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TTRPG Kickstarter Subcategories, Ranked by Success Rate
Published August 23, 2026
TTRPG campaigns succeed on Kickstarter at a strikingly high rate overall — 90.3% across the 2,229 classified TTRPG campaigns in Backer Sonar's dataset with a median goal of just $500. That's far above the roughly 60% success rate across the full Kickstarter dataset at large. But "TTRPG" isn't one market — it's a set of fairly different subcategories, and they don't all perform the same way.
The breakdown
Subcategories with at least 20 classified campaigns:
| Subcategory | Campaigns | Success rate | Median goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maps | 33 | 100.0% | $115 |
| Terrain | 231 | 97.8% | $126 |
| Miniatures | 404 | 97.3% | $170 |
| Visual | 549 | 97.3% | $150 |
| Cards | 39 | 97.4% | $1,000 |
| VTT | 64 | 96.9% | $262 |
| Bestiaries | 32 | 96.9% | $833 |
| Tokens | 21 | 95.2% | $118 |
| Rules/Supplements | 102 | 95.1% | $328 |
| Encounters | 40 | 95.0% | $312 |
| Storage | 20 | 95.0% | $1,250 |
| Content | 691 | 91.6% | $500 |
| Tabletop Accessories | 225 | 91.6% | $547 |
| Technology | 142 | 91.5% | $315 |
| Adventures | 544 | 91.4% | $500 |
| Dice | 113 | 86.7% | $679 |
| Campaign Settings | 29 | 75.9% | $1,243 |
| DM Tools | 67 | 70.1% | $1,200 |
The pattern within the pattern
Even inside a category that already succeeds far more often than Kickstarter overall, the same relationship from our goal-size analysis shows up again: the two lowest-performing subcategories, DM Tools (70.1%) and Campaign Settings (75.9%), also carry the highest median goals ($1,200 and $1,243) — more than double the median across most other subcategories. The highest performers (Maps, Terrain, Miniatures, Visual) cluster at median goals under $200.
This doesn't mean DM Tools or Campaign Settings projects are inherently weaker ideas — these are often more ambitious, higher-production-cost projects (software tooling, full setting books) that legitimately require a bigger ask. But if you're planning a campaign in one of these subcategories, it's worth knowing you're operating in a segment with a meaningfully lower historical success rate than TTRPG as a whole, and sizing expectations accordingly.
What this is useful for
If you're deciding which corner of the TTRPG space to launch in, or how to position a campaign that spans more than one of these subcategories, this ranking is a starting point for calibrating expectations — not a verdict on any individual project. Given how small the median goals are in most of these subcategories, how many backers you'd actually need is worth checking against your own goal, and our general should-I-launch breakdown covers the same goal-and-duration factors outside the TTRPG-specific lens. You can explore the underlying campaigns behind any of these numbers directly in Backer Sonar's Reporting view.