Tell your overdue Kickstarter story

[Morrus]

Oh god, this sort of thing SO MUCH.

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes. It just stone cold guarantees that something will go wrong with some random obscure and unnecessary component that only 1% of backers ordered, and the whole project will cop massive delays as a result. Steinhardt’s was a $1 million plus campaign that was delayed for half a year because of problems printing a cloth map. Beast World had many months of delays because of spice rubs. Hell, right now I’m waiting on one campaign that has been sitting around twiddling its thumbs for months while the manufacturer tries to sort out its fancy liquid-core dice.

Just print the damn books. More bits and pieces are just asking for trouble.

That's why we don't do them. Or stretch goals. Fulfill the Kickstarter and move on to the next. And that's why we have nearly 60 successfully fulfilled Kickstarters adding up to nearly $4M! It's not about that one big hit, it's about consistency--it's a marathon, not a sprint.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's one of my red flags of kickstarter project backing.

Me too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's why we don't do them. Or stretch goals. Fulfill the Kickstarter and move on to the next. And that's why we have nearly 60 successfully fulfilled Kickstarters adding up to nearly $4M! It's not about that one big hit, it's about consistency--it's a marathon, not a sprint.

I don't think some kinds of stretch goals are a great evil, if you keep them down to a dull roar and only go for digital form. Even if it takes a while, if it doesn't hold up the main product, that's okay; the stretch goals for Part Time Gods 2e took a while to drop, but that wasn't a big deal.

But physical stretch goals? Oh, heck no.

 

[chuckdee]

The kinds of stretch goals I think are OK- things that you would do no matter what and aren't going to affect delivery, or things that are upgrades to the process, but not the project. What kinds of things do I mean?

Sourcebooks that you already have in your pipeline (though I will say, that despite the value, these put the company in a weaker position as the people most willing to invest in the product won't need it).

Paying writers/artists/contributors more.

Things that ended up on the cutting room floor for cost to include, but might be interesting.

Anything else triggers me to go back and look at how much the desire to trigger FOMO might be putting the project in danger.

 

[Seramus]

Hero's Journey was a mythology focused TTRPG with a stated delivery date of 2014.

Now the catch here is that they had a VERY successful Mythology Blog focused around the game Scion, absolutely overflowing with high quality research. And even if you know nothing about Scion you could still read the blog to get all kinds of awesome stories about mythological characters. So expectations were high! Even if the product turned out to be low on production value, it surely would have lots of great myths and information in it! They even made a cute website.

But year after year the reports came in that they were still playtesting. It got longer and longer between updates. If they had just called it over with, there would have been plenty of saddened fans, but things continued to limp on with claims that it was "still being worked on." The last official update was in April of 2022. Now there is only silence.

Our best guess? They severely underestimated the costs of making the thing and just ran out of money.

 

[Morrus]

I don't think some kinds of stretch goals are a great evil, if you keep them down to a dull roar and only go for digital form. Even if it takes a while, if it doesn't hold up the main product, that's okay; the stretch goals for Part Time Gods 2e took a while to drop, but that wasn't a big deal.

.

Yes, but for us it's about holding up future products. When you have 3 more projects in the pipeline and you're still trying to fulfil one from a year ago, you're constantly playing catch-up--and it can have a knock-on effect. Plus the last thing you want is to be trying to launch a new project and the first thing people say is "what about the last one?|"

 

[Morrus]

I hate it when I see an RPG Kickstarter with a long list of badges, bookmarks, miniatures, dice bags an other tchotchkes.

That's how you get a million dollar Kickstarter. I think there have been maybe two ever who managed to hit a million dollars without all the trinkets.

 

[Velderan]

The infamous Sinclair's Library (PF2e/5e) with Nonats. Mid 2022 start, was running well and then it just died off. Promised delivery of Dec 2022. I personally know some of the creators on this project and they did their job well, but I think there was an over promise by the management, and the project has floundered. I know that a creator is helping to try and finalise some of it in his spare time, and I did receive a pdf of one of the books. The thing that most backers seem peeved about was that Nonats went AWOL (with health issues from what I understand) even though he was the face of the project, has come back, and then disappeared again.

