Welcome to CHARMS WEEK! I'll have backers-only draft manuscript downloads coming three times this week, each with a lot of fun Charms for your Alchemical Exalt.
Before I get into the technical bits, let me just celebrate our amazing weekend!
Two more Stretch Goals unlocked, both expanding our Alchemicals Companion PDF supplement, which will be automatically added as a bonus reward to all backers receiving the Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God PDF as one of their pledge rewards.
[ACHIEVED] At $85,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION: God-Machinery of Exalted Power -A panoply of Alchemical Charms and submodule upgrades, as well as Light-Sharpening Blade style, a martial art that makes use of beamklaves.
[ACHIEVED] At $95,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION: The Ever-Spreading Blight -Quick Character traits for Apostates, those Alchemicals corrupted by Autochthon’s Blight, and the lesser gremlins that stalk the Realm of Brass and Shadows.
OK, let's get to some CHARMS!
Optical Shroud
This week, our first section of Charms contains rules about how the Alchemical charms work, the list of Universal Charms and the Charms for Appearance, Charisma, and Dexterity. We'll have another section coming to you on Wednesday and Friday!
Draft Manuscript Previews
Over the course of the campaign, backers will receive the entire current draft manuscript for Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God, but it's not going to come to you all in one go. The previews will come out in bite-sized sections throughout the campaign. This helps me seem interesting over these 28 days, but it's more about guiding the conversation and helping steer feedback for the developers.
Because they want your feedback! These manuscript previews are of the current draft manuscript – the document in its latest, approved form. This may not be the final form after editing and any additional development, but you can consider it about 95% finished, so keep that in mind.
In fact, you can help guide the team through the next stages of development by providing feedback on these manuscript previews! The Onyx Path team has set up a special Feedback Form just for campaign backers for this very purpose: https://forms.gle/TNemGoMirkKR4h8U6
You can use this Feedback Form to share your thoughts directly with the Exalted creative team to help guide them through the next rounds of development and editing.
And one other quick reminder before we get to the backers-only section.
Shipping Costs will be Collected in the Pledge Manager
First up, it's amazingly expensive to ship, especially from Onyx Path's home base in the US. And that's as of today - we're all in the dark about how things will look in 2 years. We get that, but there's not much we can do at this time. Onyx Path is in a difficult space where the company is big enough that they're not saving money by fulfilling out of Rich's garage, but small enough that they haven't been able to set up ongoing international partners to handle portions of the fulfillment. So we are where we are - for now.
The best we can do at this point is to plan carefully, advise everyone up front that international shipping will likely be expensive (see our projections on the main page) and only charge what it costs us when the time comes. We’ll be charging for shipping in the Pledge Manager once the books are being printed and we can deal with the actual shipping charges rather than using our best-guesses this far out. If you live outside the US and aren't sure you want the hardcover or other physical items, you can pledge to the PDF tier now and upgrade your pledge in the Pledge Manager once we know the final shipping costs.
DRAFT MANUSCRIPT PREVIEWS - BACKERS ONLY
Remember, thanks to BackerKit magic, these download links are visible to Backers only - you must be logged in and reading this on the website to have access to the manuscript preview links. So, if you're reading this via e-mail, click that "Learn More" button on the bottom and I'll see you below this title treatment.
