What is Gamefound and Why Haven’t I Heard of It?

If you’re only into RPGs and not into board games there’s a pretty big chance you might not be familiar with Gamefound. Sure, there have been a handful of RPG related projects who have used their Pledge Manager tool after their crowdfunding campaign but until today they have never had an RPG on their platform to crowdfund. Before we dive deeper into things let’s look at Gamefound as if it were a character in your favorite RPG and look into it’s Session Zero.

A platform for and by game designers

Gamefound was started a little over four years ago by the team at Awaken Realms. At the time of writing this Awaken Realms has successfully crowdfunded 11 games on Kickstarter and one on the Gamefound platform. Their Nemesis Lockdown game enjoyed huge success with almost 42,000 backers and raising over $6 million on Kickstarter.

With such huge projects I can see why they would create their own pledge management system, which is exactly how Gamefound started. For folks who crowdfund and use one of the existing pledge management tools — a necessity for campaigns dealing with a lot of backers or multiple reward options — they can end up taking a pretty decent chunk of your funds. Don’t get me wrong, they are worth it for the ease of use, but once you hit numbers like Awaken Realms you might as well build your own platform and keep all the money in house.

Over the past four years Gamefound has gained over 400,000 users who have made late pledges, addons and been charged shipping for projects crowdfunded everywhere else by opening their pledge management tool up to other game developers. Not all of these have been board games either. There have been dice, modules, campaign settings, full systems and minis.

Back in December of 2020 Gamefound decided to multiclass and introduce crowdfunding to their platform. For their inaugural project ISS Vanguard they managed to bring 28,962 backers to the project and raise just under $5 million over the course of the campaign! This is pretty amazing for the very first crowdfunded project on Gamefound. Over the past few months it has seen continued success in the closed beta of the crowdfunding side. Every project launched was reviewed by their internal team to ensure the platform has a very strong start.

As of today Gamefound has leveled up yet again! As a lifelong roleplayer it is very exciting to announce Vast Grimm is the first tabletop RPG to crowdfund on their platform. If this project succeeds it will help open the door for other RPG developers to have another platform to reach people like you and I who love imaginative play.

By backing this project, not only can you get some of the amazing RPG items but you also show Gamefound there is a strong community of roleplayers ready to support creators. It is exciting to see Vast Grimm launching on Gamefound, as it is a platform created for and by game designers.

Vast Grimm is a Mork Borg compatible TTRPG thrown into the vast coldness of space & earth torn apart. Check out Vast Grimm and discover more about this awesome game here.

*Featured image — Vast Grimm is a rules-light Infectious Sci-Fi Horror RPG packed with everything you need to immerse yourself into a universe on the brink of collapse. Vast Grimm features 3 new Elder Dice sets with amazing holographic grimoires! [Illustration by Allen Panakal]