Post-Project Update #9 - Progress, Quickstart Box and more!
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 11:06:34 AM
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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The bad news...
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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The awesome news! Progress!
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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The Quickstart Box
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).
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Woodland Wizards!
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
Post-Project Update #8 - Aeriath's Lament
almost 2 years ago
– Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 05:30:39 AM
Hey tavern dwellers!
Yesterday's update brought a lot of extremely heartwarming feedback about the Bard Tales album I am preparing and I honestly couldn't go another hour without making more. I felt so inspired to craft something new and continue the story as you and your players will experience it through Starlight Arcana.
I bring to you today; Aeriath's Lament and with it, the grand story behind the Estalar and their dramatic downfall.
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THE SECTION BELOW HAS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STARLIGHT ARCANA.
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The Estalar and Aeriath
The Estalar are scattered and in hiding around the galaxy. They are hiding because they witnessed the hubris of Zas. After the Astral Conflict, they knew they would have to hide as they would be the last remaining non-divine element to help the world from collapsing should there ever be a universal crisis again.
The Estalar set up the beacons on various planets, long before the Astral Conflict. Some of the beacons (the nodes) were put on planets that did not even have life on them yet. They wanted to prepare for the worst as most of them had foreseen Zas losing his mind and trying to destroy everything.
It is not known to anyone other than the Estalar themselves that the Astral Conflict reached Latakar only after destroying Estalaria.
The Astral Conflict began on Estalaria because Zas had learned of what the Estalar were trying to do and feared that they were conspiring with his siblings, Ukko and Umi, to bring his downfall. He did not like the idea of non-divine beings being involved in matters of universal creation.
In his madness, he attacked Estalaria and shattered it into many pieces. Ukko and Umi noticed what he was doing and although they managed to pull him away from Estalaria and more towards Latakar so that they may fight him there, it was already too late and Estalaria was in pieces.
Umi went back to the shattered planet after the Astral Conflict and the banishment of her brother Zas. She tried to piece together Estalaria and bonded it with moonsteel, an extremely rare metal that is found only in the core of her star that, together with her brother's star, is in the middle of the known galaxy.
The planet was of course nothing more but a ghost of its past self and the few Estalar that survived the catastrophe were all too afraid to remain there. A lot of the Estalar resented the Astral Siblings after all of this because despite their warnings, Ukko and Umi were unprepared for what had happened and their disbelief is what allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place.
The Estalar scattered to various parts of the galaxy and disguised themselves so that they may not be recognized. Slowly but surely, their offspring, the Half-Estalar, started appearing around the galaxy and despite their efforts to hide, the Estalar were, and still are, unable to hide their sons and daughters too.
Most of the Estalar led peaceful lives in hiding while there are a few that continued the noble and holy work their ancestors once did, helping the Astral Siblings keep the galaxy safe.
One of those helpful Estalar is the one that the adventurers see in visions accessed through the nodes around the galaxy. She is the one trying to guide the players through the nodes and deliver the message of how they can cleanse the planets and fight back the void corruption.
There were other more resentful Estalar though, ones that were driven by madness after having suffered so much loss. Those Estalar turned hostile and some of them actually either disguised themselves and started causing chaos in the galaxy or tried to find ways to fight the Astral Siblings in more subtle ways.
One of those mad Estalar was Aeriath. Aeriath however, was touched by the Void, for he was so already determined to make the world feel the pain he once felt.
The Void saw all of this in Aeriath and because of all of that, it was easy to bring him to Zas's side without Aeriath himself even realizing it.
The Void empowered him and strengthened his will and determination.
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Aeriath's Lament
(Lyrics in the description of the song on Soundcloud)
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Narrative Design Notes
The story of Starlight Arcana is to end with Aeriath's fall, but not the cleansing of the Void. The main twist of the whole thing is that the players slowly realize how Aeriath is behind the corruption of the nodes (because he knew where they are)
But also slowly realizing that the void is more than just Aeriath himself. The final reveal would be after he is defeated, where the players would realize that the Void is not fully cleansed and that this is a fight that will last a lot longer than they thought it would.
Aeriath was or became a bard soon after the Astral Conflict (the fight between the Astral Siblings that led to Zas being defeated and then banished by his younger siblings). The Bard Tales album is actually various stories of Starlight Arcana told through the perspective of Aeriath himself and it is only apparent to players (if played to players) later on in the campaign as they understand more of the grand narrative behind everything that they are doing.
