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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[Motorskills]

As above. Way overreacting.

What do you expect from someone called "Corrosive" ?

But I also wanted to point out that he's been building a subscriber base for years and then went on to produce a Kickstarter that people went nuts for as the demand and the name was there. He didn't win anything.

Yeah, that was a really ugly sentiment to express. Ignorance and malice in one neat package.

 

[Ancalagon]

It came out a bit wrong, that is all.

Am I talking about Matt or posters here? You tell me

 

[Motorskills]

It came out a bit wrong, that is all.

Am I talking about Matt or posters here? You tell me

As long as you aren't talking about the eventual KS output, you'll be fine.

 

[baniel105]

I'm not sure why people keep saying Matt made 2 million. It's not like all that's going into his pocket! There's going to be lots of expenses, what with the majority of backers paying for physical items. Not to say that there won't be a lot of profit left over, of course.

 

[schnee]

It's not a question of us old timers gatekeeping. We're not doing that. He is. It's the opposite. It's when people like Colville are telling us that we're no longer part of the community. That's gatekeeping. He's a multimillionaire now and he's telling us we're not part of the D&D community. As far as I can make out, because nobody reognized him as he'd left 20 years ago, and he's pissed at us for that. We were supposed to genuflect at his gracious appearance here or something, and we didn't.

But well. He won $2,000,000. That makes him right. We're fired from the D&D community.

Yeah, that's a little dramatic.

Look, he's absolutely right about one thing: his success was due to YouTube. 1000%. He got credibility as a designer with his DM advice series, he got more trust by not having ads, he proved his writing chops to new fans with his books, and he is a fantastic spokesman for the 'old school' gaming philosophy.

There are a bunch of other DM types on YouTube. His screen presence blows the rest of them out of the water, not to mention his ability to articulate complex stuff in an approachable and fun way. Absolutely none of that ever comes through in a text medium.

If it weren't for YouTube his Kickstarter wouldn't exist.

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As far as there being 'Forums' people and 'Social Media' people, sure, some of us bridge the gap, but again, that's probably not the majority. And, when you look at the people who don't bridge that gap - the old forum guard vs the new social community, they are very, very different. Old graying white pulp fantasy / wargaming / ren-festers vs. younger comic / book series / movie / anime / cosplay / video game / theater / larp with very wide representation.

Even in EnWorld, which has a surprisingly liberal perspective compared to most gaming forums, I see regular outbursts of the 'get off my lawn, fantasy is about racism towards orcs and low strength female characters and that's that' variety. Just wait until MToF's 'Elves are gender-fluid' hits. Sit back and watch and see the difference. I bet money that the forum and social media responses will be completely different.

Watch the What Critical Role Means To Me video for a taste. I'd love to see if even EnWorld has that breadth of representation, but I sure wouldn't put any money on it.

 

[Morrus]

I bet money that the forum and social media responses will be completely different.

Just from my own anecdotal experience, social media responses can get pretty ugly compared to places like this.

 

[jasper]

I'm not sure why people keep saying Matt made 2 million. It's not like all that's going into his pocket! There's going to be lots of expenses, what with the majority of backers paying for physical items. Not to say that there won't be a lot of profit left over, of course.

The same way Black Panther made $1.19 Billion. We know about expenses.

 

[jasper]

Just from my own anecdotal experience, social media responses can get pretty ugly compared to places like this.

True any time I want to shut down discussion on you tube I just post a picture of myself. Smiling. That ends the discussion right quick.... or I get a temp ban.

 

[MNblockhead]

Yeah, this reminds me of "generation" debates. Most stereotyping of "Generation X", "Millenials", etc. are rubbish (Adam Connover of "Adam Ruins Everything" did a great talk on this at Deep Shift. I think the same is true with "new" social media vs. "old" social media. To me, it seems, that the new social media and multimedia options and streaming have all made online communications more approachable and easier and/or more attractive for a wider base of people to partake. Facebook and Youtube apply to broad demographic. Twitch probably trends much younger, but that has less to do with it being streaming than it does with the content streamed. If/when Twitch starts to stream content with appeal to other demographics (sports events, golf, DIY, cooking, gardening, etc.), then it will be no more of a young-person's platform than You Tube, Netflix, or Hulu.

Moderated forums like ENWorld appeal to those who want to have more in-depth conversations. Those willing to take the time to read and respond in this format will always be fewer than those who want to mostly passively consume content while shooting off quick reactions. The thing is, forum users were always a small percentage of gamers overall and in the golden era of gaming forums, many users use them because they were the easiest place to look up information or get rules clarifications. That's not true any more. That doesn't mean that forums are obsolete, just that they can focus on what they do best and provide a platform for those who want more substantial conversation.

And, I agree with Morrus, a well-moderated forum tends to be far more civil than other platforms. I have to call out ENWorld as doing an especially good job in this regards. Strong opinions are tolerated but uncivil and bullying behavior is quickly nipped in the bud.

 

[Shasarak]

Look, he's absolutely right about one thing: his success was due to YouTube. 1000%. He got credibility as a designer with his DM advice series, he got more trust by not having ads, he proved his writing chops to new fans with his books, and he is a fantastic spokesman for the 'old school' gaming philosophy.

I think that it is quite fun to retroactively come up with reasons for the success of the kickstarter because who would have guessed that a book/mini/streaming combo would have done so well.