Ed: I think it was sometime in 2008 at Origins that we were invited by Shane Hensley to sit in on a What’s Up with Pinnacle Panel. We spoke about our idea for East Texas University, where you have to go to school, study, do research, and fight evil to save the world. Shane liked the idea which made us feel better about it.
But, we were burned out. By 2010 we had written an ungodly amount of stuff for East Texas University, but were not sure if we would ever finish it or even publish it. Burnout was real. We had a meeting to decide if we were going to just call it quits, but we all agreed we had promised our loyal fans that ETU was coming and decided we would put it out there any way we could, but that running a publishing company was just not what we wanted to do anymore.
I’m not sure how it happened, though it was probably via email, but we let Shane know what were thinking and he told us, “I love Pinebox and the idea of East Texas University. You guys write it and I’ll publish it.” We went into very easy negotiations with Shane regarding our property rights and let me tell y’all, there ain’t nobody better to work with than Shane Hensley.
And that’s how we wound down 12 to Midnight and wrote solely for Pinnacle Entertainment Group.
Now, about East Texas Universtiy…John Goff, the awesome, inspiring, and creative guru of Deadlands Noir, Night Train, and more, became our managing editor and boy did he have a job to do.
As we had poured everything into the kitchen sink and stirred it to see what would come out, John reminded us that this is a horror game and to streamline it for that. Many, many cuts later and a few years of work, East Texas University and Degrees of Horrror were finally done.
Nothing I have ever done in the ttrpg industry has made me prouder. The art is outstanding, the layout, the colors, and the overall flavor of the books were top notch.
It wasn’t a great kickstarter. We had just over $54K pledged by 806 backers. Several reviewers said they had just graduated from college, or hated college, and wondered why anyone would want to go back to college. Fortunately, via word of mouth and fun gaming, word spread, and the game began to see better sales. It really took off when Wildcards began running the entire four years of games and truly showed what could be done with the game. Many of y’all have followed us and supported us through all of this and we appreciate you more than you may ever know. It’s your support that makes us want to keep going, and here we are….Fresh Blood is coming April 21st.
Preston: East Texas University was a game that came together in fits and starts. I remember an early, but incomplete, first draft “player’s guide” came together pretty quickly. Ed’s wasn’t kidding about the kitchen sink approach. We’d agreed this would be our swan song, so we were determined to put every idea we could into the game. But he also wasn’t kidding about burnout. So we were super productive for a while, then absolutely nothing for six months. Then we’d find a little burst of inspiration and work on it some more, then it would peter out again and months would go by with no activity. That’s one of (but not the only) the reasons ETU took so long to be released even after we’d shown off the players guide.
The next essay is about Degrees of Horror so I won’t get too far into that other than to say that we were writing it as one big book, so the rules were only half the struggle. When we turned it into Pinnacle, it was like a huge weight had been lifted. I really cannot describe the feeling. We’d been working on it for years, and just to have it out of our hands felt great. Several months went by, and as Ed said, John Goff read through that first draft and made us empty the kitchen sink. Now you’re all wondering what got cut, right? Honestly, I don’t remember most of it at this point. Probably a lot of unnecessary Edges and Hindrances, for starters. What I do remember is that we had a whole other section on weird science. I was picturing the power options as a three-legged stool. One leg was rituals, another was talismans, and the third was weird science. Specifically, if you wanted to use the university labs to brew up a concoction that would boost trait or whatever, then you could. We also had some stuff in the original PPC about aliens, so the weird science made a little more sense in that context. But John was absolutely right. We needed to pick a lane and stick to it. Magic and supernatural were the primary focus, so we cut the weird science and anything referencing aliens and stuck to what we did best.
After John’s edits came back, we had a LOT of work ahead of us. Not only within the rules, which was more or less straightforward, but a major overhaul of the plot point campaign. Stay tuned for the next article, on Degrees of Horror!
