Slight Correction: Matthew (TabletopObscura) was let go in July 2023 due to budget constraints. He did amazing work on the project, and was not responsible for any of the delays Sinclair's has faced. He did some additional freelance work until about December 2023, and has not been part of the project since then. The work being done on the project currently is primarily by Shawn (EldritchDream), Natthan (Creative Lead), and David.

@Aiglos78

Ай бұрын

Since it wasn't addressed: Have all the creatives been paid fully for their contracted services? Artists, editors, writers, layout and design folks?

Suggestion: If you continue to expand Sinclair's why not just make a separate COMPANY KZread account for updates and everything else in between

@JacksonOwex

Ай бұрын

This is probably a good idea. I believe Colville did this when he started making books though over time his two channels kind of melded together, or at least it seems like that from my perspective. I see a video of his and don't usually pay attention to which channel it's on! Matt does a wonderful job and I just like supporting him in anyway I am able!

This video releasing on the day that Roll for Combat is having a "Running an RPG company: behind-the-scenes" livestream. I think it would be great to reach out to Stephen for business help!

I was not a supporter of the project, but this gives a bit of an idea as to why I don't really back anything on Kickstarter anymore. To much risk if it is not an established business that is making the item in the first place.

@Phox146

Ай бұрын

Yup, I also don't typically do Kickstarter, people treat it like it's a pre-order when the reality is you're much more like an investor in a project.

perhaps it'd be best to hold off on the 5e versions until the new edition rules are available to work from so as not to cause any potential issues with unknown changes in the rules.

I've been following you since pf2e came out. You're one of my favorite content creators especially in the small but growing pf2e community. That being I was a very early backer for the kickstart because I love your content. Given the ogl debacle I was OK with a delay. You know things you all could see coming. But that being said, if you all had just told this back in November we would have been fine. I get it. Things happen. Life happens. I'm going through mental health issues and it's hard. But updates was all we needed. Thank you for this video. It is much appreciated. Just keep up updated. Unfortunately you are kind of the face of the company so people will be looking to you for info. Again thank you for the truth and this update. I'm still excited for the project and to see more pf2e content.

The fact you have all the art done before the content people actually paid for is an example of putting the cart before the horse. At the bare minimum you guys should have had an initial draft of both books done before even starting to hire artists. After all people are paying for the options and the npcs, not for pretty pictures. People would be frustrated if your funds ran out and you released digital copies of both without much art initially and were just lagging behind on art of the physical copies, but that'd be a lot better than the current situation. How on earth did you expect to get this finished on the initial budget? Seems like that would have been a complete disaster.

@jar8240

Ай бұрын

The entire kick starter concept is about putting the carr before the horss

@dwainedwards615

Ай бұрын

you actually have to comission art really early into a book project like this sadly. Art takes a long time so it was all likely comissioned early on, and they just wound up out of funds.

@Abyssionknight

Ай бұрын

@dwainedwards615 I understand art takes a while, I'm just saying the priority should be on the content, which is mandatory, not the art,which is optional. Should never end up in a scenario where you have all the art but only half the content.

This project included several other add ons, some of which were promised at tiers of the project, namely dice, minis, skinny minis, GM screen, Roll20, Foundry. Did you blow through the budget for those too or are you still committed to sending those out as well as the physical books? If not, what are you planning to do to compensate backers?

@GoodEatsFan231

Ай бұрын

This has always been my big question too. On the discord it's always been stated that they were on hold to prevent excess storage costs, but as time went on, the likelihood of receiving physical products outside of the books felt farther and farther from actually happening :( I wouldn't be so upset (that is, disappointed not angry) if I didn't think it could be so great. There have been been MANY Kickstarter projects I've backed that have stalled out and not delivered final product, but I really really wanted this one to work out.

@frostyshen689

Ай бұрын

They havent even finished the codex and they have no money lmao do you think theyre going to be giving people any of that stuff

@Rulelord2e

Ай бұрын

@@frostyshen689 Exactly

Thank you for being honest and open about it

@nfortin24

Ай бұрын

6 months with no update isn't being open and honest

I super appreciate all the update info on this! I hadn't even realized it'd been two years already. I've jus' been vibin' while waiting for things to roll out. I believe in y'all! Just keep swimming!

