DC20 Kickstarter launch on June 4th
- Thread starter AK81
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Let's say 10K back the KS, and 10K more buy it when it releases. Let's say all 20K represent GMs, for a total of 100K people who will play this game.
What does that mean for the life of the game? How long does it last? How much support does it get?
I literally have no idea how to even guess at answers. What is a successful not-D&D.
What does that mean for the life of the game? How long does it last? How much support does it get?
I literally have no idea how to even guess at answers. What is a successful not-D&D.
Elvish Lore
Explorer
It's hitting a place in the market where a segment of folks are bored with 5e (and, really, 5.24 doesn't look super different at this point ) but those people want that 5e-but-better experience. Whatever better means.
...and then there's the segment of people who are just kind of overwhelmed by Pathfinder 2e and don't want that level of crunch.
For whatever reason, at this moment in time, people are looking at DC20 as an appealing option.
(Meanwhile, proven commodity 13th Age 2e ended with $374k, probably a 10th of what DC20 will end up doing. That is... interesting. People are looking for the Next Cool Thing.)
Good timing on this, too. Right as con season gets into full swing -- I expect during/after Origins DC20 KS will see a bump -- and before the new edition D&D hammer hits late summer.
Do I expect people to be into this game in 2 years? Maybe! I've been down this hot-new-heartbreaker road 3 times before (though metrics were different) and these games don't end up getting much played past the initial release. but stuff can be niche and respected and find its audience base.
Games need community to get played. They need a certain level of player base to get played. (which is why MCDM RPG with 30k backers, actually feels like they have a community big enough to be self-sustaining).
Thing is, Dungeon Coach is a one-man operation and I think is totally unprepared for this. I've been watching his videos a bit of a couple years and a multi-million dollar KS is totally going to overwhelm whatever plans he had. Will there be supplements and adventures, etc.? Maybe but I wouldn't expect anything soon. He had no plans to become a game company publisher and actually start generating stuff on such a large scale.
In any case, good problems for him to have. Perhaps not great problems to have for people investing in a new fantasy RPG that they expect to be supported.
...and then there's the segment of people who are just kind of overwhelmed by Pathfinder 2e and don't want that level of crunch.
For whatever reason, at this moment in time, people are looking at DC20 as an appealing option.
(Meanwhile, proven commodity 13th Age 2e ended with $374k, probably a 10th of what DC20 will end up doing. That is... interesting. People are looking for the Next Cool Thing.)
Good timing on this, too. Right as con season gets into full swing -- I expect during/after Origins DC20 KS will see a bump -- and before the new edition D&D hammer hits late summer.
Do I expect people to be into this game in 2 years? Maybe! I've been down this hot-new-heartbreaker road 3 times before (though metrics were different) and these games don't end up getting much played past the initial release. but stuff can be niche and respected and find its audience base.
Games need community to get played. They need a certain level of player base to get played. (which is why MCDM RPG with 30k backers, actually feels like they have a community big enough to be self-sustaining).
Thing is, Dungeon Coach is a one-man operation and I think is totally unprepared for this. I've been watching his videos a bit of a couple years and a multi-million dollar KS is totally going to overwhelm whatever plans he had. Will there be supplements and adventures, etc.? Maybe but I wouldn't expect anything soon. He had no plans to become a game company publisher and actually start generating stuff on such a large scale.
In any case, good problems for him to have. Perhaps not great problems to have for people investing in a new fantasy RPG that they expect to be supported.
I don't think that is it. I think it is primarily driven by the DC YouTube community, and even then less than 20% of their followers are going to back it. You probably can't beat a YouTube following for guaranteeing a successful Kickstarter at this point (other than a super hot property, like Avatar, or personality, like 7th Sea's Wick). And people already invested in the channel aren't going to look especially critically at the game because, if they are already fans, they likely generally agree with the design philosophy of the channel.
I think 13th Age has been out of the zeitgeist for a while. The first edition was released a decade ago. There haven't been any liveplays that I'm aware of. No big releases.
It's kind of like expecting folks to get excited about a new edition of True20 or Hollow Earth Expedition.
Monetizing your YouTube Audience is a thing. I drove to PAX East one year exclusively because Matt Colville was doing a talk there on it (that was literally the title of the talk), and at the time I was considering doing content creation etc. and was a fan. I think this was after S&F's Kickstarter, but before K&W's. If people really like your content, they're going to support you- some of them will buy your stuff even if they don't realistically expect to use it.
13A 2e/Pelgrane Press/Heinsoo+Tweet don't have huge YouTube or other content-creation video audiences. Their Kickstarter has to get by on reputation, generated interest, social media recommendations, and previous customers.
P.S. You don't NEED to have a massive content creator audience to do huge numbers on a crowdfunder, we saw Shadowdark got a lot of content creator/social media recommendations- but I didn't know Kelsey Dionne's name before that. I think I heard about the Kickstarter from... maybe Questing Beast?
They're numbers from 2017 or so, but I think 98% of the TTRPG market share is D&D- Paizo has 1%, and everything else shares that last 1%.
If I recall, when Roll20 used to share its numbers, D&D was in the 70s percent wise, with things like Pathfinder, FFG Star Wars and Call of Cthulhu filling out the other most played games. I don't think D&D is 98% of the market.
Elvish Lore
Explorer
Nah.
13th Age has put out a ton of well-regarded content over the past decade.
The other games you mentioned are like 15-20 years old and even then there wasn’t a lot of content.
Ok. How about "Shadow of the Weird Wizard" as a better comparison? (Even if "Shadow" got a little more from its Kickstarter.)
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