Goodman Games Hits Their #1 Most-Funded Crowdfunding Campaign on BackerKit

Founded in 2001, game publisher Goodman Games has become a beloved name in the TTRPG community. While they are celebrated for their Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) series of adventure modules, they’re also known for their enthusiastic approach to crowdfunding. With over 40 campaigns under their belt, including recent successes like Adventures on the Purple Planet and Beyond and Grimtooth’s Old-School Traps, they continually push the envelope to engage their passionate fanbase.

In June, Goodman Games launched the Caverns of Thracia campaign on BackerKit, putting their dedication to creating unforgettable backer experiences on full display. With the help of BackerKit’s community engagement tools, that dedication resulted in their highest-funded and most-backed project ever.

An amazing start for Caverns of Thracia

Caverns of Thracia is a legendary TTRPG megadungeon originally authored by renowned designer Jennell Jaquays in 1979 and expanded with new supplements by Goodman Games. This campaign offered both 5E and DCC editions of the game and was jam-packed with cool rewards for backers, like custom dice sets inspired by Grecian vases and the original Caverns of Thracia artwork.

Goodman Games always goes above and beyond to treat their fans. This time, they added a special early bird incentive — a founding backer patch — on top of everything else they were offering. With such a robust campaign full of perks and a strong pre-launch marketing push — hosting livestreams and giving campaign previews on social media, email, and their blog in the month leading up to the launch — it makes sense that fans would come out early to support them.

But their fans also went above and beyond: Caverns of Thracia surpassed expectations on day one.

Within 24 hours of launching, Goodman Games had raised more than $250K.

Not only was it 100% funded on day one, the campaign:

Raised a total of $654,928 from 5,231 backers
Surpassed their funding goal by more than $644K
#1 Most funded project by Goodman Games across 41 campaigns. Surpassed their previous most-funded project by over $200K and most-backed by 957 backers
31% who pledged were new backers. Gained 1,613 new backers who had never backed a Goodman Games project

Caverns of Thracia is now Goodman Games’ biggest crowdfunding campaign ever!

Maintaining momentum through community engagement

Goodman Games understands the importance of keeping their community excited throughout a crowdfunding campaign. Earlier this year, they led the first-ever BackerKit Group-Collab for RPGs, Adventures on the Purple Planet and Beyond, where eight game publishers launched at the same time with the goal of giving their backers as many cool products as possible. For Caverns of Thracia, they used BackerKit’s tools once again to explore new ways to delight their fans.

“We had run three BackerKit crowdfunding campaigns before this one. On each campaign, I learned a lot, and I’ve become progressively more impressed with how powerful the features are.” — Joseph Goodman, Owner of Goodman Games

Backers score big with Caverns of Thracia team Trivia Challenge

Goodman Games incorporated a team Trivia Challenge into their campaign to maintain the excitement after launching and to get their supporters to continue interacting with them. The Trivia Challenge is a feature that is unique to BackerKit.

“We’d used polls on previous projects and they promoted a great level of fan engagement. Trivia is quite similar. The BackerKit team is always open to brainstorming on new possibilities. In one conversation with Martyn and McKynzee from BackerKit, we were spitballing on a possible new feature, and trivia came up as a side topic. The more I learned about it, the more it seemed perfect for promoting fan engagement.” — Joseph Goodman, Owner of Goodman Games

Once someone backed Caverns of Thracia, they were able to select a team — “Team 5E” or “Team DCC” — with backers presumably choosing teams based on the version of the game they preferred. Question topics ranged from Greek Mythology to the history of Caverns of Thracia. Correct answers helped each backer and their team climb the Leaderboard.

The Goodman Games team posted this update to let backers know how the Trivia Challenge worked.

The Leaderboard showed which team was ahead and the percentage of correct trivia answers.

It was a close competition, but Team DCC triumphed! The members of the winning team will have their names printed in Caverns of Thracia “for all future generations of readers to appreciate.”

The Goodman Games team posted this update after the campaign ended.

One bonus benefit of running a Trivia Challenge on BackerKit is that the community can comment on questions, which happened frequently during this campaign. Comments are one more way that creators are able to interact with their communities and nurture relationships. When you check out the comment threads for this campaign, it’s obvious that backers were having a good time.

Keeping the Backer Train going with Overtime Mode

BackerKit crowdfunding creators can enable Overtime Mode to keep the excitement of a campaign going for an additional 10 minutes past the original end time. As long as pledges keep coming in — a chain of back-to-back pledges we call the Backer Train — your campaign will stay live. The campaign ends only when the Backer Train stops after 10 minutes pass without any pledges.

As the Caverns of Thracia campaign entered its final day, the Goodman Games team hosted a “Countdown” livestream and built up anticipation for the final hours by telling their fans about Overtime Mode. While there generally is a spike in pledging toward the end of a campaign, Overtime Mode adds a fun twist, almost turning pledging into a game where fans try to keep the Backer Train going for as long as possible.

Through BackerKit’s Overtime Mode, Caverns of Thracia lasted more than seven hours past its original end time, adding 300+ backers to the campaign.

“Overtime Mode has returned the ‘enjoyable chaos’ to crowdfunding. Much of crowdfunding has become formulaic now. Even the ‘last 48-hour bump’ isn’t as exciting as it used to be. But Overtime Mode…oh my god. We had no idea how long it would go…or not. In the end, Overtime Mode went for more than 7 hours after the original end date and more than 300 new backers signed on in that time. So many times the clock got down to less than one minute, and then bam! A new pledge came in and the clock reset. Overtime Mode is really fun and makes crowdfunding very exciting. Plus, we got to livestream for the whole time which was a real experience.” — Joseph Goodman, Owner of Goodman Games

Crowdfunding can be so much more than just a simple launch. Goodman Games has shown that by focusing on the backer experience and community engagement, creators can transform their campaigns into events and see incredible results. Not only was Caverns of Thracia Goodman Games’ biggest campaign to date, it was also fun for their fans from start to finish.

The BackerKit team is always thrilled to see creators reach new heights and proud to provide a platform that helps creators and backers connect in meaningful ways. When Caverns of Thracia ended, it was clear how much appreciation Goodman Games’ fans had for the work the team put into this campaign.