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I hope you enjoyed today's update and I cannot wait to bring you more again soon!
In the next few updates, we'll explore:
- Starlight Tarot designs
- More Monster artwork
- Some Starlight spell descriptions
- Some planet lore
- and more!
So stay tuned and prep your light globes as we take to the stars one update at a time!
Till next time... may Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #7 - Bard Update, New Website and more!
almost 2 years ago
– Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 01:15:28 PM
Hey voidwalkers!
I wanted to give you a quick update on what's going on, so here I am with some much-needed hype on a very cold February day (at least here it's super cold...).
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Book Progress
On schedule.
I am pretty sure we are going to have to push the printing date by one or two months just to make up for proper testing and feedback implementation as well as to give people a bit more time on the pledge manager, but even with that, we are very much on time when it comes to production.
I did say from the very beginning of the project that most of the work on the book was done and I want to talk about this one more time actually. The idea was always to bring something to the platform here on Kickstarter that would be already well on its way to being finalized and the backers would help us fund its production and also add a whole bunch of extra stuff.
The extra stuff is what is adding more time and I cannot even be mad about it honestly because although we did not expect it to do so well, we have been having an absolute blast with producing all of the extra material that is going into the book. Extra planets, extra spells, extra monsters, more adventures to go on and so much more.
So, yeah, what I am basically saying is that you lovely backers are to blame for us having to take a bit longer with the production but it's a VERY positive delay to have. Thank you so much for that!
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Bard Tales Album
Remember that last stretch goal? The one where I said I would create a whole album of songs with lyrics sung by a bard that tells the tales of Starlight Arcana's campaign?
Yeah, that one.
Well, I have been having an absolute blast writing some songs here and there while taking breaks from doing Starlight Arcana stuff and it is coming along real nice. I actually have a bit of work-in-progress to share with you today.
SPOILER WARNING: This song is sung by the big baddy of the campaign, so if you are a player and want to avoid some light spoilers, I would suggest trying not to focus on the lyrics (yeah, I know that is not easy as Telamont mentioned as well during our discord chat about it, but best you can do is try!)
(This is a very rough recording. The final will be edited much better as I brush up on my audio editing skills from ye olde professional musician days...)
SPOILER EXPLANATION: There are nodes all across the Sea of Stars, on most planets. Those nodes have allowed the Estalar to leave messages and more importantly also communicate with people that are very far away. Throughout the campaign, the players will have to cleanse those nodes of the corruption that has taken them and decrypt the message that an ancient Estalar has left for the mortals there.
One of those nodes will be a surprise... instead of the usual friendly face, the adventurers will hear Aeriath himself, the person who is instrumental in the evil that has befallen the galaxy.
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I have written 3 more songs and there are 5 more to come, for a total of 9 to 10 (depending on how many I will feel like making before we get to printing the book). Some can be used as part of the campaign itself while others are just tavern-style songs for you to play during your downtime.
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New Website!
I mentioned a new website a few times already and the first half of that is ready! The archives are out!
We have launched the Starlight Chronicles Archives in BETA and have started populating it with all of the Kelfecil's Tales releases and new monsters!
We really needed a new website so that both patrons and new visitors can easily filter through the content and find whatever they are looking for. The main functionality that the website is currently missing is a private view for Patrons only so that they can access stat block images directly on the website without having to download them every time in order to see them.
I have taken it upon myself to commission a lot of different artists for a lot of the fantastic creatures that will populate the Starlight Chronicles setting, each with their own unique artwork and stat blocks. I honestly cannot wait to show you all of the stuff we have waiting to be uploaded!
Next up, we are busy making the new interactive map for the setting that will allow Patrons to explore all of the different places of each planet (starting with Latakar), the cities, factions, and more lore-related stuff. An easy-to-use interface is the goal for this and we hope to make something as awesome as the archives in the next couple of months.
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That's all for today!
The weeks after the whole OGL fiasco have been difficult since I personally had to do a lot of reorganizing and making sure everything is back on track. We have so many things going on at the same time and it's important to make sure that everything is made properly and in the highest quality possible.
