Four Horsemen Studios Mythic Legions

Just thinking of comparable 5e-based kickstarters minus the action figure component and, because Kickstarter knows I'm an easy mark, this popped up in my feed. Just for comparison of how to show the TTRPG community what the game actually includes or does as part of your campaign. I don't have time this afternoon to look at the numbers side by side but their goal was only 10k and they've brought in $325k so it's doing well.
 
Got my shipping notice. I expect the floodgates for Kickstarter emails to really ramp up now. "We've placated him! Now is the time to strike! For Money! For Pre-orders! For Money for Pre-orders!"
 
JakeEkiss said:
Not to beat a dead horse, but this is what I expect a ttrpg kickstarter to look like. Tells me exactly what I'm getting in the game and even gives an example of mechanics on the main kickstarter page itself.
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Yup.

I mean, maybe it is a dead horse at this point but it still makes me so angry that these arrogant clowns have a TTRPG Kickstarter with basically nothing about the TTRPG. They're just selling action figures again. It's an action figure Kickstarter, but they want extra money for some books and minis you'll never use. They don't take this seriously, and not to be too hyperbolic here, it's massively disrespectful to the TTRPG industry.
 
NUMBERS!

We’re a week in and the following events have happened:
-the unlocked a new paid stretch goal
-the have more backers than Advent of Decay (which unlocked a free stretch goal)
-they had a live con appearance to generate buzz
-sent out a PATHETIC email begging for money to impress industry insiders at GAMA Expo (I’m sure the guys next to them at the Squishables booth will be blown away)
-they just had their best day of the Kickstarter on Monday (the average per new backer was $490, better day one’s $419 per backer. Though obviously that’s probably a mix of existing backers buying dice/upgrading out of guilt because of the email, it’s still their best average yet.)
-they followed their best yet with their worst ($291 average spend per new backer, lowest yet. Interesting trivia: They had 60 backers on Saturday but only 21 on Sunday, so you’d think “whoa! They did great on Saturday!” but Sunday was actually a stronger day for them with an average spend of $332 vs formerly lowest average Saturday’s $297)
Edit: took to long to write this someone upped their pledge (did I miss a whiny email?!) current pledge average per new backer for today is $294, still the worse day of the campaign and doesn’t seem to change any other averages down stream…

as it currently stands 826 of the 1934 backers want anything to do with the game itself. Of them 519 are Paladin levels. Still btw not enough that they needed to lift that limit, always bully companies, it always works!

It’s going to be interesting to see how the rest of the campaign goes. Obviously “Fully Funded in 5 Minutes!” isn’t much of a bragging point when you’re an established company with purposefully low funding goal and the backing of a cult. We don’t know how many units an in stock sale pushes on day one vs the rest of the campaign, what looks impressive on Kickstarter when numbers are public could just be business as usual for them. Like I don’t doubt this campaign breaks $1m because I don’t doubt the 4H do a $1m in sales per wave.

Like I don’t even think Kicktraq is prepared for this kind of a campaign which I’m almost certain was VERY front loaded. It says the “average backers per day” is 276, it says the average daily pledge is $400 (down $2 from yesterday), but daily numbers show that’s not true at all. Day 1 is WAAAY throwing off the curve and I don’t think six is enough data points to find a true mean. (If you think it’s enough, toss the outlier day 1 gives us an average of 53 backers pledging $366 daily)

I think that email may have blown their load a bit, how many “I have time I can wait…” backers rushed to the Horsemen’s side to dig deep moving the closing rush to day 6?

Looking at AoD and the Video game, AoD had the standard KS trajectory of big first days, some cooling, strong finish almost as strong as day 1 and 2. The video game was front loaded with almost half of the funding coming day one with over 1,000 backs and the final day matching day 2 with about 200. I suspect this campaign will follow a similar path, since, there is a limit to action figures, it’s not an unlimited growth field, and while sure, maybe they maintain this current rate and can reach 3.5k backers… I’m not sure what the 4H were trying to achieve with this one.

