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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[Vampyr3]

Trending towards - $6,800,834
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[jhingelshod]

Promise?

Don't think we'll be seeing him anytime soon.

 

[robus]

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.

I don't think the commenter was talking about this KS necessarily but it certainly was (is?) a common practice on eBay. Advertise a low-priced item and then almost double the price when the S&H is added in. It happens on Amazon too with 3rd party fulfillment.

 

[zedturtle]

Trending towards - $6,800,834

I doubt. I think that Matt has built up a very reliable community... those of us who could pledge immediately did so (for whatever 'immediately' means) and those folks who are budgeting things out will pledge when they can.

I'm thinking ~$1.6 million +/- $200,000. But if he gets some sort of crazy exposure (e.g. Mercer gives a shout-out, G&S promotes it, a major business website latches onto as a 'see what the crazy kids are doing today on kickstarter', etc.) then things change.

 

[mattcolville]

I think Zedturtle is right, I think folks underestimate how effective our outreach program was. We sent out over 8,000 emails and the launch video got like 40,000 views (which is normal) in the first day. And those emails went to folks who explicitly told us they wanted to know when the KS went live.

So our opening I think is probably stronger than most, which means there aren't as many people to tap left.

Also, we are opposed to adding stretch goals just because it gets people excited. We're not Zynga, we're not trying to exploit people's dopamine receptors. We've already promised a LOT, and now we have to deliver.

I think we'll get a bump when we hit $1m. And I think maybe I'll have some stuff to show people that will move the needle.

Also Kicktraq is terrible, they treat each KS like its the only one they have any data for, like there aren't known trends. Their numbers only become predictive when there's like three days left and the answer is obvious to anyone.

 

[mattcolville]

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

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

 

[Morrus]

Early trending figures on Kicktraq are notoriously unreliable and unceasingly high. They always come down to something more realistic halfway into the campaign.

My rule of thumb is that the total is divided into three stages - the initial superspike, then 3 weeks of very slow growth, ending with a final spike. Those three are usually about thirds. So I'd guess at this doing 1.5-2M.

 

[mattcolville]

Good luck to Matt with the kickstarter.

However, it is a good example of what frustrates me, when it comes to RPG kickstarters. Being in Europe, shipping is 22 dollars, and since the projekt (afaik) is not EU friendly, I can expect a tax (and service) for an additional 20 dollars. The pledge at 30 dollars easily becomes a total of more than 70 dollars.
Matt's project is far from the only RPG kickstarter not to consider shipping and taxes outside of the States. However, when it comes to board game kickstarters most them do consider this, and strive to at least be EU friendly.
I don't know why one group of projects generally consider this, and the other group does not, but it is frustrating.

We are EU Friendly. Our fulfillment company has cleared that up.

We have updated the logo to reflect this and make explicit what it means. Import duties are included in the price.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/255133215/strongholds-and-streaming/

 

[Uller]

In my original post I said a product like this was "sorely needed"...then I watched the video and was amused to see thats how Mr. Colville described it himself.

I ran it past my players (their PCs are 13th level) and adked them if it interests them...not surprisingly it does. So I've backed it. Looking forward to the playtest pdf.


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[Usus]

We are EU Friendly. Our fulfillment company has cleared that up.

We have updated the logo to reflect this and make explicit what it means. Import duties are included in the price.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/255133215/strongholds-and-streaming/

That is some good news.
Thank you for doing this. Now I will go and a closer look at your kickstarter

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