Kickstarter

[malvok]

First, I haven't used FG, FGU, or visited these forums in quite a while. I haven't followed FG news either. I enjoyed FG as a product for years and the developers, both official and community, always seemed like great guys. I have no ill will towards FG in any way and I don't enjoy writing this post. Smiteworks even gave me a bunch of D&D FG material when I won a contest a while back, and I do appreciate it.

To get to the point, I saw an email today about a kickstarter. I just felt compelled to write that it struck me as odd that FG, what is possibly the most expensive of VTTs, would not only be running a fundraiser, but for a popular IP as well. Something about that just doesn't feel right. If I, as someone who has always had a positive view of FG can feel this way, I just wonder, how would a neutral observer feel?

I'm sure there are valid reasons, but on the surface, it just feels wrong, and I had to mention it.

[Jiminimonka]

First, I haven't used FG, FGU, or visited these forums in quite a while. I haven't followed FG news either. I enjoyed FG as a product for years and the developers, both official and community, always seemed like great guys. I have no ill will towards FG in any way and I don't enjoy writing this post. Smiteworks even gave me a bunch of D&D FG material when I won a contest a while back, and I do appreciate it.

To get to the point, I saw an email today about a kickstarter. I just felt compelled to write that it struck me as odd that FG, what is possibly the most expensive of VTTs, would not only be running a fundraiser, but for a popular IP as well. Something about that just doesn't feel right. If I, as someone who has always had a positive view of FG can feel this way, I just wonder, how would a neutral observer feel?

I'm sure there are valid reasons, but on the surface, it just feels wrong, and I had to mention it.

Pinnacle Enertainment often run kickstarters for new Savage Worlds products. Because they are not a huge company with unlimited funds. So I guess maybe its the same with Fantasy Grounds. If you don't follow or use Fantasy Grounds, what is your point in any case?

[malvok]

Because, though I haven't used FG lately, I still have fond memories of the software, community, and developers. I just wanted to mention how I felt seeing this, in hopes that Smiteworks might consider how this could appear to people as presented. I didn't come to slam them, but in hopes that future emails would contain more information as to why there is a kickstarter, so as to avoid leaving a negative impression. I wish Smiteworks much continued success, and I'm just trying to help.

[Jiminimonka]

Because, though I haven't used FG lately, I still have fond memories of the software, community, and developers. I just wanted to mention how I felt seeing this, in hopes that Smiteworks might consider how this could appear to people as presented. I didn't come to slam them, but in hopes that future emails would contain more information as to why there is a kickstarter, so as to avoid leaving a negative impression. I wish Smiteworks much continued success, and I'm just trying to help.

Cool, spread the word https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?79031-New-Sweepstakes-to-help-us-get-the-word-out&p=697196&viewfull=1#post697196 Sweepstake

[malvok]

I often speak fondly of FG to people I know, but I won't be entering the sweepstakes, as I don't play that particular game system and would rather see the winner be someone who does.

[Griogre]

I'm not an insider, but I will say that as a former computer game developer, licensed properties often don't make that much money if they are not wildly popular since you have to give the IP holder a pretty big cut.

As a former game store owner, I can tell you the World of Darkness is niche, but with a loyal fan base.

The goal of the kickstarter was $6K which is about 60-100 hours of a developer's time. Given they are building a ruleset and making data modules for the latest version of the Werewolf RPG the hours look reasonable, given Smiteworks should be able to work efficiently on new ruleset development and data entry, though they easily could spend twice the hours I quoted since software development rarely goes exactly accounting to plan.

Looking at the pledge tiers, it looks like they are doing a fair amount of bundling FGU licenses, which would imply they are hoping to get World of Darkness fans who don't already have FGU, ie expand their user base.

I suspect the last is why this is a Kickstarter. They didn't know if they could get enough WoD fans to pledge to justify the time it would take to make a new, shiny, licensed ruleset for a niche product. And that is a good question for this product - the sales for it for the first year or so are likely to be from this kickstarter and their friends.

That's all a long winded way of saying, my take is - they wanted to know if they should prioritize development time on this or something else and they used the Kickstarter to find out. A lot of small RPG companies that produce books, regularly run Kickstarters do something similar to here - to figure out what's demand for the initial print run.

[Zacchaeus]

Griorge says it above. No point in spending hundreds of development hours if only 10 people are going to buy the ruleset. Better to have a clear idea that it's going to sell before committing to a project that is possibly going to make a massive loss. That's what Kickstarters are for and many companies use them including fairly big players like Kobold Press and others. Pretty much every computer game that releases these days does so as early access; so it's not exactly something which anyone would need to look down upon.

