US/CA Shipping Delay + Support Add-on!
2 months ago
– Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 08:04:05 AM
Hey there, galaxy explorers!
Today I have a rather unpleasant update for you, specifically for those of you still waiting to receive your book in the US and CA regions.
I have promised to be transparent and honest about anything that happens with the project and I have been able to do that from the very beginning, no matter how difficult the news were. I aim to continue doing exactly that.
So let's get to it.
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⏰Huge Delay for shipping in US+CA⏰
Due to the volatility of freight & shipping costs, we are unfortunately unable to currently finish fulfillment for the areas of US and CA.
Let's deal with all of the questions that arise from this situation.
What this means is that backers who are waiting to receive their book in the US and CA regions will have to wait longer to get their pledge. This could be an extra few months to an extra year. It largely depends on how soon we will be able to raise the funds needed for the process.
- What happened, why can you not finish fulfillment❓
What happened is that the freight costs that we were charged were a lot more than the costs we were expecting. That leaves us with a rather big gap in our funding for this project and unless we can pay the fulfillment costs required in full, then we cannot get orders out to you.
- Does that mean I will not get my pledge❓
YOU WILL 100% GET YOUR PLEDGE. The only difference is that it will take longer for your physical pledge rewards to arrive at your doorstep.
- Why did this happen? Did you not account for it❓
We did account for it. We accounted for a lot of other things too and even had money saved specifically for this project and any other extra costs that might come up for it. We took our first crowdfunding endeavor very seriously and yet, despite all our preemptive efforts, we still find ourselves short with quite a bit more remaining to be paid in order to complete fulfillment for those last two regions.
Our fulfillment partner, GamesQuest, has helped us handle the situation in the best way possible. They have already informed us how to handle the costs in the best way possible and what options we generally have. Thankfully, it is not as dire as we initially thought it would be.
The only thing that this situation causes is more delay. We'd rather take on some more delay and slowly raise the funds to fulfill the project than risk losing your trust in us for delivering something great.
It goes without question that we are extremely frustrated with how the whole thing turned out. However, the best thing we can do now is just keep working hard so that we can close Starlight Arcana as a project and continue working on all the other awesome things we are making.
- What about the funding from other projects? What happened to them❓
The funding for other projects is still there, untouched. We are not the kind of company that runs one project in order to fund the next one. Soulfrost Reliquary will take a while to be mass produced and delivered as well, but that is only because it was small amounts and we opted for printing it locally.
We do want to emphasize that we do not run projects just to fund previous ones. As I mentioned above, we are very carefully as to how we plan our projects and even with whatever wild and unexpected situations arise (such as the one we found ourselves in with Starlight Arcana) we will continue to be transparent and conduct our business in the best way we possibly can.
- Can I pay extra to receive my pledge faster❓
While many other companies and crowdfunding campaigns resort to this kind of solution, we do not want to fulfill the US and CA region pledges only partly since this would create a very sour situation for those that would not have received their pledge yet.
There is a way you can help however.
We do not feel comfortable with just asking for extra money to fill in the gaps, so we instead opted for a more "pledge - reward" kind of situation with a special exclusive reward!
Up until we are able to finish fulfillment, anyone who helps support the project (specifically for finishing fulfillment) will receive an exclusive Adventure PDF; Astral Maiden!
Quick Adventure Information:
Length: x3 Adventures (3-part narrative) - x4 sessions long
(APL) Difficulty: 5
Setting: Starlight Chronicles
This adventure will take your party through the stars as they try to transport and protect a creature that is quite literally made of starlight. Many perils and other amazing things await you on this journey since many others have learned of the creature's existence and seek to steal her from you.
ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS ADVENTURE WILL GO TOWARDS FINALIZING FULFILLMENT FOR THE PROJECT.
*Remember that if your Starlight Arcana survey is already locked, you simply need to create a new one in order to get Astral Maiden.
*This adventure will be available for this price only during the Support Period for the project.
*The adventure will be distributed via the BackerKit Digital Rewards system in late November.
*Depending on the amount raised from this exclusive adventure, we will be able to shorten the delay for finishing fulfillment in the US and CA regions.
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⌛Updating the PDF: A Timeless Reward⌛
It is quite unfortunate that I have to talk about delays now since I wanted to focus on something a lot more positive with the newest update. I wanted to focus on updating the PDF.
As you all know, we have made quite a few changes to the PDF and we have been at the current version of it for a few months now. That being said though, I wanted to let you know that we will never stop updating the PDF.
