3rd party kickstarters

[Duck and Roll Games]

Hello all. I'm a third party devloper and I’m in the process of raising funds for my second product: “Behind the Vault Door”. It's a book about, appropriately enough, finance, economics, and treasure in pathfinder. And I want to know what you look for in a kickstarter.

What backer rewards do you like?
Personal credit rewards like getting your name in the book? Little extras like dice bags? Getting to name or design characters for the product? Play sessions with developers? Or do you just want the product and nothing fancy?

What information do you like included? Do you want to see how they plan to spend the money? A sneak peak of the content? Does the intro video need to be funny? Or well made? Does a video matter at all?

Do you have a policy against ever supporting kickstarter? And if so why?

[Beercifer]

The video should show your capacity to just provide a good product. Doesn't have to be directed by someone with a degree, just a pedigree to explain it all and give us some guarantee that we'll get our desired product at the delivery time. Best of wishes to you!

[Brother Fen]

You might want to take a look at some of the successful kickstarter campaigns for good ideas.

[Steve Geddes]

I generally look for more content as stretch goals rather than other add-ons.

To me (assuming I'm backing the production of a book) dice bags, custom dice, cards, miniatures, etcetera are all things which add the potential for delays. I have backed several projects who have delivered the book reasonably quickly but are now getting burnt on a second shipment because the dice/cards/whatever that they included didn't make it on time. (Or the inclusion of knick knacks has meant my book is delayed by several months).

I have a similar view with "backer contributed material" - I'm considerably less likely to back a kickstarter where some of the higher tiers get to submit a character/monster/name/whatever. Suddenly, the project is going to hinge not just on the creator but also on backers getting it together after the fact.

[Franz Lunzer]

Overestimate the delivery time.

Like, at least double the time you think you need.
Finishing early will get you some positive vibes, but being late is just hell.

[davrion]

My preference is stretch goals that add more content to the product. Special add-ons like having contributors add or name or pick things in the product are good choices for limited higher pledges.

Here is an older thread about Kickstarter recommendations that may be helpful.

[Anguish]

1} I've backed 19 successful Kickstarters for a total of $2,929 all but 3 were Pathfinder/RPG related. I have never watch a video. Don't waste my time. I can read faster than you can talk. Just tell me clearly what your product is, what it contains, how it will be presented, and why it is worthy of my money. Write it down. Let me read it. Done. Don't be funny, don't be cute. Be informative.

2} The best stretch goals are more of what I'm backing. The Reaper Bones minis Kickstarter is a good example. The more you spend, the more success the KS has, you get more minis. I don't expect to back a KS for say... a massive bestiary, and if it gets 200 backers I get a custom d20 and a chocolate bar in the shape of a goblin. Don't get me wrong... I like my Dreamscarred Press d20, but I will always prefer the book become another page longer instead.

3} As Franz says, don't screw with timelines. I'm personally a very forgiving consumer that way, but most of the time you will destroy your reputation by missing deadlines. Write your book first. Proofread it. Playtest it. Then go ahead and launch a Kickstater, knowing that if you fund, all you need is art, layout, and printing. Don't leave parts of the book unwritten. Life WILL happen to you. If an artist falls off the planet, you can commission another to do your art. If you lose your day job, you won't have the time to finish the book. See how this works?

4} Don't overpromise. Make sure your numbers are good so that you can produce the product and still make a profit. It's no good to us if you go broke trying to ship our product. Make sure nobody loses.

Good luck.

[Anguish]

P.S. Sweet Jebus. $3,000 in just under four years. Wow.

Of course, the best thing about Kickstarters is when awesome crap I ordered half a year earlier shows up. It's always like Christmas.

[DaveMage]

davrion wrote:

My preference is stretch goals that add more content to the product. Special add-ons like having contributors add or name or pick things in the product are good choices for limited higher pledges.

Here is an older thread about Kickstarter recommendations that may be helpful.

Yes, read this thread. Read it twice.

[ladydragona]

I have supported nearly 100 kickstarters(that actually funded). Some were big projects from major companies and some were small projects done by a single individual and all other sorts of companies in between and only one failed entirely so far.

So from my experience as a supporter I will tell you what I find important and what makes me back or not back when I check one out.

First stretch goals. I feel that stretch goals should always be more content for the project. More words/maps/art for books/pdf projects, more mini's for miniature projects and more terrain for terrain based projects.