If you would like to hear my thoughts on the OGL and the aftermath of it all, you can either watch the VIDEO UPDATE I posted on Patreon or just read the text below it.
Be it it's prepping new adventures, working on the production of Starlight Arcana, making a new website, posting new content on marketplaces, commissioning new artists, signing contracts to make sure everyone is getting paid, starting a new AWESOME INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT WITH MONSTERS, or preparing for the next Kickstarter... I am always busy with something and it's always fun, but it is actually hard work (especially the creative stuff, since you cannot push that), so I try my best to take breaks and relax whenever I can.
I just want to say I am super stoked to still be working on Starlight Arcana and I honestly cannot wait to send you the PDF once it's ready so that you can start enjoying it as well!
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...wait what? New Kickstarter? Well... you'll have to wait a couple of months for the announcement on this one! ^^
The plan is to deliver the Starlight Arcana PDF before we even go into another Kickstarter project, be it big or small. Printing and fulfillment will be out of our hands, so as soon as we have at least sent out the PDF to all of you and sent it for printing as well, then we will have done our part and we can confidently launch another project.
Delivering things to people before promising more is extremely important in how we do things and we would not even dare promise more before we have delivered the previous things.
Till next time...
May Starlight guide your way my friends!
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #6 - Celebrating with a FREE Adventure!
almost 2 years ago
– Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:47:29 AM
Hey travelers of the vast Sea of Stars!
In case you didn't hear or read about it, the whole OGL situation has come to a very pleasant conclusion with Wizards of the Coast leaving the OGL v1.0a untouched!
We are, as you can imagine, extremely happy to hear that and that was our (somewhat feeble yet still existing) hope the whole time so that we can continue to do what we love to do without having to rely on other licenses, companies, creators, entities or anything else for that matter. We just want to tell our own stories and since we have been building them with the 5E system for 2 years now, it would require us to put in so much work in order to be able to continue in any other way.
So, with that behind us, I am here to let you know that you will be seeing a lot more Kickstarter updates as we move forward in 2023. But first, let's celebrate, WITH A FREE ADVENTURE!
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Celebrating OGL v1.0a staying in place with FREE content!
This is an adventure that I designed a couple of months ago and Arthur de Martino brought to life with his writing and we just wanted to put it out there for free as a thank you for all your heartwarming support over the last month. It was an extremely difficult time for creators to be seeing that they need to change how they do things entirely and it would have been impossible to hold on to our dear sanity if it wasn't for all of your amazing love and support!
LINK - KELFECIL'S TALES - CRAB BOOBY TRAP
Follow the link to get your free adventure!
A huge thank you to our collaborators for agreeing to put this out for free for the purpose of celebrating the outcome of the OGL situation!
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One of the first things I want to do this week is record all of my thoughts about last month and generally begin recording more episodes for YouTube as well as we move forward into all the awesome things that we are preparing for Kelfecil's Tales.
February 2023 is the month when we finally launch our website with all of the good stuff that we've been working on for almost half a year now!
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Starlight Arcana Progress Update
Writing progress - about 80%; there's still some things that we need to finalize before we can start sending copies in early March for testing.
PDF design progress - about done; the amazing Ori has put together some really good stuff and the PDF is slowly being made as the writing is finished, edited and sent over to be put into the final document.
Tarot design progress - about done; there are about 4 more major arcana cards to be designed before we move on to the minor arcana which will take much less time to make (since we are keeping it simple, as we explained in previous updates).
Artwork progress - 100%; all artwork for the book is done! I sort of cannot believe I am even saying this, but it certainly does feel good to be able to do so!
Special Commissions progress - 0%; commissions are bound to start as soon as Dusky is done designing all the Tarot cards so commission-tier backers that haven't sent their request details yet still have a bit of time. This is something that we will take slowly and complete one by one so that everyone receives something they will be happy with!
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The plan ahead
- Send PDF to testers in early March if possible.
- Open the Pledge Manager from March till May.
- Send the "final" PDF sometime in May.
- Send in final print files for everything to our printing partner start of June.
After that point things will be out of our hands and in the hands of our printing and fulfillment partners. We will be updating you as often as possible with everything new that comes up, but it's basically up to our partners to deliver the awesome chonky books to you!
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Thank you once again for all your messages and if you have any questions about the project, please do not hesitate to leave a comment or even message me directly via PMs.
