by Motormouth Jamie
Did you hear about The World Below? Recent TTRPG by Onyx Path, advertised itself as a fantasy game set in a copyright-free Underdark, worked on by everybody’s favourite real life wizard Ed Greenwood. You know, the guy that invented the Underdark in the first place. Now, as a fan of Onyx Path’s work, and a general fan of Elminster himself, this was something I was directly in the target audience of. Thus, to Kickstarter I went to throw those aging punks some of my money.
The game isn’t particularly great. It seems like they took the Storypath Ultra system, their rules lite(ish) variant of Storypath that they used for the Trinity Continuum, Scion 2e, and their upcoming Totally-Not-The-World-Of-Darkness game Curseborn, and have slapped together a rather disappointing fantasy system. Looking at Greenwood’s social media, he’s been real quiet on the game too. Seems like the game’s creative director was “The Gentleman Gamer” Richard Thomas, who some of you may know from his Redditesque name and his World of Darkness content to YouTube a decade ago. Strange choice.
A rare disappointment from Onyx Path in my eyes. They’ve had a pretty great track record with these Kickstarter games so far…
I should know, I’ve backed a good many of them. Those of you from the Aux- pleasure to meet you, I’m Motormouth, the Legion’s favourite systems fanatic. Also a super Exalted fan. As such, I’ve been eating very, very well from Onyx Path’s Kickstarter schedule with the game line. As has the company, considering last year they were 3rd place in companies producing crowdfunded games with $7.4 million made across their game lines, only beaten by the 1st place Magpie Games (Avatar Legends & Root) and the venerable Monte Cook Games in second, who made $10.3mil and $9.8mil respectively. There is evidently good money in the crowdfunding scene.
But why? It certainly feels strange that Onyx Path have taken to a production method most well known for indie works. Its obvious it is working for them though, looking at their sales figures. I mean, the Chronicles of Darkness and Exalted are definitely not competing with D&D or Pathfinder anymore – hell, it has always been competing and failing compared to its sibling World of Darkness – but they continue to make good money on their work. Maybe they are this industry’s best example of an AA games company.
Why are they succeeding when others are not? Throw a comment in any forum or Discord server’s RPG chat and you’ll find a few people that have been burnt on a bad Kickstarter campaign. I certainly have. It seems that there is just a particular niche for some companies to exploit. Free League finds continual success with its licensed and original games – The One Ring 2e and Blade Runner have made over five million alone – as have the previously mentioned Magpie Games and Monte Cook. The most obvious answer to why is likely the right one: brand loyalty sells and those winning are the ones with experience in making good games.
I love Exalted. As such, I have backed every crowdfunding campaign for the entirety of their ongoing 3e line. Onyx Path knows they have me captured, and many like me, willing to spend more than the usual back for their games of choice. Looking at the figures of their current releases, the average backer of Exalted products are spending $111 per project! This is just for a niche setting, it doesn’t take an earnings breakdown to understand even the fabled Wider Audience(TM) are likely to pick up a Lord of the Rings or Blade Runner game, if only out of name recognition and piqued interest.
Everybody in this hobby space has a horror story about a bad Kickstarter campaign these days, but it is evident now that crowdfunding is going to be the norm outside of the big names from here on. To this I say, good. We consumers have such greater power over an industry that focuses on an audience of such small numbers, and we should embrace that. Shame the cashgrabs and the shovelware! Embrace the small communities these projects can foster by joining their Discords and talking directly to the devs. Make your voices heard, take a little more risk, and help our indie and AA game devs foster. You may just find your new favourite games that way.