I remember seeing this one around the time I got into PF2e and kept hearing his name on Reddit as "one of the good PF2e YouTubers". I didn't make it all the way through 2 of his videos before realizing his videos are lazily slapped together and him getting views was more of a sign that there weren't many PF2e YouTubers to begin with and less of a reflection of the quality of the content he made. Between his style of videos and the project being pretty ambitious for a guy who's never published anything before, I didn't feel comfortable backing it. While I feel bad for people who backed this project and most likely will be lucky to ever see the completed PDFs, but I can't say the project being a disorganized mess is a shock to me given the type of content the face of the project made.

 

[chuckdee]

The aforementioned Into the Mother lands has all sorts of extras including pins, maps, a comic, dice, and also a stuffed toy of one of the characters.

I'm not surprised it's taking so long to fulfill.

I mean, that stuff taking time is one thing - but not even having rules after all that time... that's something else.

 

[LordEntrails]

D20 Delving from @Wizard Tower Games https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wizardtowergames/board-game-d20-delving
Fully funded in October 2022 with a promised delivery date of January 2023.

They've run into a lot of unusual issues with customs and printing and such, but communication has been irregular, imprecise and apparently contradictory at times. For instance, the last update a month ago (8/16/25) said; "The last of what we need to finish this game are being picked up on Tuesday of this coming week, then at that point we will be finishing the assembly of the game and begin shipping." ... "we will be issuing shipper trackers in a very timely manner after this coming week" Weeks later we have no tracking numbers or even word if things have been boxed.

That alone would not be of concern, but we've heard this before, like back in June 14, 2023 "however the wait is over. We are expecting our stock shipment in on Monday June 19th, so that means we expect it will take us about 10 - 14 days to complete all the games for shipping to you."

June 27, 2023: "As we promised shipping of the games should begin in the coming week or so."

July 13, 2023 " we have a pallet of all nice and wrapped, we will this weekend get it unpacked, unwrapped and begin production. " But the stock was damaged.

But that's ok, because they sourced another producer and on September 29, 2023 "We have been told our games have shipped and tracing shows them in Atlanta customs with a modified release date of 10/13 so that is what we are going with. Calling them they confirmed there are NO issues, it is just in their process."

April 24, 2024 (after other fairly frequent updates we get told that customs is not releasing the games that were produced 6 months prior. "
Make the darn things myself. My manufacturing equipment is capable of easily making these games, and since we make games for other publishers anyways. It is time to just do it ourselves.

I am trying to take the most proactive course of action based on the situation. I am grateful for all the support, and I will begin regular weekly updates as of today,"

But guess what? No weekly updates. The next one was May 24, 2024 and basically said "Look for a Game is in process update within 7-10 days."

And that didn't happen but we were told July 23, 2024 that instead of working on this they were working on another game and "We will be starting this weekend begin production on D20 Delving." Sure, I believe you...

The next update was September 24, 2024. Guess what, they didn't start production the following weekend, it took them 2 months to finish the production of the other game. How can you be that far off? "We have completed print and bind of our current game that was began before D20 Delving's decisions to be produced in house." And again more promises; "We are shooting to be completed with D20 Delving by November 1, 2024 for shipments to begins a few days after that. That is our target." But apparently some of their card stock was water damaged...

April 5, 2025 we were told "D20 Delving will be releasing in late April / early May" They didn't say they had their needed card stock, but since they were promising another date I guess they had?

June 4, 2025 "We are in active production of the game, with shipping starting over the course of June."

And that brings us back to the first quote.

I'm actually impressed that WTG has persevered through this whole thing. Twice having shipments not released by customs. Damaged supplies, etc. And do think their is an 85% of actually receiving the game.

My problem comes from expectation setting, failing to follow through on your commitments and unclear communications.

How many times were we told to expect one shipping date only to have it missed, usually with no timely explanation? At some point you should stop promising or implying dates of what will happen, and just state what has happened and what is next.

Don't promise weekly updates or a follow-up next week if you aren't going to do it.

And all of that is because of the poor communication practices. Good intentions are great, but implying things are all set to begin the next phase when they are not, and doing it repeatedly.

So yea, I think we'll get our games, eventually, but I'm concerned those parts that were printed years ago may not have been stored properly. I don't know. Are we going to get delaminated or curled cards and half-melted minis? I hope not. (Are those things hard to store properly?)

That's 1 of 13 TTRPG KSs I've pledge that has had issues. So I guess that's good? Though https://www.kickstarter.com/project...d-chronicles-a-dungeons-and-dragons-rap-album certainly under-delivered, but I did get more than I actually expected.