7th Sea Hits ONE MILLION DOLLARS (AKA The Top 50 RPG Kickstarters Ever!)
Matt Colville's Strongholds & Streaming smashed all tabletop RPG records, and is the highest funding roleplaying game Kickstarter ever. It is the first to pass the $2,000,000 mark. That's astonishing. While card games like Exploding Kittens and miniatures collections like Reaper's repeatedly successful Kickstarters have made $8.7M and $3M respectively, and dozens of boardgames have passed the $1M milestone, this is the first roleplaying game to hit that landmark figure. Here's a list of the most successful RPG Kickstarters ever.
Interesting fact. The total value of all RPG (not accessories) Kickstarters above $30K is $21,612,300 from 253,154 backer pledges at the time of writing.
The next highest roleplaying game Kickstarter is John Wick's 7th Sea 2nd Edition Kickstarter which made nearly over $1M, followed by Monte Cook Games' Numenera 2, which made over $800K. Onyx Path is the undisputed tabletop RPG Kickstarter King, at least for now (they have raised a staggering $4M in Kickstarters under Richard Thomas' account). Modiphius is also a Kickstarter multiple-blockbuster, and made nearly £350K (which is about $500K) with its Infinity Roleplaying Game. Monte Cook Games made a similar amount with their (at the time record-breaking) Numenera, with just over $500K. Fate Core, The Strange, Numenera: Into the Ninth World, and the Deluxe Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition all also did incredibly well. It's clear that some companies have mastered the art of the Kickstarter down to a well-oiled science.
Below is a list of all the RPG Kickstarters I could find, ranked in order of final funding in US dollars as far as the top 50 [edit - now 100+]. It's for roleplaying game projects only - I did not include dice, miniatures, boardgames, card games, etc. If I missed any, I apologise - it wasn't deliberate! The list goes down as far as $30K.
Kickstarter passed $30K? Let me know in the comments!
Note that currencies fluctuate; I've used the values as of their funding date. Some are ongoing (I've made them bold and italic), so may have climbed the chart since being added created. I'll update their final positions when they finish, but I don't intend to track them daily until then. Kicktraq projections change constantly; where noted below, those were at the time of posting.
The list goes on, of course; I don't plan to go below $30K, as there are literally hundreds in that area. It's interesting to see entries appearing multiple times. I took those who had more than one appearance in the list and added up their individual Kickstarters to see how they rank as a total. Here were those results.
The following is similar to the top list, but it deals with tabletop RPG "related" Kickstarters. They still have to be RPG related (so no board or card games) but they include things like accessories and dice. It's not as detailed or complete as the one above, as these are harder to find; it's just here to add some extra perspective. I cut this one off at $100K for new stuff, but there's a couple of below $100K legacy software/web items from before which I've left there, but not given a ranking.
Matt Colville's Strongholds & Streaming smashed all tabletop RPG records, and is the highest funding roleplaying game Kickstarter ever. It is the first to pass the $2,000,000 mark. That's astonishing. While card games like Exploding Kittens and miniatures collections like Reaper's repeatedly successful Kickstarters have made $8.7M and $3M respectively, and dozens of boardgames have passed the $1M milestone, this is the first roleplaying game to hit that landmark figure. Here's a list of the most successful RPG Kickstarters ever.
Interesting fact. The total value of all RPG (not accessories) Kickstarters above $30K is $21,612,300 from 253,154 backer pledges at the time of writing.
The next highest roleplaying game Kickstarter is John Wick's 7th Sea 2nd Edition Kickstarter which made nearly over $1M, followed by Monte Cook Games' Numenera 2, which made over $800K. Onyx Path is the undisputed tabletop RPG Kickstarter King, at least for now (they have raised a staggering $4M in Kickstarters under Richard Thomas' account). Modiphius is also a Kickstarter multiple-blockbuster, and made nearly £350K (which is about $500K) with its Infinity Roleplaying Game. Monte Cook Games made a similar amount with their (at the time record-breaking) Numenera, with just over $500K. Fate Core, The Strange, Numenera: Into the Ninth World, and the Deluxe Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition all also did incredibly well. It's clear that some companies have mastered the art of the Kickstarter down to a well-oiled science.
Below is a list of all the RPG Kickstarters I could find, ranked in order of final funding in US dollars as far as the top 50 [edit - now 100+]. It's for roleplaying game projects only - I did not include dice, miniatures, boardgames, card games, etc. If I missed any, I apologise - it wasn't deliberate! The list goes down as far as $30K.
Kickstarter passed $30K? Let me know in the comments!
Note that currencies fluctuate; I've used the values as of their funding date. Some are ongoing (I've made them bold and italic), so may have climbed the chart since being added created. I'll update their final positions when they finish, but I don't intend to track them daily until then. Kicktraq projections change constantly; where noted below, those were at the time of posting.
*Still Ongoing
The list goes on, of course; I don't plan to go below $30K, as there are literally hundreds in that area. It's interesting to see entries appearing multiple times. I took those who had more than one appearance in the list and added up their individual Kickstarters to see how they rank as a total. Here were those results.
| # | Name | Kickstarters | Total (nearest 1K) |
| 1 | Richard Thomas | 18 | $4M |
| 2 | Monte Cook Games | 6 | $2.2M |
| 3 | Modiphius | 4 | $1.37M |
| 4 | John Wick | 2 | $1.3M |
| 5 | Frog God Games/Necromancer Games | 9 | $899,000 |
| 6 | Chaosium Inc | 2 | $768,000 |
| 7 | Fred Hicks / Evil Hat Productions | 3 | $621,000 |
| 8 | Shane Hensley | 8 | $580,000 |
| 9 | Goodman Games | 6 | $517,000 |
| 10 | Rick Meints | 2 | $466,000 |
| 11 | Kobold Press | 4 | $465,000 |
| 12 | Jim Searcy | 3 | $403,000 |
| 13 | Cubicle 7 | 3 | $322,000 |
| 14 | Andy Kitkowski | 3 | $313,000 |
| 15 | Green Ronin Publishing | 3 | $211,000 |
| 16 | Morrus | 3 | $192,000 |
| 17 | Luke Crane | 2 | $173,000 |
| 18 | Sasquatch Game Studio | 2 | $127,000 |
| 19 | Stewart Wieck | 2 | $124,000 |
| 20 | Legendary Games | 2 | $124,000 |
| 21 | Bully Pulpit Games | 2 | $87,000 |
| 22 | Adventureaweek.com | 2 | $80,000 |
| 23 | Adam Meyers | 2 | $76,000 |
*Still Ongoing
