Is The One Ring 2E Kickstarter going to break the records?

At over $140K in the first half hour and shooting quickly past the $200K mark before the first hour was up, the numbers on Free League's Kickstarter for the 2nd Edition of The One Ring are whizzing up faster than the eye can see!

THE ONE RING™ Roleplaying Game, Second Edition

A new edition of the roleplaying game set in the world of The Lord of the Rings™ by J.R.R. Tolkien, designed by Francesco Nepitello.

www.kickstarter.com

The record for a TTRPG Kickstarter is Matt Colville, at over $2M for his Strongholds & Followers project (and a followup $1.3M campaign). The next highest was John Wick's 7th Sea at about $1.2M.

There were over 6,000 people who were following the pre-launch page for this Kickstarter, which runs for three weeks.

 

[CubicsRube]

As a rule of thumb, for what is worth from a non-project creator like me, a 30-days campaign seems a lot of wasted time, effort, and energy, if you've made enough of a marketing campaign before it. The long, silent middle part is only really useful to campaigns started with a low profile, i.e. the campaigns that need the time in-between to rise some real awareness on its existence.

That's it. I think running a project for any operation must be hugely time consuming with timely updates, responses to backers and keeping the hype up. Why not try 2 weeks out and see if those mid range orders will get picked up in late pledges anyway? Either way they probably save a lot of resources with 2 weeks less of running the projects that they can put elsewhere.

 

[Morrus]

That's it. I think running a project for any operation must be hugely time consuming with timely updates, responses to backers and keeping the hype up. Why not try 2 weeks out and see if those mid range orders will get picked up in late pledges anyway? Either way they probably save a lot of resources with 2 weeks less of running the projects that they can put elsewhere.

It’s a full time job. And like you say that flat period in the middle it looks like they get picked up anyway. But we’re still at the point that we’re learning about that through experimentation. There’s the zine thing every year, people experimenting with one week kickstarters, I’m doing two 2-week campaigns every six weeks, and so on. Give it another year, and it’ll all shake out.

Of course it also depends on the size of the Kickstarter and balancing the cost of full time promotion of the campaign for those middle weeks against the amount you make each day. Return on Investment, as they say.

 

[Staffan]

Then why not 2 months? Why not 6? A year? What’s so magical about 30 days, specifically?*



*the answer is nothing as we creators are starting to discover

One month means anyone who gets paid monthly will get at least one paycheck during the course of the kickstarter and can put some money away for it, if they have the means.

Of course, this matters more if we're talking a big-money kickstarter where you have $100 or $200 pledges than "65 enchanted trinkets" for $10-15.

 

[Morrus]

One month means anyone who gets paid monthly will get at least one paycheck during the course of the kickstarter and can put some money away for it, if they have the means.

That is one consideration, yep, and a common theory. It’s why mine used to be 32 days. But I’m discovering the hard way (i.e. by doing it) that that doesn’t really make much of a difference.

 

[schneeland]

One of the things to consider is that Kickstarter ends up on credit cards, so the pay cheque has less of an effect.
Also, a thing that's relatively new IMO is the longer pre-launch phases, where hype is already built up and people get notified immediately on launch (plus, once you have backed a few campaigns, there's really no way you are going to miss that a new thing started ).

All in all: considering how typical campaigns go, I'm not surprised that people start going for shorter ones. In fact, as a frequent backer of crowdfunding projects, I also start to prefer shorter ones (long ones are often kind of dull in the middle).

 

[Staffan]

That is one consideration, yep, and a common theory. It’s why mine used to be 32 days. But I’m discovering the hard way (i.e. by doing it) that that doesn’t really make much of a difference.

I made an edit to my post while you were replying. You use Kickstarter a bit differently from many others, and that clearly works for you. And sure, when the product being sold is a $7 PDF/$20 softcover, you probably don't need to make sure customers are getting paid while the crowdfunding is going on. But when we're talking something like Frosthaven, which costs $100 or $145 with extras, that might be more relevant.

 

[Morrus]

I made an edit to my post while you were replying. You use Kickstarter a bit differently from many others, and that clearly works for you. And sure, when the product being sold is a $7 PDF/$20 softcover, you probably don't need to make sure customers are getting paid while the crowdfunding is going on. But when we're talking something like Frosthaven, which costs $100 or $145 with extras, that might be more relevant.

I’ve used Kickstarters in lots of ways, from small mini quickstarters which make £10-15K every two weeks to big hardcover month-long Judge Dredd licensed RPGs which made $200K-ish, and various things in-between which made between £30K-£200K, such as Mythological Figures & Maleficent Monsters (month-long, $170k).

I continue to experiment and push the boundaries of Kickstarter usage, although Awfully Cheerful Engine and Level Up will be traditional big month-long campaigns, with the quickstarters filling the rest of the year.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

... unless you're Disney and can bribe enough congressmembers to extend copyright indefinitely that way when Steamboat Willie gets close to becoming public domain. Should be about time for another extension now.

They actually didn’t fight for an extension recently, though I don’t recall what character exactly it was that is/will soon be public domain as a result.

But we can bet they will when Mickey himself or another high profile name comes up.

 

[CubicsRube]

One month means anyone who gets paid monthly will get at least one paycheck during the course of the kickstarter and can put some money away for it, if they have the means.

Of course, this matters more if we're talking a big-money kickstarter where you have $100 or $200 pledges than "65 enchanted trinkets" for $10-15.

Usually you can put down $1 and pick it up in the pledge manager, or late pledge

 

[Morrus]

Usually you can put down $1 and pick it up in the pledge manager, or late pledge

Not all Kickstarters use pledge managers. I don't. And I don't allow late pledges, because I think that's disrespectful to the people who supported the campaign.