That means that if you are a backer of this campaign, you will always get the latest version of the PDF, whenever that is available. Even if we plan some kind of reprint in the future or if we add some other stuff to the book, you will still get the updated version via the BackerKit Digital Downloads section once we upload it there.
Starlight Arcana was just the beginning of the grand journey we want to take you all on in the Starlight Chronicles setting and because of that, there is a good chance we will be changing a few things here and there, from time to time, in the core book.
We are very serious about honoring this promise since we value all of the people, that helped us create this book, a lot.
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😣Other Projects? Really?😣
Many of you would probably ask now;
How the heck are you going to launch another crowdfunding campaign when this one is still not fully finished❓
And you would be right to ask that!
Here's the thing though.
Unlike any other TTRPG crowdfunding project out there, we have made a promise to deliver the full content in digital form, quick and fast. We take great pride in our planning, our development capabilities and skills because we are only a 2-person team (myself and Dusky Cat) and we have to compete with giants in this industry.
Not only that, but we are faster than most of them and that is something that 1. nobody would have ever expected and 2. nobody would even think is possible.
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We proved that with Starlight Arcana. Despite it being our first crowdfunding project ever and also being a huge endeavor to take on, we were able to deliver a finished book that you can read and use (all of it, not just parts of it) in less than a year.
- Delivery of PDF within 10 months of crowdfunding campaign ending.
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We proved that again with Soulfrost Reliquary. We promised we would deliver the PDF only a few months after the completion of the live crowdfunding campaign and we did. Backers had the full 200-pages book, filled to the brim with all sorts of content, from new player options to a full dungeon crawl campaign with tons of new monsters in it.
- Delivery of PDF within 4 months of crowdfunding campaign ending.
But even with all of that, the truth of the matter is that we are still fulfilling the physical rewards of the last two campaigns. That means that the other projects are not 100% finished yet and we simply cannot promise other physical rewards until we've delivered those first.
For that reason, we are officially announcing today that all of our future projects will be made with DriveThruRPG's Print-on-Demand service!
Paired up with our unparalleled planning for developing awesome projects in record times and our ability to deliver digital rewards super fast, Print-on-Demand will be the perfect solution for all of our future projects, since it brings the following to the table:
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Super quick delivery of rewards through a trusted platform (DTRPG).
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Cheaper for backers due to printing and shipping at cost!
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Quicker and reliable delivery of physical rewards for backers!
Your books will be printed at DTRPG's US or EU factories and shipped out directly from there, meaning no delays and no extra shipping costs!
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No more printing and fulfillment headaches for us!
A crowdfunding project will take no longer than 3-4 months to fully complete, meaning we can safely move on to something else entirely!
Here is a quick infographic that we have put together to give you a quick rundown of how this will work for Sirensong!
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Oh and, if you haven't checked out Sirensong's campaign page yet, you totally should!
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This is the part where I would say that we "apologize" for the situation but that would be straight up dishonest, since, as I mentioned above, it is a situation that, despite even planning for it, still happened to us and we have to deal with it now.
We are very frustrated with how the costs fluctuated and basically messed up the timeline for us and our projects. Instead of being frustrated and venting though, we now need to focus on getting this thing done as soon as possible.
Our future print-on demand projects already have a small amount of funding allocated to them and the development of a couple of our future projects is near completion so we won't be pulling funds from there. We cannot launch a project without having anything to show and despite how fast we can be with delivering the full digital rewards, we still need to account for the expenses on future work as well.
What I am saying is that; Starlight Arcana is a priority but that does not mean we will stop working on new things too.
We are a business of two people and this is our day job. We have to continue working hard and making new stuff, otherwise we simply won't be able to put food on our table. It sounds dramatic, but it is simply the truth.
We are giving you all the facts, without any "opinions" on the whole thing so that you can decide how you feel about it on your own. We hope to find you understanding of the difficult situation and be it that you decide to support us (by purchasing the new add-on reward) or not, we still appreciate you for being here in the first place.
I will say, once again, that we can and will deal with the situation in order to finish fulfillment.
It will just take more time.
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That is all for today's update.
Please do not hesitate to leave any questions you might have here or on our discord community server (always best to discuss things there by the way) and I will try to reply to you as soon as I possibly can.
Till next time...
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #30 - Slight Book Dent + Fulfillment Update
3 months ago
– Fri, Sep 06, 2024 at 07:56:27 AM
Hey there, star scryers!
I wanted to make a quick update in order to update people on something that has been coming up a bit from backers reporting in after receiving their pledge.
