12 to Midnight

Another week, another update. First, let’s look at the numbers.

Plot Points Completed: 4 of 12
Pages: 22 of 37[1. I told you the total page count would probably fluctuate. This week it dropped by a page.]

This time last week I was really concerned that I wouldn’t have much to report today. In fact, I made almost no progress up through the weekend. However, on Monday I ended up staying home with a sick kid and was able to get in several hours of writing between trips to the doctor and pharmacy. So this week you have my sick son to thank for my finishing the next plot point.

I’m very pleased with this new adventure and have to admit that it blows the doors off the old one. I’d love to gush about it in length, but I refuse to spoil the surprise. I’ll just say that it evokes the setting perfectly. It’s a “12 to Midnight” adventure through and through. It clocks in at 1,300 words minus the antagonist’s stats[2. I’m calling it done even without the antagonist’s stats because I’ll have to copy those over from another chapter and it gets messy when each chapter is its own file and two people are working on them.]. I’m guessing that will put it around 1,500 words, which was the length of the last one.

Plot point length is a tricky thing. I told you earlier that we’re having to reconsider the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach and really trim things back to a reasonably sized book. If you look at plot points across various Pinnacle setting books, you see some barely longer than a single column and others that run three pages. Once I’m done with the chapter I’ll probably make another pass to look for fat to cut, but hopefully I’m not too far out of the norm.

GlenMac and Jackson

Last week Jeremy suggested that I talk about some of the people and places that make up Degrees of Horror. This week I’ll talk about a pair of iconic 12 to Midnight characters – Professor Glen Maclanahan (aka “GlenMac”) and Jackson Green. These two characters originated as the alter egos of two 12 to Midnight founders. If you’ve ever GM’d a Pinebox adventure, you’ve seen sidebars in the voices of these popular characters.

In Pinebox canon, Maclanahan is a professor of folklore at ETU and Jackson is his graduate student assistant. Both characters are fascinated by the paranormal and fortunately Pinebox offers no shortage of opportunities for investigation. GlenMac keeps an office full of ghost hunting equipment, which he and Jackson use to try to document the supernatural. The professor has even been known to lend his equipment to other trustworthy students as long as they promise to share their findings with him. While GlenMac sometimes comes across as a bit absent-minded, his encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural has gotten he and his protege out of more than one tight spot.

Some people look no further than Jackson’s trademark cowboy hat and pickup truck, underestimating the grad student’s keen wit. The outgoing young man can often be found at his favorite hangout, the Pizza Barn, where he enjoys chatting up the young co-eds. However, under the easygoing exterior is a young man who has also been shaped by several deadly encounters with the paranormal. Under certain circumstances, Jackson loses his easy smile and gains an intensity that borders on paranoia–although all too frequently justified in the end.

Both characters make appearances in the plot points but they also make excellent NPCs for game masters who want to run their own campaign. Either character could just as easily serve as mentors or jealous rivals. Here are a few off the cuff adventure ideas using these characters.

• The heroes bump into GlenMac and Jackson while investigating the same haunted dorm.
• GlenMac gives a lecture on the rare mummy being exhibited at the campus museum. A few nights later, a break-in results in the theft of the sarcophagus while the mummy is left behind.
• Jackson and a hero vie for the attention of the same co-ed.
• GlenMac goes missing while checking reports of Sasquatch sightings in the Big Thicket.
• Jackson offers to tutor one or more of the students in exchange for help carrying around all his ghost hunting equipment one night.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next Wednesday with a new update and a new look at life on the campus of ETU.