Crowdfunding rewired tabletop publishing. It let small designers bypass distributors and retailers, rewarded lavish production, turned preorders into communities, and made backers a force that even Wizards of the Coast had to reckon with.
What happened
Kickstarter opened in 2009 as a way to fund creative projects through small pledges from the public, paid only if a goal was met. In February 2012 the model exploded into public view when a video-game project from Double Fine raised more than $3 million, and tabletop designers took note. That spring three college roommates Kickstarted a browser-based virtual tabletop, Roll20, raising almost $40,000 against a $5,000 target. Games became, with film and music, one of the categories that together account for over half the money raised on Kickstarter; today video and tabletop games alone draw more than two dollars of every ten pledged on the site.
Tabletop suited crowdfunding unusually well. Board and roleplaying games are expensive to print, with most of the cost due before a single copy sells, and traditional distribution took a large share of the cover price. Preorders from fans solved both problems at once. Campaigns also rewarded ambition: stretch goals unlocked extra miniatures, expansions and upgraded components, and the most successful projects became events in their own right.
Why it mattered
The model made new kinds of games possible. Isaac Childres funded Gloomhaven, a sprawling campaign-driven dungeon crawler with 95 scenarios and 17 playable classes, through a 2015 campaign that raised $386,104. A second campaign in 2017 raised about $4 million, and the game reached the top of BoardGameGeek's rankings that year, staying there until 2023. Its standalone sequel, Frosthaven, raised nearly $13 million from 83,193 backers in 2020. At the other end of the scale, indie roleplaying designers used modest campaigns to print zines and art books; the Swedish Mörk Borg began as a planned zine until Kickstarter backers funded a full hardcover.
Crowdfunding also blurred the lines between media. In 2019 the cast of Critical Role asked fans to fund a short animated special and raised about $11.4 million from 88,887 backers, a record for film and television that led to Amazon's The Legend of Vox Machina. In 2022 fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson raised about $41.8 million for four "secret" novels, the largest Kickstarter to that date, and in August 2024 the Cosmere Roleplaying Game based on his books raised about $15.1 million, overtaking Frosthaven as the platform's best-funded game — a record since passed by a Cyberpunk trading card game campaign that raised more than $28 million in 2026. Licensed RPGs flourished too: Magpie Games' Avatar Legends drew 81,567 backers in 2021.
Legacy
The Kickstarter era has had costs. Delivery delays are common, giant boxes strain shelves and wallets, and the pressure to promise ever more stretch-goal content favors publishers who can afford marketing and manufacturing up front.
The platforms themselves became battlegrounds. When Kickstarter announced plans in 2021 to move onto blockchain technology, tabletop creators objected, and in 2022 BackerKit, until then a pledge-management service, opened its own marketplace; the Gloomhaven: Grand Festival campaign there raised more than $5 million. Gamefound, another rival, also grew around board games. When Wizards of the Coast's leaked OGL 1.1 revealed in January 2023 that Kickstarter had negotiated a reduced royalty for D&D-compatible campaigns on its platform, the arrangement became part of the uproar.
For all its problems, crowdfunding changed who can publish a game. A designer with an idea, a playtest group and an online following can now reach thousands of players directly, and that directness has helped fuel the flood of new tabletop games in the 2010s and 2020s.
Marginalia
- Along with film and music, Games is one of the categories that together account for over half the money raised on Kickstarter; video and tabletop games alone draw more than $2 of every $10 pledged.
- The virtual tabletop Roll20 was itself Kickstarted in spring 2012, raising almost $40,000 against a $5,000 goal.
- Isaac Childres's Gloomhaven raised $386,104 from 4,904 backers in 2015; a 2017 reprint campaign raised about $4 million from more than 40,000.
- Exploding Kittens, a card game, drew 219,382 backers in February 2015, still Kickstarter's most-backed project.
- Frosthaven raised nearly $13 million from 83,193 backers in 2020, the most for any game on Kickstarter until the Cosmere Roleplaying Game passed it in August 2024.
- Brandon Sanderson's 2022 campaign for four secret novels raised about $41.8 million, then the largest in Kickstarter history.
- In 2022 BackerKit, long a pledge-management tool, opened its own crowdfunding marketplace after tabletop creators objected to Kickstarter's blockchain plans.
Quick answers
- What is Crowdfunding & the Kickstarter Era?
- From 2012 onward, Kickstarter and its rivals turned players into publishers' patrons: tabletop games became the platform's powerhouse category, funding everything from indie zines to Gloomhaven, Frosthaven and a record-breaking Sanderson RPG.
- When did Crowdfunding & the Kickstarter Era begin?
- 2012 to the present.
- Why does Crowdfunding & the Kickstarter Era matter?
- Crowdfunding rewired tabletop publishing. It let small designers bypass distributors and retailers, rewarded lavish production, turned preorders into communities, and made backers a force that even Wizards of the Coast had to reckon with.
