Post-Project Update #13 - Testing has begun!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 03:20:56 AM
Hey star dwellers!
We have great news to share with you today; the PDF testing has begun!
We put everything together and handed it over to our testers so that they may begin digging through Starlight Arcana. The feedback so far has been fantastic and we are extremely excited to make all the necessary changes and then go to printing in a couple of months!
We are approaching the end of the road with Starlight Arcana and we are aching to tell you more about everything we have been working on. It is extremely important to us that we maintain the communication standard we have had so far and continue updating you on every step of the process.
With that in mind, I will "spam" you one more time with the "Join our Discord" image because that is the best place to get answers if:
- You have more questions about Starlight Arcana
- You want to be a tester for SA and/or future projects
- You just want to hang out and talk with other people that love TTRPGs, board games, video games, etc.
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TL;DR Progress
If you don't want to read all of the details below then you can read this and just get a quick idea of where we are at and what to expect:
Final PDF Delivery: Mid-July
Pledge Manager: July
Printing and Manufacturing: end of August
Fulfillment: October (the latest hopefully, depends on printing)
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Overall Project Progress
Today I wanted to share with you a more detailed view of where we are at with Starlight Arcana and everything around it (which means more than just the book). Everything after the first 🠞 is what still needs to be done.
- Starlight Arcana Book (80% done) (written and in testing)
Currently In Testing 🠞 Tester Feedback implementation 🠞 Final syntax and Grammar check
- Quickstart Booklet (90% done) (written and in final steps)
Currently in PDF Prep 🠞 Final syntax and Grammar check
- Tarot Deck (90% done) (all artwork done except for ones for back and box)
Currently in design (card back and tuckbox artworks being finalized) 🠞 Final font for card titles to be chosen
- GM Screen (50% done) (in design process)
Currently in design (organizing the important content on it) 🠞 Final check
- SA-styled Character Sheet (99%) (finished, just a few details left)
Currently in final design steps
- Premade Character Sheets (99%) (finished)
Currently in final design steps (putting the information on the sheets)
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And now for the big parts of the project:
We are getting all the final bits of information we need to open the pledge manager from Gamesquest these days and we hope to be able to open the Pledge Manager at the beginning of July.
This is something that we still cannot know for sure when it will begin since it is very much up to the printing service that will handle it. We are in talks with the printing company and as we have the final PDF, we will be able to give a more exact date. For now, just to be safe on naming a date, I would say printing would begin either end of August or end of September.
As soon as printing is done. We cannot know yet, but count at least a month after printing.
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Are we late? Well, yes. Unfortunately, we are...
We really hate to say this but the project got delayed for all sorts of reasons (most out of our control) and the dates we initially had in mind got pushed back quite a bit. As always though, we will be crystal clear with you about what is going on and with full honesty also say that the team does not mind this since we are constantly working on this with a focus on making it the best it can possibly be.
The testing phase has proved that we were right to take this long to bring even the TEST PDF out because the feedback so far has been fantastic. Mind you, the TEST PDF is all messy since we just rushed to get all the text in there so that we can share it with the testers. While we were afraid of sharing such an "ugly" version of SA with the testers, it was important to share it as soon as we possibly could so that we can start gathering feedback on it. The "prettying up the PDF" part is happening at the same time and is not really something that we had to rush anyway, so we are happy to finally be in the testing phase.
Regarding the pledge manager, I would like to share with you why it is so late.
Trust me when I say that I wish I could have opened the pledge manager sooner.
So basically, the reason why we have not charged shipping yet (which is why we would open the pledge manager) is that we did not want to do "just a rough estimate" of how much shipping would cost for each of you. In order to calculate shipping properly, we would have to know the total weight of each pledge tier (for example having the book plus the GM screen plus the quickstart box all in one shipping packet) so that we can charge the right amount for shipping.
Since the book is so big, we really needed to wait and see how it would turn out before we can start calculating shipping costs. Opening the pledge manager any earlier felt like it would have been a dishonest move since we did not fully know how heavy each shipping box would be.
Now that we are in the final stages of production, we can safely start calculating these shipping costs and thus prepare the pledge manager to open up for all of you to lock in your orders and addresses.
Printing will come right after the pledge manager closes since that is when we will know how many of each item we would need to print and manufacture.
Gamesquest has been absolutely fantastic with fulfilling Kickstarter projects in the past (and I say this as someone who had experience with them as a backer as well) so I am very certain that they will handle it as fast as they possibly can. Knowing we have a good and well-trusted fulfillment partner is awesome by the way because it takes so much stress off our shoulders.
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Thoughts on Project Fulfillment
I will emphasize once again that delivering a project to backers fast and at good quality is of paramount importance to us and we have been feeling extremely anxious because of how long this whole process has taken. We really do not like having people wait just because there are so many small moving parts here and there.
