I know it seems like we’ve been awfuly quiet around here, and some of you may be wondering if we’ve fallen off the face of the map. Far from it! We are making good progress on ETU: Degrees of Horror, and we’ve been posting regular updates on the Savage Worlds forums. However, I realize that we should have been mirroring those posts on our own website as well. I’m pasting the first of those dispatches (June 25) below, and I’ll post no more than one a day until we’re caught up.

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A year ago a bunch of yahoos from Texas showed up at Origins with an introductory adventure, a college fight song, and a kick-ass character sheet to our plot point setting ETU: Degrees of Horror. With Origins kicking off again this year, I figured it was time we bring you up to speed on what has been going on for the last year.First, a quick refresher. ETU stands for East Texas University, and Degrees of Horror takes wet-behind-the-ears freshmen and subjects them through four years of hauntings, conspiracy, monsters, the occult–all while maintaining a passing grade point average. For most students, college is about finding one’s identity. For your characters, it’s about growing into the role of heroes… or serving as another gruesome object lesson in failure for the next incoming class.

So what HAVE we been up to in the last year? The long answer is that we had some other projects to which we were already committed, and it wasn’t until this spring that we could focus 100% of our development capability on ETU. The Player’s Guide section of the book is completely written. It needs the polish that comes from editing, but it’s done. I spent several months working on just on the character creation chapter while Ed wrote several other chapters start to finish, just because we both knew that we had to absolutely nail character creation. If you couldn’t create a heroic character with the characteristics of “that guy” or “that girl” you knew in college, then the game would be over before it began. We’re pretty confident you’re going to love the result.

Meanwhile, the GM’s side of the book–which we’re calling the Professor’s Syllabus–is about 80% done. The last big section to still needing to be written are the plot points. I think we’ve got a very cool campaign outlined, and we’ll be committing it to paper in the coming weeks. That being said, we already have enough Tales to easily fill a campaign, plus a very robust adventure generator.

So that’s the state of the institution at East Texas University. We’re going to try to do better about providing you with frequent updates. If we don’t, call us out here in the forums! Sometimes we’re so busy working we forget to let you know that we’re still here. We ARE still here, and it’s time to start dusting off those college admissions applications. ETU needs fresh meat!