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The Alleyway Oracles

Created by Publishing Goblin

The Alleyman returns with THREE brand new decks as one-time printings: the Alleyway Tarot, Oracle of Secrets, and Oracle of Play.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

End of Day 3 | Astrological Booster | The Wooden Box, Revealed! | Wandering Tiers!
almost 2 years ago – Thu, May 18, 2023 at 06:10:46 PM

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Wow! Here we are friends, end of day 3 and quite a ways in already!

First off, I should note that the $375,000 stretch goal-- the Astrological Booster-- is now unlocked! For $7 you can get 13 new cards in a lovely foil wrapper, all themed around the signs of the stars! And I made it 13 cards to include Ophiuchus, in homage to the Normal Horoscopes.

That stretch goal also added 3 new cards to each of the three decks, putting us to 103 in the Alleyway Tarot, and 63 each in the Oracles! I better get these reveals moving faster if I want to keep up with every little piece, huh? :P

The Astrological Booster Pack!

Shown here are:

Aries from Astro Kitties - Astrology Booster Pack by Alicia Arroyo - Lotus Moon

Gemini from Cosmic Consequence by Linda Lahtinen

Cancer from Gravenchase Lenormand's accompanying Gravenchase Zodiac Oracle by Lynyrd-Jym M. Narciso

and Scorpio from Anino Lenormand's accompanying Anino Zodiac Oracle by Lynyrd-Jym M. Narciso

Libra from This Is Me Deck by Murphy Pines

Capricorn from Woven Path Tarot by Ambi Sun

 The Wooden Box 

A triangular wood box with a cutaway in the middle, featuring three large compartments for deck storage and 3 smaller compartments between them for knick knacks
The Wooden Box in the.... Wood? Flesh?

I have got to do a lot of really cool things since I began publishing full time. I've helped bring to life some amazing things, designed some cool features in books, on cards. But nothing made me as excited as when I sketched out then built the blueprints for the Oracle Dice storage box. So when I began to think about what I wanted out of a wooden box for this project? I knew what it was immediately.

I sketched it out loosely in my sketchbook, then moved to the computer and began working with exact measurements. I made it too big at first, and tightened the space while leaving room for the hinged deck compartment lids to still all be open at the same time. You can see my lovely designs below-- but I mean, look above and you see the more beautiful, more final version.

The plans for the box, side view!
The plans for the box, top view

My favorite thing about Shawn from New Titan is that I tell him I want to do something, and he finds the people who can make it happen. It's why I keep going back to him since the Alleyman's! I asked if we could do storage between the deck spaces, and he got back to me with the magnetized lid suggestion!

So here we are! Now, the 'final' images at the top of this are still not totally finished-- they need ribbons in each deck compartment and lining and hinges and latches for the deck lids, but it's real and it's BIG.

If you buy one, know it's large! It will be a gorgeous table centerpiece, a king of your shelf, or well-placed on your altar. I am still debating if there will be any engraving on the deck compartment lids. I love it so much as is, but I also wonder if you all might want symbols for each deck, unique enough to the decks that you'd know which decks goes where, but open enough that it could hold something else.... What do you think?

The Wandering Oracles

Now, I mentioned a wandering pledge tier thing in the first update. But what does that mean? 

My first big(ger) kickstarter was the Normal Tarot. Oh, sorry, "NORMAL TAROT 2: REVENGE" I ran it during the 'Break Kickstarter' event, where we were encouraged to run kickstarters in really abnormal ways. The way I did it was by having constantly moving pledge tiers that came and went. We also weren't sure we could raise enough money to do the full tarot deck, so we broke the deck into 5 pieces and had parts of the deck itself be stretch goals. 

On this project, we have a set of Wandering Oracles. The Oracle of Play, the Oracle of Secrets, the Oracle of the Alley, and the Alleyman themselves. At strange and seemingly random times on strange and seemingly random days, they will appear with limited slots for greatly cheaper decks. I'll do my best to leave some clues before they happen, but even if people figure the clues out, I think part of the fun is letting it be your little secret.

Alrighty now, see you tomorrow! : )

7, your Pub Gob

Pretty Quiet Day 2 ...
almost 2 years ago – Wed, May 17, 2023 at 06:28:01 PM

Hello y'all!

