RPG Crowdfunding News – Seas of Kansas, the Undying War, airlock, and more

Charles Dunwoody · May 4, 2022

Seas of Kansas sounds like an interesting setting. Not sure about the cards however.

Egg Embry · May 4, 2022

Charles Dunwoody said:
Seas of Kansas sounds like an interesting setting. Not sure about the cards however.

I haven't tested out the system so I can't say if the cards work or not. That said, one of my favorite games is CAPERS and its card mechanic makes for one of the best and most atmospheric systems I've played. So, fingers crossed on Seas of Kansas.

Mark Craddock · May 4, 2022

Thanks for the comparison of Kickstarter vs IndiGoGo.

Morrus · May 4, 2022

Egg Embry said:
Not disparaging either product or campaign, instead I’m comparing them to see the difference the platforms makes. Both campaigns featured compelling products, though this one is a little more fun, both are from the same publisher, and use the same system, but at this time, this Kickstarter campaign is about ten times the size of the IndieGoGo one in terms of funds raised and over four times the size in numbers of backers. That’s telling. I feel both books offered great content and Blessings, Healing, and Peace for Ukraine gave support to the refugees in crisis, but there is a marked difference in audience and it could be argued that is down to the platform.

So there's a couple of reasons for that.

First, Kickstarter is bigger (of course), and people are more willing to use it as they're used to it. They have accounts there, they've probably backed things before there.

But more importantly, we've spent about a decade on Kickstarter running 29(!) campaigns now. That's a lot of people getting notified by Kickstarter when we launch a new campaign. When we launch a KS project, 20,000 past backers get notified. When we launched that IndieGoGo campaign, 0 people got notified. If we launch another IGG campaign then 222 people will get notified.

We have a desire to use other platforms for a variety of reasons, but it's taken us a decade to build this following on KS, so it's a slow process and we're kinda starting from scratch again. Thus the much lower showing on IGG. For larger companies who have tens of thousands of people in the KS infrastructure, it would be even more pronounced.

On one other platform we got even lower figures for a campaign. But nobody noticed.

Egg Embry · May 4, 2022

Morrus said:
So there's a couple of reasons for that.

First, Kickstarter is bigger (of course), and people are more willing to use it as they're used to it. They have accounts there, they've probably backed things before there.

But more importantly, we've spent about a decade on Kickstarter running 29(!) campaigns now. That's a lot of people getting notified by Kickstarter when we launch a new campaign. When we launch a KS project, 20,000 past backers get notified. When we launched that IndieGoGo campaign, 0 people got notified. If we launch another IGG campaign then 222 people will get notified.

We have a desire to use other platforms for a variety of reasons, but it's taken us a decade to build this following on KS, so it's a slow process and we're kinda starting from scratch again. Thus the much lower showing on IGG. For larger companies who have tens of thousands of people in the KS infrastructure, it would be even more pronounced.

On one other platform we got even lower figures for a campaign. But nobody noticed.

All very fair and valid points. I'm glad EN Publishing is spreading the exposure around, it helps the whole market.

beholdsa · May 5, 2022

I downloaded the Seas of Kansas preview rules and it looks like a beautiful mess. But I love card-based RPGs. And I happen to be from Kansas. So they can count me in as one more backer.