12 to Midnight

Last week I foolishly said I’d come back here and tell you about editing the plot points, so now I have to live up to that promise. See? The accountability is working already!

In the original draft, I tried to weave 3 separate threads throughout the 12 plot points. The idea was that each plot point would have at least 2 of the 3 elements in them and everything would come together in the end. To an extent, that’s how it worked. However, the end result was a very densely packed plot that relied heavily on the GM to interpret back story and character backgrounds to fill in the gaps during the sessions between plot points. In retrospect, I might have pulled off my ideas with a scripted campaign, but it was too ambitious and required too much backstory to work as a plot point campaign.

Part of the problem I had arose as a side effect of structure I’d adopted for the campaign. Unlike just about any other setting, in Degrees of Horror character ranks correspond 1-1 with the campaign itself. What I mean by this is that Novice characters are Freshmen, and Freshmen generally achieve the next rank after one year of classes. With rank being so integral to the setting, it made more sense to me to evenly distribute plot points across each “year” of college. The more traditional and open way of plot point campaigns is to have one plot point that launches the campaign, followed by a series of others that are introduced at GM convenience (and sometimes non-linear), and ending with a suitably dramatic endcap plot point.

By contrast, the plot points in Degrees of Horror work like seasons in a television show. Within each rank are an equal number of plot points which inform the tone for the “season”. As part of the over-arching theme of maturing into the role of hero, the first plot points in the first season de-emphasizes physical danger over investigation, with each subsequent rank raising the stakes.

On one hand it’s a fitting structure for this campaign. It really reinforces the player ranks and  the sense of steady progression through college. On the other, it tied my hands in how I told stories. Being a verbose guy with ambitious plans for a grand plot, I had a really hard time working within the limited number of plot points at my disposal. For instance, in the first draft I had a big event planned that would shape the entire Fall semester of the Senior year. Yet the structure dictated that I only had 3 plot points for the entire Senior year and the last one had to wrap up the entire campaign. At best that gave me one to launch the event and another to give closure, leaving nothing in between. One of these days I’ll tell you about it, but for now I’m keeping it in my back pocket. There’s always grad school.

Anyway, I started the revision process by looking at the entire outline and–like the rest of the book–distilling it down to its essence. This was the process I worked on last Fall; sweating over an outline of the entire campaign. In some cases it meant deleting large chunks of plot. (As a matter of fact, in the plot point I’m working on right now I deleted the entire first page. It now begins with nearly last section–a secondary plot in the original–followed by new material.)  In other cases it meant condensing the timeline and simplifying the back-story. Not a single plot point is going to remain untouched, and some are getting completely jettisoned in favor of new ones.

Now comes the part where I really come clean. What follows is an actual, concrete progress report, and it will become a regular staple in future posts. Thus far I’ve completed editing the back story leading up to the Plot Points, plus the following stats:

Plot Points completed: 2 of 12

Pages: 19 of 38[1. The page count will probably rise and fall over time as I add and delete. In the original draft all character and creature stats had been referenced by page number in another chapter. Our editor wants to see at least some of them inline, so that may actually increase the appearance of the page count.]

So… now what? I’ve given you an idea of where things stand with Degrees of Horror, and I’ve given you a peek (albeit a vague one) into editing the plot point campaign. What do you want to hear about now? E-mail me or post something in the comments. I won’t talk about specific plots or the inner workings of Pinnacle, but just about everything else is fair game. One way or another, I’ll be back next week to talk about something— even if it’s just a quick note to give you a progress report.