Well, the second ShadowDark kickstarter, the "setting", i.e. hexcrawl stuff, just finished its kickstarter run, although late pledges are still trickling in. It made almost twice as much as the original, although it did so with fewer backers. If backers continue to trickle in, then it might end up being close enough to the original number of backers to not be worthy of comment, but still... it's very interesting to me that the ratio of backers to money earned is nearly 2:1 compared to the first. I had thought, a few weeks ago, that we'd end up closer to the same amount with half the backers, and speculated that whales had taken over; people who were willing to spend more money for a premium product, but fewer of them. However, that seems to not be the case, most likely—similar number of people (probably many of the same people, I'd guess) backed it and just spent more money because they were very happy with the original product and now were willing to invest more in it now that there's more to invest in again.
I have to admit that even though I have no need of ShadowDark, probably won't play it, and in fact already bought a pdf copy from Arcane Library months ago, I was tempted to jump on the Newcomer's Bundle, which would have been print + pdf of the original book, the two setting books, and all six zines. Ultimately, the fact that I don't really care for dungeon-crawling, hexcrawling, or have any need of the rules beyond what I already have convinced me that that was silly. But even I got caught up in the hype for a while.
Also, it would have been two hundred bucks. I can afford that, of course, but I don't spend that kind of money without actually making sure that I want what I'm spending the money on.
I still haven't done an annotated response to the Mike Mearls interview on Questing Beast, and now it's unlikely that I will because it's been long enough that nobody cares anymore (including me) but I do like his idea that from his perspective, it seems like the old wisdom that "as goes D&D so goes the RPG hobby overall" is no longer true. D&D's position within the hobby has never been as weak as it is now. And rather than having singular competitors threatening their dominance, it's just turning into a situation where all kinds of smaller, indie guys are collectively threatening its dominance and the hobby is more fragmented and diverse (and therefore healthy) than its ever been before. Rather than D&D fighting it out vs White Wolf or Pathfinder, it's D&D as probably still the majority, or at least largest plurality by far, but smaller in scope than it used to be, and the health of D&D specifically doesn't matter to the health of the hobby any more. Tales of the Valiant funded at $1.1 million. ShadowDark had two separate kickstarters, collectively worth nearly $3.5M. DC20 funded at $2.2M. The Brandon Sanderson RPG funded at over $15M!! which is admittedly a feat that is unlikely to be matched ever again, if ever. I didn't see totals for Daggerheart or MCDM, but they funded for a lot of money too—I think over $4M each, if I remember correctly. Clearly a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of money on games that aren't D&D. Which is probably quite good for everyone... except WotC. Many of those games are designed not to complement, but specifically to replace D&D; especially Tales of the Valiant and DC20. And the numbers continue to go up. Not that long ago, Savage Pathfinder getting under $500k was a pretty big deal. Now, breaking a million bucks on crowd-funding isn't so unusual that it's worth mentioning every time that it happens anymore.
What does that mean, exactly? That's a good question. I think for the most part, the more successful games have not competed head to head with D&D (except during the 4e era when Pathfinder did exactly that) because of D&D's dominance; successful RPGs laid claim to another area, genre, or type. Call of Cthulhu or World of Darkness games, for instance, offered something significantly different than D&D, and were therefore able to thrive on people who didn't play D&D. The only kind of exception to that was the OSR, but that's tricky; the OSR is mostly made up of older editions of D&D, rewritten and re-presented, of course, but not mechanically all that different, really. If we now see games that do compete head to head with D&D gaining prominence, like DC20, ShadowDark, etc. in an era when enthusiasm for "corporate slop D&D that's still woke in the post-woke era", well... it's not necessarily shocking.
Thinking about new videos to make too. I've whipped up a few more banners, just for some variety.
And this one; almost identical "prototype" title for Eberron, before Keith Baker went and spent a couple of months workshopping the campaign bible with the WotC folks.
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