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Back of the Book Dent
We received reports with pictures from books that were delivered to backers which had a slight dent in the back of the book.
As you can see from the pictures, the dent might be smaller for some people (and be barely visible) but it's still something that we take quite seriously.
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Why is the dent there?
The dent is there because the art prints were wrongly mass produced in thicker cardboard material than thick paper as we wanted them to be printed in. Our printing partner communicated this with us and said that they can still be folded in order to be added to each pledge as normal. We agreed to it since printing 4600 more art prints would have been extremely expensive. Not only that, we were happy to see that Ukko and Umi artworks were quite symmetrical so the folding line (due to folding) did not hinder the beauty of each art piece.
That, however, was supposed to be something that should not cause a dent on the book. For that reason, our printing partner put it on the back of the book (because they were packed together with each physical book pledge) and was left front facing down.
Be it that our fulfillment partners across the globe packed them face up or face down, the dent could have happened during freight transport since many of the books were packaged on top of each other, therefore creating that weight issue and pressing down on others.
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So what now? Can we get a replacement?
As much as it hurts me to say this, we, unfortunately, cannot provide a replacement for any book with this kind of issue. This is because, quite literally, all of the books that we printed more or less have this issue due to packing.
We apologize for this and we hope that you understand our position on this. We wish we were able to do more, but the truth of the matter is that we are barely able to fund projects of this size in the first place.
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What are we doing about this?
The best we can do is mention this as a complaint to our printing (LongPack) and fulfillment partners, but beyond that, we cannot really do much more. Only other thing to do is be more aware of such issues in future project printing so that we can avoid such issues.
I want to emphasize that this is something that:
- We tried to avoid no matter what by printing thinner art prints (but still good paper quality)
- We communicated clearly with our printing partner but had to go with what we got (despite their mistake on this) due to the fact that we do not really have the funds to reprint everything just because they misunderstood what we asked for
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⛵Fulfillment is ongoing!⛵
We are happy to announce that fulfillment is moving forward steadily and without any other issues. We are monitoring every region as closely as we can and so far all backers that have received their pledges are very happy with what they got.
We are also happy to report that packing has been great (keep in mind that the "back of the book dent" is not necessarily a fulfillment issue) and that everything has been arriving without too many issues.
We heard of certain courier services having delays in the EU, but that is, unfortunately, something that we, or even our fulfillment partner in some cases, cannot control in any way.
We are expecting US and CA fulfillment to begin soon since address confirmation e-mails have gone out (the majority of them, if not all of them).
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🌊Sirensong PreLaunch Page is now live!🌊
Visit the campaign page!
Our next campaign's preview page is up and running and we are already at 100 followers! Help us reach even more so that we can unlock more things that will be added to the project.
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That's all for today's update. I am really sorry (and greatly annoyed) by the whole "book dent" thing, but as I said a million times before; this was our first project and we are still learning.
Along with many other hiccups that happened throughout the printing and fulfillment process for Starlight Arcana, we were forced to learn a lot of things in the most hard (and intense) way.
We look forward to seeing you onboard for the next one, be it our Kickstarter Zine in February (Crystal Chaos) or our next Grand Tale (Sirensong) in Spring of 2025!
Till next time...
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #29 - Fulfillment Update
3 months ago
– Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 02:34:31 AM
Hey there, fate weavers!
I see that a lot of you have requested an update and although I have been trying my best to keep up with everyone's questions on both comments and on our discord community, I figured I would leave an update here as well in case someone is not seeing the rest of the spaces.
TL;DR is that our ETAs for freight have not changed since our last update and that fulfillment is basically underway, one region at a time.
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⛵Pledges are almost there!⛵
Here is a quick list with information about all areas:
US/CA: Pledges are still on boats and are estimated to arrive around late September to the fulfillment centers. Canada might have to wait a little bit longer because the books are going through the US first.
EU: The boats should have arrived or are arriving soon. Address confirmation e-mails have already been sent. Fulfillment should be starting very very soon!
Asia/Australia: Both of these regions have already received all their pledges or are close to finishing. If you have any issues, please make sure you contact me.
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IMPORTANT: You can no longer change your address but if you end up having issues with your pledge being delivered correctly, then you should definitely e-mail me at [email protected].
If you ask me to change your address now then it is kind of pointless since it will not change anything. Please wait for the confirmation e-mails to first go out.
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🌊Sirensong PreLaunch Page is now live!🌊
Visit the campaign page!
