Explore the stars with the monumental 500+ pages tome for DnD 5e. An unmatched amount of content for both Players and Game Masters. Now open for pre-orders! Please note, we are waiting to charge for shipping closer to fulfillment. After shipping fees are added in, you will be notified via email before your payment is charged.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hey everyone!
It's been a month since the last update and some of you are requesting a new update which is very fair!
I held off with making an update until we have the TEST PDF ready to go, but we are still working on it and will have it finished and ready to be given out sometime next week. So until that update post which will come in a couple of days, I figured I would tell you a few things about where we are at with everything.
The process is as hectic and time-consuming as we expected but we are still very much focused on making the PDF look the best possible. For the TEST PDF, we are of course cutting corners here and there in terms of visuals so that we can get it out to testers as fast as possible.
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If you would you like to be a tester, please join our discord and post a message in the #starlight-arcana channel, stating that you are interested in being a tester.
Everyone interested in being a tester will be privately PMed so that we can verify that they are a backer of at least the PDF tier.
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It is about darn time!
As soon as the TEST PDF is finished, we will have a much better estimate for shipping quotes and will therefore be able to finalize all numbers needed for the pledge manager. We plan on the Pledge Manager opening it near the end of June. It will stay open for at least a month as we finalize everything with printing.
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As you may have easily deduced by now, the timeline we had for delivering the book has shifted a month or two already, despite our best efforts to be as fast as we possibly can with finalizing printing and fulfillment.
We are actually very ok with these delays since every step of the process so far has been very necessary if we are to make something that is high quality and something that we can be extremely proud of.
The biggest delay so far in the project timeline was the whole OGL shenanigans during winter which set us back a month or two. Apart from that, we have been non-stop preparing things for Starlight Arcana and we honestly cannot wait to deliver it to you so that you can see all the awesome things that we have added in there.
So with all that in mind, you can expect something like this:
We left a lot of room in between printing and fulfillment but even with that extra time we simply cannot know how much longer it might take since all sorts of things can happen to delay the project delivery even further.
We just want you to know that we are non-stop working on the project and making sure we are working towards delivering it as fast as we possibly can!
(We want to be able to deliver things to our backers super fast and that is something we take very seriously. That way we can work on even more projects, just because we lovemakingawesomeTTRPGcontent. The huge gap between finishing a Kickstarter campaign and ACTUALLY delivering it to backers is something we will address with our next Kickstarter project, so stay tuned for more information on that!)
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We actually felt a bit awkward when we had to announce that the tarot deck will not include the Minor Arcana but we were quickly reminded that we just cannot deliver all of the extra content that we initially thought we would be able to deliver.
On the other hand, we ended up adding so much more to the book that was not in the initial campaign and announcements that we are sure will keep everyone happy with the final delivery. If I were to add up all of the extra content we've included in the book in terms of extra side quests, monsters, and other things, it would be at least 10 or so extra stretch goals.
We really just went wild with creating this book and although we might not have fully followed our initial designs and plans, we are very proud of what we have put together. We now cannot wait to hear our testers' feedback on it so that we can improve on details.
As soon as the final PDF is up for all our backers, we would love to hear your opinions too, since your opinions will be the most important ones!
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In a couple of days, we will also announce our next Kickstarter project by sharing some teasers and some more information with you through an update here. We have shifted a few of our resources already so that we can work on that project as well (since Starlight Arcana is finally fully produced) and we plan on launching it sometime in September 2023.
We are extremely excited about this new venture and we hope you will get excited about it too once we show you what it is about!
We will have links for following a newsletter to get notified when it launches!
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That's it for today's update!
Please keep in mind that we read ALL of your comments and messages, even if we sometimes forget to answer one or two of them. We really appreciate all of you poking us to post more updates, be it here or on Discord, so please keep doing that!
See you again here in a couple of days when we have the announcement for the TEST PDF!
Until next time...
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Hey astral explorers!
It's been a while and we have great news for you today!
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We are very pleased to announce that development on Starlight Arcana is 99% done! That means that everything is written and is either being edited or alpha tested in order to make it ready for beta testing at the end of the month.
