Mothership Publisher Pivots from Crowdfunding to Creators in Upcoming Event

The company behind the sci-fi horror TTRPG Mothership is pivoting its annual crowdfunding event away from launching large projects toward supporting its creator community.

Mothership Month publisher Tuesday Knight Games announced its third annual Mothership Month on Tuesday. The event, which will occur from November 1 to November 30, has regularly been used to launch new Mothership products. The company decided to abandon the crowdfunding model instead and do something to support its creator community.

Three initiatives were announced.

The first is the Jump-9 Writers Grant. TKG says it will invest $9,000 each in three new Mothership writers to help them produce a new Mothership zine. The writers will work with TKG’s development team to create the product. The zines will then be produced as third-party products.

Submissions for the Grant will open in September. The finalists will be chosen in October, and the recipients will be announced during Mothership Month. Details will be announced at a later date.

The second announcement will be the launch of the Warden’s Club. This program will reward storytellers for running public games (such as at a convention or a local game store) with swag and starter adventures. It’s inspired by Goodman Games’ DCC Roadcrew.

The final addition will be Mothership Select, a new award that TKG will present to third-party publishers whose zines it believes have gone above and beyond. 10 of these will be selected by TKG’s team during Mothership Month. The selected zines will get special logos, a unique section in the TKG store and essays elaborating on what makes the

What inspired the sudden pivot? TKG is “exhausted,” wrote Mothership creator Sean McCoy. The company hopes to use this time to catch up on fulfilling past crowdfunding campaigns and to ensure it is meeting its current obligations.

McCoy also says the collab funding space is too saturated and wants to offer its fans some economic relief. “There’s an RPG month every month or two; it’s difficult to keep up with, and it’s hard on your wallets,” McCoy argued. “The economy isn’t great for all but like six people right now. Additionally, you all have a huge stack of modules you’ve been putting off playing while you wait for old modules to ship! Let’s fix that.”

Mothership Month is scheduled to begin on November 1, 2026 and go until November 30, 2026.

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The History of Collab Funding

The idea for collabfunding is something that Backerkit and other crowdfunding platforms have been experimenting with for the last few years.

Backerkit defines collabfunding as when creators collaborate on the platform to launch crowdfunding campaigns simultaneously. The campaigns often have something in common, whether it’s a format (books, pins, TTRPGs, etc), a theme (Halloween, fall, winter, academics,) or something else altogether.

The idea of RPG months began when Joe Goodman of Goodman Games asked to organize a TTRPG-centric version of Backerkit’s Topia events. That first event was organized around Goodman Games’ Adventures on the Purple Planet and Beyond, and asked third-party creators to create books built around those themes.

Mothership was the first version to attract significant attention for its Mothership Month in 2024. The event raised more than $1 million in funds for TKG and other creators by the end of November. The 2025 Mothership Month, which centered on the in-game space station Prospero’s Dream, launched 27 projects and raised over $850,000 that month.

Since then, multiple publishers have hosted their own RPG months. That includes Mausritter, Orbital Blues, Megadungeon Month, Old School Essentials Month and more. There are also several -Topia events organized throughout the year, from Zinetopia to Pintopia.

While most of the campaigns above did not reach the numbers Mothership first event did, the collaborative nature of the events helped the vast majority of campaigns to reach their funding goals in what some have described as a “rising tide raises all ships” scenario.

Other crowdfunding platforms have adopted similar approaches. RPG Party is Gamefound’s ongoing effort to help new RPG publishers launch their crowdfunding campaigns.

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