[LordEntrails]

Interesting perspective. What are your general opinions or view of Kickstarter? I'm guessing this is why you see the FG kickstarter for a new ruleset in a negative light?

I have mixed feelings about KS myself, and am pretty careful about those I back. There are some that are just looking for guaranteed funding prior to investing in hard/production costs. There are others that it's to support creatives while they try to create something new (these are the highest risk no doubt). There are others that just use it as a distribution platform.

For a company like Smiteworks, I see it as an opportunity to lower the risk of developing niche content for FG. It gives the members of these niche products the ability to step up and show support for what they are willing to actually buy. I'd rather have FG, and other small businesses, Kickstarter a high risk project rather than either refuse to take a chance in developing such, or even worse, go out of business because the invested in a niche/high risk product and lost too much money on it.

[Jiminimonka]

Griorge says it above. No point in spending hundreds of development hours if only 10 people are going to buy the ruleset. Better to have a clear idea that it's going to sell before committing to a project that is possibly going to make a massive loss. That's what Kickstarters are for and many companies use them including fairly big players like Kobold Press and others. Pretty much every computer game that releases these days does so as early access; so it's not exactly something which anyone would need to look down upon.

Ah the greatest crowdfunder at all Star Citizen raised hundreds of millions and is still in Alpha after, 8+ years......

[malvok]

I see from the posts in this thread that there are, and I knew there would be, valid reasons for this kickstarter. I guess I still hold the idea that kickstarters are aimed at getting small developers needed funds to complete a project. I guess it could be useful to get a gauge of how successful a product will be, but that isn't the first use that comes to mind. It's kind of like if WotC had a kickstarter. I'm not suggesting that Smiteworks is as large as WotC, but in the smaller subset of VTTs, they're up near the top. Thanks guys, for giving me a broader view of how kickstarter can be used. I hope future emails will be a bit more informative.

[Trenloe]

Lots and lots of established companies use Kickstarter for many reasons - to feel out the market, to use the marketing and momentum that a successful campaign can give, to provide funding for development, to engage users and get their feedback, etc.. Kickstarter has gone way beyond its original roots of helping small/fledgling companies "kickstart" a project. Many companies just use it as a pre-order platform, many more will use it for the reasons mentioned in this thread. A massive company like Philips even crowd funded a projector on Indiegogo. It's interesting having a negative viewpoint of an established company running a Kickstarter. I think "kickstart" has long fallen by the wayside, and this is purely and simply crowd funding of a project - the more people who back it, the more of that product will be produced. Kickstarter's charter (from their website) "Kickstarter’s mission is to help bring creative projects to life." That's exactly what SmiteWorks are doing here - bringing a creative project to life. If the funding goal wasn't reached, then that's a clear indication from the marketplace that it would be a risk for SmiteWorks to develop this project, funding all of the up front development costs (and licenses) themselves as it wouldn't be a popular ruleset and sales would be low. But, as the Kickstarter has funded quickly and is going well, it allows SmiteWorks to get the funding for the development and get a good quality product, and additions, into the hands of the end users.

[anstett]

Along these lines but on a tangent I do purchase modules, maps, etc. here in the Store that I am only somewhat likely to use, if at all. I do that to show support for the people converting for smaller rule sets (2E and Traveller) and hope that spurs them to convert more and add to my resources.

Of course I am also hording just in case for that day when my travellers decide to go 200 parsecs in a totally random direction than what I had planned. :)

[ddavison]

I appreciate you sharing your perspective. As many have already commented, we see the reasoning behind this Kickstarter to be many fold.

Risk Assessment
Ever since I've run the company in 2009, we have generally performed an internal risk assessment on what would sell before deciding what to develop. For that entire time, there have always been items we did not choose to develop or we have on a list and simply have not gotten to. That list continues to grow and new RPG systems continue to release at a pace faster than we can accommodate. Our community developers help us tackle many of these, but there is still a strong demand for rulesets and products that we do internally. Some of our choices for development have turned out well and some of them have failed. As a very recent example, the Dune ruleset has had very poor sales and it was a substantial loss. The market simply was not there for that product. In other cases, rulesets that we are very proud of have failed to reach an audience outside of the established FG community.

Outreach
Fantasy Grounds has a little over 400K people who have at one time or another signed up on the forums or purchased a license. D&D Beyond, by comparison, has 15M people. Roll20 is somewhere in the same ballpark. We still see cases where people have evidently never heard of Fantasy Grounds. Our community is possibly more insular, and they don't seem to spend as much time proselytizing the system on general gaming forums and communities. Kickstarter is very visible and expands our reach.