The plan is to have the first version of the PDF ready in the next week or so, so that we can give it to all of our testers for some final testing, so that we can make any final edits needed before we send the files out for printing.
These past few weeks, we have been working hard on finalizing the ancestry options, the classes, the spells, the destined artifacts (one for each subclass, hidden somewhere throughout the Starlight Arcana campaign), and last but not least, the quickstart box elements.
We ended up going a little bit beyond what we were planning to make for the quickstart box and introduced a lot more lore for the characters involved in the story found in the box. We are super excited to deliver this to you together with Starlight Arcana!
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If you would like to be involved in the testing of Starlight Arcana, then you need to do the following:
DISCLAIMER: This is a disclaimer and a reminder that the test version of the PDF will have a lot of empty space, missing artwork, and other things that have not yet been finalized. We are providing this document to the backers that wish to test various elements of the book as well as to gather feedback on all sorts of things such as balancing issues, typos we may have missed during editing, inconsistencies, and other things that might have been overlooked, etc.
The whole point of running this test is to gather feedback and deliver the book in the utmost best possible version it can be. We are sure there will be issues with balancing here and there and we are ready to address them as best as we can, but all of that will be explained in a future update as well. So far, we are very proud of what we have created and the feedback for the content has been fantastic, so we are very much looking forward to seeing what even more people will have to say about it.
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Yes! As soon as the test-version PDF is out, we will know enough to be able to provide more specific information to our printing partner so that we can proceed with all the necessary actions from there onward. That means that we will be able to estimate shipping more precisely and will be able to open the Pledge Manager so that everyone can start locking their orders.
Shipping has, thankfully, not fluctuated much since the time we ran the project and if anything, the change of fulfillment partner has helped us maintain friendly shipping and also make shipping prices as best as they can be for a heavy book like what Starlight Arcana is. A huge thank you to GamesQuest for this who have offered a lot of help in every step of the process so far.
The Pledge Manager will remain open for no more than a month. You will be notified multiple times through both e-mail and Kickstarter updates.
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Also very important to note that the FINAL PDF will be delivered soon after the Pledge Manager closes.
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We held a quick poll over on our discord server asking which ancestry option you would like to see revealed in the next Kickstarter update and the Shar received the most votes (and I am personally really happy about that because sharks are my absolute favorite).
THIS IS A DIRECT EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK.
THE SHAR
Springing from the seas of Nitania, the Shar build cities in the shallowest points in their ocean world, creating islands that congregate around the hunting of crabs and the community of their people. Of course, this was just the beginning. The hubs became bolder and bolder as the Shar explored the depths of Nitania in search of a variety of food. The different shallow cities created different cooking styles and it was through the trade of cuisine that the Shar people united under a single banner, in which each city was represented in a larger council spearheaded by a chief.
None among the Shar had connections with creation magic from before the Astral Conflict, but an ancient Kraken found in the depths of Nitania radiated with that force. The Cove Dwellers and the Shar share an ancient history, usually as allies and with a clear designation. The Shar live in the shallows, the Cove-Dwellers live deep under the sea. They trade and grow together in a happy symbiosis of two people. The Kraken is seen by the Shar as an ancient, natural being that is as mysterious as it is holy. However, they also see the Kraken as something ‘beyond’ the Shar, something that is not their business.
Contact with the Estalar clued in the citizens of Sharanar, the largest shallow city, about the Sea of Stars. There is only one Starport in Nitania and it is located in that city. The Shar rarely venture outside Nitania, but they have embraced travelers and even created manners for them to breathe underwater with their shell breathers. The Shar secured trade deals with Zitune and other planets like Cralast to provide food and ingredients from the cosmos, pushing the Shar cuisine even further.
Their way of life orbits about fine dining, experimenting with new plates, and hunting for the juiciest fish and other animals they can find. This pursuit of taste is one done in tune with nature. It is taboo to hunt a fish or animal in its mating season, so Shar society experiments with highs and lows as the tide flows in Nitania.
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This is just the lore bit about this new ancestry option. There is also more information written for the Heritage option, the special abilities, and bonuses, as well as options for what kind of Shar you can be (hammerhead style head, swordfish style head, etc.).