Like… are there indie TTRPG’s that get THOUSANDS of backers on Kickstarter?!
Admittedly the search engine is shit and I don’t feel looking for the diamonds in the rough in seas of “we need 200 people to give $1000 total to print our one shot”, I don’t get where the Horsemen are pulling $1.5m out of their assholes…

Again, maybe they regularly do $1.5m in sales per wave so this is business as usual, they clearly had the confidence they’d hit these goals because Add-on figures (the things that actually increase pledge rates) are locked behind half-million goals (AoD’s goals when these were NEW models was $15k apart), two figures are just out of reach until this out performs AoD financially with an All-In that cost half as much! So clearly they were expecting BIG numbers, because why else give Kickstarter 10% (as of writing KS is making $77k off this project)

I suspect in a week whether unlocked naturally or not the $1m figure becomes available to goose sales. I’m wondering right now if we see any “surprise” figures added because it feels like this was supposed to be “passive income”, the dice, the books, the standees, the GM screen, maybe even the minis would subcontracted out, the 4H just tended to a tiny 9 figure wave with some accessories and then warehouse crew boxes it up… and when they need a new stand alone adventure the warehouse crew writes those too apparently! DONE FOR YOU PASSIVE INCOME, BABY! If they want a “big number finish” dropping more toys is the way to go, but that’s more work and they have to share their cut with KS, so I’m willing to bet early unlocks and maybe the cheapest freebies (skull face plate you probably already have!) is all they do.

Not even sure if this stayed on topic or made sense, but after yesterday’s email and looking at the daily numbers I don’t think this is what the Horsemen wanted taking this project to Kickstarter.
 
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I think what's actually kind of interesting is how we can blow this all back to: The Horsemen seemingly could have made the same amount of money they want from this KS by just pre-ordering all of these action figures on their own site. And, if so, what is the actual cost of making the GAME part of this GAME Kickstarter? Or are we to believe that the 4H massively overcharge for their toys to the point where they actually make enough off selling a wave to fully fund a TTRPG every wave?

Something to chew on.
 
Damien said:
10% all-in, or thereabouts. It's 5% off the top and ~5% in payment processing fees. I'm assuming Mint's 30% was just a typo.
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Not a typo, I had been told 30% from sourced criticizing Kickstarter as a non-ideal platform if you have other potential funding meanings (like the Horsemen) because they take so much and just passed that info along without double checking.

I’ll edit my original post to 10% since that’s fair more reasonable (and $77k is still an insane amount to give KS for nothing)
 
Damien said:
Or are we to believe that the 4H massively overcharge for their toys to the point where they actually make enough off selling a wave to fully fund a TTRPG every wave?

Something to chew on.
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They reuse so much (and that's not a criticism, it's part of the appeal with armies and modding), I don't know why anyone would be surprised.

In the Cabal it was always "smaller runs justify it" but when you know you're going to sell through and you have that much demand at that point, it's a forced boutique offering and thus forced scarcity.
 
Mint In Boks said:
Not a typo, I had been told 30% from sourced criticizing Kickstarter as a non-ideal platform if you have other potential funding meanings (like the Horsemen) because they take so much and just passed that info along without double checking.

I’ll edit my original post to 10% since that’s fair more reasonable (and $77k is still an insane amount to give KS for nothing)
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There could be hidden fees and bullshit I don't know about. But KS's official answer is 5% and 3-5% for payments based on some mysterious variables they don't make note of, so I just assume they charge everyone 5% and the 3% is bullshit.
That lines up with the Boss Fight crew having said their projects both lost 10% off the top to Kickstarter, and the reason they didn't want to go back to KS for anything else.


TheSameIdiot said:
The $30-per-figure price point caused me to raise an eyebrow.
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Shaaaady business, I tell you.
 
Thirty percent might be the double whammy of Kickstarter + Backerkit. Or at least closer to that number.

I've seen some brands skip Kickstarter and just use Backerkit.
 
I assume they went the Kickstarter route in hopes of getting traction with the TTRPG crowd who follow those campaigns - if they stuck to their website they are unlikely to get noticed. And while it is true most of the backing dollars are going to the figures, I would think a campaign getting $750K in backing might at least lead the algorithm to promote it and maybe have people look at it that wouldn't otherwise.

10% is not a hefty fee for new brands/true fundraising (and not essentially just pre-orders) to provide a stable platform for pledges, provide some marketing and also some confidence in things being legit for the backers. Backerkit does add to it as well for those who do not have a storefront yet, but I don't know how much.
 
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