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!

​

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).

[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[Hawk Diesel]

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!

Yea, I recently used Roll20 to build a stronghold for my players (they call it the Handsome Mansion in case anyone is curious). For things like actually building or designing a stronghold, the 3E supplement Stronghold Builder's Guide holds up fairly well. But this new product seems to go far beyond just designing and building a stronghold, and exploring the farther reaching game impact and consequences of a home base and source of influence upon the world. For me, that's what I'm most into about this.

 

[mattcolville]

When a product is advertised at some low price plus S/H, where all the profit is hidden in the S/H hidden in the fine print, I feel that ranges from sleazy to outright fraudulent. Here's the thing; I'm paying for the book. When I walk into a bookstore or game store, I pay whatever the price is for the book. I don't care about how much it cost to store and display the product or pay the cashiers or handle returns; it should all be in the price on the book. If I'm in a situation where I can't carry the product out, and have to have it delivered or mailed, then I'll pay for delivery or shipping, but the two costs should be as separate as possible.

Well we made them seperate! We make nothing on shipping.

 

[Traveller]

When a product is advertised at some low price plus S/H, where all the profit is hidden in the S/H hidden in the fine print, I feel that ranges from sleazy to outright fraudulent. Here's the thing; I'm paying for the book. When I walk into a bookstore or game store, I pay whatever the price is for the book. I don't care about how much it cost to store and display the product or pay the cashiers or handle returns; it should all be in the price on the book. If I'm in a situation where I can't carry the product out, and have to have it delivered or mailed, then I'll pay for delivery or shipping, but the two costs should be as separate as possible.

I find this statement somewhat naive...

When I buy apples at my local grocery shop he is also "hiding" his shipping in the price per kilo, and it's even more subtle and hard to calculate.
He also hides his spoilage and electric bill in the price...

The book shop is also hiding lots of costs in that price you pay, ever wondered how come Amazon can sell it for less?

 

[CubicsRube]

When a product is advertised at some low price plus S/H, where all the profit is hidden in the S/H hidden in the fine print, I feel that ranges from sleazy to outright fraudulent. Here's the thing; I'm paying for the book. When I walk into a bookstore or game store, I pay whatever the price is for the book. I don't care about how much it cost to store and display the product or pay the cashiers or handle returns; it should all be in the price on the book. If I'm in a situation where I can't carry the product out, and have to have it delivered or mailed, then I'll pay for delivery or shipping, but the two costs should be as separate as possible.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? If you buy online there is the cost of the product and then you pay shipping on top.

I've backed this kickstarter and the shipping is directly display. If anything this is more upfront than backing and then having to pay a potentially high shipping cost later down the line.

 

[mattcolville]

If anything this is more upfront than backing and then having to pay a potentially high shipping cost later down the line.

Kickstarters let you wait until the end of the KS campaign to tell you the shipping but we felt like that was crazy. Folks need to know how much shipping is going to be when they pledge.

 

[CubicsRube]

Kickstarters let you wait until the end of the KS campaign to tell you the shipping but we felt like that was crazy. Folks need to know how much shipping is going to be when they pledge.

I appreciate it matt. Although I've recently been binge watching your running the game videos and i knew this was going to be an instabuy for me!

Glad to see you're doing well on it!

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

AAaaaand this is the reason I log on once every six months to this place....

Promise?

 

[AriochQ]

Ironically, I had been thinking of making a similar product for DMs Guild. Guess that is now shelved lol.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Ironically, I had been thinking of making a similar product for DMs Guild. Guess that is now shelved lol.

Nah, go ahead! If the game and DMs Guild can support 157 different Revised Rangers, arcane half-casters, and new Warlord variants... a second book about running a stronghold should be fine!

 

[Lidgar]

Nah, go ahead! If the game and DMs Guild can support 157 different Revised Rangers, arcane half-casters, and new Warlord variants... a second book about running a stronghold should be fine!

Correction. There are now 157.3 Revised Rangers. I am still working on the 0.7. And believe me, its a doozy.