Our sci-fi Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arkenforge/the-sci-fi-masters-toolkit
What happens if I already own the toolkit?
You can trade in the new Master’s Toolkit key from this Kickstarter for $5US store credit, or give it to a friend (They will receive the Toolkit + Fantasy Essentials)
Why did we make this decision ?
Many of you have asked this question since we first announced this Kickstarter, so we’d like to give you a little bit of a background info on this.
The reason we started a Kickstarter for these asset packs is because we needed funding to complete this ambitious endeavour in one year, rather than 2 years like Wild/Towns and Cities/Dungeons Deep took, and as with all previous pack pre-orders, we wanted to offer a compelling deal for your trust in us. Software development is getting paid for by our toolkit sales, but expanding the studio was not an option with the current sales.
Running a Kickstarter just for our community is a nice idea, but a large number of our users have jumped on board for our high-quality Fantasy assets. A large number of people have been waiting for Sci Fi content before diving into the Toolkit, and we can’t expect these newcomers to have to make a separate US$35 purchase alongside the Kickstarter. For this reason, we’ve effectively bundled the Toolkit with all pledges as a free extra. We wish that this “I do/don’t have the Toolkit” situation could have been managed through add-on rewards, however Kickstarter doesn’t allow new projects to use them, so we’re constrained by these limitations. We also don’t want to double up every pledge tier with a ‘with/without Toolkit’ option, as that would just add to the confusion of newcomers.
On the economic side, since we are a no-subscription business (and intend to stay that way) we need to sell packs and software to stay afloat. While in the short term, allowing backers to give away the Toolkit for free may hurt our bottom line, we view it at the very least as an infinitely long free trial, and hope that the software makes such a good impression that these new users decide to support us in the future by purchasing our content packs as well.
For those of you who were with us already, we did not forget about you, as we would not be here without your support. We priced the asset packs so it will be well worth your while (in Australian dollars too, so fellow Aussies wont break the bank either), and you would also get a copy of the Toolkit to pass on to someone aspiring to be a DM in your group, or a friend who likes to make maps/write their own adventures. If that is not something you could take advantage of, then you can trade back your toolkit key for a US$5 coupon code for our store, so you can explore some of our third party pack offerings, or get a nice discount on your next purchase.
We hope that you can understand why we feel that this was our best option given the ones available. Thanks to all of you for jumping on board, and for helping us create awesome content 🙂