Are We Looking At A New RPG Kickstarter Record?

The current record for an RPG Kickstarter is John Wick's 7th Sea 2nd Edition, which made just over $1.3 million in about a month. Matt Colville looks like he might leave that in the dust with Strongholds & Streaming, however, having raised nearly half a million dollars in about 5 hours at the time of posting this, with a month to go!

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Strongholds & Streaming is a dual Kickstarter - first to produce a 128-page hardcover book about building strongholds and attracting followers for D&D 5th Edition; and then with stretch goals related to Colville's streaming channel.

You can build four stronghold types - keeps, towers, temples, and establishments; these roughly correlate to warriors, arcane casters, divine casters, and rogue-types. The stronghold improves your class abilities, and attracts followers.

Stretch goals include miniatures, more pages, an an adventure (so far - he's blown through all those on there right now already).

You can see this epic Kickstarter here. I've never seen an RPG Kickstarter blow up quite so fast in so short a time!

Matt Colville writes the Critical Role comic, and has worked on various tabletop gaming projects, including the recent Star Trek RPG. He has worked on various mass-combat and starship combat rulesets. In addition, he runs a big YouTube channel about tabletop RPGs (D&D especially).

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[gyor]

I would wager that extra funds will go towards studio space and equipment for the streaming show.

That makes sense, but their is nothing wrong with the boss man getting a nice pay bump too, this is capitalism.

 

[Shasarak]

While there are no more official stretch goals (which is a good idea for various reasons); I imagine there are plenty of uses for extra money should there be extra money (expect unexpected overhead).

A better studio! A bigger book with more pictures! Better quality on the minis! More videos! I'm sure there are lots of ideas.

I must admit that I was hoping for a bit more then 126 pages though. Maybe the extra items and Adventure will plump it out a little.

 

[CubicsRube]

I'm just hapoy with a straightforward ruleset that will be easy to import into 5e!

I want to run an old school style gold for xp, name level, west marchesish campaign and this will be perfect for it!

 

[AriochQ]

Bro your product could grab all the folks who are unhappy with OUR product and those people need strongholds too!

I think there are some aspects I was planning on including that probably won't be covered in your product, so I will keep it on the shelf. I am in the midst of another large product at the moment, so I need to get that one done first. I am looking forward to seeing what you put together!

 

[jasper]

Bro your product could grab all the folks who are unhappy with OUR product and those people need strongholds too!

yes yes I am an accountant in a fantasy land. I must must know if a wooden 5 by 10 door is 3 gp or 7 gp. How much is a 10 by 10 stone wall cost.
Or I could just open my 1E dmg and find out.
The market can handle both.

 

[MNblockhead]

This is why I went from someone who was going to pledge to someone who isn't, the excitement of the stretch goals are part of the kick starter experience for me.

I back a lot of Kickstarters. Rarely are the stretch goals a deciding factor. I decide if I want to back the product on the merits of the pitch. Is the base product something I would like to have and would like to see created? If so, and if my budget allows, I back it. Often I do back at a higher level to get any add-ons and stretch goals that are offered and to give the creators more support, but more often then not, I find fulfilment of the stretch goals and add-ons to be a pain. I have to keep a close watch for update e-mail messages, deal with clunky third-party order systems, it becomes a chore. If the bones kickstarters were not such a good deal, for example, I wouldn't bother supporting because of the annoying order system.

Also, like ordering food at a restaurant, more is not always better. If the base product promises to be excellent and exciting, you really shouldn't need to hold out the carrot of more stuff.

I especially don't like stretch goals for books. Your goal should be to have a book with the content needed at the quality desired for your vision. Adding extra content as a stretch goal cheapens the vision in my experience. There are some exceptions, such as Kobold Press adding cardboard flat minis to go with its Tome of Beasts, but this book doesn't really lend itself to that. Even the minis that they are adding seem like something slapped on, which don't directly support the base product. Also, adding an adventure (for example) doesn't really do anything to add the base product I'm deciding to back. Unless Matt strikes an amazing deal with Dwarven Forge to add 3-D battlemap pieces to go along with the book, I can't think of anything that would enhance the base product enough to make it influence my decision to support. Focusing on a great base product certainly seems to be working well for him with this Kickstarter.

 

[pogre]

You are not the only one. It comes up every time I've seen anyone talk about this kind of product over the last 20 years. There's definitely a fantasy of "I want to BUILD my stronghold, gimme some graph paper!"

Hell that's what I did in 1986 when I built my Lyan Paladin's stronghold!

I checked out some of your Youtube videos and was really impressed. It is easy to see why this project is taking off. You are a great rep for the D&D community. In other words - You are a River to your people!

 

[Swarmkeeper]

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[Motorskills]

I'd take the opposite tack to [MENTION=6670153]gyor[/MENTION] - I've seen too many Kickstarts fail exactly because of stretch goals. (Loss of focus, over-reach, etc etc)

The only company that I backed specifically because of their stretch offerings (kinda) was Arc Dream for their Delta Green launch last year
a) their rollout was weird
b) they have built up huge trust that they can deliver (eventually) over many years.

 

[Azzy]

I'm really (pleasantly) surprised about this. I would have thought that the topic of this product would have only appealed to old-school players and DMs, but it looks like there's plenty of "newer" D&D players that are looking forward to this, too.