Adding lots of bits and shiny things to projects can be very profitable for big projects like ours but we found that it is not something we are big fans of. All these small moving parts are just not worth it when our main goal is to deliver something awesome without too much "fluff" around it.
The Kelfecil's Tales team wants to deliver memorable narratives and TTRPG content with substance. The pretty dice, the art prints, and all those other things, while they are indeed awesome, they are not the content we aim to create nor do they amplify it or make it better (or worse). They are pretty but they are just materials that just complement the project and help it make more money. There are plenty of other projects you can spend hundreds of dollars on to get shiny stuff that you might use once or twice and we never felt like adding to that pile. We want to stand out as the creative team that makes awesome content without all the extra fluff.
I love having pretty art prints and pretty dice, but there are more accessible, better, and cheaper (for you) ways to get all of that. We want your attention to be on the actual content and not on what the "ALL-IN" pledge tier has.
Remember how many times I emphasized that I wanted the project to have "playable content" and no extra fancy things? Well, we are getting even more serious about this now.
Our next project is going to be all about that and I will talk more about it in the next update which will be the big reveal!
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As always, thank you so much for being so absolutely awesome. Your support means the world to us and we are still completely baffled by how well Starlight Arcana did, especially considering how not-so-known our team was (and still is honestly).
Thank you, and may Starlight guide your way, my friends.
~Kelf
Bonus Backer Reward - The Astral Sibling Umi, The Moon
over 1 year ago
– Mon, May 29, 2023 at 04:44:04 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Post-Project Update #12 - Quick Update!
over 1 year ago
– Mon, May 29, 2023 at 03:45:10 AM
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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Reminder for Testers
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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The Time of the Pledge Manager is upon us!
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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Moved Timeline
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:
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Late June - Pledge Manager opens
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Late July - Pledge Manager Closes - Printing Starts
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Early September - Fulfillment Starts
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Late October - Starlight Arcana is delivered to you
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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More Content?
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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New Project!?
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
Post-Project Update #11 - Testing Phase + Pledge Manager coming soon!
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Apr 27, 2023 at 08:22:48 AM
Hey astral explorers!
It's been a while and we have great news for you today!
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Development Status + Testing
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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"How do I get involved in testing Kelf?"
If you would like to be involved in the testing of Starlight Arcana, then you need to do the following:
- Join our Discord Channel.
- Post in the #starlight-arcana channel stating that you are interested in being a tester.
- Wait until you are given the "Starlight Council" role.
- Receive the latest test version of the PDF through the dedicated channel for the Starlight Council.
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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"Pledge Manager coming any time soon Kelf?"
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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The Final PDF Delivery
Also very important to note that the FINAL PDF will be delivered soon after the Pledge Manager closes.
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Lore Dump? The SHAR!
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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The Future? Soon...
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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Do you like Comics? We do!
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
Post-Project Update #10 - Updated Project Timeline
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Apr 03, 2023 at 09:13:26 AM
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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Printing & Fulfillment Handling
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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Our Fulfillment Partner
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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Updated Project Timeline
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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Timeline Details
Things we CAN control:
- How fast backers get the final PDF so that they can already start enjoying Starlight Arcana.
- The quality both in terms of content and look for the final PDF and printed book.
- The shipping happens in a manner that does not end up with shipping costs being much more expensive than what was expected.
- Keeping the Pledge Manager open for a full month and sending TONS of notifications to all backers through various channels so that they do not miss their opportunity to lock in their orders and finalize their shipping address.
Things we CANNOT control:
- How long the printing process will take. We trust our printing partner, PrintNinja, will take good care of this but this is very much out of our hands, so we will have to wait as long as needed for printing to fully be completed.
- How long shipping to hubs and then to backers will take. Shipping has been a wild world in the last decade and it continues to fluctuate all the time, so we cannot know if it will indeed take as much time as we think it would (if we were to make an estimate right now).
- Other unexpected circumstances. As you can see, despite health issues, the team taking on more roles/tasks and even a lot of other things, we are doing our best to keep up with the production and our planning and we will always be communicating all of that with you too, so that you know what is going on.
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There will be Major Arcana, but no Minor Arcana...
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:
- The production time for the Minor Arcana is far longer than expected and is interefering with other parts of the project's production.
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.
- The production costs for the Minor Arcana are making us go very far off from what our printing & shipping estimates were like.
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 Minor Arcana would have to be used in some way in Starlight Arcana and that adds even more time needed for developing, writing and testing new mechanics for them.
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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Next update... New projects?
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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Something Awesome
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.
Direct Imgur Link
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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
