Okay, this is the first of a series on the designing and play of ETU: Degrees of Horror. I’m hoping to provide enough teasers to generate interest and some feedback as well as to give our fans an idea of what goes into producing a plot point setting from writing to editing, to rewriting, to editing, to final editing, to layout, to art, financial decisions, and keeping up with the Pinnacle standards of good practice.

ETU has been percolating within us from the very beginning of 12 to Midnight, and fans who have been with us the past 4 to 5 years may remember that at the beginning it was known as SETI (South East Texas Institute). But we soon debated that it was not in South Texas, but in East Texas and the name changed to ETU.

Many of our adventures have been set in Pinebox, Texas and the college has been alluded to many times. When we decided to actually move forward on producing a plot point campaign we debated on whether to make one for Pinebox, ETU, or a more generic one for Golan County I think this conversation actually took place sometime last year. When you have 5 to 6 partners (we recently added one), sometimes these debates can get real interesting. At first we discussed if we should even do a Pinebox setting or another, vastly different one. I had developed several ideas including one based in early America (1607), another that took modern people to another planet to see if they could survive political intrigues, alien fauna and beings, and discover the true purpose of the Keepers (think Lost, but on an alien world full of fantasy and sci-fi). Preston had an idea for creating a younger kid’s plot point to get kids playing role playing games. Jerry had a great idea for the Zombie Wars, and a few others. Finally we decided that 12 to Midnight was built on Pinebox and our fans deserved a full setting with all the bells and whistles to make for a true campaign. And after many more discussions we finally settled on an ETU setting. But what could we name it?

We began with Wicked 101, but were not sure that fit what we were hoping to be selling. Eventually Preston posted on the Peg Forums and the Savages gave us many great ideas, the one we all liked the most was ETU: Degrees of Horror. We had a few meetings and worked out some of the basics of what we wanted to achieve with this release and what our requirements for it would be. We have always tried to provide professionally done adventures from writing to editing to art and layout. Many of our products have been delayed as we simply refuse to release anything until we are happy with it and even then, mistakes happen. But, I do feel that for a small, indie company we do what we set out to do. I’d put our pdf adventures against any on the market for quality and value. In fact (not to get too off task), many pdfs on the market simply are not good enough in my opinion and I’d like to see some sort of industry standards someday (this has been started a few times, but always ends with various disagreements and nothing being done with it).

Our first discussions of ETU were hammering out what the story arc is going to be and the basic presentation. At first Preston suggested having the setting include other genres like action, spy, and so on, but again we settled on the idea that we needed to be true to the Pinebox setting. One problem we have had is that many folks don’t understand what type of horror genre the Pinebox setting is. There have been many horror settings released for RPGs in the past few decades. We wanted one that was more of a cross between the quirkiness of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the slow creeping doom of a classic Cthulhu game.

I love Buffy and you will definately see that influence in the ETU setting. More to come soon…..