Post-Project Update #19 - Pledge Manager Closing, PDF is ready, Canceled Alchemy Module
8 months ago
– Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 06:23:33 AM
Hey star people!
It is officially the 10th of September and that means that today is the day we planned to close the pledge manager. Until...
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Postponing the Closing of the Pledge Manager
We want to give everyone one last chance to get their pledge in order so we will be extending the period of the pledge manager staying open for another 2 days.
The Pledge Manager will close on the 12th of September at 23:30 (GMT +2:00).
Please make sure you have finalized your order by then because, after that, the only thing we will be able to do is basically change the address of people who might need a last-minute address change.
Having mentioned that, should you need help with changing your address after the closing of the Pledge Manager, please make sure you e-mail our team at [email protected].
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PDF is ready!
We are in an absolutely awesome position to tell you that the PDF is finished and it is ready to be delivered to backers! We will be sending it out via BackerKit to everyone once the Pledge Manager closes 2 days from now.
Should you find anything big that needs fixing or if you have any feedback in general, please do not hesitate to post it on our discord server.
(I kindly ask that you do not privately message me (Kelfecil) or other members of the team with feedback. We prefer to receive feedback through the channels on our Discord server.)
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Alchemy module: Canceled
We have to, unfortunately, cancel the making and publishing of the Starlight Arcana Alchemy module.
For anyone who has added the Alchemy module to their order through the Pledge Manager, you will now find that it has been removed and so has its cost. Do not worry as nothing changes with your order since there were no other extra costs that came with the Alchemy module being in your order.
We have been honest and transparent with you every step of the way and we would like to keep it this way moving forward, so we decided to tell you exactly why the Alchemy module is being canceled.
The reasons why we are doing this:
- Not enough interest in it.
Alchemy is a rather new platform and we completely understand there might not have been as much interest in a Starlight Arcana module on there. There were far too few orders on the Pledge Manager for the Alchemy module.
- Conversion tools are very unintuitive and inefficient.
We have to make a disclaimer here that the folks over at Alchemy made it very clear to us that Kelfecil's Tales is the only creator that is on the 2nd creator tier agreement. The 2nd tier is basically a higher percentage cut for sales on the platform (less for Alchemy, more for us), no promotion bonuses, and we would have to ingest all of the content completely on our own.
For the reason mentioned above, we were given some links with information and guidelines on how we can ingest content on the platform (convert our content into modules on Alchemy) and that was pretty much it.
We asked a lot of questions but most of the answers we received were (as expected, for very reasonable reasons) not very helpful since the Alchemy staff does all of the ingestions for other modules in-house. We were a bit disappointed to find that the processes are extremely inefficient and cumbersome and it would basically take us triple the amount of time to make Starlight Arcana into an Alchemy module.
Despite the complicated nature of other VTT platforms (like Foundry), there are enough processes in place for us to be able to make modules in a very efficient manner that also results in high-quality content. For Alchemy, we would be going in mostly blind with tons of time invested for something that is much simpler in nature.
We understand that Alchemy is new as a company and a platform, but this is also the reason why we opted against making modules for a lot of other VTT platforms in the past as well. What I mean is that we avoided VTT platforms that did not have good tools in place for creators to be able to make and publish content on the platform.
- The marketing is not very appealing to us.
We asked the people from Alchemy if it would be possible to publish more smaller-form content in the future and we were told that everything goes through a greenlight process. This is totally understood and generally, Alchemy seems like a platform that is trying to appear as very "high-end" with releases from high-profile publishers and some from more known creators. While this may seem like a great opportunity for Kelfecil's Tales (considering we have only one big publication under our name), it is actually not since the support we have received for moving forward with the platform has been very minimal so far.
We discussed it internally and it was a unanimous "no" on the decision to go forward with Alchemy even if just for this reason because the general feeling we got was that we would not be looked after all that much and the effort we would put into it would not be worth it in the end.
Please make no mistake here as I do not mean to say that the staff at Alchemy was not kind or nice to us. They were very professional and kind. What I mentioned in the paragraphs above is totally understandable as this is the way that Alchemy wishes to run its business and we absolutely respect that. It just does not appeal to us and we would like to see how it goes in the future before continuing with it.
- We were able to change to the other creator tier and have Alchemy ingest the content for us (at no cost too) but we were asked for something that we simply cannot agree to deliver.
