We had several meetings to flesh out our ideas. During that time we debated how to make the setting fresh to gamers, but familiar enough that everyone would be comfortable playing it. By this time I had become a die hard Savage World’s fan and we decided early on to focus on writing the campaign for Savage Worlds. We designed new adventure cards, played with new skill ideas, new edges and hindrances and more (Preston will expound on this later I’m sure). We also debated the focus of the game. We could easily make a horror game based on international espionage and secret projects at the university, or we could go with the more classic feel. We settled on something in between and Preston and I began debating who would be responsible for what sections of the book. He had an overall plot arc planned and since I wanted to be involved in the playtest, he took over the main plot points, while I wanted to work on the Adventure Generator and the Midnight Tales.
Our first outline of the book included the following chapters: Character Creation, Gear, Setting Rules, Magic and Science, People and Places, Adventure Generator, Plot Points, Midnight Tales, and Creature Feature. By now some of these have changed or been greatly expanded, but that was our original outline. I focused first on the Adventure Generator, which may still be changed many times before the publication of ETU: Degrees of Horror.
I had gm’d 50 Fathoms with absolute joy, loving the plot points, tales, and adventure generator and knew that I wanted to follow a similar scheme. I settled on four basic adventure types to be generated: Partying, Research, Daytripping, and Community Service.
Why partying? Well, it is a classic part of college life and a way to “blow off steam.” Remembering my own party days, I realized that parties could take place anywhere at anytime and involve just about anyone. I decided I wanted to use a standard card deck to draw from for each of the generators, and the more I developed my ideas the more I realized how important NPCs are to a modern game. The world needs flesh on the bones and the gm would need quickly generated NPCs, so I designed an NPC generator that provided basic stats, backgrounds, personalities, etc. in only a few pulls from the adventure deck. (In fact I have continually used this in my home games and with a little modification it works GREAT with Sci-fi, Fantasy, you name it!)
Now, back to Partying! I latched onto the idea that a college student needs to party at least twice a semester (10 exp) or they suffer a -1 to their Studying roll to pass Final Exams (More on this later!). Of course, too much studying may also have a negative effect!
Parties range in size from a small get-together (heroes and 1d4 NPCs) to huge parties attended by the heroes, 1d10 NPCs, and up to 150 extras. The suits of the cards drawn indicate what the “feel” of the party is ranging from Love connections to Violence. Each party has a reason, and 1-5 events depending on the size of the party. Of course anytime a Joker is pulled, the Oz factor kicks in and strangeness abounds. I really went overboard on these charts, but taken as a whole, the GM has an incredible amount of options to play with and every game and party should be different and memorable.
Preston worried that it was too big! He may be right, and the final version may be way less than it is right now, but I love it!
Now you may be asking what is Reputation and Studying? Preston will be answering that one in due time.
Next time I’ll go over Research adventures and all it encompasses.
Keep it horror! Keep it Savage!