The lack of experience is why I didn't back this project - I've seen enough RPG books deliver years late (3x+ time to delivery date) or flat out fail even from people with decades of experience in publishing. I wish you the best of luck in wrapping this up and getting it out. My longest delivered RPG Kickstarter took over 5 years (from experienced people) so you're still ahead of that low water mark at least.

While I was not a backer because I was barely into 2e at the time, I can appreciate your honesty about what has happened. Mistakes are made, the more important part is what is done to rectify it. Could this have come sooner, yes. But it came and I have faith in you and the others of this team to deliver what your supporters paid for.

You play with fire when you make such promises. It might be best for onlookers to start smaller for their first project

This is long, _long_ overdo, but hey at least it's here I suppose. Please, if you ever plan to expand Sinclairs, higher an accountant and have at least two people on the team take a project management class. Learning lessons the hard way works, but it'd be much better if you knew how to avoid future pitfalls before they happen.

Being honest is the best policy. Thank you for the update. Luck be with you all.

Hello there Nonat, I supported this project in its first year, I've been in love with what has been done in the first book and I shall support it 'till the end. Lot of love

Hope you´re feelin gbetter NoNat, projects like that are very hard to make amd those kinds of things happen all the time, i hope this doesn´t deter you from making more content in the future. Im glad seeing you back, thank you for the clarity.

thank you for the update! I'm still waiting patiently. thank you for all of your hard work! I appreciate you all.

Thanks for the update. Please continue to provide updates on a regular, monthly if possible, basis.

Thank you for the honest update. All the best for you and the rest of the creators behind Sinclair's and I look forward to the finished product whenever it comes out. Hope you're all taking good care of yourselves :)

Lovely :) i have been very happy with the Almenac

As a project manager, this is more the norm than you would think... people are optimistic to a fault. The difference is when the government does it they just bail the project out with more tax dollars and don't advertise that part. Good on you putting this out there and good luck finishing this out Nonat.

Good job getting to this.

It's crazy how much more money the project made in kickstarter above the goal, but it still wasn't quite enough. I'm still eagerly awaiting my physical copies. thank you for honesty, always a supporter of your content bud.

@metalcollection1

Ай бұрын

Yeah, crazy how a bunch of dudes with no real knowledge about managing big scale projects and lack of any kind of social media/communication person can't make it with the triple budget. And people complain how corporations spend tons of money for seemingly "useless" positions like that. Well guess what, they are not that useless. You need someone to organize your shit or you just fuck up.

@Trithis2077

Ай бұрын

Honestly for how much they wanted to do, the amount they raised should've been like _half_ of their minimum budget. They severely underestimated how expensive things would be.

@metalcollection1

Ай бұрын

@@Trithis2077 That's what I'm talking about. Being passionate about the project is one thing, but not doing your homework, risk assessment and general market overview shows, why plenty of KS projects fail and why you need to hire people who can help you. Also being upfront about the fuckups is the only way to damage control. This video was released just after the drama on reddit and it feels more like "crap, we can no longer ignore the supporters" instead of serious apology video.

@MichaelG485

Ай бұрын

Unfortunately a lot of these kinds of Kickstarter projects set a goal that is way too low nowadays. They set it to something like $10,000-$20,000 so they can put up a banner that says "FUNDED IN 5 MINUTES!!!!!" In this case, $35k was never going to be enough, but at least they got to say "FUNDED IN UNDER 2 HOURS!!"

I think the main issue here was not prioritizing the correct parts of the project and over-ambition. I would've started with a smaller project and then built up from there as your reputation builds. Also, it didn't seem like y'all had enough fully fleshed out ideas going into the Kickstarter.

Glad I didn't back this project. I've backed a few KS that have only ever had delivery delays because of getting boats or certain sickness that happened. Hopefully people get what they are promised and everything can be settled

Thank you for letting us know what is going on. Do we have any idea timeline wise what we are looking at for the codex? Months? A year? 2 years? Dont need any promises here, just a ballpark of what its looking like. Also... yeah... you know it know, but always expect to fail, always expect to go over time and budget. Ah well. Lesson learned I hope. Qreet needs his minions mYes-Yes!

Thank you for the update. I do hope you and your team are more proactive with them in the future

This video took a lot of courage to make. I've had some pretty big Kickstarters dry up and never produce what they promised. I have a few that I'm still waiting for over a year past their initial production date. Most of the ones that dry up disappear and don't respond at all to requests for updates. Life happens, and sometimes our games take a back seat to more important stuff.