Advertising
A common refrain we hear is that we should just advertise more. We have been doing this for the last few months and even for this Kickstarter campaign. The advertising costs for Werewolf along with the costs for the video creation will likely be more than the original funding goal. Advertising and creative ad work is not cheap.

Learning from the Success of Others
Many of our partners have had great success using Kickstarter to run every project they produce.
Kobold Press (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/campaign-builder-castles-and-crowns-for-5th-edition-dandd-tov/description) is running a campaign that hit $151k with 24 days to go.
Castles & Crusades (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ckg/castles-and-crusades-monsters-the-unclean-and-pure) is running one that hit $40K with 27 days to go.
Free League is running a One Ring (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/moria-through-the-doors-of-durin?ref=section-games-projectcollection-4-staff-picks-category-popular) campaign that hit $960K with 4 days to go.

Almost every week or two we help one of our partners promote their Kickstarter campaign. We think it is probably long overdue that we learn from their success. Werewolf is almost a presale situation for us because we had already committed to do it. It let's us test the waters a bit and see if this pattern will work for us going forward. As I write this, the campaign has raised $8K. I doubt that we would have seen anywhere near that amount of funding if we simply released Werewolf into our store with our normal methods of adding it to the newsletter, social media, and the forums. We will need to find a way to minimize our campaign costs, but I think this is proving to be a method that will work for us. It won't be every project we produce, but it will be focused on projects that are either a) unsure of the market or b) properties that we think need greater outreach.

Lagging Sales
D&D was the flagship product line for us ever since we signed on as official partners. It is still pretty dominant, but the appetite for D&D has dramatically decreased. In some cases, this loss of demand seems to flow across into other products and also into our core license sales. We still work with them and with all of our other RPG partners, but providing better sales volume for us and those other RPG partners is becoming more and more important. A successful Kickstarter that we run will be good for our partner and good for us to help compensate for the drop in D&D sales.

[Egheal]

I won't participate in that kickstarter because I don't play this line of products but it seems to me that it is a nice way to get funds and to pay the developers. I would fully participate in a kickstarter for the Blade Runner RPG for example ;);) just saying... ;)

[Lo Zeno]

I see from the posts in this thread that there are, and I knew there would be, valid reasons for this kickstarter. I guess I still hold the idea that kickstarters are aimed at getting small developers needed funds to complete a project.

To be fair, Kickstarter started (heh) out like that; but it's been ages since that time: as someone who pledged to an unhealthy number of kickstarters I can assure you that nowadays only a relatively small number of kickstarter projects are aimed at getting small developers the funds for a brilliant idea. The majority of kickstarter projects now, especially the big popular ones, are used as a way to assess the viability of a project, to make sure it will prove to be a profit.

[malvok]

Once again, thanks everyone for bringing me up to speed about the use of kickstarter. I haven't kept up with kickstarter in ages. Thanks Doug, for that thorough explanation, I appreciate it.

[arkanis]

Lagging Sales
D&D was the flagship product line for us ever since we signed on as official partners. It is still pretty dominant, but the appetite for D&D has dramatically decreased. In some cases, this loss of demand seems to flow across into other products and also into our core license sales. We still work with them and with all of our other RPG partners, but providing better sales volume for us and those other RPG partners is becoming more and more important. A successful Kickstarter that we run will be good for our partner and good for us to help compensate for the drop in D&D sales.

Sad to hear that, because it's not an smiteworks fault, but as an avid DND consumer I must say that the latest products released by WotC range from the forgivable (Wild beyond Witchlight), the lame (wildemount) and the outright awful (adquisitions incorporated)

[deer_buster]

I see kickstarters as a measuring stick of interest. Get enough interest and the project progresses (in most cases...I've seen kickstarters fail even after far exceeding their goals). The key here is that Smiteworks is a reputable company with the expertise and integrity to deliver a quality product if enough interest warrants their investment of time into the project. I consider their kickstarters as a pre-sale...and look forward to them submitting more projects of this nature in the future, even if I am not particularly interested in this IP at this particular time.

[Nylanfs]

It should also be mentioned that Smiteworks also talked about this in 2013. :) (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?16443-Kickstarter-Project-Idea-Thread)

[mdrichey]

Lagging Sales
D&D was the flagship product line for us ever since we signed on as official partners. It is still pretty dominant, but the appetite for D&D has dramatically decreased. In some cases, this loss of demand seems to flow across into other products and also into our core license sales. We still work with them and with all of our other RPG partners, but providing better sales volume for us and those other RPG partners is becoming more and more important. A successful Kickstarter that we run will be good for our partner and good for us to help compensate for the drop in D&D sales.

