Pig people you say?
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 01:18:59 AM
So a little secret... most "stretch goals" on Kickstarters aren't true stretch goals. Because of the work necessary to create new content, most Kickstarters either planed on doing them already and simply add them as a stretch goal. In fact, many times they are simply added to the project afterward, even if the stretch goal isn't meet.
We ourselves initially played with that idea and were going to have a stretch goal of different dragon types unlock until all 40 were unlocked, but then we thought that would be unfair to those who ordered the Dragon book, so we just unlocked all of them from the start.
Hence, we are trying to do TRUE stretch goals, items we might not have done at all without hitting certain goals.
For example, these new Ancestries... we aren't fooling around with these new ancestries, I was talking to Mark last night and he called them MEGA ANCESTIRES. I'm not sure if you noticed but some ancestries in Pathfinder are 6 pages long, while others are 8 pages. That is due to the page count limit when Paizo creates a book, so SOMETIMES they need to make an ancestry a little shorter than a "standard" ancestry (which is usually 8 pages). What that means is that sometimes they need to remove some of the higher level Feats and reduce the word count a bit to make them fit into the book. So times you get a "standard" ancestry, while other times you get a "shorter" ancestry.
We, on the other hand, when we add a new ancestry, we aren't fooling around. An average ancestry you would find in a Paizo product is around 4k words, 5k at most (which translates to 6-8 pages).
Our new g'mayun ancestry, which Mark wrote, is 6185 words, which might not seem like much, but it's a BIG difference. We are looking at approximately TEN pages for our new ancestries (not including Dragons, that is a whole other story), which is why we are calling them MEGA ANCESTRIES. We have no page count limit so I am allowing my authors to write as much as they need, and they are writing! So when you get a new ancestry... you will get a MEGA ANCESTRY!
Plus, making them "true" ancestries affects the Jewel adventure path in other ways. For example, now that the Orpok will have a complete ancestry developed, we can add them as NPCs more easily, we can add them to the history of the islands, flesh out their history and culture, and make them a living, breathing part of the world. Oh yeah, and we'll additional artwork, A LOT more artwork.
So even if you don't expect to use them as an ancestry option in your game, having a new ancestry affects the overall project in more ways than you might expect. A few weeks ago the Orpok didn't even exist, but after Patrick proposed them, I thought they were so cool that we should add them as a potential ancestry. And now not only will be they an option for players to use in their game, but the Orpok are getting an entire town in the next adventure!
So keep unlocking those new ancestries to keep expanding the world of Alacar. Oh yeah, and I literally JUST got this finished artwork while I was typing this, an Orpok Fighter! Enjoy!