I was very clear from the very beginning with the folks at Alchemy that I found it weird that they do all of the ingestion for other creators, but as mentioned in the previous paragraphs, this is how they run their business and I have nothing else to say about it. If it works for them, then power to them and we respect that. This is one of the main reasons why we decided to be on the other creator tier, where we would be ingesting the content ourselves.
However, after seeing how inefficient the processes are, we thought about exploring the option of changing tiers and having the Alchemy staff ingest Starlight Arcana for us. We were informed that this is totally doable and that they would actually ingest it at 0 cost as well since that is what the agreement entails.
We were very happy to hear that since that really sounded like they were doing us a favor but then we were asked to deliver the Adobe InDesign files for the book.
It is extremely important to note here that I read through the agreement we have with Alchemy and it was made very clear in it that they make sure they do not misuse any of the sensitive files and content they receive from the creators they work with.
Despite what the agreement says though, we, Kelfecil's Tales, will never agree to deliver such sensitive design files and documents to any outside partners. We, for example, had a horrible experience in the past with high-profile creators laughing in our faces when we asked for an NDA. Because of that experience and because of many other more professional reasons, we never share design files (InDesign, Affinity, Photoshop, or anything else) with outside partners, collaborators, or anyone else.
We were actually asked for a Photoshop file for an image before as well and we said no to that as well. We have plenty of experience and expertise to deliver images with the specifications required, meaning that asking for a Photoshop file is not just about "saving time" in this case but rather about protecting our processes and creative works.
Once again, we do not think that people from Alchemy would ever misuse the content we would send them, but we would rather avoid having to send files like that.
To add to this matter, we closely inspected the process for ingesting content on the Alchemy platform and found that although it takes a lot of time (lots of copy-pasting honestly), no design files are necessary. A design file would save a bit of time, but it is not necessary so when we were told that they could not ingest Starlight Arcana if they did not receive the InDesign file, we saw that as a red flag and categorically declined to provide any such documents.
We therefore canceled the project of converting Starlight Arcana as a module on Alchemy's VTT platform).
We convert content for Roll20 and Foundry VTT very often and the person in our team responsible for making VTT conversions has never asked us for design files. He, himself, told us that such a file is not necessary and that was well after he had finished converting the entirety of Starlight Arcana for both the Roll20 and Foundry VTT platforms.
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All that being said though, we really liked how the platform looks like and how it works. Starlight Arcana may not have been absolutely perfect for it due to the fact that there are a lot of tactical encounters too in the book and Alchemy does not support that kind of stuff, at least yet, but we thought it would be awesome to have it on the platform.
Even with the lack of interest (low amount of orders for the module) and the big money and time loss, on our side, we were still very determined to make the module. Due to the reasons mentioned above though, we decided that the best path forward would be to not put any time into making a module for the Alchemy VTT platform right now.
We will be looking forward to seeing how the Alchemy platform grows as well as if and how it will support creators like Kelfecil's Tales in the future.
We would like to thank the Alchemy VTT team for the support and the answers they provided us throughout this whole process. We hope to be able to work with them in the future once their ingestion processes have improved and become more intuitive for creators.
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Moving forward! Printing + Next KS Campaign!
We are ready to give all printing files to our printing partner and start production in no more than a week (right after the Pledge Manager closes) so we will of course keep you updated on that, every step of the way.
The project may be off our hands once we deliver the files, but I personally know really well how important it is and how good it feels to stay informed as a backer in regard to what is going on with the project you have backed. For that reason, I will make sure I make an update at least every 2 weeks informing you of anything new we might have on the printing and fulfillment process. Even if nothing new has happened, we will still make an update to let you know things are moving forward.
Also, starting end of this week, we will start our promotion for our next Kickstarter campaign; Grand✦Tales: Soulfrost Reliquary!
We are super excited to finally start sharing more information about Soulfrost Reliquary and we got all sorts of awesome things to share with you, starting with a free preview adventure next week (to be distributed through our newsletter).
I will also be making lots of videos detailing things about the next KS project and also about all the things we are doing better this time around (after having learned a lot from Starlight Arcana).
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As always; thank you all so much for your support and I am so thrilled to soon deliver this chunky Astral book to your hands!
Until next time, may Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