As I expected, this was a ridiculously explosive first day that outclassed almost the full first three days of the Alleyman's Tarot! That told me that there was a high chance the project would slow down in a big way on day 2, and there we are. No worries, this is still a bigger day than most of my other projects have ever had, with $50,000+ coming in today!

If you're unfamiliar with Kicktraq, it's pretty fun to go check how things breakdown, and compare to old projects.

The Alleyway Oracles by Publishing Goblin :: Kicktraq

Our first day here wrapped with $274k! The first three days of the Alleyman's Tarot combined was 297,891, just 25,000 more. So I think we're well on our way!

Now if only there were fun things and images I was showing today... gee. Guess you'll have to wait for tomorrow, when we break that $375,000 goal! ;)

7

Our first 12 hours | Stretch Goals Galore! | Thank You!!
almost 2 years ago – Tue, May 16, 2023 at 07:19:15 PM

Hello all of you amazing people!

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Now, first thing, you will notice my face here, talking. I am plugging a video of me summarizing or reading important details from each update on all major updates on this project. Mainly I overexplain in text and I know some people would appreciate audio instead-- but also sometimes my overexplaining gets misinterpreted and well, it's hard to read tone in text! So I hope adding my smiling face and voice helps make sure we understand each other better. (Also I should have repainted my nails, but I did pay for my first haircut not done by me in probably 13 years!)

What Progress!

The Alleyman's Tarot at its most made $106.5k in a day. Strangely, that was day 3. The first two days climbed, which is fairly odd for a campaign. Normally Day 1+2 are best, and it fades. But the Alleyman was exceptional. I think we can all agree on that.

Now at 8PM, after 12 hours, we've already done $265,000. And it's exclusively thanks to you all.

Stretch Goals!

Well, I think we can put to bed the $85k funding goal. 

Then the $100,000 goal that gave us a bonus $100 pay to all participating artists! 

Then the $175,000 goal that promised I'm going to do the Alleyman Podcast Season 2 (you can find the pilot episode of the new season on the campaign page, or on youtube as the Alleyway Podcast!), as well as unlocking the 13-card Blanks Booster Pack! You can nab that booster for $5 as an add-on now. It will be a 13-card booster pack with unique card backs and blank card fronts. This time around we'll do hopefully a better job at keeping them unfinished so they can more easily be drawn on!

And we just broke the $250,000 goal in the last few hours, unlocking an additional $200 bonus to all artists, raising their bonus pay to $300 each!

Up next at $375,000, we'll be adding 3 extra cards to each deck, and the 13-card Astrological Booster Pack will be unlocked as an add-on as well!

Some Housekeeping

Well, we've hit a lot of things here already-- I may need to come up with more goals soon!

  •  Alleyway Tarot vs the Alleyman's Tarot - I've seen a fair bit of confusion, and this is on me. I wanted the logos to be similar enough it was clear they are related, but as a result, many people think the Alleyway Tarot IS the Alleyman's tarot. So just some clarity-- the Tarot deck on this campaign is all-new and different from the Alleyman's that funded in 2021-- though our remaining stock of Alleyman's is available as an add-on.
  •  Community Copies? Early birds? - On the Oracle Dice I did a Community Copy and Community Funds piece to the campaign, where I locked in free copies of the dice to send to people who couldn't afford it and funds that I've been spending to help get oracle and tarot decks on crowdfunding over their funding goals. At the time, I said all major projects would feature these. By the time I got this project fully together, I realized it was such a behemoth, and the campaign story is SO LONG and already a bit hard to navigate. For that reason, I am going to approach some community copy and wandering pledge tiers in the weeks to come, especially as the project starts to slow down in the 2nd and 3rd weeks. Stay tuned!
  •  Yet to be Revealed Cards, Unseen Add Ons - Some of the cards are marked 'Yet to be Revealed'-- they are cards that I have ongoing discussions with artists on but didn't have the contract locked yet, so I couldn't share their cards yet. They will be revealed and shared soon! And for the add-ons that don't have images of the actual items yet, as well as things like the deck boxes, those will be revealed as we get the prototypes and the like in hand! For example, the $150 wooden box should be ready to be shown in 3 days!

And I think that's everything for just now. I appreciate all of you so much for making this an impossibly bigger project than the last one, but I'm not chasing first place this time. We're going to do everything at the pace that you all set. So relax, hang out a while. We've got a good month ahead.

See you tomorrow!

7DA, 

your Publishing Goblin