We are still making like busy bees and working on our first plot point setting book. I’d estimate the 1st draft of the book is about 70% complete. This is an exciting time for us as we hope to have the 1st draft off to the editors by early May. This will be followed by a 2nd round of writing, rewrites, additions, and sidebars, then another pass by the editors. We will then do a final rewrite, a final edit, and then go into layout. We are hoping to have it laid out with all art by early spring 2009. Of course it will then have to be approved by Pinnacle and then be printed before it will actually be available for distribution, but it is our primary goal as a company to make certain this happens.

The good news is that once the editors have the copy, we can finish some other outstanding work such as the 12 Hours adventure series, The Prodigal, and House on Dale Island.

So far we have playtested ETU for approximately 35 gaming hours and the heroes have reached about 22 experience points, making them Sophomores and enabling them to finally have a wild die of d4. Everyone has had a great time and we have some extremely cool, scary moments. IMHO, we have successfully captured the flavor of attending college, albeit a very weird one. Check out the writeups in our forums for more on the details of the playtesting.

The basic experience point system we have used is 3 xp for a plot point or published adventure (such as Last Rites), 2xp for completing a tale, and 1xp for each generated adventure. Generated adventures take on special importance, since Research adventures apply to increasing a student’s Studying bonus which is in turn necessary to passing final exams each semester. This has worked very well and controlled character growth and story pacing.

Finally, I’d like to report that Mike Dukes, (Bloodshadows on the forums) is writing some tales for ETU. After his work on Bites of Midnight, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.