TTRPG Crowdfunding Thoughts and Jukebox Pre-Launch!

The Jukebox Journal

To get Jukebox: The Karaoke Musical Roleplaying Game from a digital pdf to a physical product, there are three big challenges I’m figuring out: 

1. How crowdfunding works

2. How printing works

3. How fulfillment works

At this point, I’ve done enough research and asked for enough advice that I have a plan for all three. I figured I’d start sharing my decision-making around crowdfunding.

Spoilers: I ended up deciding to crowdfund with Kickstarter. Speaking of which, the Kickstarter Pre-Launch page is now live. Jukebox is a game near and dear to my heart - it’s my love letter to TTRPGs and Broadway. If you like indie TTRPGs, musicals, karaoke, OR you just want to support me or my creative work, please sign-up to be notified on the campaign page:

Comparing with the Competitors

Okay, back to crowdfunding. I ultimately chose Kickstarter, but I looked into Crowdfundr and Indiegogo as well.

Kickstarter Cons

When researching, these were some of the cons I learned about Kickstarter:

• Higher fees.

• A potentially less friendly audience that can be rude in the comments section. Poking around I did see a bit of this, but also I saw a lot of projects that ran behind schedule and weren’t communicative.

• Comparatively sluggish customer support.

• Only available in some countries.

• This was before my time, but I am vaguely aware of ethical issues raised by TTRPG creators about Kickstarter - I believe this is due to an early 2022 controversy where Kickstarter announced plans to embrace NFTs and incorporate the blockchain/crypto into their platform. Since then they’ve backed away from these plans, but I know not taking a firm stance immediately against NFTs soured some creators on the platform.

Crowdfundr and Indiegogo

The two other platforms that I’d heard about TTRPG folks crowdfunding on were Indiegogo and Crowdfundr. Crowdfundr in particular has a lot of resources for indie TTRPG writers and I’ve heard that their customer support is amazing. They presented at Big Bad Online 2023 (Crowdfundr - Your New Sidekick!). They obviously care about TTRPG creators and, as Armanda mentions in the video, it was the only platform that supported her crowdfunding from Argentina.

What Kickstarter Has Going For It

Time and time again, I heard the advice that Kickstarter is popular because of the audience and community on the platform. People referred to it a bit like a “marketing tool”. That’s why it’s the most popular platform: there might be issues with the platform, but ultimately it’s where the people are. 

A friend pointed out how I was being a bit illogical about the Kickstarter fees; sure, they might take a few more percentage points off a sale, but if they ultimately contribute to 20% more people pledging, then that makes up for it.

With Jukebox, I’m hoping to reach folks outside of my Twitter community and hardcore indie gamers. The advice I got as a new creator was that established creators were finding success on other platforms, but that was because they already had fans and an audience. For a newbie like me, I’ve decided to stick with Kickstarter and see how things go. I hope someday to experiment with other platforms.

Analyzing TTRPG Zines on Kickstarter

I started out poking around Kickstarter and looking at TTRPG zines to see if I could get a sense of pricing, what seemed to make a zine successful, and so on. Because I’m me, I recorded this data in a spreadsheet, and after doing this a few times, I figured there must be a faster way to grab Kickstarter data besides manually typing it.

It turns out there is a kickstarter scraper that allowed me to download some basic information in a spreadsheet. The settings I used were:

• Everything that included the word “zine”

• Category: game/tabletop games

• A goal between 1k - 10k

Then I went through by hand and filtered zines that are similar to Jukebox. Jukebox is a full game, so I removed anything that was a supplement to a pre-existing game, strictly OSR content, or part of a series of zines. This ended up taking 250+ Kickstarters to about 30 that were similar to Jukebox. I poked around and hand-recorded a bit more information about those 30 zines. Then I further tagged the ones that were new or first-time creators (about 15). For this specific subset, here are some numbers I grabbed:

• Digital pdf sales: Average 109 (range 11 - 285)

• Physical sales: Average 196 (range 29 - 464)

• Digital Price: Average $7 (range $2 - $10)

• Physical Price (most didn’t include shipping): Average $15 (range $8 - $20)

Printing: Mixam, which is likely the company I’ll be using to print Jukebox, was listed as a printer for a bunch of them. DriveThruRPG printing on demand was only listed for one.

Shipping: Shipping was handed in a variety of ways, some estimated the shipping and included it in the cost. Others limited which countries they shipped to. Most did not include shipping in the price.

Add-ons: One of the interesting strategies I saw was having a reward tier for supporting community copies (basically funding a free copy for someone who can’t afford it). Some also included retailer tiers to get multiple copies of the zine. I’m planning on avoiding physical add-ons (stickers/pins/etc) because I don’t think I can get economies of scale to work out and there are so many blogs, Reddit advice threads, etc. that say promising additional physical stretch goals or rewards is a common mistake new creators make. Also, for US media mail, as soon as you add a pin or sticker it’s no longer considered “media” and the price for shipping bumps way up.

What does failure look like? One of the reasons I decided to go with Kickstarter is that for most of these smaller Kickstarters that failed to fund, I can see why – the art looks sloppy, it’s over-promising, etc. This wasn’t the case for some Crowdfundrs and Indiegogos that failed to fund, which anecdotally backed up the advice I got to stick with Kickstarter.

What took a little more digging was to note which Kickstarters funded, but struggled to actually get made. Here are a few examples (1, 2, 3). The other piece of advice I got from multiple people  (besides don’t do physical add-ons) was to make 95% of the book before Kickstarting. This is backed up by the “fail-after-the-fact” Kickstarters I found and the interactions in the comments section. They’re sad for all involved.

A list of random crowdfunding take-aways for TTRPG folk

The following is a list of other takeaways from a lot of research and chatting with folks who have run Kickstarters:

• Make a video, make it less than 2 minutes.

• Prep Kickstarter updates in advance.

• Make sure to update the Kickstarter page before the campaign ends because then it freezes.

• Budget and have a schedule; pad both money and time.

• Set the cadence for updates post-Kickstarter (once every two weeks for example).

• Have the game mostly already made.

• Collect quotes/reviews from playtesters and display those.

• Avoid physical add-ons and physical stretch goals, go simple.

• Be very clear about how shipping is handled.

• Advertise beyond Twitter - Reddit, Discord, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Emails…

• The first 72 and last 72 hours are the most important, consider an early bird special.

  • Kickstarter will show these specials to later backers.

• Consider applying to the creator fund.

All of this I say with a HUGE asterisk of your mileage may vary.

If there’s one thing I learned from looking at different Kickstarter campaigns and getting advice from different creatives, it wasn’t always clear why one creator or idea was more successful than another. Some of the campaigns I analyzed were over a year old and as I write this, I’m just starting my Kickstarter journey. One more note: Raccoon Sky Pirates was one of the Kickstarters that I tagged as “similar to Jukebox” and I recently discovered Chris Sellers wrote a very frank and in-depth two-part blogpost retrospective on the Kickstarter. If you’re thinking about printing and Kickstarting an indie TTRPG zine, it’s a great read.

I’ll be writing more dev journal entries as I get closer to launch. Unlike the Project Management for TTRPGs series, these are a little more “off-the-cuff”. If you have a topic you want to know more about related to anything to do with making Jukebox, let me know!

And once more, sign up for the Jukebox pre-launch!

Over and out,
🫙👁️ 👁️