Surprising. I thought D&D was more popular than ever.

[deer_buster]

Surprising. I thought D&D was more popular than ever.
Once you're saturated in the community, you can have only so much growth. They'll get surges around new products being released for DnD, but unless one of the other VTTs has another gaffe (e.g. Roll20, et.al.), they're unlikely to see significant growth in DnD

[ddavison]

Surprising. I thought D&D was more popular than ever.

It still might be more popular than ever -- just not on Fantasy Grounds. I believe it is also lagging at other VTTs, but this could mean that people are just consolidating around D&D Beyond.

[Griogre]

It probably is still popular, but new sales are lagging possibly because of the bad PR from those proposed changes to the SRD they walked back on; and maybe, One D&D. I mean would you buy a new PH or DMG right now, unless you *really* needed one, knowing that they are about 7/12ths through their approximate one year playtest.

They are tightening stuff up in the playtest which means they are starting to get serious about the end of playtesting. I would guess that would affect new sales of PHs and DMGs.

[Myrdin Potter]

I don't play that system and never have, but I was happy to see Smiteworks use Kickstarter this way. At worse it advertises Fantasy Grounds. At best it makes enough to make the effort of adding a ruleset more than worth it and pulls in a bunch of new people to the VTT.

I am more concerned about Roll20 strangling access to IP (which they actively do by forcing Roll20 to be the only VTT if you want to best payment for your pdf) and Foundry being messy but using a web browser as the client and javescript plus associated web tools as the way to script.

[vegaserik]

Surprising. I thought D&D was more popular than ever.

Wizards also hasn't helped themselves much this year lol

[HywelPhillips]

I really like the idea of supporting ruleset releases via Kickstarter. I'm not going to back Werewolf because I don't really play WoD games any more - and that's a bit of data for SmiteWorks right there.

There are several rulesets that I would back immediately and be willing to chip in higher-level supporter amounts towards - Forbidden Lands, Dragonbane, Blade Runner, Mutant Year Zero and pretty much all the Free League games that aren't already on here. But also RuneQuest, which a developer was working on but which seems to have disappeared again.

What's popular with the Roll20 set (somewhat younger, more casual gamer crowd than typical for FGU in my experience) or Foundry (techies) may not go down well for FGU's customer base whereas older style games or crunchier stuff like RoleMaster (and RuneQuest) might do really well on here. And stuff that benefits from a lot of automation might break through on here in a way it might not break through elsewhere. I think Savage Worlds has always done well on FG because of the very high level of system support, even though it is a relatively streamlined system.

I've stopped buying D&D for the moment because of the factors everyone else has mentioned: 1) WOTC shooting themselves in the foot with the SRD debacle earlier in the year 2) poor quality of recent releases from WOTC (Spelljammer was the last straw for me - if ever a setting needed a sandbox approach it's surely this, but it was a TERRIBLE linear railroad scenario along with a very shallow and desultory campaign setting) 3) One D&D doesn't look like it's going to be my cup of tea, but I'll take a look at it when it comes out 4) Frankly I've got a bit bored with D&D having played little else since COVID lockdowns started. (Which is why my own next campaigns are all in other systems).

I'm sorry Dune bombed for you guys. I bought it, played it (not on FGU), didn't think the system really clicked for my normal groups so I've not actually run so much as a single game using it on here.

I'll just finish with a repeat plea to support the other Free League systems. Most of them share something of the core game system MYZ engine, so I've always hoped that it won't take too much to build on the foundations of the existing absolutely excellent Vaesen and Alien rulesets. Maybe try kickstarting some of those next and see if there are enough of us to be worth supporting!

Cheers, Hywel

[Egheal]

Concerning Runequest it is in test phase but the recent FGU updates have broken a lot of the coding. So @MadBeardMan is still working on it. I can't wait for the final product, it will be awsome (source: talking with the dev on tweeter).
I hope we will see all Free League games on FGU, I played Blade Runner and it was has good if not better than Alien, so I'm all in for a Free League FGU Kickstarter! I would like to see Candela Obscura and DaggerHeart too, not sure if I would get those but it could attract some critters to FGU.

[Ryuson]

Use of Kickstarter is a something I support as well, for many of the reasons already stated. If this will encourage SW to produce more rulesets and sourcebooks, I'm all for it. I also backed this one (Werewolf 5e) more for its support of Vampire 5e than Werewolf (which I only have a passing interest).

