by Andrew Gronosky, Founder

We’ve decided to continue using Kickstarter for the time being. We’re aware of the concerns around Kickstarter’s migration to blockchain technology. We’ll continue to monitor the situation.

If you are boycotting Kickstarter, we sympathize. Please consider backing our crowdfunding campaigns as a late backer. Kickstarter won’t get a nickel of your money, but the creators will.

Many gamers have raised strong objections to Kickstarter’s announcement of Dec. 8, 2021 that they’ll be adopting blockchain technology. Shewstone Publishing disapproves of this move as much as anyone else does. We see nothing but downside for us, our backers, and the tabletop gaming community overall.

We’ve quit Kickstarter on principle before and we’ll do so again if necessary. For now, we’ll believe Kickstarter’s claim that they’ll use carbon offsets. We still object to the blockchain move, but our objection isn’t quite enough to make us walk away.

Bluntly, Kickstarter remains the most cost effective marketing tool for tabletop roleplaying games that we know of. The “follow” feature makes Kickstarter into a social network. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, whose algorithms limit the number of followers who see a post, Kickstarter has a financial incentive to amplify the creator’s message. That’s why it’s so hard for a small, young company like us to turn away from them.

We had a good experience crowdfunding with Game on Tabletop in 2020. If you already have a solid audience, that would be an excellent alternative.