In April 2017 we presented the East Texas University Bundle, featuring the Savage Worlds campaign setting from Pinnacle Entertainment about modern-day academic horror in Pinebox, Texas. If you’ve already visited this haunted Big Thicket town created by the 12 to Midnight studio, you know snake cultists run the local bar, vengeful spirits plague the high-school locker room — and at East Texas University, the beer is enchanted and your advisor wants to kill you.
Southern rural horror right out of Bubba Ho-tep by way of Buffy and The X-Files, East Texas University scored top marks in its May 2014 Kickstarter campaign. This offer presented almost the entire ETU line, plus the complete Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook, for a price cheaper than a pitcher of magic beer.
There were five titles in our Student’s Collection (retail value $43) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks or .MP3 audio tracks, including Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition (retail price $10) plus the East Texas University core campaign book (retail $15) and ETU Player’s Guide (retail $5), Archetypes (retail $3), the Trouble in Texas soundtrack (retail $10), and we threw in an ETU Welcome Kit of free downloads from the Pinnacle website.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price graduated to our entire Dean’s Collection with twelve more titles worth an additional $69, including the complete Savage Worlds Plot Point campaign Degrees of Horror (retail $15) and the Class Ring adventure (retail $6); Heroes of ETU and Horrors of ETU Figure Flats (retail $7 each); four full-color .PDF poster maps (Classrooms, Library, Off Campus Housing, and Pinebox Businesses, retail $4 each); and the University Press Kit and GM Screen Inserts (retail $4 each). After the offer launched, we added Horror for the Holidays (retail $7) — a short seasonal adventure based on the last public lynching in Texas, where the victim was dressed as Santa Claus (true!) — and La Bruja (retail $3), a short “Creature Feature” about ETU’s most sinister señoritas.
That’s US$112 worth of higher education for less than the price of a fake ID. Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this offer’s designated charity, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
