Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne takes a look at the recent Dungeon Crawler Carl BackerKit campaign.
The BackerKit campaign for the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG surpassed $13 million with over 54,000 backers on the platform this week, making it, to no one’s surprise, the most funded tabletop RPG ever on the platform (see “Surpasses $12.5 Million“). It raised slightly more than Frosthaven (in overtime hours) and ended up $1.2 million behind Cosmere RPG; both of which used Kickstarter to fund their campaigns.
Renegade Game Studios, the publisher of Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG, offered a retailer level with the campaign. Retailers gained access to the campaign with a $100 pledge, though the pledge description does not currently specify what retailers get by pledging. The initial pledge will be a deposit toward the full cost of the eventual retailer order.
As I have noted in previous columns, I am rather ambivalent regarding backing campaigns ran on crowdfunding campaigns (see “Pros and Cons“) as most of today’s campaigns have moved far beyond the original purpose of crowdfunding: helping a creator develop and produce something the creator did not have the funds to produce on their own. Today, many game publishers and manufacturers that could afford to produce items on their own use crowdfunding as a promotional tool, with the funding from the campaign as a secondary objective.
Some game retailers see this campaign’s DTC selling as circumventing FLGS sales while still expecting the game store to run tournaments and other forms of OP for these products. In the case of the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG and a few others, our store and about 350 others do not see this as a problem. Here are two reasons why:
Number of backers of the campaign. Yes, $13 million pledged for the campaign is a lot of money and over 54,000 backing the campaign is a lot of people. However, take a look at those numbers, especially the number of backers, in perspective. 55,000 is a lot of copies of the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG and Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable games, but not everyone who bought a copy of the RPG bought a copy of the deck-building game. I roughly estimate about half bought into the campaign at a level getting them both the RPG and the deck-builder. That still leaves about 20,000 customers who very likely will want the Unstoppable game later.
Size of the Dungeon Crawler Carl intellectual property. Just under 55,000 backers supported the Dungeon Crawler Carl campaign, but over 6 million copies of volume one in the Dungeon Crawler Carl novel series have sold so far. That is a whole lot of people who did not pledge the BackerKit campaign and if Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond tells us anything, there are a lot of customers out there who are not interested in hobby games but will come out to purchase a product of which they know little but which is tied into an IP they enjoy. Just ask Foam Brain Games how well they have done with the DCC pins and most comic stores how popular the DCC comic was on Free Comic Book Day.
I expect to do well with the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG and the Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable game, and look forward to having them on the shelf for Q4, when all those customers looking for a gift for someone who “really likes Dungeon Crawler Carl” come into the store.
Comments? Did you choose to back the campaign? I would be interested in hearing why or why not at castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
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