Things like dice, t-shirts and whatever physical booty you all can think of just adds to your final shipping cost and these are things you all have to pay for to provide to us so while these can inflate your total this isn't money for you even if you are including a small profit in your pricing, you are taking risks you don't need to take and it is adding a headache you don't need to add in attempting to obtain said physical items. Way to many of the kickstarters I have supported have been even later because of difficulties the creators have encountered trying to get these "booty" items finished up.

What we do want is a bigger book with more content. Maybe small side PDF's of both new and older books that you have available. It is to your advantage to make the stretch goals cost as little as possible. If you have a library of PDFs of older gaming material available to you that sells an occasional copy offer these as stretch goals it costs you nothing and attracts people in.

Next Value. Your customer wants to feel like contributing funds a year or more early is getting them something a little extra. A deal so to speak. Nothing ticks off a contributer more paying $25 for a PDF waiting a year for it to come out and then watching it go on sale to the general public 2 days after they got it for $9.99. Yes I have had that happen to me.

A recent Tabletop RPG Kickstarter made more than $1,200,000 because of value. Yes it was a big name writer with a solid reputation and a nostalgic title being offered which on its own would have gathered a few hundred thousand but I believe what made this kickstarter go crazy was his offering the entire library of related material in PDF form free with any purchase of the book and as the total grew so did a long list of incredible stretch goals which added more and more value so that for $60 you got a 300 page hardcover book and about 50 full sized pdf's thrown in for free. Wow. No wonder more than 10,000 people joined in. and all those older PDF's cost the creator nothing. He made an extra Half million dollars or more because he gave up an few hundred dollars in annual sales on these PDF's.No not every creator has these resources available to him but those that do should probably make note of this.

We want you all to succeed. Gamers are intelligent people and we understand the realities of the industry we know it isn't easy and that most creators do this in their spare time. We want you to make a profit, and we will pay full market price for the items in question but we want some value to make it worth our while to pay months even years in advance. You need Cash to pay for writing, editing, layout and oh yes art, but we need a little something out of the deal as well.

Ok on to lateness. I am a patient person and am willing to wait but you need to be honest with us. It is frustrating when a creator says the project will be done in less than a year and implies he is almost done during the campaign only to find out he hadn't even started yet after it is over and to hear nothing but problems, excuses and more promises in updates over the course of years. Honest and frequent updates are important if only to let us know you haven't forgotten us. Throwing half finished work at us helps and we can even help with picking out typos, playtesting and advice. After all your backers have already paid for the material and they like to feel included in the process. Look to Patreon for more ideas in this area.

It is very important to give an honest date on when this will be done then add a few months to that for problems that will arise and they will. Everything from the flu, or other illness to you or a family member, problems on the day job, artists who have illness or problems on the day job, printers that have bigger clients that come first or longshoreman strikes that delay your books arrival from China. I have heard all of these and more in apologetic updates from numerous creators.

On to special perks, we want to be the first to get our hands on the project after all we were to first to pay. We want to be the first to read/play with the product. I had one project where Books were sold on kickstarter for $60 each and they went on sale on Amazon for $34.99 three weeks before the backers got their copies. Not good.

Other perks can include exclusive material. This is a good way to convince a prospective backer that paying now is a good thing rather than waiting for it to come out and getting that Amazon discount. Things like bonus PDF's, signatures, and maps or charts in the book that won't be in the general book. Also things like your name in the book can't hurt I like to look to see if I made it.

So what should you include in the information that will convince potential backers to back or not to back. Video's are nice but not necessary. While I do watch them they usually don't convince me one way or the other. But I am told seeing how many people watched them is a good indicator to the creator how many people have looked at the kickstarter.

I like to see a good description of what the book is about and art previews are nice. This is especially important for first time creators. How well done the kickstarter page is a good indicator of how professional the creator is. How well he knows what he is doing. If I feel the page is amateur I will question if the person is up to the project. Look at other kickstarters both successful and unsuccessful ones to see what they did imitate the successful ones.

Finally, and this is something I haven't seen anyone comment on before. you really need to be very active in your own kickstarter. The most successful kickstarters have creators that really work at it. Lots of updates, lots of comments, answering questions and concerns lots of activity on web sites, facebook, and rpg community boards. And don't be afraid to cross over into the boards of related games many gamers will convert if the subject is their cup of tea or they play multiple styles of RPG. You need to get the word out. After all if I see you are not even trying during the fundraising effort I will really question how hard you will work on the project itself. Start pushing several day before it starts because a good beginning is very important the faster it funds the faster you can get to stretch goals which all adds into the value I talked about earlier. If I see a kickstarter that has little to no interest I get concerned on why their is no interest, why is nobody interested in this what do they know that I don't, so the first day is crucial.

So good luck hope to see your project soon.

