How to Run a TTRPG Crowdfunding Campaign
#018 - Lessons learned, tools that mattered, and conversations with creators who’ve been there.
As the year draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the past months and on this first truly real year of Golem Productions and OSR Rocks!. Above all, I feel grateful for the support we’ve received and for ourselves, for daring to take the plunge in the first place. Reflection also brings questions: what could we have done better, what lessons did we learn the hard way, and where do we go from here?
My last blog post, “How I Write Adventures,” was received with great enthusiasm and already distilled some creative lessons from indie publishing. It felt only natural, then, to turn to another pillar of running a small studio. One that is far more operational, but no less formative: crowdfunding.
To be clear, having run a single Kickstarter - our Pirate Borg mythic sandbox Ravaged by Storms - doesn’t make me an authority, nor qualify me to lay down universal “best practices.” Many creators have far more campaigns, scars, and successes to their name. So rather than a definitive guide, this post’s first part stays deliberately personal: I share a handful of tools and resources that genuinely helped us along the way, alongside insights generously shared by supportive OSR/NSR creators. Their support was of immense help.
And because no single perspective is ever enough, I’ll then hand the mic to another creator, whose campaign during Mothership Month 2025 impressed me this year: Nate Whittington of Grinning Rat. If you want to jump straight to that exchange, feel free to scroll past the following bullet lists.
Tools that really helped us move forward
Potentially the most comprehensive collection of tools:
Goblin Archives – Liminal Horror SRD, “The Annotated Archive of Game Design Resources.” A curated, categorized “one-stop” library of practical links (funding models, printing/publishing, marketing, tooling, licensing, accessibility) that’s especially useful for crowdfunding creators as a campaign prep checklist, helping you spot what you still need to solve.
Some of the most influential sources I’ve read:
Art – RPG Drop, “What 70 Campaigns Taught Zac About Making TTRPGs That Backers Love.” An interview with Zac Goins reflecting on his experience running over 70 campaigns, sharing lessons on marketing strategy, community engagement, and avoiding common crowdfunding pitfalls.
Ian Yusem – Uncanny Spheres, “Kickstarter Fulfillment 101: Shipping Costs.” A practical deep dive into calculating shipping costs for Kickstarter campaigns, breaking down hidden fees and formulas to help RPG creators avoid losing money in fulfillment.
Ian Yusem – Uncanny Spheres, “A Year in RPG Self Publishing: Year 2.” A transparent year-in-review by an indie RPG publisher who ran a successful Kickstarter, detailing how crowdfunding income integrated with broader publishing, the financial realities of indie RPG work, and the workload involved in managing and fulfilling a campaign.
Ian Yusem – Uncanny Spheres, “A Nest of Vipers: Navigating TTRPG Contracts and Partnerships.” While not strictly about crowdfunding, this post shares lessons from real-world TTRPG business partnerships, how to spot red flags, evaluate contracts, and manage logistical relationships that often intersect with fulfillment, retail, and production aspects of crowdfunded projects.
Luke Stratton – Limithron, “Pirate Borg Design Primer.” Specific to Pirate Borg but full of useful advice for OSR design in general. A practical “compatibility guide” for third-party creators that codifies the games’ content boundaries and table-first writing style (terse, hierarchical info, no read-aloud, meaningful choices, multiple solutions), while also detailing layout/visual guidelines and font choices to help supplements feel in-world.
Michael Prescott – Trilemma Adventures Blog. “My Kickstarter Task List.” A detailed, task-by-task journal of all actions taken to build, launch, market, and manage a TTRPG Kickstarter campaign.
Sean McCoy – Win Conditions, “Why Do Adventures Beat Systems? Talking to the Creator of Cloud Empress.” McCoy frames core rules as a loss leader, arguing that adventures and ongoing support sustain a game and justify crowdfunding. He emphasizes long-term product lines, front-loaded work, and leveraging existing ecosystems to reduce risk and increase reach.
Sean McCoy – Win Conditions, “The Bottom Line.” A practical breakdown of pricing and profitability for indie games, including how to set margins, factor in costs, and think about long-term sales beyond the crowdfunding campaign.
