Hello everyone, and welcome to a special episode of Finder’s Archives. This time I’m going to be talking about something slightly different, namely a Kickstarter that I’m running. I hope you’re willing to come along, and if it sounds like something you’d find interesting, it’d be greatly appreciated if you either chipped in or helped spread the word. 🙂
So, not too long ago, on the 20th of March, I launched a Kickstarter for Tomb of the Undying Empress. It is an adventure for both Pathfinder Second Edition and 5th Edition (5e, or 5e D&D, whatever you wish to call it), that’ll take your heroes from 3rd to 4th level, so it’ll allow you to use some of those newly found powers that you gained early on in your adventuring career. 🙂
The story behind it is that an ancient ruler, a woman named Tephenet, was the Empress of a small realm (probably too grandiose a title of the size of her realm, but hey, that’s what hubris does to you). She was the worshiper of an entity called Sss’Kosh – The Pillar of Power, a type of entity that many of you will recognize as a Great Old One from the Cthulhu Mythos (though it is a unique creation and not one that existed in it before). Of course, we all know that worshiping a Great Old One can only bring trouble, and on the eve of her ascension to immortality, something went wrong, and the lands she ruled were blanketed in sandstorms for years. When the storms subsided, her country was gone, and she was trapped in her old palace, along with some of her minions for millennia. Necromancy and the like are strong forces, so while she was trapped, she did not perish. And now, a bunch of scholars has unearthed her palace once more, and the heroes will need to explore the palace for them and bring an end to an ancient evil.
If you check the link to the Kickstarter, you’ll notice that it’s already funded, but that the funding level was really low (at only $100). There are a few reasons for that, which I’ll try to break down.
- I wanted to be (relatively) sure that it’d fund. So I’ve kept my costs down as much as I possibly could, to enable it to fund. Frankly, if it had only been funded at $100 I would have been out of pocket on it, but as it is, I’m in the black.
- It’s an experiment. I wanted to bring as many people along as I possibly could, and to that end, I kept each pledge level as low as I could. I mean $2 for an adventure seems pretty reasonable to me. 🙂 I was hoping that by having the volume of backers, I’d be able to get more people to come along and make up what it’d normally cost instead that way.
- I wanted to learn more about Kickstarter itself. It is my first separate Kickstarter, and I wanted to learn the ins and outs of it, what works and what doesn’t. And at the same time, learn more about the people who use Kickstarter — and I’ve already had my first surprise in that regard. (More on that in a bit)
So those were the goals. And while it’s great that we’re above the funding goal, the more over it gets, the better the team’s chances of making something even bigger and better for the next one. Because looking at how this has gone, compared to our normal releases, we have to say that this is a better avenue for us, at least until we’re fully established.
But I was hinting at something we’d learned. And that’s something that has been a big surprise to us. Based on how many players play 5th Edition vs. how many players there are for Pathfinder Second Edition, and the number of projects for each on Kickstarter, we were expecting the majority of supporters to be there for the 5e version. BOY were we wrong! 80% or more of our supporters are heading for the PF2 version, and the rest are going for 5e. And not just that, but in general, the 5e players are going for the lower pledges, with the PF2 players going for the higher ones. It’s not what we expected, but it is part of a trend that we’ve noticed: the 5e community is REALLY difficult to get into, even if you’re active among them. It’s like there’s been a wall built around it, and the people inside are discouraged from looking out. That wall broke a bit with the whole OGL debacle a couple of months ago, but it is still very evident.
Honestly, it’s come as such a surprise that there’s that much difference that we’re discussing dropping 5e from our lineup (especially with 6e/oD&D being on the horizon) entirely and opening up to something else instead besides PF2. Dungeon Crawl Classics, Basic Roleplaying Game, Swords & Wizardry, and Castles & Crusades have all been discussed, but that’s probably going to go on for some time.
But yeah, I’m hoping you’ll take a peek and that it’ll pique your interest. By the time this goes live, the Kickstarter is already fully funded, and there should only be a few days left. So come on over. 🙂
See you next time. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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