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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[zedturtle]

Haha sorry should be more specific, DnD or 5E stuff!

Dude not only worked for WotC, he worked on third-party things for 3E, and has had a youtube channel for the last couple of years teaching folks how to run 5e. He'll even be on (another) livestream on Sunday with Mearls, Matt Mercer and Adam Koebel.

I think he'll be okay. Plus, he's going to open up drafts to backers and solicit feedback.

 

[Elf_flambe]

I looked at the campaign this morning, and the book part looks interesting. But also trying to do miniatures (for the first time!) and build a broadcast studio makes the goals seem very scattershot and unfocused. Especially for a first-time Kickstarter creator. I generally hope for the best for people's projects, but something about this makes my Spider-sense tingle. I'll keep watching...

 

[Jester David]

Dude not only worked for WotC, he worked on third-party things for 3E, and has had a youtube channel for the last couple of years teaching folks how to run 5e. He'll even be on (another) livestream on Sunday with Mearls, Matt Mercer and Adam Koebel.

I think he'll be okay. Plus, he's going to open up drafts to backers and solicit feedback.

What did he do for WotC?

 

[Jester David]

I looked at the campaign this morning, and the book part looks interesting. But also trying to do miniatures (for the first time!) and build a broadcast studio makes the goals seem very scattershot and unfocused. Especially for a first-time Kickstarter creator. I generally hope for the best for people's projects, but something about this makes my Spider-sense tingle. I'll keep watching...

Paizo did two Kickstarters where they combined video games and RPG book.
It's odd but it pulls in money from people who want the book and people who want to support his streaming.
And he has a large following. It's in his best interests not to tank his rep with a bad Kickstarter...

 

[Wiseblood]

I looked at the campaign this morning, and the book part looks interesting. But also trying to do miniatures (for the first time!) and build a broadcast studio makes the goals seem very scattershot and unfocused. Especially for a first-time Kickstarter creator. I generally hope for the best for people's projects, but something about this makes my Spider-sense tingle. I'll keep watching...

I highly recommend his youtube channel. It covers all kinds of stuff but mostly D&D. See a doctor about the spider-sense though, might be the flu.

 

[Rygar]

Another sign that D&D audience from streaming and streamers is massive. Colville is looking to make ten times what the ENWorld Touch of class raised... in a couple days.

I think that's a little bit of a stretch. Right now there's 6,864 backers. Or 0.002% of the US population. That's vanishlngly small, not massive. In fact, it's just 2.2% of the first month of sales for 3rd edition. If anything, this is confirmation that streaming is inconsequential.

 

[Jester David]

I think that's a little bit of a stretch. Right now there's 6,864 backers. Or 0.002% of the US population. That's vanishlngly small, not massive. In fact, it's just 2.2% of the first month of sales for 3rd edition. If anything, this is confirmation that streaming is inconsequential.

And if the pace slows, so it only sells 10% the first month's sales of the 3e PHB, that'd still be one of the best selling 3PP of all time. Compare it to the numbers and funds of a noted publisher like Kobold Press: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/350683997/midgard-campaign-setting-dark-roads-and-deep-magic

6,500 sounds small. But you never see more than 2000 users on *this* site at a time, and it's free. And it's still day one.

 

[darjr]

And it’s a small pond, a small hobby, it’s already a big fish.

 

[Henry]

Colville I could swear is an ENWorlder, too, though I don’t remember if he had an alt back in the day.

This is fantastic! I wish Matt all the success in the world, and more importantly — being a Kickstarter project, I wish him all the best in getting everything fulfilled on-time and in-profit!

 

[mattcolville]

I looked at the campaign this morning, and the book part looks interesting. But also trying to do miniatures (for the first time!) and build a broadcast studio makes the goals seem very scattershot and unfocused. Especially for a first-time Kickstarter creator. I generally hope for the best for people's projects, but something about this makes my Spider-sense tingle. I'll keep watching...

Seems a reasonable observation. But we put out literally dozens of books when I was full time at Last Unicorn, then WotC, then Decipher so to me, that is low-risk.

And we've already streamed, we have all the gear, we literally just don't have a space anymore. So...folks may not like the stream, but actually doing it is easy. We did it for several sessions WITHOUT a successful kickstarter, just me spending $10k+ on all the gear for a multicamera live TV station.

It's really the minis that are a risk, we call that out in the video and the KS page. But we have concept artists already working, modellers ready, and manufacturing partners lined up. I'm confident we'll make SOMETHING!