Cosmere Overtakes Avatar Legends To Become Biggest TTRPG Kickstarter Ever!

With a full five days left to go, Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG has passed Avatar Legends' record of $9.5M to become the highest funding tabletop roleplaying game podcast ever! Just its first-day total of $4.3M put it at #4 in the official Million Dollar Kickstarter Club, and it looks set to comfortably set a lead of at least $2M. Backer Tracker currently projects a total of just under $12M, while Kicktraq predicts $12.3M.

Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club

Avatar Legends leads the pack in an exclusive club -- Kickstarters for tabletop roleplaying game products which have broken the $1M barrier! It is currently the most successful TTRPG Kickstarter in history with a funding total of nearly $10M, and over 80,000 backers. [UPDATE--Backerkit started...

www.enworld.org

While the backer count is under half that of Avatar, the Cosmere dollar total is currently sitting at nearly $9.8M. Brandon Sanderson already holds the Kickstarter record for the most funded project ever--his novel series made over $40M on Kickstarter in 2023!

Published by Brotherwise Games, the game encompasses Brandon Sanderson's entire universe of novels. It includes a world guide, a rulebook, and an adventure called Stormlight Stonewalkers. It's a new game system, based on a d20 mechanic with talent trees and skill-based magic.

It only remains to be seen how far it can go--but one thing is for sure: Brandon Sanderson has yet another world record to his name!

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[Crusadius]

Somebody alert the International RPG Crowdfunding Olympics Committee, the Cosmere be doping.

Yes. I agree. People should be arrested over this. I’m calling the Committee right now.

 

[Nikosandros]

Somebody alert the International RPG Crowdfunding Olympics Committee, the Cosmere be doping.

Even a trace amount of Cosmedol is sufficient for a 2 years disqualification.

 

[mamba]

Well they did $10M or so for their TV show, IIRC. And TTRPGs are a much smaller market than TV shows, so I would assume less (in the same way that Sanderson's TTRPG Kickstarter did a quarter of what his novels KS did).

not sure it would be less, they had 88k backers for a series that I can watch for free, and they just got a little earlier, or at least that is my understanding. As far as rewards go, that is not all that much and probably depressed turnout. Given that they are known for roleplaying I’d also expect their audience to have a much larger overlap with TTRPGs than a fantasy book author

 

[DoctorPip]

Cosmere is funding for two core games

Its one game that will release with two settings. The Mistborn and Stormlight books are seperate from the core books.

Avatar Legends had more backers so you could argue that its a more successful campaign, yet here we are just looking "filthy lucre" as the best indication of success. But I do understand the difficulties of trying to use other indicators since those indicators can be difficult to calculate, and looking at the big dollar sign at the top of the page is easy to use.

The goal of a kickstarter is raising money. The Cosmere RPG raised more money, and I don't see it being spun as more than that.

I'm not sure I understand why it matters to Avatar Legends that the Cosmere RPG was higher funded. Does raising more money harm Avatar in some way I'm not aware of?

Avatar simply held a record. It wasn't competing with the Cosmere RPG for a top spot. At most Avatar will have to remove "most funded RPG" stickers from their books or something.

 

[Morrus]

I'm not sure I understand why it matters to Avatar Legends that the Cosmere RPG was higher funded. Does raising more money harm Avatar in some way I'm not aware of?

Exactly. I don’t inagine the owners of Avatar are weeping silently at the ‘unfairness’ of it. Like I said earlier… ‘unfair’ to whom, exactly?

People can measure these things how they like. It literally doesn’t matter. I ranked them by dollar amount in the Million Dollar list, but if somebody wants to rank them by backer count or word count or level of spiciness they are welcome to. It doesn’t matter.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Spicy Cosmere sounds delicious. Is it closer to Cali-Mex or Tex-Mex?

 

[Parmandur]

Exactly. I don’t inagine the owners of Avatar are weeping silently at the ‘unfairness’ of it. Like I said earlier… ‘unfair’ to whom, exactly?

People can measure these things how they like. It literally doesn’t matter. I ranked them by dollar amount in the Million Dollar list, but if somebody wants to rank them by backer count or word count or level of spiciness they are welcome to. It doesn’t matter.

The creator of Avatar publicly congratulated Brandon Sanderson on Instagram, being a fan of his novels, and digital high-fives went all around.

 

[Crusadius]

Its one game that will release with two settings. The Mistborn and Stormlight books are seperate from the core books.

Then I am mistaken in thinking that each setting (Stormlight, Mistborn) has 3 books being funded by this kickstarter: a core book (handbook), a world guide, and a book of adventures, and someone could choose to order the corebook, world guide and book of adventures for Mistborn and still be able to play the game without any additional books from the Stormlight set. I would appreciate being corrected in my belief.

The goal of a kickstarter is raising money. The Cosmere RPG raised more money, and I don't see it being spun as more than that.

I'm not sure I understand why it matters to Avatar Legends that the Cosmere RPG was higher funded. Does raising more money harm Avatar in some way I'm not aware of?

Avatar simply held a record. It wasn't competing with the Cosmere RPG for a top spot. At most Avatar will have to remove "most funded RPG" stickers from their books or something.

And all I was commenting about was that comparing the total funds of a TTRPG kickstarter to other TTRPG kickstarters is becoming meaningless when the kickstarters themselves aren't comparable. I'm not criticising the celebration of the success of the kickstarter.

And in 10 years when another barely breaks 10 million and gets compared to Avatar Legends, someone is going to say "yeah, but inflation...".

 

[Parmandur]

Then I am mistaken in thinking that each setting (Stormlight, Mistborn) has 3 books being funded by this kickstarter: a core book (handbook), a world guide, and a book of adventures, and someone could choose to order the corebook, world guide and book of adventures for Mistborn and still be able to play the game without any additional books from the Stormlight set. I would appreciate being corrected in my belief.

And all I was commenting about was that comparing the total funds of a TTRPG kickstarter to other TTRPG kickstarters is becoming meaningless when the kickstarters themselves aren't comparable. I'm not criticising the celebration of the success of the kickstarter.

And in 10 years when another barely breaks 10 million and gets compared to Avatar Legends, someone is going to say "yeah, but inflation...".

You are correct about the format, each set is getting a self-contained rulebook that is a combo PHB/DMG, along with an Adventure book and a Setting book that doubles as the MM for that world.

This Kickstarter actually did beat Avatar's inflation number, and even the Vox Machina inflation number of $14 million. I backed all 3, it's just kind of fun to compare.

 

[Morrus]

And in 10 years when another barely breaks 10 million and gets compared to Avatar Legends, someone is going to say "yeah, but inflation...".

And it still won't matter.