For those who haven’t played ETU before, one of the core mechanics is that each Advance corresponds to an exam (either mid-terms or finals). You ARE a student after all, so that means making choices between investigating a haunting or attending a study session. Your academics can be improved or worsened based on extracurriculars and other factors, and at exam time you roll a skill associated with your major. If you pass, you roll on a table to receive a temporary perk that lasts until your next exam.
One of the first things we did when working on Fresh Blood was to get on the Official ETU Savage Worlds Study Group and ask what you liked and disliked about exams (formerly called Tests until the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) used the term to mean something different). The feedback we received was that the Test/Exam rule was fun, but the small table of possible outcomes quickly got repetitive and un-fun. So obviously one of things we’d do is increase the number of possible outcomes.
In the first edition of ETU, characters used a Knowledge skill specific to their major to determine whether or not they passed their exams. SWADE did away with those knowledge skills and rolled them into basic skills, so all liberal arts degrees became Academics, and all science and engineering degrees became the Science skill. On one hand that was disappointing because it felt like the student characters had one less distinguishing trait. On the other hand, it opened up a new, cool possibility.
In either interviews or someone in an article, I know I’ve revealed that in the original ETU, the rules for tests/exams went through SEVEN iterations before landing on the one that was in the book. We tinkered with a lot of different approaches, and one of the things Ed and I talked about was how neat it would be to customize results based on your major. With a kajillion different possible majors, each with their own associated Knowledge skill, it wasn’t practical. But now, with the number of potential skills shrunk down to a handful, I was able to revisit the idea.
Your Major Matters!
In Fresh Blood, your major and the associated skill dictates the table you roll on for passed exams. Academics has one set of results, Science has another table, and “other” (like Performance, etc.) has their own. Each of these tables have a different set of results, so now your major dictates the kind of available perks you get for passing exams. This also means that different characters at the table could have perks that others at the table simply can never get. So picking your major has real, in-game consequences more than ever before.
Remember when I said near the beginning that in the original ETU the number of results got repetitive? Splitting the tables provides more variety across the Study Group, but I also increased the table size to give more potential options. In ETU1, the table only had seven possible outcomes. I’ve increased that to 12, which at first may not seem like that big of a jump. You were probably hoping for a d20 or more, right? I might have been able to do that, but only at the expense of those different outcomes for different majors. No way could I come up with sixty different outcomes.
To make the options feel fresh, I took a pretty simple mechanical approach: unlocking new parts of the table at each rank. At each rank when taking exams, you’ll roll a higher die type, unlocking new possibilities on the table until finally as a senior you’re rolling a d12. If you roll a 2 on that d12, you can always spend a benny for a reroll. [evil laugh]. And if 12 possible outcomes still doesn’t feel like enough, one of the results on the table is Multidisciplinary: A class outside your major made an impression. Reroll, a different major’s table, adding +1 to the roll.
What’s the best outcome on the table? If you ace on a d12 (so, as a senior), reroll and the perk is permanent!
