The Big "Sweetwater" Breakdown [Patreon Exclusive] (Patreon)

EDIT: Video updated and fixed! Thanks for your patience!

In 2019, during the development of Epithet Erased, I conceptualized another TTRPG I wanted to run. This one would be unlike my other games. It would be horror-themed, grounded in reality and suburban misery with player character death not only likely, but almost guaranteed.

Sweetwater had five players: Austin, Will, Mo, Savvy, and Christian. Their players were not in any kind of party. They would each play alone, unable to watch each other's sessions until the full thing had been edited together. In fact, players themselves were allowed to be killers.

I spent a literal thousand hours studying and preparing for this game, creating a murder mystery that could be investigated from any angle like a Murder Metroidvania. But alas. In the end, it was not to be. Scheduling conflicts, tech issues, and simply having Way Too Much Stuff To Do got in the way for years. And now, Roll20 updates have even destroyed the visuals of the beautiful maps I spent so much time working on.

I also drew over a hundred unique icons for this campaign from scratch. Because if you're going to have a murder campaign, everyone needs to be equally suspicious, which means they need to be equally unique!

Yesterday, 3 years after our initial planned start date, I finally sat all the players down in a call to tell them exactly what I had planned for Sweetwater. We go through all 60+ maps, talk about all the many characters and the many murders I had planned, and then tell the players all the ways I imagine they could've DESTROYED the campaign I set out for them.

This video is a flyover of 1000 hours of work, so obviously it is very long. I hope you guys enjoy learning about all this and seeing all my hard work, but before you watch, some content warnings! Sweetwater is a very mature production with themes of death, murder (including child murder), drug usage, frightening imagery, on-screen blood, audio descriptions of intense gore, and sexual situations. If you're ok with that, please proceed!

Here are some timestamps for those interested:

0:00 - Brief Overview
7:29 - Player Introduction
11:16 - Edited Prologue + Animated Opening
26:06 - Meet the Player Characters
50:00 - A Brief History of the Town
1:04:27 - The 1st Episode (Rowan's Story)
1:40:35 - The 2nd Episode (Police Investigation)
1:53:52 - The Mystery Hooks
2:02:55 - The Treasure of the Forest
2:32:05 - The Haunted Train
2:46:47 - The Death of Lilac Franklin
3:01:17 - The Core Mystery of Sweetwater
3:48:42 - Will the Real Murderer Please Speak Up?
3:56:14 - The Rest of the Maps
4:37:37 - The Rest of the Icons
4:41:55 - The True Killer

If you watch this video and have questions about this campaign or the characters, please leave them below! I could talk about Sweetwater and all its intricacies for twice as long as I did in this VOD. Also, I'll be uploading all of the icons and artwork here if you're interested in using them for anything. Axolotl patrons are also free to request a copy of this game on Roll20 so you can mess around with the maps. I was never able to run this game, but if you can reuse any of the assets, feel free! (NOTE: I cannot offer the edited visuals of objects I made because they were bought from packs and heavily edited. If Roll20 lets me transfer games to other GMs and it keeps everything in tact, you're free to use those maps though!)