Once again, we have a fantastic Discord community where we talk about ALL sorts of things so you are all welcome to join us there if you'd like to chat with us or just lurk and watch out for fun stuff.
See you in the next update and till then...
May Starlight guide your way my friends,
~Kelf
Post-Project Update #5 - It's final. The book is 5E.
almost 2 years ago
– Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 09:26:56 AM
Hey everyone,
I am sure that a lot of you have already read through the recently released new OGL draft by WotC and you saw for yourself that although it is better than the original extremely bad stuff that was leaked, the new OGL is still super bad, manipulative and borderline scammy.
However, on the bright side, there have been enough posts, comments, and statements by WotC that allow us to be confident enough to make Starlight Arcana using the original OGL v1.0a and not worry too much about what this greedy and totally all-over-the-place company will do next.
So with that being said, I am here to tell you that; we are making Starlight Arcana using the 5E system as was originally planned. This means that we will be using OGL v1.0a in order to make the book we wanted to originally make.
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Note on how we use the OGL:The way Starlight Arcana makes use of OGL v1.0a is by mostly making use of the system and the way monster stats are presented. We do not use more than one or two things from the SRD itself as most of the book is original content that was made from scratch for this project. We are still referencing the 5E system in order to explain skill checks, the difficulty for various quests and chapters in the story, monster stats, and combat in general.
This comment alone, in my eyes at least, shows that they are finally, even if slowly, starting to admit that they cannot pull back the OGL v1.0a. Even if it is in the document, all of their feedback on that new draft will literally say exactly that; that they CANNOT do that.
Nonetheless, Starlight Arcana is as good as published at this point and we have enough proof that shows it is a project that was published well before any of this new-OGL fiasco stuff came around.
It is very sad to see that people need to go to the lengths they have before a company like WotC even starts admitting things and changing things for the better. The worst part is that we are not even halfway there since the new OGL is still absolutely horrible.
I am personally starting to believe more and more every day that their revoking the first OGL v1.0a is basically something they simply cannot do and I remain hopeful that they will not completely ruin what the TTRPG industry had going for it while the OGL v1.0a was around.
WotC has lost all of our trust at this point and every new message just comes off as more manipulative than the last. They will have to go do amazing things in order to gain our trust again but for now, a good start would be completely shutting down the whole "new OGL" thing and just letting the other one exist as it is.
Will that happen? No, I do not believe so, but what matters to us is that we make Starlight Arcana and then move forward as we best can for future projects. With or without WotC's system.
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Last update and confusion
With the last update, we tried to provide some clarity and transparency on how Kelfecil's Tales and the Starlight Arcana team can deal with the upcoming changes to the OGL.
I would like to clarify that the last update was NOT a statement on how we will proceed but rather a post to inform you how we MIGHT proceed in the future. Considering the fact that, even now, we do not have a fully official new OGL or any 100% legally binding information on how the new OGL is going to work, we only wanted to tell you how we perceived what is happening and how we have already found ways to pivot away from this mess should it come to the point where we need to protect our work and our rights with them.
Starlight Arcana was MARKETED, LAUNCHED ON KS, AND FUNDED AS A 5E PROJECT. For that reason, it has always been our goal to try and make it exactly that. The last update was meant to detail how absolutely shitty certain new developments were and how they might end up pushing us to the point of having to do something that is not what we initially promised just so that we can protect our hard work.
We do NOT want to advertise a new system. We never even wanted to make a new system. We just want to tell our stories and create memorable experiences for you and your friends while playing TTRPGs. We are working with the 5E system because it was the most popular and easiest-to-work-with system when it comes to creating content for a large audience.
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Thank you for taking the time to read through these not-so-exciting updates and I promise you that there will be cool updates with more sneak peeks and more starlit things in the near future.
Thank you for your patience, your understanding and most of all your support as we try to navigate the waters of these unexpectedly difficult times. Your comments and messages have really touched our hearts and the overwhelming support we had from people telling us that they would support us even if we do not make SA as 5E was just stunning. Thank you so much for your kindness and we hope to be able to pay back that kindness by delivering to you a lot of awesome stories, memorable experiences, and lots of warm feelings with our projects.
May Starlight guide your way my friends,
~Kelf