We won't be revealing everything, but you will of course learn more once we send out the final PDF to all backers!
Nitania is the codename "Sea World" planet that was one of the very first planets we designed for Starlight Arcana. There is a unique adventure to be had there as well as a lot of other things to do and situations to explore. Today we are revealing for the first time some of the concept art that we have prepared for the Shar!
Concept Artwork by Trovan
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From the next update, we hope to have enough materials to start talking about our next project already, since it's a huge deal for us to continue making awesome things!
We will be adopting a new style of making projects in the future so that we can maintain the quality and awesomeness of our projects while at the same time being able to deliver them to backers x10 times faster. Who knows, maybe we are on to something and we'll end up revolutionizing the way 3rd party 5E content is made (not really, but we do have some awesome plans that will indeed make all of that happen and we're so excited about it! So stay tuned!)
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Our good friend and amazing in-house illustrator, ALGOYO, is about to launch his next comic book project:
Battle Code: Ragnarök - VOLUMES #1 and #2
If you like Space, Vikings, or Comics, then you should check it out.
If you like all of the above, then you should DEFINITELY take a closer look!
Adrian and Alan are planning on launching their project in the next month or so, so give their project a follow to be informed when they are up and running.
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That's all for today! As always, thank you for your support and your patience with Starlight Arcana. Our team has learned a lot from this project and I cannot wait to start telling you how we plan to run things x10 times more smoothly in the future so that you can all enjoy the content we are creating (and planning to create) much faster and with less costs involved for backers.
All future updates will of course continue to have information about the current status of Starlight Arcana as we still have to go through printing and fulfillment!
Till next time...
May Starlight guide your way!
~Kelf
Hey awesome starlight backers!
I know it's been a long time since the last update (half a month to be exact) but there are some good reasons why I've delayed making an update before today.
Today we will be talking about the new project timeline for everything that is left to do with Starlight Arcana and telling you a bit more about the plan to finish it all up.
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Before we move on though, I'd like to put out yet another invitation to anyone who has not joined our Discord server yet.
In case you have any questions in regards to the project, this is the best place to do that since we always answer questions there the fastest. Not only that, but we also get into discussions with our backers about all sorts of things!
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Karl Nicolas (Natwuns) was handling all of the printing & fulfillment-related matters for this project. I say "was", because since a couple of weeks ago, Karl has had to withdraw from the Starlight Arcana team due to personal reasons that he prefers to keep private.
Karl has been a fantastic asset to our team and helped with a lot of things and situations that would have otherwise seemed insurmountable if we were to run the project without him. We thank him for his contribution and wish him all the best in future projects he is involved in.
With Karl's leave though, someone else has to handle all of the printing & fulfillment for Starlight Arcana. I have decided to take on those responsibilities on myself (Kelfecil) and have spent the last couple of weeks making sure we are still on track for everything. Karl also helped a lot by making sure the transition was seamless and I am already fully in control of all the stuff that he was handling.
That of course means that there is a lot of extra work that I need to do, on top of managing everything else with the project, so there is a good chance that this will set us back at least one month in our projected timeline for delivering the project. More on that in a later section of the update though.
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We are very proud to be working with GamesQuest who specialize in, and have experience with, fulfilling projects for various kinds of Kickstarter projects. I can personally attest to their expertise since I have been a backer of a couple of projects that they fulfilled for the companies that made those projects and everything went perfectly for the shipping and fulfillment part.
GamesQuest also works with fulfillment centers around the world so backers of Starlight Arcana in the US, the EU and AU will be happy to know that we will have affordable shipping as expected (and as calculated and shown on the shipping table during the campaign). The prices are of course, as always, subject to change but we will always be transparent about what practices we are using and how we are handling the shipping of the pledge rewards to you.
There will be regular updates on the shipping process once that is underway. Printing & fulfillment is very much out of our hands in most cases but we will try our best to keep you updated on the progress for everything (e.g. what stage of production we are at, where your pledges are currently at, when you should expect them, etc.).
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Our previous timeline showed that we would have opened the Pledge Manager by March and would be printing already in April.
