Important Blackoath news and the future of this Patreon

So I've been dreading writing this post for a while now... And since there's no better way to do it, I'll just jump into it: I sold the Disciples of Bone & Shadow and Seekers Beyond the Shroud IPs to Exalted Funeral. This means that all my work, published and to be published, all the assets, contracts for the game to be published in other language, etc. now belong fully to EF. The main implication of this is that I can no longer create stuff for it and release it myself (unless EF decide to hire me as a writer). Which logically means that I'll not be able to continue producing material for these two games here on this Patreon. 

So you might be asking yourself: "why the hell did he do that?"; the official version is that I'm burned out and need a change, and that the games have grown to a point were I can no longer handle them by myself alone. This is partially true; I've been working several hours daily on these two games for almost 3 years now, non stop. But this wouldn't be enough for me to decide to sell my babies, I fucking love these two games and they're finally reaching the point were I can feel proud of what I've created. No, the actual reason, as some of you already know and others might have figured out by reading my discontent between the lines, is that Exalted Funeral clearly has bigger fish to fry, and my work has been relegated to second or third tier category. Don't get me wrong, I will always be grateful to Matt and the rest of the EF crew for what they've done for me, I wouldn't be where I am without them. But we've reached a point where things were getting quite bad for me and it was all becoming a huge source of stress. To name a few:

- Having to constantly beg and chase them to be paid the royalties I'm owned. Not only do they always pay me with months of delay, they keep switching up the payment dates and I feel like I'm being played with.

- Having no sales reports whatsoever; I never have a clue of how many copies we sell.

- Ignoring all my requests for a better management of the games on DTRPG; I've lost count of the number of times I've asked them to leave the Basic edition of Disciples as a free product, but it still has a price tag. People kept asking me about DTRPG-related stuff, and all I could ever say was that I had no control over it, which looked very unprofessional. 

- Terrible, terrible communication. I used to talk to Matt daily, and I know he's super busy and has lots of things going on now, but when I ask him about release schedules (something I must know in order to plan my work) and he never, ever answers me, I feel like they just don't want to work with me anymore. For example, originally this year we had 3 publications planned: a 7" for Seekers, with an adventure written by Diogo Nogeira, and music by me, the Seekers expansion and the Disciples expansion. They're initially supposed to go to KS. At the end, I just pushed it all to the next year cause they never said anything about it, until recently when Jarrett finally asked me what I was planning to release next year...

- Total disregard for promotion and customer support. I've asked them multiple times to send review copies to blogs and YouTube channels that wanted to review the games, which is always a great thing, and after promising me they would do it, they wouldn't do it. Then it's me who has to talk to the blog or YT channel or whatever and explain that I have no control over that, and that if I had received author copies (which I didn't) I would have sent it myself... It's not a good look. And that's without getting into how they never answer KS or email questions from customers. People kept writing me to complain about stuff that I just couldn't help with cause I don't work at EF. 

So as you can see, it hasn't been ideal for me. I tell you guys all this not to shit on EF or Matt's work, and I would truly appreciate it if we keep this between us; the last thing I want is to start rumors and gossip. Like I said, I love Matt and what he's done for me. I tell you all this so you understand how it's been behind the curtain all this time, and why I've decided that the best option for me moving forward is to essentially start all over from scratch, but with my freedom. I hope nobody thinks I've done this for the money cause I'm being paid $5,000 for all this, which they can make back with the print of a single book and doesn't really begin to even cover my work as a writer. To be honest, I just wanted all this to be over, for my mental health. My step sister has recently been diagnosed with cancer and it's not looking good, and I'm going through other personal stuff at home and the last thing I need is an extra source of stress.

So what does all this mean, then? For starters, it means that the upcoming Farthun content for Disciples will be the last thing I upload on Patreon for that game. I'll leave it there a bit so you guys can download it, but soon I must take down ALL the content I've uploaded, so you better grab it all fast! Exalted Funeral is moving ahead with the publication of the Narrative Playbook for Seekers and the expansion for Disciples next year, but that will be it for now, until they can go over all my notes and decide what they do with the games next.

As for me, I intend to finish Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (now that I'll be able to focus on it fully) and make it the foundation of the new Blackoath Entertainment moving forward. I have also started sketching a new fantasy game, heavily influenced by the Sword & Sorcery genre (to no one's surprise) and the Mediterranean cultures of ca. 500 BCE, but with some very cool mechanics that I have never seen on a tabletop RPG. I'm very excited about it!

As for this Patreon, my goal is to continue uploading the PDFs of the deluxe editions I release (the Trough Sunken Lands PDF will be up soon, for Master level patrons), and continue discussing all my games. Then, once ATDW is out, and whatever I release after that, I want to keep releasing monthly content for my games, as I've been doing so far. Since this is still a few months away though, I am going to eliminate the two higher tiers (for now) and just leave the $1 tier, for those who want to keep supporting me meanwhile. To those who were here only for Seekers and/or Disciples, I 100% understand that you'll no longer be interested in supporting this Patreon! I just hope that once I have new games out, everyone here decides they're worth your hard-earned cash!

So that's it, if you've read this far thank you for it, and I hope you all understand why I've decided to take this step. Let hope it's for the better!

- Alex.