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Kickstarter happening now:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zengaian/evolutionary-foundations/
Written by the co-author of Starjammer: Core Rules (4.5/5 stars Endzeitgeist) Kirby Flake and illustrated by Misty Spiller Flake. This is a 200+ page Pathfinder 2E rulebook that includes content from the Pathfinder® Second Edition Core Rulebook and Pathfinder® Second Edition Bestiary. It presents existing and new options in tables and summarizes information in an easy to understand way while still referencing the original sources.
Additional it adds:
- Heritages - At least one new Heritage for each of the Core Ancestries, more Half Heritages, plus more surprises.
- Backgrounds - Backgrounds table and 5 new Backgrounds.
- Classes - For each of the Core Classes: a detailed level progression table, a table for all class feats, and a new "Sub-classes" including Neutral Champions.
- Skills - Tables for all skills plus new optional skill.
- Feats - Tables for all feats plus new feats.
- Equipment - New armor & weapons.
- Magic - Spell tables, new spells, new focus spells, new rituals and new magic items.
- New rules - Alignment system for changing alignments plus more
Everyone please come back our project!
Thanks,
Kirby Flake
Zen Gaian Games
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I wish you all the best, but I'll admit, the visuals don't have an inspiring first impression. The sample page is very difficult to read, while the sample "Hat Rack" image isn't really legible at all. I might suggest another pass on things like that and the cover, as it's probably losing you a lot of backers who would otherwise be charmed by your mechanics!
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Yeah... the art there is pretty bad. Honestly, I think that the "class hat rack" does you more harm than good being there. I apologize, because it's clear that someone put some effort in on that thing, but if that's the quality of illustrations in the book, you might be better served to not have illustrations.
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Kickstarter page updated with more details & a screenshot.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zengaian/evolutionary-foundations/
Please come back our project.
Thanks,
Kirby Flake
Zen Gaian Games
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The screenshots on your kickstarter page are so tiny as to be unreadable, and I don't even know what they're supposed to represent. Are you reproducing the class progression tables from the CRB? Why waste space on that?
The complete lack of information on what anything being added in here DOES is also not very confidence inspiring. You're adding a new "priest" cleric "subclass"... What does it do? What's the theme? Is it a class archetype? A doctrine?
Also, as much as I hate to say it... The art really is kind of not great. It reminds me of Ringo Starr.
Simply put, this page tells me nothing about what is actually inside your book. you're just naming names without providing a single detail about what your book is actually providing.
Also I think this is in the wrong forum section.
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Yeah, sorry, I can't back this project in its current state for all the reasons listed by others. Not enough details on what it offers, screenshots are really small, and the art shown so far is, I'm sorry, actively making me want to run away. Similarly, for the cover I would never guess it's for an RPG book. Maybe an abstract college textbook? Not sure.
I get it, not everyone is an artist, or can pay for good art. Hell, maybe that's something that the kickstarter could help raise funds to solve. Unfortunately, at this point you're in a situation where no art is better than what is current available to you.
All the "subclass" in quotes strikes me as odd as well. I'm not sure what the quotes are for, especially when you say the Sorcerer has new bloodlines. So are the others not just druidic orders, barbarian instincts, etc?
I hope you come back another time with reworked details.
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My artist has formal art training and has sold her art professional. She has illustrated exactly what I requested, especially for original ancestries/heritages that are only in this book. The art in the book is consistent, not hodge-podge of different styles. You cannot see that from just two examples, so buy the book and you will see.
I have been designing rules and writing a long time. I originally wrote, just new subclass, because I did want to reveal everything all at once; hence now it says <To Be Revealed>. I will continue to Reveal more the campaign progresses.
Did you like the Transgenetic race in Starjammer Core Rules? The FTL system (1 to 30) and all those calculations? All my design. And there as a lot of collaboration with Peter Ullmann as well.
The level progression chart allows you to easily see all of your classes stats at any level. There are many other tables that you quickly find the info without having to flip pages.
So give it a chance before you say no.
Thanks,
Kirby Flake
Zen Gaian Games
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Okay, that's completely fair. People shouldn't judge a book by its cover, etc. etc. However, this is a Kickstarter you're proposing. The whole point for doing a KS is to try and sell your idea to the would-be consumers directly in order to gain funding.
Showing your audience 2 pieces of art that are, in my opinion, not that great, and 2 two=page spread examples that are too low of a resolution to discern any detail at all doesn't help sell your idea. Nor does the cover mock-up looking like something one would make in Paint.
Having prior experience is great! And hiring a professional artist is, as well, great! But the examples you've provided for both aren't doing your KS any favors, and it might be good to at least consider replacing them with examples that will be more representative of the final product. Be that different art, spreads that we can actually read, or both.
No offense is meant by what we're trying to say. I personally want every single PF2E-related Kickstarter to succeed by leaps and bounds. But I can't see myself giving my money towards this project the way it is made right now, sorry to say.
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My artist has formal art training and has sold her art professional. She has illustrated exactly what I requested, especially for original ancestries/heritages that are only in this book. The art in the book is consistent, not hodge-podge of different styles. You cannot see that from just two examples, so buy the book and you will see.
For what it's worth, potentially having a 'hodge-podge" of different styles is not the criticism here. It's that the style on display is, unfortunately, not very appealing. I'm glad you're happy with it, but we're trying, and admittedly struggling, to find the best ways to tell you that we don't think that's the case for enough potential customers. If you want more specifics than that, they can be given on request.
