Matt Colville's 'Dungeons and Dragons' Kickstarter Raises One Million Dollars in a Week

An unofficial Dungeons and Dragons Kickstarter just surpassed one million dollars in less than a week.

We previously reported on Matt Colville launching a crowdfunding campaign for his Strongholds & Followers publication, a supplement to Dungeons & Dragons that would add rules on how party members can build castles and hire artisans, soldiers, and low-level adventurers to occupy and staff it. Now, just seven days into the campaign, Colville's Kickstarter has raised over $1 million in funding, which far exceeds its modest $50,000 goal.

Colville is best known for running a popular YouTube series on how to be a dungeon master and he's considered to be one of the game's top "celebrity" DMs, on par with Critical Role's Matthew Mercer. Colville also writes the Critical Role comics series and was the lead writer for the sci-fi shooter video game Evolve.

In response to the impressive funding figures, Colville noted that his campaign was close to breaking Kickstarter's all-time funding record of RPGs. He announced that if his campaign surpassed $1,316,813, he would add rules on a Pirate Ship stronghold, giving players a mobile base of sorts.

Colville's new book adds four different types of strongholds, each of which can help players advance their personal pursuits during downtime in the game. For instance, a Tower helps wizards learn spells more quickly, while Temples give towns and armies special in-game buffs. The game also gives improvements to certain class abilities, but only when a player has recently visited their stronghold.

Stongholds can also attract new followers, like soldiers, ambassadors, artisans, and even low-level adventurers. Strongholds & Followers adds gameplay rules so that players can benefit from the people living on their land. There's even rules for uber-powered "Special Allies" like Dragons, Giants, or Demons.

Players can purchase a PDF version of Strongholds & Followers by pledging $20 to the campaign. They can also receive a hard copy by pledging $35. Other perks include dragon miniatures, signed copies of the book, t-shirts, and stickers.

The Kickstarter will be open through March 11th, although some of the pledge levels do have a limited number of awards. Product is expected to begin shipping in September 2018.