A new Dungeons and Dragons crowdfunder hit Backerkit on March 31, and it’s safe to say I’m not a fan. Traveller 5e, a D&D conversion of the 1977 sci-fi TTRPG, faces many naysayers for being a 5e port in the first place. That’s not my gripe, though. It’s just how much stuff is crammed onto the campaign page – stuff that hardly has anything to do with the rules themselves.
First, a little context. The original Traveller was first published by Game Designer’s Workshop just a few years after Dungeons and Dragons first hit the scene. It has seen many iterations, but there are two current rulesets: Mongoose Publishing’s Traveller 2e and Far Future Enterprises’ Traveller5 (not to be confused with Traveller 5e).
It’s a system with a rich history, and World’s Largest RPGs are far from the first to translate it for another tabletop RPG. We had GURPS Traveller as far back as 1998, after all. The why makes sense, given the overwhelming popularity of D&D 5e. It’s just the how I take issue with.
First, the funding goal. World’s Largest RPGs set a low, low funding goal of $1,977. World’s Largest RPGs says this was done to celebrate the original TTRPG’s release year, but it bears eerie similarity to a marketing strategy that’s become popular in crowdfunding. Namely, setting a seriously low funding goal so you can plaster “funded in one minute” all over your promotional images.
Incidentally, Traveller 5e was funded in two minutes. And, yes, the publisher is shouting about it.
At time of writing, the Backerkit has raised $365,923. That money came from 1,020 people, meaning the average pledge is around $359. That’s only $10 more than the campaign’s flagship pledge, the ‘featured’ one that is expected to cater to most people’s needs. Traveller 5e only needed five people to back this pledge tier to meet its funding goal.
Said pledge gets you a physical copy of the four rulebooks World’s Largest RPGs is raising money for. You’ll also pick up PDFs of each title, a metal slipcase to store your physical copies in, a metal dice set, and an additional deck plan book.
The pricing, while it reflects a subjective take on the contents’ value, seems a little strange to me. We know from the campaign’s add-ons that World’s Largest RPGs has priced individual physical rulebooks at $79. Your average official D&D book costs $50, so that’s $29 more than a 5e player usually expects to pay for a 250-ish page rulebook.
The Backerkit doesn’t confirm details like page count, so we can’t make more direct value comparisons, but at first glance, the prices seem inflated. If the pricing is fair, though, this makes the low funding goal seem even more odd – no book that costs the consumer $79 takes less than $2,000 to mass produce.
So, at $79, four books would cost us $316. That means the publisher has valued its metal slipcase, dice, and additional book at just $33. Perhaps that’s a generous discount on premium add-ons, or perhaps things are not as premium as they first appear.
To throw a few more numbers at you, Traveller 5e includes a digital-only pledge including PDF versions of the four books, virtual tabletop features, and mini STLs. It’ll cost you $169, though, and the PDFs alone would cost $116.
If you want the most basic possible pledge, you’ll need to pay $99 for the core rules and a dice set. Unlike most crowdfunders, there’s no option to pledge a single dollar, which is usually done to show goodwill to the campaign or to better customize your pledge through the available add-ons. $99 is the base level of entry here.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the ‘all-in’ tier, which costs $999. This includes all previously mentioned rewards, plus a metal GM screen, a dice bag and tray, a giant die, four extra dice sets, a patch pack, a metal dice box, six sets of character miniatures (and accompanying STLs), a commemorative coin, and a ‘mystery bag’.
It’s…a lot. Crowdfunding campaigns stuffed to the brim with accessories, add-ons, and stretch goals have certainly become the norm in recent years, and many of them do well. Traveller 5e itself is performing just fine, so it’s clearly catering to the needs (or the FOMO) of its intended audience.
But, personally, I’d call this overkill. Overconsumption. Overwhelming. Lots of words with ‘over’ at the start. No tabletop RPG needs limited edition coins, dice, and patches. And they certainly don’t need videogame-style loot boxes.
That’s basically what those ‘mystery bags’ are. They’re randomized dice sets, dice bags, and metal tokens. To further incentivize spending, they also contain “two rare dice sets only obtainable through the mystery bag!”. Each Mystery Bag costs $19.99, but you can buy five for $99 or 25 for $399.
These add nothing to the game you’ll be playing. They seem only to exist to encourage fear-driven spending from players who are terrified they’ll miss out on something limited edition.
There’s many more infuriating parts of this campaign I could touch on. I could mention that, depending where you live, shipping all this unnecessary stuff could cost up to $299.
I could talk about the fact there’s no free quickstart version of the rules, meaning I can’t tell you for sure what the new subclasses or promised Psion class will look like. Plus, it means consumers won’t get the chance to try this system before they buy it for sky-high prices.
I could mention the Backerkit page promises over 230 original illustrations, but it only credits two artists with the work. I could point out there’s no statement on whether the project uses AI, an act of transparency that savvy shoppers increasingly seek from crowdfunding campaigns.
To me, the vibes seem off. Given my gut feelings, Traveller 5e seems like a tremendously tall investment that I’ll be avoiding.
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