3PP Release (3rd Party Book Release) Paranormal Power: A Psionics Option for 5e and A5e, written by Steampunkette!

[dave2008]

I have been asked, and the answer is yes: All of the artwork in this book is AI Generated.

I walked into writing this book with a budget of $0 and am currently at -$35 dollars (I spent a tiny bit of money on advertising). All of the artwork is provided by the Midjourney AI. The Fonts and Backgrounds are free-use with credit to their creators, as well. Specifically Swordmeow, the artist of the page backgrounds and watercolors themselves, and Jason Ondricek, who maintains the online archive that provided their access.

Ultimately there are several reasons I chose to use AI artwork.

1) Broke. I literally had no money to put towards art and no skill with creating artworks.

2) Very Specific Ideas. Yes, there are free art packs out there in the world, and public domain works are abundant. None of them matched my ideal, my hopes, my specific mental image of what these things should look like. Selfish, for sure, but at least I'm honest about it.

3) I was woefully unaware of the unethical nature of most dataset collections for AI art. Whether through innocent lack of exposure or avoiding it subconsciously I didn't know until late in the process that AI art often scraped digital imagery directly. Even to the point of copying signatures and watermarks.

I would 100% understand and agree with anyone who refused to pay money for this product on that basis, alone. That is a healthy moral stance to take. I get it. And have chosen to continue to produce this product. Aware of the ethical mire I am in, and the divisive nature of my choice, I accept any repercussion thereof.

Maybe you can offer some stretch goals to replace some or all of the art with commissioned art?

 

[dave2008]

@Steampunkette, do you have a price for the PDF yet? I personally despise psionics, but I can always use new and interesting monsters and I would like to support your work.

 

[Steampunkette]

Maybe you can offer some stretch goals to replace some or all of the art with commissioned art?

Once more: What money comes out of this is probably going to go to paying off bills like car payments, electric, home loan, medical expenses, etc. I don't anticipate pulling down thousands upon thousands of dollars, here, that I'll be able to get fully above water and employ other people.

I've currently got about 40 people who have clicked the "Follow" button on this thing... and if we can get another 10 to purchase beyond that, we'll hit my $500 goal. Of which I'll get a little over $300. That'd be "pay for my prescriptions for two months" money. Or "Half the cost of Gas for the month".

@Steampunkette, do you have a price for the PDF yet? I personally despise psionics, but I can always use new and interesting monsters and I would like to support your work.

$20 for the PDF from the Kickstarter. Once it hits DTRPG after the kickstarter it'll creep up to $25 'cause DTRPG takes a 35% cut.

 

[Scribe]

The sample pages look fantastic.

 

[Steampunkette]

The sample pages look fantastic.

I can, with pride, say that they are a largely representative sample. There are pages with no images, small images, big images, or full page images...

And all kinda text except the full page arts, of course.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Shared in my various (albeit small) non-ENWorld communities

 

[Waller]

Once more: What money comes out of this is probably going to go to paying off bills like car payments, electric, home loan, medical expenses, etc. I don't anticipate pulling down thousands upon thousands of dollars, here, that I'll be able to get fully above water and employ other people.

But that's the point of stretch goals. You use them to pay for the things you can't afford unless the project kicks off.

Be careful what you say on the Kickstarter page. They're pretty strict about projects raising funds for something other than the project itself. If you're raising funds to pay bills rather than produce the product, they'll take the project down if they get wind of it. It's against their ToC. I've seen projects get taken down. Best keep that quiet!

(you can include paying yourself as a project expense though)

 

[DiamondB]

 

[Steampunkette]

But that's the point of stretch goals. You use them to pay for the things you can't afford unless the project kicks off.

Be careful what you say on the Kickstarter page. They're pretty strict about projects raising funds for something other than the project itself. If you're raising funds to pay bills rather than produce the product, they'll take the project down if they get wind of it. It's against their ToC. I've seen projects get taken down. Best keep that quiet!

(you can include paying yourself as a project expense though)

I mean... the kickstarter is for the book. I'm just going to use the proceeds for my bills because, y'know, earnings. It's not a fundraiser and I make no mention of this in the Kickstarter or anything.

As far as stretch goals... I don't know where I'd put "Get new art" at. To put it into context:

There are 40 pieces of full color art in the book. If I did $100 per piece, which is really -really- low cost, we'd need to get $4,400 that would go directly to artists without a penny going to my pocket or Josh Gentry's. For me to get the aforementioned $300 for pulling in $500, would be a $5,000. I don't anticipate this thing pulling in $5,000. And I would like to earn more than $0.01 per word... if possible.

But. I'll go ahead and do stretch goals in the $5-10k range to replace individual pieces of art until it is all replaced. I just don't expect to hit them by a wide margin.

Or, rather than -replace-, create a separate art-pack as an add-on for anyone who buys a copy. I think that would make more sense.

 

[Steampunkette]

Added the following to the Kickstarter Page for launch:

Stretch Goals!
By far the most important, and requested, stretch goal is to replace, or compliment, all of the AI Art in this book. So that's what we're going to do.

• $2,500 Unlocks a full color cover-art commission.
• $3,500 Unlocks the Nedraz as a full color commission.
• $4,500 Unlocks the Imaginary Friend as a full color commission.
• $5,000 Unlocks the 7 Archetype Images as B&W commission.

For every $1,000 beyond that, we'll select another piece of art to commission until all 40 images in the book, cover to cover, have a version drawn by an artist in the community.

And if we hit the $35,000 mark, we'll issue a second version of the book using exclusively hand-drawn art, and make the AI Art into a pack.

All such art will be bundled for distribution through DriveThruRPG.com once completed, but may take several months to finalize, depending on artist availability. The book as it stands, however, will be delivered as soon as the funds clear from the Kickstarter!