I have been designing rules and writing a long time. I originally wrote, just new subclass, because I did want to reveal everything all at once; hence now it says <To Be Revealed>. I will continue to Reveal more the campaign progresses.
Great, glad you have experience in designing rules. I still don't really know enough about the options presented in this Kickstarter. The priest doctrine might be cool for the Cleric, but I have no idea what it might be about.
Did you like the Transgenetic race in Starjammer Core Rules? The FTL system (1 to 30) and all those calculations? All my design. And there as a lot of collaboration with Peter Ullmann as well.
That's cool that you worked on those. I have played none of those, and don't know who Peter Ullmann is. In general, worth assuming that's the type of person you're selling to for this kind of thing.
The level progression chart allows you to easily see all of your classes stats at any level. There are many other tables that you quickly find the info without having to flip pages.
Also cool. As mentioned previously, the images are small enough that we can't read them.
So give it a chance before you say no.
Thanks,
Kirby Flake
Zen Gaian Games
The general feedback you are being given is that we don't know what to give a chance to, and the little we are seeing doesn't inspire enough confidence, sorry.
As I said in my previous post, hope you can take this feedback and come back. Always nice to see more successful PF2e content.
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I've also not heard of anything else you've worked on, and a quick google tells me Peter Ullman worked on Exalted in 2010 and... not much else? Again, if you want people to give you money for a product, you have to tell them what the product is.
I see that you've updated the "priest sub-class" to say "between cloister and war". This implies to me it may be a doctrine, but I'm not sure; further, the doctrines are already so clunkily designed that this still doesn't give me any idea as to what that could mean.
If you're going to "reveal more over the campaign", you should probably act fast - you've got 8 days and are barely a third funded.
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You cannot see that from just two examples, so buy the book and you will see.
Even if I hadn’t seen the art, this statement alone would be a hard NOPE for me.
I say this sincerely as criticism, with no ill will towards you or your artist, but you are not our friend trying to get us to check out this thing you think is cool.
You are a complete stranger asking us to give you our money for your product and being for all intents and purposes vague with what you are willing to share about said project.
“Just throw your money at it and find out after if you like it” is not a valid sales tactic nor hype machine.
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All classes Revealed subclasses. I redid the Wizard pages screenshot to make more be readable. Please give it a chance.
Thanks,
Kirby Flake
Zen Gaian Games
I see the Wizard page got updated with colors, which is not what we're talking about. The actual image resolutions of the screenshots are simply too small to read any of the text.
Downloaded both images, they're both 640 x 440. Zooming in even on my 1080p monitor makes the text too blurry to discern any information from the images. The low dpi (dots per inch) of the screenshots don't help, either.
You simply need to upload larger resolution images for the Kickstarter. At least twice, if not three times the size of the images up right now.
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Well, it suddenly jumped $200 within the final day and got funded. Congrats.
Though that first stretch goal wasn't there last time I looked at it. $1 above the main funding goal? Isn't that just part of the main campaign at that point? That feels like weird artificial marketing hype that skeeves me out a bit. Seems like a lot of new additional work too.
So either the person running this campaign was already secretly working on those, but held them back in an extremely transparent attempt at hype marketing, or they're creating more work for themselves at the last minute. Both are designer red flags.
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Yeah, I think I can very safely say that I have absolutely no trust in this guy as a developer if he won't answer questions and didn't even need funding in the first place.
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Why did it take you the full length of a kickstarter to even write the names of what's included in the book? Why have you still not included legible miages for your funding page, which per your ow nwords also only shows reproduced material from the CRB? Why was your "stretch goal" only added on the final day and was 1 dollar above your funding goal?
Why did you spend the entire duration of your kickstarter refusing to answer basic questions about your book?
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Why did it take you the full length of a kickstarter to even write the names of what's included in the book?
Did not want to reveal too much. I looked on other Kickstarters and they revealed far less than I did.
Why have you still not included legible miages for your funding page, which per your ow nwords also only shows reproduced material from the CRB?
Same stats represented differently, tracking the proficiencies, so you just have look at it.
Why was your "stretch goal" only added on the final day and was 1 dollar above your funding goal?
More like 3 or 4 days before. Adjusting things to try and get more pledges.
Why did you spend the entire duration of your kickstarter refusing to answer basic questions about your book?
Only of these one questions is about the content. Please ask me questions about rules from the book.
Thanks,
Kirby
Zen Gaian Games
P.S. This is not my first book, but it was my first Kickstarter.
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"Did not want to reveal too much"
You revealed nothing at all.
Putting 1 and 2 together, this KS was more or less a smokescreen to pad a resume.
"More like 3 or 4 days before. Adjusting things to try and get more pledges."
A $1 dollar whole new tier packed with content is NOT how you do that, either you were sitting on it or you just upended a whole heap of Crunch on your writers and you don't know how to plan.
"Only of these one questions is about the content. Please ask me questions about rules from the book."
No, this was a KS YOU were running and expecting money from people for, us asking questions about it is perfectly valid. You refusing to engage is a major faux pas, not an assumed normal you think it is. Granted you obviously didn't need other's money to begin with as this showed.
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The fact that the thing funded at the $1,100 level, with 13 backers, and no pledge level above 60? Also pretty sketchy. Like, the marked pledges account for $440... so who wound up ponying up $660 without additional reward just to pour more money into the kickstarter?