“Vala has become one of our most trusted marketing partners. After seeing the impact they had on our crowdfunding campaigns, we expanded our partnership to include photography, influencer coordination, social media marketing, website development, and more. Their team understands the tabletop industry, delivers consistently high-quality work, and operates as a true extension of our internal team. If you’re looking for a one-stop marketing partner in tabletop, Vala is best-in-class.“
-Jordan Gaeta, Renegade Game Studios
Renegade Game Studios launched Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable on BackerKit with more than just the goal of fully funding. They wanted to make history. And, with Vala Marketing‘s help, they did!
This campaign became one of the most funded games in BackerKit history and one of the largest tabletop game crowdfunding campaigns ever. When all was said and done, it raised over $13 million from tens of thousands of backers (lovingly deemed “crawlers”). Over $4 million was raised in the first 24 hours alone. Quick stats:
Funded in under 5 minutes Over $1 million raised in 19 minutes Raised $13,298,059 total 55,972 total Backers 3rd most funded TTRPG of all time across all crowdfunding platforms
Vala Marketing partnered with Renegade to build a full crowdfund marketing strategy that was built to do one thing: Convert a massive audience into committed backers. This article is a breakdown of that strategy, including the prelaunch marketing funnel, advertising, page design, and UX which all fed into each other to become a conversion engine.
The Opportunity: Turning a Phenomenon into a Record-Breaker
Firstly, in order to understand the campaign, you must understand what Dungeon Crawler Carl even is. This was not your typical crowdfunding campaign. It was two full tabletop games launched together: the official Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG, a full skill-based TTRPG set in the brutal, televised World Dungeon, and Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable, a solo and co-op card-crafting deck-builder. Both games are fully licensed adaptations of Matt Dinniman’s best-selling Dungeon Crawler Carl series. This series is about a man, Carl, and his cat, Princess Donut, who are forced to survive a deadly, alien-run, global dungeon-crawl game show after Earth is destroyed.
Some key stats on the books that we leveraged in the development of the crowdfunding campaign:
- As of 2026, the series has sold over 6 million copies worldwide and has been translated into roughly 20 languages. Every book is an established New York Times bestseller.
- The series is an absolute titan on Audible and Soundbooth Theater. The global Dungeon Crawler Carl fanbase has accumulated more than 140 million total listening hours on Audible alone.
- The dedicated subreddit, r/DungeonCrawlerCarl, is the core hub for the fandom, with over 330k visits weekly.
With all that being said, this was not our first Dungeon Crawler Carl campaign, so we knew that there was a solid audience of crawlers to work with already. Our work on Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crocodile confirmed that we’d have at least 30k crawlers as a base, but we wanted to blow that away. In fact, Grant told Jordan that Vala could improve it by 40% before the first ad even ran…and we did just that.
Some key stats on Renegade Game Studios that put the crowdfund into focus:
Renegade Game Studios is a premier tabletop board and role-playing game publisher, and is famous for producing high-quality games. They are best known for original hits like Lanterns and Clank!, as well as massive licensed properties like Transformers, Power Rangers, and the World of Darkness roleplaying universe.
Renegade Game Studios’ previous crowdfunding record was My Father’s Work, landing at $920,101.
How it all comes together as an opportunity:
This wasn’t a fix-what’s-broken project, or a launch-with-zero-fan-base crowdfund. It was an opportunity to take something that was already beloved and scale it to its full potential. Renegade Game Studios came into this crowdfund with an existing track record in crowdfunding. They already knew how to make games that fans wanted, how to fulfill crowdfunds, and how to communicate with their fans. What they wanted from Vala was a full-funnel performance system that could tap into the existing ecosystem and smash past their previous records.
Pre-Launch: Building a (Qualified) 65,000-Follower List
The key feature of this campaign was 100% the pre-launch follower list. The campaign gained over 65k followers with over 40% of them converting into paid $5 reservations by the day of launch. This massive follower list made Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable:
- The Most Reserved TTRPG Campaign Ever Before Launch: It achieved the largest reservation list of any tabletop game on BackerKit.
- #1 Followed TTRPG Campaign Ever: It reached the absolute highest number of followers for a tabletop roleplaying game on BackerKit.
This wasn’t an accident. We did more than just collect emails into a big bucket and hope. It was targeted, planned, and nurtured.