[Marc Radle]

ladydragona wrote:

I have supported nearly 100 kickstarters(that actually funded).

Great points here!

[Endzeitgeist]

+1 to everything Anguish and ladydragona said.

Additionally, and this cannot be overstated: Have the writing at least mostly done, UNLESS you already have veteran writers that always deliver on time. Scratch that, have the writing at least 80% done -I could rattle off a couple of delayed projects that didn't take that into account that are severely delayed. (Stretchgoals not counting.)

We all want more content, but don't stretch yourself too thin: Jeremy Smith, one of the head-honchos of the highly respected Dreamscarred Press once posted that too much stretchgoals can be highly problematic - so make sure the goals are aptly priced so they don't sink your calculations.

Also, make sure you STAY active during the KS. On social media, the boards, KS itself. I saw a KS fund 3/4s in 2 days...and then go dark; authors etc. go incommunicado. It stayed at exactly that amount...and then evaporated. Go to all blogs, sources, magazine you can find...and ask them fr links, coverage, etc. Visibility, especially for small 3pps, is key.

Finally, if you ever want to run a KS ever again, well, then stay communicative after it has funded. There is a certain 3pp company that was in exceedingly high regard and critically acclaimed, had a KS and...well, to this day only delivered ~1/3 of the content we backed for. Sans explanations, plan presented to deliver the goods or the like. Months on end sans update or visible progress. Behavior like that is not only bad for one's own business, it can be bad for the 3pp-scene as a whole, so please, provide at least bi-monthly updates, even if there is nothing new to report.

Just my 2 cents, of course.

[GM Rednal]

I think I'm going to tweak something I wrote for another company...

1) Try to commit to an update schedule of every 2 weeks after the campaign ends, and stick with it. Even if it's as simple as "things continue to go according to our schedule", people really appreciate it if you stay in touch. Mention it on your campaign page if you plan to do this. Taking the money and then vanishing for a couple of months while you work makes people worried.

2) I also recommend including a rough list of things you're doing and how complete they are. For example, "Art: 23% (+10% from last update). Proofreading and Editing: 12% (+7% from last update)." And so on, with whatever the numbers and timetable actually are. This helps backers get a better sense of how much work is actually being done, and more importantly, it sets their expectations. One thing we've learned about Kickstarters is that they tend to take longer than the developers expect, too... so a visual representation of your progress really does help.

2a) Speaking of that, give yourself lots of extra time. However long you think you need to do this, add at least 25% (or go with what people up-thread said - really, the more extra time, the better), then explain to your backers that you think you can get it done faster and will ship it early if you do, but have allotted extra time to deal with unexpected events and, hopefully, avoid any real delays. This, combined with the above tips, should help you establish trust, and that's vital both during this campaign (for getting people to pledge) and afterwards (if you want to make this a regular thing). If you still have delays, alert the backers as early as possible, telling them the revised timetable and emphasizing what's actively getting done at the moment. Some people will always gripe a bit, but the better your communication is, the more forgiving your backers will be.

3) For the KS campaign itself, show off the most polished product you possibly can. In your case, this would be stuff like a few sample pages of what the final product might look like, polished as heavily as you can. Once you're more established (like, say, Kobold Press or Frog God Games is), you can usually get away with just describing stuff - but as a newer publisher, you'll want to look as professional as possible, and having a complete-looking product helps.

4) Try to get your initial funding amount as low as is practical for you. Nothing supports success like success, and the earlier you fund, the better. Getting a lot of the work done beforehand - as suggested, most of the writing and stuff - can help with this.

[Incidentally, this was originally written for an overseas company doing a Kickstarter for the first time. Their first goal was $180,000. After listening to myself and some other members of the community, before their project launched, they managed to rework some things and bring their initial goal down to $125,000. The final total was a little over $183k, squeaking past the original goal but blowing through the revised one, and they were able to work in a fair number of add-ons and bonuses as a result. They listened to the community and the feedback they got, and doing so was ultimately a great benefit to them.]

[Dover Pro]

I had a policy of not backing Kickstarters until early this month. I had been following Tenkar, of Tenkar's Tavern and had read his horror stories about game Kickstarters. Then there was the saga of a certain third-party publisher which played out here on the forums. Their name is now mud because of how they failed to handle their Kickstarters.

What changed my mind? Chatting with respected third-party publishers over Facebook. They explained to me how to research a Kickstarter creator and how to back a Kickstarter for only one dollar.

I've backed five Kickstarters this month all from creators with an established track record of producing cool content.

So, yeah. What everyone said up-thread is good stuff to keep in mind.