Typically for our ‘Crowdfund This’ column, we feature neat-looking campaigns that have just started, or that could use a little bit of a final push to get it over its finish line.
This project from RealmSmith Inc. is something completely different, as it actually hit its original goal in less than 48 hours, and is already more than 200% funded.
The company makes incredible sounding, super-immersive Dungeons and Dragons adventure boxes, and they’re looking to take their passions to the next level with this Kickstarter campaign.
They’ve already been shipping boxes for over a year — each adventure consisting over a 6 part story, delivered through 6 monthly boxes. It sounds like they’ve already made a pretty massive impact, as folks like DwarvenForge founder Stefan Pokorny and Luke Gygax, the son of the freaking creator of Dungeons and Dragons, among with other creators and influencers in the industry, have shared support for this bad-ass idea.
The goal of the campaign is to “to raise awareness, build community, and take our existing subscription boxes to the next level.” The campaign video (watch it near the bottom of the page, details a few of the ways that the team at RealmSmith plans to do this, and it begins with the packaging for the box itself. Rather than, well, a box that you’ll just throw away, the freaking box turns into a DM Screen, Dice Tower, and Initiative Tracker… yes, all of them!
Along with the sick-ass packaging, the team also plans to enhance the boxes with more immersive items, better printed materials (and paper stock), improved artwork, better marketing to help build awareness even further, and faster shipping!
Each box is meant to be extremely immersive, from what you see, hear, and smell when you’re running your campaign — the goal here is to take out the monotonous side of being a GM, so that they can instead “take a lot of the monotonous prep-work out of each session a Game Master prepares while equipping them to maximize creativity and spend time crafting a world for their players.
Honestly the boxes sound sick. Each one includes:
Full-color Adventure Module: 5th edition compatible module written and designed by our own staff which provides cues on when to play moods from the Soundset and when to light the candle, etc. Each module can be used as a one-shot or to continue the ongoing campaign.
Premium Plastic Unpainted Miniatures: Curated to provide everything needed for a major encounter within the module.
Papercraft Terrain: Printed on premium card stock for you to simply cut out and build. We also offer the digital PDFs to download to print your own as well as instructions on how to assemble it all.
Hand-Drawn Map: Drawn by our very own Jason Azevedo. The map provides information on the major encounter and a guideline of how the paper craft should be set up.
Custom Syrinscape Soundset: A Soundset for the Syrinscape fantasy player designed by our own team that includes original sounds recorded by RealmSmith.
Themed Scented Candle: Soy-based hand-poured scented candles that set the mood for a major encounter within the module.
Mystery Player Item: A themed prop that is intended to be given to the players to enhance the story.
The campaign’s first stretch goal, an online adventure builder, has already been reached at a cool $40,000, and it’s just $2000 away from its second stretch goal, which would add a ‘Trade Route Expansion’ to your box.
Rewards start as low as $7CAD (did I mention that these guys are from Toronto?) for a digital download of an adventure module and a subscription discount, to about $3300 which nets you a custom sculpted and painted DM screen, along with every RealSmith box, and a subscription voucher. Naturally, there are a ton of other options in-between, including wooden mugs, candles, subscription boxes, art by Spider-Man, X-Men, and Black Panther artist Ken Lashley, and even more.
Really, this is just a sick looking project that really makes me want to give D&D a go again (damned work and schedules eating up all of my time).
Take a look at the Kickstarter video below, and let us know if you’ll be backing the project! You can learn more, as well as back, right here.