Things To Learn From The Deluxe Exalted Third Edition Kickstarter

Since its creation, Kickstarter has radically changed business. No longer are banks and wealthy individuals the sole means of making enough money to attempt a business venture - through "crowdfunding", regular people can pitch in small amounts to give creators access to the funds they need while keeping creative autonomy within their control.

Sadly, in the past few years backers of various projects have found just how bad crowdfunding can be. For me, the project that taught me just how risky Kickstarters can be was Onyx Path's "Deluxe Exalted Third Edition" Kickstarter campaign. While it seems that they are finally delivering on a campaign that is (of this writing) over two whole years late, there were many mistakes made along the way that future project creators could learn from.

Here are two of the three downfalls that you should watch before before you create a Kickstarter for your project (or warning signs to look for before you back a project):

1. Release Some Actual Rules

Exalted Second Edition was a system that even the most hardcore fan considered a buggy mess. In fact, here is a quote I found from a hardcore fan that describes his feeling on the system:

"Exalted Second Edition is a buggy mess and I never want to run a game using it ever again."
- Me, after running the system for three years.

Naturally, when Onyx Path announced that they were working on a new version of the game that was bringing back the original creator and was going to address all of the issues the community had brought up over the years, I was excited. Apparently, so was everyone else, because the campaign raised over $680,000. Yet, for all of that money raised no demonstration was released. A rules set that was "mostly complete", and a game that was going to be released at the end of 2013 should be complete enough that some playable proof of concept should be able to be shown to potential backers (or at the very least to any backers who pitch in the smallest pledge tier possible). No such demo kit was released, and while the rulebook is complete and in the hands of backers it still has not even been written yet. 

The reason? They, like several creators, were afraid someone would steal their rules before they would have the opportunity to publish the game.

Well, it turns out that the real reason was that the rules had not even been written yet. Shortly after the completion of the campaign, they stated that they were not satisfied with the quality of the rules that they did have written. They went back to the drawing board, and two years later had something ready for release. This lack of preparation was a large part of what upsets me about the delay - had they been more honest at the campaign's onset about the state of the rules, or at least released what they had at the time, I and many other backers would not have gotten so fed up. Plus, during the time that this game was been in development, Onyx Path ran multiple other "Deluxe" Kickstarters for other game lines they own, with these campaigns all delivering well before a single Exalted backer received even a pre-release "Please Check For Spelling" PDF.

Lesson to be Learned: Bring Something to the Table, or Don't Come at All.

2.  Do NOT Keep Backers in the Dark

Onyx Path advertised that this was going to be the first version of Exalted to be public playtested. They opened it up to anyone who backed the campaign, and this ended up being one of the factors that led to the game being good (Spoiler Alert: I do like what they ended up writing, and you can read about it here). The only problem? They decided that, since they were afraid of someone stealing their system ideas, they would purposefully censor all publicly released playtest reports. Reading them was like looking at documents released by the Freedom of Information Act, but seeing all of the important bits blacked out.

But all of those things blacked out? They ended up being terms like Initiative Crash, Withering, Decisive, and words that are not copywritable. But, non-playtest backers were growing more and more concerned as the original deadline continued to slip further into the past. As a way to prove that Exalted was shaping up to be worth the wait, one of the playtesters released a version of the playtest packet to the public. In response, Onyx Path ended the playtest prematurely, stating that they would never be holding a public playtest again. Sadly, while the leak restored many unsatisfied backers opinions on the game, the negative response from Onyx Path basically canceled it out.

Lesson to be Learned: Keeping Backers in the dark will Backfire and will Alienate People Against You.

The third is so big of a mess, it needs a post all of its own. So in the meantime, why not read all of the reasons that this game is actually worth your time? Just remember: if you are going to run a Kickstarter, you have to communicate effectively with your backers. While a badly run Kickstarter should not be seen as representative of the quality of the product, it will be representative of your level of professionalism.