Avatar Legends, the tabletop roleplaying game based on Nickelodeon Animation Studios’ Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is the number one RPG Kickstarter in the site’s history. Coming from Magpie Games, this campaign has reached undreamed of funding levels for an RPG on Kickstarter. How undreamed? It’s likely to end its run at pushing triple the haul of the former number one’s position. These numbers are a sea change for the upward limits of what a modest sized company akin to Magpie can hope to accomplish. Adding to Linda Whitson’s d20 Radio coverage of the campaign, this two-part series will look at how they reached these heights. In the first article of this two-part series, I’ll look at the buildup to Magpie Games’ Kickstarter and how they primed the pump to reach brand new levels of fan interest.
Who Is Magpie Games? That’s a broad question, but an important one when considering how they’ve managed to fund this property. For the purposes of this article let’s focus on Magpie and their crowdfunding projects. Prior to Avatar Legends, Magpie completed two* Kickstarters for the Root RPG and Urban Shadows 2e. The Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, based on the popular Root board game, raised $602,022 from 6,495 backers. Urban Shadows: Second Edition, a dark urban fantasy RPG, raised $196,906 from 3,775 backers. Those are excellent numbers, and I’ll look at them in more depth below.
Like many of Magpie’s offerings, those two campaigns used the Powered by the Apocalypse system. More importantly, each of these campaigns contain elements that informed how they would run this campaign.
*UPDATE from Sarah “Sam” Saltiel of Magpie Games:
“While the Magpie Kickstarter account has only created the three Kickstarters, we’ve been launching Kickstarters for many years. We previously just ran the Kickstarters under the accounts of individual designers, but have recently shifted to the more consolidated company account.”
Those additional Kickstarters include three six-figure campaigns. Combined, they point towards a wealth of successful crowdfunding experience from Magpie Games.
- Urban Shadows 1e – 1,076 backers pledged $35,209 on June 29. 2014
- Epyllion – 863 backers pledged $37,080 on May 3, 2015
- Masks: A New Generation – 2,371 backers pledged $107,328 on October 25, 2015
- Bluebeard’s Bride – 1,745 backers pledged $129,820 on November 20, 2016
- Zombie World – 1,093 backers pledged $51,150 on August 12, 2018
- Wizard Kittens – 4,052 backers pledged $165,483 on March 31, 2019
[Thanks for sharing this correction, Sam.]
But let me go one further and add one more piece of experience to the pool: the first million dollar RPG Kickstarter, John Wick’s 7th Sea: Second Edition (11,483 backers pledged $1,316,813 from February, 2016). I’m adding this to the list of influencers and dry runs because the project manager for John Wick Presents during the 7th Sea Kickstarter was Mark Diaz Truman who is the co-owner of Magpie Games. In this Youtube link showing Mark and John accepting the golden ENnie Award for Best Free Product (2017) for 7th Sea, John gives Mark all of the credit for reaching a million dollars on Kickstarter. Mark helped to set the first record in 2017, now he’s back in 2021 and bypassing the original milestone.
Establish Properties. Looking at their prior crowdfunding experiences, there are several key takeaways that illustrate why Magpie was the right choice for an Avatar RPG. One of them was working with known IPs (intellectual properties). Urban Shadows, the first edition, won awards in 2014, 2015, and 2016. At DriveThruRPG, the first edition obtained a Mithral sales level (the second highest sales volume). This is all to say that Urban Shadows had a built-in fanbase. In the same vein, the Root RPG was born of an extremely popular board game. How popular? Well, looking at the Kickstarter numbers helps to illustrate the draw.
- In February, 2016, John Wick Presents (with Mark Diaz Truman on the team) becomes the first million dollar RPG Kickstarter. A chunk of the success could be attributed to the campaign returning 7th Sea to RPG tables.
- In October, 2017, Leder Games* ran a campaign for their board game, Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right, that raised $631,770 from 8,454 backers.
- In March, 2019, Leder Games* ran another campaign for the board game, Root: The Underworld Expansion, which raised $1,726,461 from 20,886 backers.
- In September, 2019, Magpie Game’s Root RPG’s campaign reached about the same numbers as the first crowdfunding for the board game, $602,022 from 6,495 backers.
- In October, 2020, Magpie’s Urban Shadows 2e campaign did smaller numbers than the others discussed here, but it was a purely in-house property. Yet, it still managed 3,775 backers and $196,906.
- Even though this does not have a direct impact, Leder Games* completed another Root board game campaign. In February of this year, Leder* ran a campaign for Root: The Marauder Expansion which raised $2,007,212 from 22,792 backers. They demonstrated that their IP continues to gain in terms of audience.
All of these numbers express that Magpie Games has experience with large (for RPG) crowdfunding projects. They’ve handled previously establish properties well in terms of reaching exceptional numbers. Their good track record built confidence in their fanbase before the Avatar Legends campaign launched.
*Leder Games is a separate game publishing company. Leder specializes in board games. Magpie Games specializes in tabletop roleplaying games.
Previews. Nothing inspires confidence in backers like good previews of the game. For their campaigns, Magpie Games offered free quickstarts if you’ll sign up for their newsletter. It’s a win-win for them, they get your email address to let you know when the game is available to back and you get a preview that, hopefully, will encourage you to back the full book.
- For the Root RPG, Magpie offered Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game Quickstart
- During the Urban Shadows: Second Edition campaign, they gave away Urban Shadows (2nd Ed.) Quickstart
- Leading up to the Avatar Legends Kickstarter, Magpie offered the Avatar Legends Quickstart in exchange for signing up on their mailing list
- Even though this game was not by Magpie Games, I’m going to mention that as an incentive to back the 7th Sea campaign, John Wick Presents offered a free quickstart to backers
Getting a preview of what’s to come works on two levels. There’s the real chance to open up the book and learn more about the project, to get some details on the mechanics, world building, writing, and art. On the other hand, there’s the psychological effect of getting a gift, it makes you more inclined to want to give something back and, in the case of Avatar Legends, that means backing their Kickstarter.
Watcher Stretch Goals. I think watcher stretch goals are the next area of focus for RPG crowdfunding projects that are looking to maximize their first day pledges. Offering stretch goal rewards based on getting X number of watchers for your Kickstarter before it launches means dedicated, interested fans anticipating the campaign, much like getting fans to sign up for the mailing list or giving them a preview copy of the RPG.
But what is a watcher? A watcher is a potential Kickstarter backer that clicks the “Notify me on launch” button for a campaign that has not gone live yet. By getting a watcher, you’re likely getting a fan that will back the campaign, and there’s a high likelihood of them backing early. Early backers are good for two reasons: Kickstarter’s algorithm favors popular campaigns and potential backers like to back a winner.
Add to that, if you’ve ever run a crowdfunding campaign, you’ll receive post-campaign messages from a number of potential backers that lament that they did not find your campaign during its 2 to 4 week funding window. By opening up and attracting backers prior to the campaign, and offering them bonuses just for being interested, you expand the window of time in which fans might find your campaign. To that end, getting watchers is key.
In Part Two. In the second part of this series, I’ll discuss how the campaign’s stretch goals positively influence this campaign, their use of ads, the benefits of larger media exposure, how Powered by the Apocalypse works for them, and what else could reach these lofty numbers. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out the campaign.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game from Magpie Games
End Date: Thu, September 2 2021 7:30 PM EDT.
“An officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra”
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Amazon.
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