Ed Wetterman
So, back in 2019 or so, I wrote a series of plot point adventures that involved some of the history of Golan County. We were thinking it would be published in a serial format, but things changed after Covid, and it sat for a while. About 2022, Preston and I decided it was time to write a new version of East Texas University. We had a meeting and discussed possible plot points for it. I had two ideas and Preston had one, but he asked that I write this plot point so I chose to update and modify the 2019 plot point as I loved the story it told. For this one, Preston would write the tales.
We agreed that we did not want to just rewrite the original Degrees of Horror. I hate buying game books that are the same as earlier versions, just updated for new rules. I feel like I already paid for that the first time. We agreed we wanted a new book with new rules, and an updated campus, city, and county, showing that it was a vibrant, interesting place that has grown and changed in the years between the original and new edition.
We decided to call everything that was produced prior to Pinebox Middle School as the First Era, and everything since, the New Era. The pre-ETU scripted 12 to Midnight adventures were “Era Zero.” When exactly are these eras? Well, that depends on your own home games, but canonically the New Era is about 4 to 10 years after the events of Degrees of Horror. While there were a few changes to the town-businesses coming and going–most of the New Era changes involved people. We retired the old ETU president, James Nelson. The new president is Dr. Ella Ferguson. Professor MacClanahan has gone off to Egypt and Jackson Green is now a PhD teaching in England (See Study Abroad).
Even starting with the base rules, it would take us more than two years to complete the new edition, turn it into Pinnacle, and put it into the queue for publication. It was also during this time that Shane Hensley asked us if we were interested in writing a graphic novel telling the tale of our favorite convention game, Chickens in the Mist!
Preston:
While Ed started on the plot points, I took a pass through the rules. He hates the rule design part, so he left that to me. While we wanted the book to be something new (dare I say, “Fresh?”), we had to be careful to keep the parts that people loved and focus on improving the rest. Of course, for starters we had to take into account the new Adventure Edition of the core Savage Worlds rules. Pinnacle had published a one-page ETU conversion doc sometime back, but there were smaller tweaks that went unaddressed. Obviously dropping the Knowledge skills in favor of more broad skills like Academics meant rethinking what it meant to have a major and take exams. (I’ll write about the change to Exams in a separate post, because I think it’s really cool.)
I also took a hard look at Edges and Hindrances. Changes to SWADE meant that some of them had to be rewritten or removed altogether. We greatly reduced the number of “restricted” Edges and Hindrances, leaving it up to the Dean to make that call. A few, like Second Fiddle, I dropped because very few people seemed to actually take it (I’ve seen it roleplay to great effect, so that one sort of broke my heart.) But I also got to create new ones, plus recommend ones found in the Horror Companion. Finally, the gear section also got a light refresh, introducing equipment we hadn’t considered the first time around.