Sean McCoy – Win Conditions, “Stretch Goals Are Haggling.” Stretch goals are reframed as negotiation tools that increase perceived value and momentum. McCoy advises designing them early and balancing added content against quality to avoid overwork and burnout.
Sean McCoy – Win Conditions, “When Are You Ready to Crowdfund? (And Do You Even Want To?).” Crowdfunding should be a data-informed choice, not a default. McCoy urges creators to build an audience, test demand, and recognize that crowdfunding shifts, rather than removes, risk and workload.
Sean McCoy – Win Conditions, “Implied Setting and Building a Line.” A debate with watt (Cloud Empress) exploring implied setting design and planning beyond a single campaign by building a coherent product line, where each release has a clear role and supports long-term play and backing.
Crowdfunding Campaigns as Events
What really fascinated me about this project - beyond the product itself - is how its creator set out to present Certain Fathoms’ crowdfunding period as an interactive experience (with the Faction War ARG, free preview, expansion zines, puzzles, and polls, stretch goals, supply pod, cross-collab etc. ...). Although not all of the announced gamified elements could be implemented in the end, the dedicated approach struck me as promising.
Golem Productions (G.P.): Nate, what inspired you to take this game-like approach?
Nate Whittington (N.W.): Well, the original inspiration came from trying to fill the period of time in the middle of every campaign where things die down. If you can keep eyes on the project between weeks 2-4 leading up towards the conclusion, you can increase the final backer count.
I say “original inspiration” because, well, a lot of my plans wet out the window when I started playing Sam Sorensen’s Over/Under - the play-by-post Mothership wargame.
G.P.: You put a lot of work into pre-launch buildup: weekly teaser updates, follower goals, and even bonus content for early sign-ups. How did you plan this pre-launch campaign strategy?
N.W.: When I start to set up a new campaign, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I as a backer would want to get and see. I think a lot of people get in the mindset of what has come before - previewing new art, new writing, etc. - but that stuff is already what the person is buying. It feels, to me, a bit like advertisements on the outside of the store you’re already planning on going in; or like reading the menu of a restaurant you’re already planning on going to next weekend.
For me, what draws me in is free stuff. It doesn’t even have to be particularly fancy, it just has to be cheap or very low price, like a dollar or two. Something where I have to sign up with my e-mail and I get more than just a taste of the end product. That stuff gets me hooked and eager to see what comes up in the actual campaign.
G.P.: Your project offered not just a core book but expansions, a soundtrack, a pamphlet, a bookmark, a patch, etc. How did you balance this ambitious scope with feasibility and fulfillment concerns? How long did you work on it?
N.W.: So, like all things, it started off simple haha. Just the zine!
Then as I started framing it out, I realized the zine is kind of constricted by its format. I can’t go much past 60 pages without making it kind of difficult to use at the table. So I looked at what I had written in my outline and stripped out what felt like “additional content” - things like running rival crews, extra destinations, and solo rules - and realized I had enough content there to make extra zines that served kind of like expansion packs.
In terms of the soundtrack, my buddy had made some music for a friend of ours that I really liked. I just reached out to him and asked if he could make some songs, to which he enthusiastically said yeah.
Everything else just felt like a natural extension of what the zine is trying to do. The pamphlet adds a weird vendor and strange items, the bookmark is a little reminder of the core mechanics of the module… and it’s Mothership, so you have to have a patch, y’know?
G.P.: You assembled a team including editors, renowned artists, and guest writers contributing stretch goal content. How did these collaborations come about, and what was your approach to coordinating such a diverse creative team?
N.W.: This feels like such a cop out, but it’s honestly true: I just asked them. I did ask some others who turned it down due to prior obligations, but of those who said yes I think it came down to three things: 1) They were interested in the premise, 2) I immediately provided them with an above-standard pay as my offer, and 3) I gave them deadlines and examples of what I was looking for.
Basically, I treated it like what I would want to see if someone asked me to assist with their project: what’s the pay, what’s the job, and when do you need it by.
