For Peter Chiykowski and The Story Engine team, crowdfunding isn’t just about raising funds – it’s about fostering a community.
After the success of The Story Engine Deck and its sequel, The Story Engine: Deck of Worlds, Peter and his team turned to BackerKit for their next campaign: The Story Engine: Lore Master’s Deck. With an unwavering commitment to delighting their fans and equipped with BackerKit’s community engagement tools, they launched a fun, interactive campaign that encouraged collaboration.
They also showed that when you truly connect with your audience, they can become champions of your vision. The Lore Master’s Deck campaign raised over 6x its funding goal thanks to 3,741 passionate backers.
Starting a new chapter
Launched in 2019, the original Story Engine Deck was a groundbreaking deck of cards with prompts designed to help writers, game designers, Dungeon Masters, educators, and artists unlock the story ideas and character concepts trapped in their heads.
The Lore Master’s Deck is the third release in the series, and was designed to help storytellers fill their work with rich, interconnected lore.
Peter, a seasoned crowdfunding creator with seven successful projects, chose to launch the Lore Master’s Deck on BackerKit’s crowdfunding platform after using the Pledge Manager for previous campaigns. “We were familiar with BackerKit’s ability to deliver, especially in the post-campaign setting.” Peter shared why he was excited to be one of the first creators to launch on BackerKit:
“Right from the get-go, the two biggest things that I was impressed with with BackerKit were that the initial platform was being launched very much in collaboration with creators and that there was this huge focus on backers – having tools to engage backers, having tools to collaborate with backers, being able to do polls and livestreams, and really do a campaign hand in hand with backers. And I think that all of the campaign highlight moments happened because of those tools.”– Peter Chiykowski
A few of those campaign highlights:
- 100% funded in 4 hours
- Raised $506,282 with 3,741 backers
- #1 Biggest Day-One total for The Story Engine
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Make your backers your biggest champions
For crowdfunding creators, building and maintaining a relationship with backers is key to long-term success. One of the most effective ways to do this is by actively engaging your audience throughout your campaign. This is exactly what Peter and his team did.
Livestreaming their way to their biggest day one
To kick off their campaign, Peter and the Lore Master’s Deck’s Project Manager, Miroki Tong hosted a Launch Party livestream on BackerKit. This is a powerful way to capitalize on the critical first 48 hours of a crowdfunding campaign when most pledges typically happen.
By creating an event out of the launch, they brought energy and excitement to the community, which translated into early pledges. Initially planned to just run for an hour and a half, the stream ended up lasting four hours because of the enthusiastic participation from backers.
“The community wanted to participate and chat with us,” Miroki says. “In the land of virtual connection, how lucky are we that we can connect with our backers in England and Australia and China?”
During the livestream, Peter and Miroki gave a demo of the deck, teased upcoming backer incentives, and simply hung out with their fans. Feeding off the community’s enthusiasm, they playfully encouraged people to back by promising to perform for them: Peter would juggle and Miroki would sing. The stream’s energy was infectious, and by the time it ended, the project was fully funded.
They had a 1,000-backer Backer Train just after launching – that’s 1,000 consecutive pledges, each less than 10 minutes apart. They continued to host livestreams throughout the campaign to connect with their community and reveal new details about the Lore Master’s Deck.
“Our average pledge was much higher [than previous campaigns]. I assign that to, by the end of the campaign people had hung out with us, we’d been playing the game together, they got to see the expansions in so much more detail, so they got to know really well if they wanted it or not — and I think that’s really a testament to BackerKit’s superpower — that ability to engage backers so much deeper and to make them, truly, your biggest champions.” — Peter Chiykowski
Not only did their livestreams boost engagement, but they also generated valuable content. “We got all the video tutorial content that we could ever want and had so much fun while doing it,” Peter says. “We didn’t have to go through the video editing process. There’s a looseness to live that really works for being able to get that content out there quickly.”
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Integrating mid-campaign feedback
The Story Engine team also used the BackerKit crowdfunding platform’s Polls feature to actively seek feedback from backers, turning their crowdfunding campaign into a true collaboration. “When you do crowdfunding, you have to be willing and open to hear feedback from people,” says Miroki. “If the number of concerns far outweighs the positive response, then there’s something wrong. And you have to make a choice.”
The Story Engine team sought input on storage solutions for the deck. Their initial idea was unexpectedly met with resistance from the community. However, by using BackerKit’s poll feature, they gathered the insights they needed and went back to the drawing board.
Through a series of polls, they really got to understand what people wanted and ultimately designed what became known as the Leviathan Storage Box, a massive box large enough to hold all the cards from all of their decks with room to spare.
The very simple act of asking for feedback can improve a campaign’s offerings while strengthening the relationship creators have with their backers, demonstrating that their opinions are valued.
Building together
The sense of community is one of the most exciting and essential aspects of crowdfunding, and the success of the Lore Master’s Deck demonstrates just how powerful that connection can be. We’re excited to see what’s next for Peter and The Story Engine team. Whatever the future holds, they’ll have a legion of enthusiastic backers ready to support them.
Ready for more fans, more funds, and way more fun? Sign up for a free BackerKit account today.