39,600 of the followers came from from paid advertising. We deliberately avoided double paying for leads by waiting to launch ads until after the announcement push and all organic channels and press had been hit. We made a custom exclusion audiences for Leads, so ads were only shown to new crawlers.
Thanks to BackerKit’s reservation system, once we had enough purchases, we could flip the goal from “Lead” to “Purchase,” and optimize our ads to reservations, and thus backers, instead of just signups.
In short, this was not just a bunch of emails, this was a validated and qualified list built to convert. And it did – over 40% of our leads and over 70% of our reservations pledged to the campaign.
Testing: Creative, Targeting, and Meta
Because of the volume of followers, we were able to test out several things, including a variety of Meta Business Suites creative enhancements as well as Advantage+ ads.
Unfortunetly, all of our tests with Meta’s features underperformed, and we found that linear and manual control still reigns supreme. (Which is unfortunate since our team spends about a quarter of their ad creation time just turning off all of Meta’s “enhancements.”)
We used a variety of Lookalike and Interest targeting and A/B tested them against each other to hone in on our perfect audience. Then we tested over 100 creative ad variations to find our winning ad set.
With our winning ad set in hand, it was scale time. We pushed harder into the best performing creative and audience combinations and adjusted our budgets accordingly using the reservation funnel as our guiding light.
The Funnel: From Teaser to Launch Party to Backer
Speaking of the reservation funnel as our guiding light, it’s important to dig a bit more into our paid media strategy, and how it was not just about running ads to the main page and forgetting about them. We used a structured funnel that had specific call-to-actions at each stage. The funnel was structured this way:
- Teaser ads focused on introducing Dungeon Crawler Carl as a TTRPG experience, and leaned on the strength of the IP and book audience.
- Ads then directed interested clickers to a landing page where crawlers could “Follow” the project by inputting their emails.
- By entering their emails, they were added to an email marketing flow where they’d get both marketing heavy email follow ups and plain text, more personal style emails asking engaging questions to reel them in a bit more. The goal of these email flows was to get them to reserve their pledge ahead of time.
- The reservation section of the funnel encouraged crawlers to drop a $5 commitment which separated casual interest from real intent. Crawlers got a special coin added on to their pledge if they reserved at this step before the launch.
- In preparation for the launch, we redirected their attention towards the launch party page where they could engage with the project, receive updates, and more.
Unlike so many other marketing tactics, the funnel didn’t end after fans were added to the email list. Updates, polls, and other communication driven activations by the Renegade team played a key role in keeping the audience warm, and built hype and community so they could feel like they were truly involved.
We used audience insights to determine we needed to post educational content as well, for example, the topics: “What is a TTRPG” and “What is BackerKit” were pieces that would ensure our crawlers knew exactly what was happening and exactly what the campaign was about.
This all played such an important part in not just how quickly the campaign funded, but how it sustained momentum. The campaign funded in under five minutes, hit one million in 19 minutes, and cleared 4.57 million in the first 24 hours.
Page Design, UX, and Launching with Clarity
At the end of the day, our funnel is only as strong as the page it points to, and because this page featured a dual launch, it was a bit more complicated than the norm.
Showcasing a Dual Launch
To our knowledge, a dual launch like this had never been done, so we had to come up with a unique way to differentiate between both campaigns in a way that was easy for the viewer to understand.
Color Coding
Color coding each story based off of their brand guidelines was what made sense to us. Our thought process was to keep the imagery between both campaigns relatable but at the same time different enough to show that they are separate campaigns.
Buttons and Clear CTA’s
Having buttons with clear calls-to-action, like “Switch to RPG” encouraged potential backers to view both campaigns easily. It also simultaneously expressed that, yes, this is a dual launch, without overcomplicating the project.
Even though we were launching two distinct products, everything worked together to support a crowdfund page that kept attention on the value of the offerings, made backing feel simple, and reduced confusion.
What This Campaign Says About TTRPG Crowdfunding
Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG + Unstoppable really showcases what can happen when you have an IP with a large, locked in audience, a platform like BackerKit built for crowdfunding at this scale, and a full-funnel marketing team that treats each stage of the project as one connected effort.
The key takeaway here is that even with a ginormous, built-in audience you still need a structured funnel that works with every other aspect of the campaign towards one goal: to convert.
If you are planning a Crowdfunding launch and need a full-service partner to guide every phase of your campaign, we’d love to connect.
