Even Deeper Cuts
You learn to take the good from failures, but that doesn't mean they don't still hurt.

Here we are for our second meeting with our friend Max Castellani and his privileged perspective on the world of tabletop role-playing game crowdfunding. After the initial failures with his first project, things surely went smoothly right away, didn’t they? Well, no. Not at all.
No one tells you this after a successful Kickstarter: success doesn’t bring stability. It brings responsibility. And if you’re not ready to scale with that responsibility, it’ll outpace you fast.
That’s what First Kings taught me.
After Shattered Tower wrapped up—modestly, but with energy—several indie creators reached out to pitch collaborations and projects. One stood out: First Kings, a folklore-soaked RPG set in mythic pre-Roman Italy. It had a raw, grim atmosphere, a quite original engine, and the kind of untapped setting that grabs your attention.
But it wasn’t ready.
The game’s mechanics were interesting but fragile. The text was disorganized—barely readable, by the author’s own admission. It lacked structure, cohesion, and testing. It wasn’t even near production-ready. However, the idea had a soul, and we were young, hungry, and maybe a little too hopeful.
Looking back, we should’ve paused and treated that enthusiasm as a warning sign—not a green light. A soul isn’t enough. Before jumping in, we should have mapped out exactly what “ready” meant to everyone involved and made sure we all agreed.
Instead, we came on board at full speed. First as campaign partners, but quickly as co-authors and developers. We helped adjust entire chunks of the game system and revamped parts of the setting – adding what was missing. While doing so, we formalized our involvement. And because it made sense logistically, we hosted the campaign under our own Kickstarter account.
First Kings RPG funded. Not huge—but enough to move forward.
And that’s when things got harder.
When the Train Slows Down
Since the original creator wanted to have complete control over the game’s structural content, we stepped back from day-to-day development on First Kings, while he started working to deliver a cleaned-up draft for our review. Around the same time, we were offered the opportunity to partner on a third-party project as lead game designers, developers, and writers. This project proved to be much larger and more time-sensitive, ultimately becoming our award-winning, breakthrough title!
While working on that project, we lost touch with First Kings development; a big mistake that took us by surprise a few months later, though in hindsight, it shouldn’t have. The game’s files were not only delayed but also arrived in a fragmented and inconsistent state. The new mechanics needed rework, and the worldbuilding felt disconnected. Instead of reviewing a near-final draft, we found ourselves holding another messy prototype.
At this point, timelines were already off. Tension rose. Communication wobbled.
And then came the wildcard: a publisher offered to absorb First Kings into their new RPG line. We thought this would be a reset button—a fresh shot. We agreed to a hybrid licensing deal. Our names remained, but authority over editing, planning, and production shifted to the publisher.
Unfortunately, it didn’t help.
If anything, it slowed things down even more. While we took on another huge project for the same publisher—one aimed at achieving even greater success than the first—development on First Kings became diffuse. Roles blurred. The pandemic was still hitting hard. Priorities changed. And First Kings slowly slipped into a limbo. But our names were still there. And when backers got restless, we were the ones they contacted. And they were right to. Because even if your role was temporary, if your name is on the box, people will expect you to own what’s inside.
Long story short, things with the publisher went south, and the deal ultimately fell through. The rights reverted to us—but what we received was barely ready to use: missing files, altered ones, and no production budget to speak of. The project we’d left was gone, and what remained was broken.
We could’ve walked. Honestly, maybe we should have. But we didn’t.
We salvaged what we could—paying out of pocket and reconstructing enough to finalize the Italian digital version of the game, with the original author approving its release before going to print. Then—almost immediately after its publication—he disavowed it in public.
That one hurt. Not because it was dramatic. But because it wasn’t. No way to predict it. No call. Just a quiet betrayal after months of work, legal headaches, and strained good faith.
And for a moment, I thought that was it. I was ready to walk away from everything—projects, partnerships, maybe even the whole damn industry.
Life Moves Faster Than Projects
Meanwhile, life moved faster than any project could keep up with. Kids. Bills. And then, a lead designer position offer from a major company. I took it. Not only because I needed to, but also because I wanted to. Because it was the right call.
And First Kings shifted again. Into background folders. Not forgotten, but harder to carry. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of it—it’s this: unfinished doesn’t mean dead. It just means it’s still fighting.
The Myth of the Redemption Arc
And here’s the strange part: while First Kings slowed down, into a desperate “fall of shame”, the rest of my career sped up.
Bigger projects. Larger teams. More structure, more stakes, decent money (enough to call it a full-time job!). From the outside, it probably looked like I failed upward—And honestly, part of that is true.
However, my failures stuck with me, and they always will. Shattered Tower and First Kings still shape how I work. They’re the main reason why I flinch at overpromises, why I overcommunicate with collaborators, why I tend to double-check production timelines even when someone else owns the spreadsheet, and why I embrace the paradox of applying some constructive pessimism philosophy while staying positive when preparing a campaign for a project. “Yes. It will be fine. I know. However, since everything will probably go wrong instead, let’s see A again, and B, and what about C…?”
They left scars. But scars aren’t just signs of failure. They can serve as reminders of what happens when you assume trust, stretched budgets, signed contracts, and great ideas will be enough.
Because Kickstarter isn’t a store, and it doesn’t run on hype or hope.
A crowdfunding project runs on accountability. And when that breaks—whether through miscommunication, burnout, delays, or a difference in vision—there’s no reset button. There’s only what you do next.
And that’s precisely why I’m writing this.
Not for sympathy. Not to reclaim some redemption arc. But because most of the real work—the hard lessons—happen off the record. Before the panels. Before the awards. Before the NDAs.
There were nights I panicked. Weeks where I avoided emails or public comments. Months where I thought I’d never run another project again.
And let me tell you, I’m not the only one.
What I Wish I’d Known
First Kings didn’t fall apart because of bad intentions. But good intentions don’t deliver games.
The truth is, even with formal agreements, clear budgets, and roles defined on paper, a project still fails if the people involved don’t share the same values—or the same understanding of what it takes to finish.
We were transparent about the work ahead of us. Perhaps that clarity led us to assume we had the trust to make significant structural changes. Maybe it made the original author feel boxed out. Either way, we all underestimated the true cost of creative alignment.
And when things fell apart, a deus ex machina publisher rarely can fix it. In our case, it simply slowed everything down, diluting momentum, confusing the process, and eventually ruining the relationship we had built over the years. And since they were the big company with the big game titles (even though we are the ones who designed and wrote them), and we were just those wannabe magicians under the stairs, they walked away, reputation intact, while we took the hits. Why? Because, from the outside, for the general public, none of what I wrote about up until this point in the article matters.
So, keep it well in mind: momentum isn’t a plan, clarity isn’t commitment, and trust isn’t delivery.
If you’re riding a wave—of excitement, potential, partnership, whatever(!)—make sure everyone on the team is still and always paddling in the same direction.
Because once the current shifts, it’s the people with their names on the box who take the hit.
And if you don’t have the structure to share that weight—if you’re not aligned when it counts—then even a project with a soul can quietly die.
We’ll be back in a week with a nice little guide for indie authors to, well, try to make some bucks with their passion. At the end of the month, we’ll send you a new role-playing toy.
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I appreciate the openness and rawness of this retrospective from Max. It takes a lot of courage to own a project as it falls apart. Wishing him the best on future projects.