12 to Midnight

Originally posted on July 30.

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After a nice vacation last week (albeit slightly disrupted by Hurricane Dolly), it’s time for another weekly ETU: Degrees of Horror update.

First, horror website Flames Rising recently invited us to write an essay on the creative process behind writing horror games. The essay was posted last Friday, so check it out. While you’re there, check out some of their other interviews, essays, and reviews. If you like horror (and if you don’t, why are you reading this thread?), you’ll feel like a kid in a candystore.

Next, an update on the writing. On my side, the vacation really derailed my writing routine. All of last week was pretty much a wash. If you read my blog you’ll see that I lament the need to restore some writing discipline. I wrote this morning’s post yesterday (using the magic of post-dating), and last night I did in fact work on the plot points. Tonight is my “writing night”– the one night a week I leave the wife and kids at home, power up the laptop in a coffee shop, and hammer away for a few relatively uninterrupted hours. I’m not a night owl, so I’m a lot more productive at these sessions than when I’m putting the kids to bed and firing up the computer at 9 pm. I guess the point of all this is that I am still pushing forward, and I think once I build some writing momentum again then it won’t take long to finish the plot points. The rest of the book is essentially written.

Now that you’ve had a progress update, let me tell you about the game. I’ve talked about character creation, lingering over the parts unique to college such as majors, activities, final exams, and wealth. Now let’s talk about the adventures.

The less said about the plot points, the better. Generally speaking, the plot points are keyed to time: “When you reach this point in the semester, kick off this plot point”. In between the plot points, you can play Midnight Tales (renamed Savage Tales). Ed has written Midnight Tales based on your class (Freshman, Sophomore, etc.), your major (Agriculture, Engineering, etc.), extra-curricular activity (fraternity, ROTC, etc.) and location (History building, student center, etc.). He has written an insane number of Midnight Tales. (I should say we’ve also had some excellent contributions from Mike “Bloodshadows” Dukes.) The result is a campaign that is very customized to your group. While I (modestly) think that the plot point campaign is very cool, we’re giving you enough material that you could have a great campaign without ever touching them. Most likely, you could play Degrees of Horror three times without playing the same Midnight Tale twice.

Speaking of great material, I haven’t even touched on the other way to come up with an adventure– Ed’s adventure generator. I’ll save that for next week’s update since that probably deserves a post of its own.