We are quite proud of the fact that we have been very efficient and on point with everything so far and despite various mishaps (OGL and other things that happened), we were able to continue with the production of the project.
That being said, the projected timeline ended up being a bit off so here is the newly updated timeline with expected delays factored in:
✦ End of April: Delivery of the first PDF draft to testers.
✦ End of May: Delivery of final digital PDF + Opening of Pledge Manager
✦ End of June: Closing of Pledge Manager + Printing Process started
✦ August to September: Shipping to Hubs + Delivery of SA for Foundry VTT backers
✦ October: Shipping to Backers
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Things we CAN control:
Things we CANNOT control:
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This is a rather sad point that I have to talk to you about as we will be rolling back one of the stretch goals that we added while the campaign was running.
We said that we will try our best to include the Minor Arcana in the final Tarot Deck but that ended up being something we could not handle. This is happening for a few different reasons:
We are very serious about delivering a high quality product to all of the people that helped us fund and create this project and because of that, we would settle for nothing less than something awesome. That means that if we are to create a whole set of Minor Arcana cards, we would have to make the artwork on them be up to par with the rest of the Major Arcana. Even if we were to go with something simpler, we would not be satisfied with the end result given the time limit we have for our production timeline so we decided to instead drop the idea entirely.
Going from a 22 cards Tarot deck to one that is more than double the size of that by adding 56 cards in there is something that makes things very very different costs-wise. We were wrong to have thought that this would have been an easy change and that is a first-time creator's mistake that we are admitting right here, right now.
The Major Arcana all play a special part in the story of the campaign and are used in a few different ways. As we emphasized multiple times throughout other updates before, we want to implement only playable elements in the project. The only things that we had in the pledge tiers that are not playable are the art prints and the more "deluxe" tiers that included a private artwork commission. Anything else that is being added through stretch goals is also playable content (even the bard songs album that is being produced for the campaign).
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Because of all the above reasons and some more, we decided that leaving the Minor Arcana out of the project was the right move to make. We understand that this may cause some people to lose interest in purchasing a Tarot Deck and we are more than happy to handle any questions that may come in because of that.
We apologize for the confusion this may have caused.
We really want to make a Minor Arcana deck but it will have to wait for a future project when we will be able to plan it, produce it and deliver it at a proper pace.
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In the next update, we will be revealing some information for our next project and more importantly about our plan to go with Print on Demand in order to be able to fulfill our projects much easier and much faster. We have lots of plans but the most important part for us right now is to deliver the Starlight Arcana PDF first before we even start talking or preparing other projects (or even making a KS campaign for one).
Print on Demand is definitely something that we want to talk about to a greater extent though.
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No watermarks today, just plain good artwork. We are giving you one of the first Half-Estalar concept images for free so that you can use it as you want (non-commercially of course).
I was going to make a mobile wallpaper out of it, but the image kind of works on its own because of the dimensions, so I'm sure no matter what mobile device you are using, this should work well.
Half-Estalar Artwork by TiePie made for Starlight Arcana.
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That's all of the important news we have for you today. I know this was a rather heavy update and you might have questions that you may wanna ask, so once again, feel free to join us on our Discord server and ask away in one of our channels.
We hope the new Spring season has found you well and in good health and we hope to be treating you to some Starlight goodness soon enough with the digital PDF, so that you can all start exploring the stars!
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Hey starseers!
Got awesome and bad news. The bad news are basically the reason why I was not able to post updates more often in the last couple of weeks.
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Before we go into those though, make sure you join us on Discord to join our community and keep up with all the news real-time!
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I am just going to get the bad news out of the way real fast and tell you that I have had some issues with my eyesight lately and I recently found out it's basically a unique case of my eyes just not healing fast enough, which is why I have been getting blurry all the time. This situation has basically made it really hard for me to work more consistently but I am generally dealing with it as best as I can with lots of patience and lots of rest.
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We have made some fantastic progress on Starlight Arcana and I am here to tell you all about it!
✦ CAMPAIGN
The campaign has been fully written and we are not in the editing part of it all. We are having a few meetings over the next couple of days in order to iron out all the details for the storytelling and the adventures, but generally, it's all good and done!
