News Roundup: TTRPGs and Crowdfunding in 2025

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In this issue, we’re crunching some data around 2025 crowdfunding trends, including the fourth quarter of 2025.

TTRPG Crowdfunding Stabilized in Q4 2025

It’s time for my quarterly review of TTRPG-related crowdfunding trends. This is specifically a look at crowdfunding campaigns that successfully raised $100,000 or more between October 1 and December 31, 2025. You can take a look at Q3 here as well as past details about our data and methodologies.

I identified 26 campaigns that raised $100,000 or more in Q4 2025, from year-long campaigns for game systems like Draw Steel to the long-awaited update to Apocalypse World by the Bakers. Some of the successful campaigns did include software or map updates, although we did not include physical products like dice.

The majority of games were non-D&D, with only 11 identified specifically as D&D-adjacent. The spending appears higher than the previous quarter, with at least two campaigns surpassing $1 million.

The month also saw many successful campaigns driven by events like Mausritter Month and Mothership Month, two special events hosted by Backerkit, where creators teamed up to create a ton of projects built around popular systems. While the majority of projects funded for both “Months” raised less than $100,000, only the main project led by the system's leaders exceeded $100,000. Mothership: PROSPERO’S DREAM (written and published by Mothership creators Tuesday Knight Games), for example, raised more than $445,000, but none of the other games succeeded at raising more than $100,000. That’s not a bad thing, mind you. The campaigns still succeeded at raising the funds they needed, with all creators getting funded. But are we seeing scenarios where “a rising tide lifts all boats,” or is it more like the third-party creators are getting crumbs off the larger project? I’d argue our data sample is far too small to say anything meaningful.

This also brings us to the end of 2025. An estimated 98 campaigns raised $100,000 or more in 2025¹ . That’s slightly less than 2024’s 104 campaigns but more than past years (based on data gathered by Bob World Builder, who helped inspire how I’ve been approaching this data collection).

If we combine the total raised by those 98 campaigns, it exceeds $37 million. That’s significantly less than 2024’s $48 million and 2023’s $39 million, but more than the years before them. If we add in the hundreds of other campaigns, that number grows even higher.

Ten of those campaigns raised more than $1 million each. The most successful campaign of the year is Draw Steel: Crack the Sun with $2.6 million. This was followed by Alien: Evolved Edition ($2.4 million) and Shadowdark: Western Reaches ($2.3 million).

What does this all mean? TTRPGs remain a popular form of crowdfunding despite concerns about tariffs and economic hardships, and backers appear willing to continue supporting the projects they love. IP-based projects continue to do pretty well, as well as D&D projects. But we’re also seeing people still supporting the D&D alternatives like Shadowdark and Draw Steel.

If you want to get deep into the weeds on all of this, Web of the Gigantic Spider is a blog that publishes monthly summaries of the crowdfunding campaigns in the space and holds a lot of fascinating data that I am unable to feature in this story.

You can see Q4 2025’s successful campaigns below.

As always, please let me know if we missed anything or if we need to adjust our numbers. Transparency is incredibly important to me as a reporter, and I want to make sure that we are communicating with you and accommodating any errors I might have made in my own attempts at data gathering and comparison.

Unearthed Arcana Teases ‘Mystic Subclasses’ and Lets You Screw Around with Magic

Another year, another set of playtest subclasses released for D&D fans. This week was no different with the release of the Mystic Subclasses Unearthed Arcana. The test reveals four new subclasses, each with a focus on spell and magic-focused subclasses

• Warrior of the Mystic Arts Monk, which lets you intertwine casting spells with martial arts

• Oath of the Spellguard Paladin, which lets you focus on countering spellcasters before they can screw up your party.

• Magic Stealer Rogue, which lets you steal magic from your friends and enemies, then turn it around to mess them up.

• Vestige Patron Warlock, where you acquire a fragment of a dying deity and use its power for your benefit.

Personally, I think the Vestige Patron warlock has some of the coolest ideas at play for a story and seems very fun to play with. But you can get a closer look at these on DnDBeyond. The feedback survey for the subclasses will go live on January 22.

We’re still waiting for more details on what D&D is planning to release this year. I’m still convinced it will be a “rebuild year,” but the UAs we’ve had so far point to some pretty broad options for players, from horror-themed elements to even Dark Sun-adjacent settings.

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Italian RPGs are something that has grown more prominent in the space over the last few years, with games like Fabula Ultima, Twilight Sword, Cowboy Bebop and a bunch of other games getting momentum. Personally, I’m a big fan of Outgunned, a cinematically themed TTRPG from Two Little Mice in Italy. But what’s going on here? Weird Place, a YouTube account dedicated to indie TTRPGs, takes a closer look.

That’s all for this week. Have thoughts on a recent story? Want to promote your latest product? Feel free to send us tips or emails at [email protected].

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1  Again, this is not to say that the smaller campaigns were less successful, merely that I use the $100,000 mark to set a certain standard to simplify data collection and comparisons for myself, and to build off Bob World Builder’s work for my own research. Cuz I like data.