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News has been quickly spreading about a Kickstarter project set up by the cast & crew of Critical Role being funded almost immediately. The Kickstarter's goal was to raise $750,000 over the course of 45 days, starting on March 4, in order to make a 22 minute animated episode based of their first campaign.

The kickstarter's target goal was met within 45 minutes, and by the end of the first day had racked up $3.8 million. As of the time of typing out this post, the kickstarter currently sits around $4.5 million with 34,000 backers on it's second day out of forty-five.

It goes without saying that this project has been a massive success, and has far exceeded the expectation of the folks organizing the kickstarter. This has already landed within the top 100 highest funded kickstarter projects ever held, and still has 43 days of run time left to go. This is quite the big deal as this one of the biggest crowdfunding undertakings for a D&D related project, or even simply animation project (save for a few crowdfunded movies) to date.

As it currently stands the folks at Critical Role are adjusting the stretch goals, as well as recovering from the shell-shock of their projects' overwhelming success, in order to account for further possible funding. The project now, based of their original stretch goals, is up to 88 minutes of animated footage which is currently unannounced as to whether it will be several episodes or one long piece.

In case you are interested in seeing the progress of this kickstarter here is a link to the Kickstarters page here.

I love critical role, but I also feel like they should Aim-Small, and expect overages. There is an initial instinct when a project gets this much funding, to just make the project bigger, and bigger, and bigger, to fit the new funds.

But, that's not only not sustainable, but a recipe for disaster. Mighty Number 9, No Man Sky, Star Citizen. Creative Bloat can absolutely kill a project and devour all of that extra funds, especially if a complication or hitch comes up.

I hope they keep the scope of their project reasonably small, and not worry about spending all the money. Anything not spent on the project can get donated to charity. 826 LA for example. I'm like 95% sure nobody whose donating to the Kickstarter would be bothered hearing that their donation went to a charitable cause, because the project didn't need it.