The campaign project is planned to go live in Spring of 2025 but until then, we will be previewing and showcasing a lot of the book's contents to hype all of you for what is to come!
Not only that but there will be tons of awesome free adventures and other awesome things building up to the launch of the project.
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That is all for today's update!
I will emphasize that you are all more than welcome to message me or leave a comment here if you have any questions or concerns about any of our projects and for any stage of each individual project. We try to be very transparent and straightforward with our answers because we know how important it is to be informed as a backer throughout all stages of a project you've backed.
Also, don't forget that you can always join our little discord community and talk with us there (about anything and everything!)
Until next time,
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #28 - Fulfillment & Future Projects
5 months ago
– Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 03:09:42 PM
Hey, pirates of the stars!
Some good news on fulfillment and some quick updates on future projects.
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⛵Pledges are on boats!⛵
We've received good news about freighting as most pledges are already on boats and on their way to fulfillment centers!
Please keep in mind that freighting takes a while (4 to 6 weeks from what we were told) and after that fulfillment centers will have to take some time to organize the pledges and start sending out the packages to all backers.
You will be receiving an e-mail from the fulfillment center handling your order asking to confirm your address, so make sure you put in the right address in case you see it is not correct on the one in the e-mail.
IMPORTANT: You can no longer change your address but if you end up having issues with your pledge being delivered correctly, then you should definitely e-mail me at [email protected].
If you ask me to change your address now then it is kind of pointless since it will not change anything. Please wait for the confirmation e-mails to first go out.
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🌊Sirensong!🌊
We have been very busy finalizing everything for both the Starlight Arcana and Soulfrost Reliquary projects since we made the promise that we will focus all our efforts on first finishing those projects before we launch anything else.
That being said, we are of course also working on other things at the same time, most importantly our next project; Sirensong!
Today, we shared with our Discord community the very first teaser for the project.
We also revealed that the new Tarot Deck cards will introduce new effects and gameplay elements for the Fate Weaver subclass!
If you are interested in staying updated then make sure you JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER!
Next week we are revealing the real cover of the book as well!
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❗Future Project Decisions❗
We have made a few key decisions for our future crowdfunding projects that we would like to share with you.
DIGITAL OFFERINGS:
We decided that starting with our next project, we will offer all of the artworks and other files as digital files as "rewards" in our crowdfunding projects.
There will be a Digital All-in pledge and a Physical All-in pledge.
The items within both of those pledges will of course be available as add-ons as well but the pledges always come with a nice discount.
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CHEAPER OFFERINGS:
Our crowdfunding offerings will be even cheaper.
We really care about people being able to afford the stuff we create. Although we already have very reasonable pricing for both digital and physical items, the shipping situation is only getting more expensive and if we really want to continue making physical stuff that everyone can enjoy, then we have to do something about it. For that reason, despite other companies and creators going with more expensive and higher profit margins for their crowdfunding offerings, we have decided to go even lower than what we had before. It is not a huge change (think of 5 to 10 EUR change) but we hope that this will help people decide to back our campaigns and enjoy the content we put so much love (blood, sweat and tears), time and energy into creating.
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FUTURE REPRINT:
We will definitely reprint some of our previous books at some point. When we do, we have decided to offer previous backers of those campaigns a free add-on and of course free access to the digital files of the update versions of the reprinted books. This means that if you backed Starlight Arcana the first time, you will get the updated one when we reprint it. There will, however, be new things that you might want to get that were not available during the first campaign. This is something that will happen in 2026 or so, but we have made this decision early on because one of our projects in 2025 leans heavily into content that was previously released.
MORE REVEALS AND PRE-LAUNCH SHOWCASES:
For Sirensong and all future projects we will want to bring to you as a crowdfunding campaign, we will be showcasing A LOT MORE of the content than we did before and way before the project even goes live.
We realized that pre-launch marketing is something we did not do right before, so we really want to share all of the awesome things we've made with you, from new subclasses, ancestries and spells to new adventure content and setting information.
I have also created a new text channel on our Discord server where people can check to see what new things we are preparing in regards to future crowdfunding projects. We do know that the discord server may not be super active, but it is nonetheless a huge source of inspiration and feedback for our little team. With that in mind, we figured we should have a dedicated channel where we can spoil future content and also gather opinions, feedback and impressions on what we are preparing. Head over to our discord server and lurk around to see what's coming up.
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That is all for today!
We really CANNOT WAIT to finally start seeing photos from delivered pledges and reading your impressions on all the awesome physical stuff that is coming your way!
Until next time...
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