All artwork for the campaign is finished with the exception of 3-4 maps that are now being colored!
✦ ANCESTRIES, SUBCLASSES, DESTINED ARTIFACTS
Ancestries - all done and ready to be tested. All artwork is finished.
Subclasses - 9/12 done and ready to be tested. 3 more should be done this week. All artwork is finished.
Destined Artifacts - 0/12 done and will be made before the end of March. The concept for each weapon is already made but has to be realized with interesting game mechanics. All artwork is finished.
✦ TAROT DECK
Major Arcana - There are only 3 tarot cards left to be illustrated!
Minor Arcana - We finished the concept artwork for these and will be making the finals so that we can showcase them in a future update soon-ish!
✦ QUICKSTART BOX, CHARACTER SHEETS, PRE-MADE CHARACTERS
Quickstart Adventure - This is now being written and should be ready in a couple of weeks.
Character Sheets - All good and done.
Pre-made Characters - 5/10 player characters are finished. Rest are being made this week. Artwork for all of them is almost finished as well.
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I wanted to take some time and talk about the Quickstart Box today and explain the idea behind it. A lot of people tend to think of these boxes as extra stuff that is trivial and is just for fancy stuff like dice and whatnot. In the case of Starlight Arcana, we wanted to make something truly special for both new and veteran players.
✦ x1 Booklet
The booklet will first and most importantly include instructions on how you can get things started really fast and easily as a GM running Starlight Arcana. Other than that though, there will also be a one-of-a-kind adventure that is special in a few ways.
The adventure will offer x5 pre-made epic heroes with ready-to-play sheets that are simplified so that players can easily understand and play them. We want to give the feeling of doing some big epic moves while still keeping it simple for newer players. The adventure takes place on the day of the Astral Conflict, when the world was brought to ruin because of the fight between the Astral Siblings, the dragon gods of the realm. The players will take on the roles of epic heroes fighting on that day and trying their best to save people from the armies of the maddened god.
✦ x10 Ready-to-Play Characters
The box will also have x10 pre-made characters for your players to choose and play in the Starlight Arcana campaign. x5 of those characters will be made to be played starting from Act 1 while x5 of them will be made to be played starting from Act 2 (at a slightly higher level).
We have discussed this a lot and have decided to go with various different classes so that we can make the pool of characters as diverse as possible!
✦ x1 Set of Opaque Purple Dice - x1 Printed Galaxy Map - x3 Printed Battlemaps for Act 1
The box will of course also include a set of dice, the galaxy map for your space travels from planet to planet, and the most important maps for Act 1 of the campaign!
We have discussed the whole dice thing quite a few times on our discord but the general idea was that we wanted to include a simple set of dice so that you can have something to play with right away. We really wanted to make them super fancy but the costs for that were just ridiculous and we did not feel comfortable asking backers to pay that kind of money (KS campaigns usually ask for 3 to 4 times more than the production price of dice).
The map choices were quite specific and although they are not the ones that are for Quickstart adventure, they will help you get started with Act 1. We chose those maps over others because they are maps that we felt could be used outside of Starlight Arcana as well (which is always awesome if you are an active GM).
Our awesome friends at Wyrmgold just launched their absolutely cute and adorable game, Woodland Wizards (KS LINK)!
You may know Wyrmgold from their previous campaign, Pagan: Fate of Roanoke. I actually had the opportunity to create a legacy campaign for their last board game and they were super excited about it so they made it a stretch goal during their 2nd printing campaign!
I really admire Wyrmgold for their attention to detail and they have come a long way since their first Kickstarter campaign, improving in many ways, be it by listening to backers' feedback or by pushing to make their work even better and higher quality. This new project is no different and at 13 euros only for such a fantastic game, backing it is a no-brainer really.
I don't usually post much about board games but for those that follow me a bit more closely, you know I play tons of board games (like, 4-5 new ones every week at least) so being able to showcase some of Wyrmgold's new work is just a pleasure for me.
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That's all for this update and I cannot wait to show you more next week when I will be sharing some written material along with some more artwork!
Till next time, may Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf