through, despite personal financial and other hardships (B.O.S.S. Bag comes to mind). Then I had others where the creator struggled with personal issues, but then later was involved in a variety of other new projects while never completing the Kickstarter project and letting it drag on without progress or communication for years. Godsfall: Rise of the Demigods is the first that comes to mind and I steer clear of anything by that creator, Kickstarter or otherwise.

 

[EthanSental]

Good view and one I try to hold too as well, benefit of the doubt in general.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Isn't the installed version of Hero Lab still supported?

It is, but if you want anything beyond the games they supported at the time, you're on your own. I was particularly soggy about PF2e in this regard.

I mainly used Hero Labs in conjunction with RealmWorks because of how you could launch an encounter in Hero Labs from RealmWorks. I also don't use any of their software these days but basically because of the opposite reason as you. After moving, I rarely run games in person and moved to cloud-based tools like DnD Beyond and Foundry VTT.

I don't run them in person either, but I still don't want to be dependent on a third party's servers to do so. Its the same reason I use Maptool as my VTT.

 

[dbolack]

I'm not sure what has you writing so angrily (I didn’t quote the part where you are implicitly swearing) but a KS taking TWELVE YEARS to fulfill is not how the system is supposed to work. Obviously, you pay your money, you take your chances with a KS, but folks have every write to be upset when a KS keeps moving the goalposts and takes more than a DECADE to deliver. That's hardly childish; how long would you wait before starting to complain? Was this your KS or something? You seem to be taking criticism of it extremely personally.

I won't argue any of the timeline complaints. It was catestrophically awful on pretty much all levels. Some of the reasons are understandable (multiple hospitalizations, an artist skips out with a lot of undelivered work), while others are completely WTF (completely changing the game engine?) to the point that I am still surprised it was completed.

The problem is expectations. The expectations of a 2012 kickstarter are not the expectations of a 2014 or a 2024. There's been an evolution. Retroactively applying those higher and more stringent expectations backwards is unreasonable. This is entirely independent of all of the shoulda/woulda/coulda with the execution of that Kickstarter.

This is what I get frustrated with. The moving goalposts of expectations. Stomps all over my sense of fairness - yeah, more than the naughty-show the KS run was.

 

[humble minion]

Isn't the installed version of Hero Lab still supported? I mainly used Hero Labs in conjunction with RealmWorks because of how you could launch an encounter in Hero Labs from RealmWorks. I also don't use any of their software these days but basically because of the opposite reason as you. After moving, I rarely run games in person and moved to cloud-based tools like DnD Beyond and Foundry VTT.

I've got a Herolab licence which I use for Mutants and Masterminds character generation and nothing else, because M&M's character generation system genuinely needs software assistance and short of messing about with Excel, there's nothing else that does the job. But as M&M faded a bit from popularity as a system, HL had less and less time devoted to bugfixes, updating with new material etc as Pathfinder became their priority.

Not sure if they'll devote resources to supporting M&M 4th ed when it comes along. It'll be a very big problem for Green Ronin if they don't. I certainly wouldn't even try to run an M&M game with no character builder.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've got a Herolab licence which I use for Mutants and Masterminds character generation and nothing else, because M&M's character generation system genuinely needs software assistance and short of messing about with Excel, there's nothing else that does the job. But as M&M faded a bit from popularity as a system, HL had less and less time devoted to bugfixes, updating with new material etc as Pathfinder became their priority.

Not sure if they'll devote resources to supporting M&M 4th ed when it comes along. It'll be a very big problem for Green Ronin if they don't. I certainly wouldn't even try to run an M&M game with no character builder.

While I'm not going to deny its a virtue to have software support there, I think (at least generically, how it is for you is of course your own thing) its entirely possible to build characters without it. I did it for a considerable time in the early period of 2e and 3e (and presumably 4e) were not appreciably more complex (perhaps slightly less).