TTRPG Crowdfunding Slowing Down in Q3 2025

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Today’s issue is a quick check-in on the state of crowdfunding among TTRPGs as the third quarter comes to a close. Who were the big players over the last three months?

As we established back in the last update, crowdfunding is essential to the spread of new TTRPGs, as it is often used to spark interest and provide the funding needed to start a game. It’s the standard we all rely on when it comes to established and indie publishers succeeding.

The third quarter appears to reflect a slight slowdown in crowdfunding. TTRPG Insider was only able to identify thirteen TTRPG campaigns that successfully raised $100,000 or more and ended their campaigns between July 1 and September 29, 2025.

This brings the total campaigns that successfully raised $100,000 up to 70 total. It also means that only six campaigns raised more than $1 million in 2025.

Four out of the thirteen campaigns are based on 5e, while the vast majority of campaigns were either for updated rules or expansions to established games. The Italian game designer Two Little Mice had the most significant impact this quarter, with two successful campaigns raising over $100,000. TLM had four of its campaigns cross the $100,000 threshold in 2025, including Household RPG - Collection I & II, Memento Mori: The Old City, Outgunned: Superheroes, and the 5e expansion of Household: Welcome to the Garden.

Monte Cooke’s Cypher was the most successful campaign, raising over $1 million in its final hours. This is also their second game that successfully raised $1 million in 2025, after The Magnus Archives: Tangled in the Web’s success.

You can review the $100,000 campaigns identified below:

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What Does This Mean?

Quarter-by-quarter results are a bit limited in scope since they are often far too short to establish trends, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

That said, it appears that spending on crowdfunding has declined. Whether this decline is due to a time-related factor, where crowdfunding typically decreases around the end of summer, or a drop in luxury spending related to general economic stress, is difficult to confirm at this time. I suspect that TTRPG publishers may be slow to crowdfund new games in the coming months as the impact of tariffs long-term are being felt by manufacturers and fans alike.

New properties continue to struggle, while established games or IP remain the strongest tool for raising funds in this economy.

The successful campaigns appear split between Backerkit and Kickstarter, with nearly half occupying both platforms at this time. The majority of smaller games remained on Kickstarter, however. Gamefound’s RPG Party hopes to make a splash later in October, but it is unclear if the platform will successfully attract enough RPG fans to make the event as big as the crowdfunding platform.

There are quite a few campaigns that are ongoing at the time of this report’s publishing that could see some significant success, including Free League’s Invincible: The RPG. We’ll see how spending patterns wrap up for the year.

Methodologies

If you want to review my data, it is available here for your perusal. This is so you can point out potential analytical errors in case I got things wrong, and so you can do the math yourself. I’m just one person, but I’m convinced I've got all the big players. 

The data above was gathered through a review of Kickstarter, Backerkit, and Gamefound’s platforms. Any campaigns featured in my dataset must meet the following criteria:

• A campaign must be successful. No failed campaigns are included here.

• The RPG project must be for a campaign setting or book. While dice projects like Heroforge’s Custom Dice did have substantial success this year, we’re focusing primarily on books and publishing.

• The campaign must have earned $100,000 or more. This is a ballpark metric that I think reflects a reasonable amount of success, and was inspired by Bob World Builder’s April 2025 video reviewing past subjects. This isn’t to say that a campaign that made $90,000 is lesser, but it likely has less market prominence than others.

• They wrapped up some time between January 1, 2025, and September 30, 2025

The estimates were drawn directly from the time the campaigns wrapped up. Many Kickstarter campaigns experience a surge in pledges after the campaign ends, which can significantly increase the total amount earned. I chose to focus on what was earned at the time of the campaign’s end to ensure everything remains steadfast and will not change due to economic reasons.

Finally, I did my best to convert any pledges into USD based on the exchange rates available as of July 1, 2025.

What are your thoughts? Send any scoops, tips or press releases to [email protected].