A Portland startup that makes dice, maps, miniatures and other accessories for role playing games is tapping its community of fans to help it grow by becoming shareholders.
1985 Games has raised roughly $66,000 of a maximum $1.2 million target on the StartEngine platform. The campaign will likely be extended until the end of May. The minimum investment is $250.
The company has already reached its minimum target making this its eighth successful crowd campaign. It previously has had seven non-equity campaigns through Kickstarter where it has raised a total of $1.3 million.
By switching to an equity campaign, co-founder and CEO Lenny Gotter hopes to deepen the relationship with the brand’s fans. As shareholders they are more likely to be even bigger ambassadors and supporters, he said.
1985 Games caters to players of tabletop role playing games, known as TTRGPs. One of the genre's most famous games,Dungeons & Dragons, is having a moment in pop culture and a renaissance in popularity. Wizards of the Coast, owners of D&D, had tabletop gaming revenue of $1 billion in 2022, up 12% from 2021.
The name 1985 Games reflects the year Gotter started playing games. In 2019, Gotter met fellow gamer Jeremiah Crofton who had an idea about making a modular book of game maps and terrain. The idea was to provide an easy way for people to have lots of maps with high-quality art at the ready instead of drawing your maps on graph paper. They also wanted it to be an affordable option for people who didn't want to buy elaborate minis and maps.
The book idea was the company’s first product, called Dungeon Craft.
“I fronted the money to get the art done for the first book. We printed 500 copies locally and took them to Emerald City Comic Con (in 2019),” said Gotter. “We sold out.”
That was when Gotter knew there was a business here.
The duo took the revenue from ECCC and launched the first Kickstarter to get a bigger run of Dungeon Craft produced. The books are still a big seller and the product line has expanded to include cards of story prompts, notebooks, miniatures and dice. The products are designed to work with any TTRPG rule system, not just D&D.
In 2021, the company had $1.5 million in revenue, up 142% from 2020. Sales started as direct-to-consumer, but since last summer the company has added more than 100 retail stores for wholesale. This year, products will also be available on Walmart.com.
Pursuing wholesale business was always part of the plan for Gotter, who has been able to pull from his years working in the spirits industry — he was founder of Eastside Distilling — and apply it to the game world.
“The vision was always to start with the books and add other products to complement,” Gotter said. “When I was in the spirits industry and you went to liquor stores and you only had one thing, the store didn’t want it. If I had several things I was much more likely to get a conversation.”
He sees it the same with game and comic books stores.
1985's growth ambitious
1985 games consists of the two founders plus a team of five full-time employees. With the added funds from the equity raise Gotter wants to build out the team to boost wholesale partnerships by adding sales and account management and also try to bring some of the production in-house.
Specifically he is hoping to set up a print shop as well as dice and miniatures production, which is currently in China. He’d also like to hire for social media content creation and attending more trade shows. He and Crofton go to all the big shows but there are many smaller regional shows.
“I know we can make a few thousand a weekend at smaller shows but we need more people to do that,” Gotter said.
The time was right to try this equity round while TTRPGs are so popular and the D&D movie is hitting theaters, Gotter said. Additionally, the games are becoming more accessible to people through easier to understand rules and the popularity of streaming shows featuring people playing these games.
“When we sold out on the first show I was stunned,” he said. “We had 500 books, that is a lot of books.”
He noted at that same ECCC show the cast of the wildly popular actual play web series "Critical Role" were on hand and brought their fans, who likely contributed to the sellout.
"'Critical Role' has changed the landscape," he said about the show bringing the game to a whole new audience. And a company like 1985 games is hoping to help folks new and old with the hobby have access to more gameplay tools.
“Dungeon Craft has no direct competitors. It’s such a useful product,” Gotter said. “I would love lots of folks to have access to it. We want to get the product out in mass.”