Nicely said sir. Starting/running a business is not at all easy and kudos to you all for even starting down that path, and even more so for updating everyone to the trials and tribulations. Yes there are going to be people that are upset, but its a learning experience. Looks like you all are already growing from it. Just keep the people that put their trust and money behind the project well informed, that's all you can do.

I was a backer, I haven't been able to download the 2e pdf of the Almanac. I haven't gotten any answers on Kickstarter. I don't have a Discord account these days, but was wondering if I could be guided to how to download the pdf. Also curious about the Minifigs and where they might stand in the chaos of production.

Honestly... thanks for the update and honesty. I am thus still reassured my money was not wasted. I agree, updates like this should have been made earlier but... that is in the past. And thanks for everyone still working on the books.

wellcome back !! happy to see you on Pathfinder 2e !!

Hey NoNat I just wanted to let you know that even though I don't agree with all of your takes I do respect your ability to make the hard rules interesting and I am glad that I have found you. I'm glad you're back and I hope you can keep your head high.

My qualm is being able to purchase the product (hard copy) and it's not really available. I'm not talking the kick starter, but an actual purchase

I love nonat but this video feels more like a "O shit they remembered, so now I have to defend myself" rather than an update. Also, I find it weird that you want to differentiate the 2 entities (Nonat and sinclair's) but keep saying "we" while openly admitting you're no longer working on the project and haven't been on for a while. While I'm not on camp "nonat is a scam" this whole thing is really scummy and I bet the only reason you came out with updates on the project is because you got caught leaving the project and the fans in the dry.

Best of luck. I hope you've learned some lessons for when you take on your next project.

I am sad that things turned out the way they did. Thank you for the update.

I think its dishonest to say you "took a hiatus" and "switched to city of heroes". You completely changed your channel description to be a CoH content creator. You were done with pathfinder based on everything you put out from that moment on, not on a hiatus from it. You openly said only a video here and there for pathfinder but primarily CoH going forward. Now your description is switched back to ttrpg again and here we are. No new CoH videos and a couple Pathfinder videos. I believe you saw the hemorrhaging of viewership and followers, took time off to figure out how to turn it around, and now back to the same again prior to CoH. I.E. took a chance and it didn't work. Own it and I personally would respect that more.

I never backed it, but I completely sympathize; it’s something that most people who have tried running a project of that scale can understand. Good luck on getting it to fruition.

It's late, but it's good to have the update.

Honestly life happens. Things don't go according to plan. Breaks are important. Welcome Back!

huh, he saw the reddit

As somebody who watches your videos sometimes and didn't know anything about this project until I saw reddit posts about it being a scam, thanks for putting out an update. Good to hear you're not secretly running a pyramid scheme lol. Looking forward to enjoying more of your videos. Best of luck with what sounds like a stressful project.

As someone whos been following the project for a while, it really feels like everything that could go wrong did. But the team has persevered through it. I know commucation could be better, but I've never lost faith that the books will be done. ❤❤❤

I've missed you, and while I didn't back the project I really appreciate you making this video. I'm sorry for the struggles you all went through in '23. Thank you for this, and I look forward to seeing the books when they come out, and I'll def buy them. Love you Nonat.

Hey, on an unrelated note, what happened to your videos on City of Heroes? I haven't watched them but you seemed to be very passionate about the game. Did you move them to a secondary channel or something?

@StretchDattass

Ай бұрын

Its an algorithm thing, the TLDR version is basically if you have X number of videos that do well relative to your channel size, and then Y number of videos that dont do as well because (in this case at least) theyre on an entirely different topic from the original premise of the channel, youtube thinks you "fell off" and stops promoting your stuff, doesnt put it in the recommended feed, and doesnt recommend it on videos.

Unfortunately the effectiveness of this apology is undercut slightly by the fact that it comes one day after a Reddit post gained traction yesterday calling NoNat a thief.

Sir, this is a kickstarter project. You need to provide updates and answer questions on kickstarter, not make people join discord in order to hear anything. If you had no one on staff with any clue how to run a business, well, that was mistake number one. But communication is not hard. There are four of you. All of you know how to use words. Someone should have been on kickstarter using said words to let people know you all hadn't run away with people's money. This is all too little too late. I hope we can get our money back.

I backed a kicktarter project 4 years ago that I am still waiting on, lol. Kickstarter projects come with these kinds of risks, unfortunately. Good to see your face on KZread again, my friend, try to keep your spirits up!