G.P.: As a graphic designer, you emphasized an “easy-to-reference layout” and strong visuals in Certain Fathoms. What is your philosophy on layout and visual design in RPG projects, and how did it guide the way you constructed this campaign and the book itself?
N.W.: This could honestly be a multi-part podcast, so I’ll spare your readers and get to the nitty gritty, haha.
I really think you have two goals in TTRPG design: to show or to tell. Showing involves awesome art and evoking the idea of a thing - basically, showing the reader something that would be difficult or boring to try and explain via text. Telling involves explaining how things work: rules, mechanics, lore, etc.
You have to balance both. Just art or pretty graphics will be nice to look at but hard to reference at the table (unless you’re literally just doing improv with no prep), whereas just text with no art can fail to get the vibes across.
G.P.: Launching during Mothership Month meant coordinating shipping and promotions with other creators. How did the event-driven approach influence your campaign planning? Would you say running a project as part of a larger event is more advantageous than going solo?
N.W.: It was actually pretty simple, all things considered! I think Tuesday Knight Games learned a lot from last year’s Mothership Month and made things even easier this go around. We basically had to have a skeleton ready by July and agree that all our goods would be shipped to TKG by early summer next year. From there, they’re handling the actual fulfillment - and because all the projects are coming from one place, backers only need to pay shipping once.
I’d say running as a group has a HUGE benefit in that you’re capitalizing on the marketing and brand of the biggest company that’s running with you. In this case, it’s TKG - who have a million-dollar crowdfunding campaign under their belt and arguably the most popular sci-fi horror RPG on the market.
G.P.: Certain Fathoms feels very ambitious in content and presentation. How do you personally decide when a creative idea is worth the extra cost or complexity to include (e.g. commissioning a soundtrack or adding an ARG), and when to rein things in? In other words, how do you weigh ambition against practicality during campaign development?
N.W.: For me, I try to determine two things: 1) how easy is it for me personally to do this thing and 2) does the cost line up with the effort / ask. So for the soundtrack, my buddy is doing 99% of that and I’m just picking songs from his lineup. For the ARG, once I dropped out of OVER/UNDER, I realized it was going to be a LOT of work for a pretty minimal payoff - so I dropped it.
Unfortunately, a lot of that comes from previous failures. Doing a lot of stuff that you only realize after the fact was a waste of time. Or missing opportunities to do stuff that would have been worth your time. It’s more of an art than a science.
G.P.: Do you envision running crowdfunding campaigns as a series (building a recurring community that follows each new project) or as unique one-time events that stand on their own merits?
N.W.: This is tricky - I’ve done a few crowdfunding campaigns in the past where I made my own little d6 dungeon-delving game called DUNGEONEERING. I did two expansions for it, a megadungeon, and an adventure / setting. So I suppose in a sense, I’ve already done this.
I will say that jumping headfirst into the Mothership community has really opened me up to how gracious, cool, excited, and friendly everyone is. I’ve met a lot of folks who I would have considered heroes / inspirations through the community and through that have become somewhat friends with them. It’s kind of wild!
I can see myself making Mothership stuff for a while. My past is kind of weirdly dotted with Mothership stuff? I did an actual play for the Haunting of Ypsilon 14 on YouTube with two of my buddies (one of which is the one doing the soundtrack on CF!) and that got a little bit of attention back in 2022. Now I’m kind of looking at the broader community, the zines, the trifolds, the game jams, the wargames… and I kind of like it here!
G.P.: What is OSR to you?
N.W.: OSR, to me, is the Matrix. You can kind of do whatever you want — medieval fantasy, scifi horror, pirates, etc — but there’s a structure beneath that reinforces a particular playstyle. That playstyle weights critical thinking, problem solving, fiction-first play, an, typically, playing as normal folks thrust into a life of adventure.
Thank you for reading and I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
What are your lessons learned, best practices, or big DOs and DON’Ts in running a TTRPG crowdfunding campaign?
“From pebble to monolith—your journey matters. The Golems have spoken.”
Alexander from Golem Productions
I’m saving this for future researching!