Community Is Everything: The Story Behind the Most Funded Tabletop Role Playing Game in Crowdfunding History

Avantris Entertainment's Neon Odyssey is a certified hit. Drawing its inspiration from classic sci-fi, retro video games, classic animation, and general pop culture nostalgia, Avantris Entertainment's the tabletop role playing game captured the attention and imagination of all 49,116 of its backers.

Written and published by the creators of another Kickstarter success story, The Crooked Moon, Neon Odyssey is a 1,400+ page trilogy that's part of the popular D&D actual play series, Legends of Avantris. It's also currently the most funded TTRPG in crowdfunding history.

We spoke with Mikey Gilder, who co-founded Avantris Entertainment with his twin brother Richie, to see what he made of that kind of success.

For starters, how does it feel to have the best funded TTRPG in crowdfunding history?

It feels absolutely surreal, and honestly still hasn't fully set in yet. We are so incredibly humbled and grateful that Neon Odyssey resonated with folks, and those 30 days of the campaign is one of the wildest and most incredible periods of my life. And now we're back heads down working hard on the books to make sure that we hit the bar of quality we set for ourselves, and we hope all the backers love what they see! 

What first drew you to Kickstarter and why did you come back for this project?

In 2023 as we were preparing to launch The Crooked Moon (our first crowdfunding campaign), we did a ton of research and looked to the years of historical Kickstarter campaigns and drew inspiration from hugely successful projects by awesome TTRPG publishers we admired, so it was really a no brainer to kickstart our dream of making and publishing games via Kickstarter. And because The Crooked Moon shattered all of our expectations and changed all of our lives, it made sense to return for our second campaign. 

We wouldn't be here if people didn't believe in us, and I wake up every day filled with gratitude that the backers made our dreams a reality. 

What did it feel like to have other people believe in your idea?

Again, it has been extremely humbling. As we spent the two years working on Neon Odyssey ahead of announcement, we felt we had something really special, but you can never be sure if people will agree. So seeing the electricity and excitement around the campaign, the setting, the game features, the trailers, etc. has been really awesome. What I probably love the most is seeing the flood of character concepts that people are coming up with and the art and other creative projects that people are already doing to dive into the setting. We wouldn't be here if people didn't believe in us, and I wake up every day filled with gratitude that the backers made our dreams a reality. 

Kickstarter has a great built-in audience of people who love and support TTRPGs, and the tools for organic discovery on the platform are awesome.

In what ways did Kickstarter help your journey?

Kickstarter has a great built-in audience of people who love and support TTRPGs, and the tools for organic discovery on the platform are awesome. We've heard plenty of anecdotal stories of people who stumbled upon Neon Odyssey from the browse page and other organic placements, which was really cool. And most of all, the support from the Kickstarter Games team was just incredible, helping us with all of our questions and getting issues solved when we ran into them. We are hugely appreciative.

How does community factor into what you do?

Community is everything! It's the community that rallied together around Neon Odyssey and made it break all of the milestones we ever could have hoped to hit. And especially for a game of cooperative storytelling with friends, community is the lifeblood of a TTRPG. It was really awesome to see the Avantris community come out to support Neon Odyssey, from our most diehard fans to even folks who occasionally see some of our animated shorts. And what was really cool was to see just how many people who never even heard of Avantris getting super excited about Neon Odyssey and really getting involved in the Neon Odyssey community. The VIPs that joined during our pre-launch campaign and the folks in the official Discord server in general were just the best to keep the hype at critical mass for three full months. I am so supremely grateful, and I'll never forget it!

What would you tell someone who's sitting on a great idea right now?

Keep the fire of your passion burning and pursue that idea to make it into a reality. Crowdfunding makes it a real possibility to kickstart small businesses across a wide spectrum of scales. I'd also do a ton of research to figure out what is the best way to bring your idea to fruition. If crowdfunding is right for you, figure out the right scope and scale of your first project. Every campaign is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to find success, so figuring out what you want to make and how you want to make it is critical. Consider what inspires people to get excited about a game and back it via crowdfunding. If you think about your potential audience and why your idea is something that should excite them, you'll have a better idea of how to present and market your idea and hopefully build a community of backers to kickstart your dreams! Finally, one of the most important tips I have is that the pre-launch campaign is just as important as the campaign itself, so planning for marketing ahead of launch is something to account for!