I don't understand whether you're actually going back to work on the project or not. I understand 2023 was bad, but since you seem to have gone back doing pf2e stuff in 2024 I'm just trying to understand if you're actually going back to actually finish the codex or whether you're just doing marketing for Sinclair

Missed you man. Sorry about the awful people making your comeback difficult. Their inflammatory comments are the most attention they've ever gotten.

So, you continue to refer to the production team as "we," but you aren't even actively working on the project...and you didn't know that Matthew was "let go" in July and weren't aware there was at least one new person working on the creative since December? This is pretty heavy on exposition but there isn't much explicit information about expenditures, updates on the physical deliverables, and not even a whiff of discussion about how the project was budgeted outside of the fact that you apparently paid for art before drafts of the books were even finalized. I genuinely empathize with you about your horrible life struggles over the last year. I watched the update vid you made, and I'm genuinely sorry you've gone through the horror you went through. ...but that being said, this sort of feels like you're trying to leverage the NoNat1 community becsuse you have the resch and folks bought in mainly because you were the "face" of thr project. But honestly, it sounds like you aren't even contributing anything else to the project and it's not clear to me after this exactly where you even fit into the management or production scheme. Also...to be clear here, how many freelancers did you hire and WHY did you hire freelancers at all? If 3 people ended up doing the vast majority of the creative and all you're really doing is transferring the systems text from 2e to 5e...what were the freelancers actually doing? You hired editors? Plural? And layout folks too? I'm just genuinely confused about exactly what the company "owners" contributed to the work and what you effectively sub contracted? Also...since you never addressed it; Have all the creatives been paid? All your writers, artists, editors and designers have been FULLY compensated?

@Rubycule

Ай бұрын

One of the creatives who worked in the project has spoken up on reddit. They claim that they and everyone else they knew of where paid in full for their work. To my knowledge, noone has so far contradicted this claim. Still, take it with a grain of salt.

@Aiglos78

Ай бұрын

@@Rubycule I find the whole thing off putting, but that would be the absolute deal breaker for me, and it's just super strange to not very explicitly clarify that "blowing through the budget" doesn't mean the creatives didn't get paid.

@Rubycule

Ай бұрын

@@Aiglos78 I went back to read their post again, so here is a small correction: They say at least they themselves have been compensated very well and that the project manager made it their goal to pay good rates to the contractors. They have not made any claims about others' payments, only that they got the impression of a very professional treatment in that regard. The same person also mentioned specifically "the funds for the day to day staff doing the nitty gritty stuff like formatting and editing have run dry". As the intention seems to be to follow through with the production of everything, I'd assume that means all contractors have been payed and the budget for print and production is still mostly intact. To me it appears as they just can't afford any additional contractors and writers without compromising the actual production.

Man. What a way to come back to pathfinder content. Hopefully, you get back on track soon.

I used to be a big fan but this entire thing has left a horrible taste in my mouth. You said two people are still working on this, and kept saying "we." Are you personally working on anything or not?

Character. That's what you display, Nonat. Solid, enviable character. Thank you.

8k+ views and only 80 comments. Clearly falling off

It seems suspiciously convenient that this video follows public criticism on reddit.

@paulpower9959

Ай бұрын

Well duh

@scorchmcscorchyson7597

Ай бұрын

Yeah, not responding until called out about it is not the best look.

@Humble197

Ай бұрын

Well when people freak out it forces them to talk about it.

@sirix500111

Ай бұрын

This video was too planned out to have been a response to that reddit post. If he had released this video first, it's a very VERY slight save of face for Sinclair's but negatively impacts his channel. Particular after a hiatus. He made the correct choice in relasing a positive and outwardly familiar video first. Before diving into a negative and divisive topic. He is still risking his channel metrics as is, and this has been/is his main form of income. Cut him a slack, things have been hard and he is handling it better then I would have. Can you say the same?

"He only said this after reddit" is the most bad faith shit. Id get it if this was all buzzwords, but he literally is showing stuff.

Nonat ignore the subreddit. That place is dogshit. Yes the creative lead should’ve been more communicative. You are not that person though. You were a creator for it, even if you are a “face” of sinclairs. Get the books done, but that sub can get bent. If the Tian Xia stuff proved anything, it’s that that community is so horseshoed-accepting that they’re toxic. Ronald defended you too.

Garbage

So blah blah blah we stole your money and we're not doing 80% of what we promised and you're not getting your money back, get bent nerds.