The latest Street Wolves adventure, Heart of Glass, has launched on Backerkit It’s doing great so far, but this isn’t just to let you know it’s live. This post is more about delving into the creation of it and sharing some design thoughts, so keep reading if you’d like to know some more behind the scenes info (but also please check out the Backerkit page).
Just a heads up: I’m not going to get too far into the story details of Heart of Glass, but it may get a tiny bit spoilery. If you plan on playing it, please don’t read the “The Past Isn’t Dead” section.
The Origin of Heart of Glass
Heart of Glass basically came from wanting to work with Meghan Caves of Gone Roge Entertainment. Meghan was extremely active in the ttrpg scene at the time* creating and working on various ttrpg productions. One of the things she made that I thought was a great idea was “Adventure Bones“, basically plot seeds for adventures that came with mp3s that featured voice acting. That immediatly sparked my imagination and I thought that it would be really cool to do something like that, but with Street Wolves.
I took the idea to Meghan and she was on board, which was super cool. I was actually flattered she wanted to work with me as I was basically a nobody at that point. I mean, I’m still a nobody, but I didn’t really have much of an established game library under my belt.
With her interested in the idea, I ran the project around in my head for awhile, trying to work out something I could do that involved voice acting. The idea that eventually stuck was that it would be less of a seed for an adventure, but rather an enhancement for a more traditional one.
With that in mind, how could I incorporate voices/messages? The obvious idea to me was they’d be on cassettes, which matches the Street Wolves vibe. They could be found in a way similar to finding audio logs in horror games. When the players get to a certain point, they get a tape. Each tape could contain some clues and leads, but they’d be a great source for background information to give context to other clues and leads they find along the way.
*Meghan has pulled back a bit from the scene, but she’s still making cool things.
I Was Born in a Small Town
Once I had the formula for Heart of Glass, I needed to flesh it out even more. Were the Street Wolves going to be running all over Miami finding tapes? I had already written about three or four Miami adventures at that point (plus a long one that takes place in New York City that should come out some day) and I was kind of tired of that whole thing. Or should I say, I needed a break.
My mind then turned to my roots. As the song goes, I was born in a small town. Well sorta, by the time I became a conscious person I really only knew small town life until I escaped when I turned 18. I thought it would make for a compelling story to set the city dwelling Street Wolves in a small town sort of like the one I grew up in and one that the Street Wolves had zero connection to. And even more importantly, one where they had no back up when things went wrong.
The Street Wolves blow it
As the pieces started falling into place for the tone and how the adventure was going to be structured, it became important that the Street Wolves shouldn’t have access to outside help. In Street Wolves: Turbo Edition the default is that they work for an organization named Wolfpack. Wolfpack has limited resources, but they’re still there to call for advice or to pull strings to get them things they want to complete the mission.
I wanted to scale things back a lot. The experience I was going for with Heart of Glass was more along the lines of a thriller movie. I wanted there to be an extra layer of danger and suspense layered on top. If the player characters have access to an emergency exit or backup, that deflates the tension.
In order to facilitate that experience, Heart of Glass begins with failure. The Street Wolves have really screwed up their last mission. In game terms there’s a table that they roll on to see how badly they failed. And they also take Drive checks that are relevant to that type of failure. Regardless of what actually happened, the Street Wolves are cut off and left on their own.
This failure sets the tone for the story: when it begins they’re not heroes, they’ve royally screwed up and are both physically and emotionally vulnerable.
Now the next part is a bit more difficult. With no help, why the heck are they heading off to a small town? I don’t want to get too deep into it, but basically they’re given a lead and since they’re told to lay low for awhile, there’s no harm to going to some town in the middle of nowhere for a bit. Plus, the lead they get is pretty juicy and hard to pass up for characters who are dedicated to help the helpless.
The Past Isn’t Dead
One of the primary themes of Heart of Glass is that the past isn’t dead. Several years prior to the adventure starting, a group of satan worshipping teens ritualistically killed some kids. At least, that’s the story. The Street Wolves discover that the truth is more horrible and deadly. There’s a group of powerful people was able to frame the teens for the murder to hide the real killer. This has some pretty horrible consequences in the present that the Street Wolves discover in the course of their investigation.
Once I had that situation in mind, the idea that hit me that the tapes could be left from a previous investigator. Who that investigator is and what happened to them is something they uncover.
I also wanted to tackle the ideas of a powerful group of people controlling the town and introduce a satanic panic. The tricky part was, honestly, getting the tapes into the adventure in not a super corny or hamfisted way.
Playing Heart of Glass
Once I had all my notes for the major beats of Heart of Glass along with a timeline of what happened, backgrounds on lots of colorful NPCs, and some interesting “side quest” type of things, I started running it.
I’ve run Heart of Glass several times and each time it’s been fantastic. The players loved the experience and that convinced me that I had something that was really cool and I should release it.
The play tests primarily taught me two things: 1. The whole tape thing fit in pretty well (even if I didn’t have the actual tapes and I was just reading them). There’s still a bit of buy in you need from the players on the concept of finding pre-recorded notes, but it’s not larger leaps of logic than what is required from a TV show or movie.
2. I did a pretty good job of accounting for what the players would do in the sandbox nature of the adventure. Sure, there were times they went into areas and followed paths I hadn’t anticipated, but for anything big like that I was able to adjust the notes in the adventure. Have I accommodated for everything? No, no adventure can, but it gives GMs enough tools to handle the unanticipated when it comes up.
Finding time to make it
I first started writing Heart of Glass in February 2023. At the time I was hoping to release it “soon”. Well, the Street Wolves: Turbo Edition Kickstarter crowdfunder didn’t launch until April of 2024. I then had to redo the layout of Street Wolves to get it printed along with all the other things I made for that campaign, so Heart of Glass was on the back burner for awhile. Then I got a wild hair to make Monster Truckers, so again another delay as I made that game.
The project kept getting pushed down the road. Occasionally I’d check in with Meghan to see if she was still on board. Thankfully, she always reported back that she was, so once I really got serious about releasing Heart of Glass I hadn’t lost the audio producer!
Crowdfunding and Beyond
Once I had the time, I decided it was ready for crowdfunding. I potentially could have done it without going to Backerkit, but I felt that even if it was a niche thing (an adventure for a third party setting for a niche(ish) system) that it had enough going for it that I could potentially get a bit of marketing boost and be able to more readily afford more art for it if it did well. When I just make something and put it out there, the response is not anywhere close to putting something up for crowdfunding, not by a long shot. It was my chance to be able to make it the way I really wanted it done with as many bells and whistles as I could afford.
I also decided that I would make a system agnostic version to try to appeal to those who would be interested, but didn’t play Savage Worlds based games. There’s been a few backers of that, and we’ll see how much more time it adds to see if it’s worthwhile converting more of my stuff into a system agnostic version.
So far the crowdfunder has exceeded expectations. It’s not a big megahit, but people are responding better than I’d hoped and that makes me feel good. I’m sure once they get it to their tables, they’ll love it as much as I have.
But also, once I have Heart of Glass made it’ll be much easier to adapt it to the alternate version of Street Wolves that I’m planning…
One Last Plug
If Heart of Glass sounds interesting to you, please check out the Backerkit page.