As for other Kickstarters I'd be interested in:

1) Cortex. I think it's a great ruleset but it's stuck in limbo with Fandom [correction: Dire Wolf] AFAICT. Cortex doesn't really need a robust program like FG to work, but there are a lot of "dice tricks" that could be automated that would speed up play. If/when Cortex takes off, it could be a popular system -- again, stuck in limbo atm.

2) 2d20. There's already most of the Modiphius games supported by FG. The implementations of both STA and Fallout rulesets are fantastic and seem like they are supported by continued content. Too bad about Dune, but that's been my experience as well - none of my players care to play it. Modiphius also has a new system out (not on VTT AFAIK), Dreams & Machines, which also looks interesting. We'll see if it's popular (and more importantly, would be popular on FG).

3) Indie games. There's a bunch of indie games that I'd be interested in but I don't know if the market is there - at least on FG. Like Fiasco and Zombie World (both already implemented on R20 IIRC). I know I can create it myself - but if the price was right, I'd prefer just buying it.

[battling1]

The Delta Green writers talk a lot about how there is this idea that there is a ton of money in TTRPGs but actually profit is really thin other than for big companies like Wizards so I get the Kickstarter. Tts a ton of work, risk, and cost thats easier if you have a guarantee that it at least has costs covered at the start. Hopefully it does lead to more systems too

[Griogre]

I just wanted to mention that I think where FGU shines is its support for many different systems. So general support to CoreRPG to so a user could build a extremely simple and lightweight ruleset extension off of CoreRPG in less than an hour is potentially game changing.

Something like an easy character and NPC sheets where certain attributes / rolls / card values could be generated and compared against each other in a combat tracker and simple over / under / miss / hit / critical fail / critical success outputs would be sent to chat. IE the user uploads a CSV spreadsheet for the character sheet, another CSV spreadsheet for the NPC sheet, and the last CSV spreadsheet for how to compare attributes for characters and npcs on the combat tracker. And while I used CSV spreadsheets as an example, something more sophisticated like the 5E character wizard could be used as well.

There are thousands of RPGs out there and only a tiny fraction of will ever support commercial rulesets.

[Mytherus]

Ah the greatest crowdfunder at all Star Citizen raised hundreds of millions and is still in Alpha after, 8+ years......

Ugh the pain star citizen brought me and my brother that were so excited for it when we learned of the project a decade or so ago. We were both huge wing commander fans. Years back o even spent $75 on one of the packages (I got a refund btw) . So disappointed in Chris roberts with that game it feels so “scammy” now. My brother and I have both sort of blacklisted that game from our conversations even years ago. So yeah crowd funding is one of those blessings and a curse kind of things for enthusiasts of whatever the project is they are backing. Choose wisely what you support but also for your hopes not getting dashed.

[Jiminimonka]

Ugh the pain star citizen brought me and my brother that were so excited for it when we learned of the project a decade or so ago. We were both huge wing commander fans. Years back o even spent $75 on one of the packages (I got a refund btw) . So disappointed in Chris roberts with that game it feels so “scammy” now. My brother and I have both sort of blacklisted that game from our conversations even years ago. So yeah crowd funding is one of those blessings and a curse kind of things for enthusiasts of whatever the project is they are backing. Choose wisely what you support but also for your hopes not getting dashed.

I still have my "package" but not logged in their website for 5+ years. Total scam.

Elite Dangerous is better and the £100 kickstarter got me free updates forever too.

Back to FGU, I just upped my backing to the Ultimate Licence version and I will gift the licence to a friend or maybe as a giveaway on my stream.

[damned]

Ah the greatest crowdfunder at all Star Citizen raised hundreds of millions and is still in Alpha after, 8+ years......

Hundreds of millions?

[Muagen]

Apparently so. (https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/02/27/star-citizen-tops-550-million-crowdfunding-cloud-imperium-games#:~:text=Star%20Citizen%20tops%20%24550%20mil lion,registered%20players%20%7C%20Game%20World%20O bserver) :|

[damned]

Apparently so. (https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/02/27/star-citizen-tops-550-million-crowdfunding-cloud-imperium-games#:~:text=Star%20Citizen%20tops%20%24550%20mil lion,registered%20players%20%7C%20Game%20World%20O bserver) :|

Kickstarter only shows about $2m
The page you linked to suggests people are still contributing over $1m/week (via other channels) even after 8 or 9 years!

[Nylanfs]

IIRC, they started using their own crowdfunding to support "development"

[Jiminimonka]

and it is still in Alpha...