Critical Role Critical Role's Kickstarter Breaks $1,000,000 In About An Hour!

For those hoping for a new D&D cartoon, Critical Role has just launched a Kickstarter for an animated show based on their livestream campaign. It broke a million dollars in about an hour, and has 45 days left to go...

​

"Critical Role's The Legend of Vox Machina reunites your favorite D&D heroes for a professional-quality animated special!"

Also on offer are theme song MP3s, production art prints, sticker sets, dice, playing card sets, plushies, pin sets, canvas bags, and more.

 

[Hussar]

D&D does NOT have a good track record on film. But even if that was not an issue, explaining what Mind Flayers are, the whole hive mind thing, and elder brain, etc. Would waste a lot of precious animation time to explain. The Briarwoods are vampire despots. Easy-peasy to convey to the new viewer without a lot of exposition.



Unless google has failed me, Warner Bros own the D&D movie rights and have a film in production for a 2021 date. No idea if that's still true, though.

---

They'll probably blow through the $5.75m goal before the stream tomorrow night.

Meh, brain eating squid heads. Not exactly hard to figure out. All the other stuff, that D&D geeks groove on, don't matter at all.

This really does remind me of Rooster Teeth and the Red Vs Blues series. RT started out just doing some youtube machinima videos using Halo. After a few seasons of this, Microsoft actually contacted them and gave them the rights to use the art and whatnot to expand beyond machinima. Considering Red Vs Blue has generally now gets millions of views on Youtube, it has been a partnership that has helped both groups.

One could hope a similar sort of thing could happen between WotC and CR.

 

[CleverNickName]

They just broke the record for the highest-funded film project on Kickstarter. The previous record was set in 2015 by "Mystery Science Theater 3000," at $5,764,229. That project ended up filming 14 episodes, and ran for two seasons on Netflix.

Film is not the same media as animation, and B-movie satire is not the same topic as live-stream tabletop RPG. I don't know what this means for the project's exposure or long-term viability. But I think it's safe to say the future looks bright for Critical Role.

 

[jmucchiello]

They are currently the 15th most funded project on kickstarter.

So before this shift I might have been right but now... the limit is based on how much they are willing to produce.

Mercer has said, the more money, the more animation minutes. I doubt they have any willingness to stop.

And as for the stretch goals delaying the release, that's silly. They only really have to get the first 88 minutes or so out by the "fall 2020" deadline. That should be no problem. The rest can come out over time.

 

[Waterbizkit]

I've been watching CR since the first episode of campaign 1 aired and its been an amazing phenomenon to see unfold over time. I started out not expecting to be especially interested in watching other people play, especially since their style was so different from what I see at my tables, but it became mesmerizing. The stories and characters are genuinely compelling and the people themselves are wonderful as we've gotten to know them more & more over time.

To see this kickstarter take off like this is equally amazing and I'm happy that it's going to let the cast accomplish a dream of theirs they thought was just a pipedream. I haven't pledged yet myself, I'm just waiting for the next paycheck, but I'll probably throw $100-200 at this in another week or so. I'm looking forward to tonight when they start their latest stream.

So good luck to them moving forward, because there's a lot to look forward to.

 

[sim-h]

I love that they are doing this, but will they repay their Kickstarter investors if there are distribution deals, sale of rights to other territories and media etc.? I can see them making a fortune out of this, which should rightfully be shared with those that made it possible. Although maybe I'm missing something? Not trying to be negative...

 

[André Soares]

I love that they are doing this, but will they repay their Kickstarter investors if there are distribution deals, sale of rights to other territories and media etc.? I can see them making a fortune out of this, which should rightfully be shared with those that made it possible. Although maybe I'm missing something? Not trying to be negative...

There is no reason for refunds. The backers will recieve the episodes first, and in the kickstarter there is no commitment to one mode of distribution, neither a promess to not sell rights, they even state they are looking in to the best way to do that.

 

[Parmandur]

I love that they are doing this, but will they repay their Kickstarter investors if there are distribution deals, sale of rights to other territories and media etc.? I can see them making a fortune out of this, which should rightfully be shared with those that made it possible. Although maybe I'm missing something? Not trying to be negative...

That's not how Kickstarter works: this isn't investment, it is a transaction for swag.

 

[sim-h]

Looking at the reward levels and the cost of each - the swag is worth nowhere near the requested pledge at each level. Otherwise I'd back it. It looks more like raising the money to pay the respective parties for their efforts to produce the cartoon - which will be intellectual property with all the associated exploitation rights assigned to the owner of that IP.

Which begs the moral question of who should own the rights, if the person/s creating the IP are effectively being paid to create it by hundreds of thousands of KS backers.

But hey, not my problem! Has there been a precedent of this sort of thing on KS?

 

[André Soares]

There is no legal basis for a claim of ownership of a product by backers. Morally I don't know how one could argue they did. Kickstarter is about believing in an idea and supporting it not about buying shares to an IP.

 

[Asgorath]

Looking at the reward levels and the cost of each - the swag is worth nowhere near the requested pledge at each level. Otherwise I'd back it. It looks more like raising the money to pay the respective parties for their efforts to produce the cartoon - which will be intellectual property with all the associated exploitation rights assigned to the owner of that IP.

Which begs the moral question of who should own the rights, if the person/s creating the IP are effectively being paid to create it by hundreds of thousands of KS backers.

But hey, not my problem! Has there been a precedent of this sort of thing on KS?

This isn't a Kickstarter for a bunch of cool CR merch, i.e. the rewards aren't the goal of the whole thing. A beanie doesn't cost $100, for example. You're donating to help them produce the animated series, and the rewards are basically a way of saying thank you for the help and to encourage you to donate more money.