Happy New Year from 12 to Midnight! As is our custom here, I’d like to share with you my reflections on 2005 and give you an idea of what to expect from us in 2006.

2005 was a growth year for 12 to Midnight. We were invited to contribute to Modern Dispatch on a monthly basis, which was quite exciting. Of the four companies participating in the Modern Dispatch, ours is the only one run by “moonlighters”—the others are all full-time publishers. Hopefully we justified their trust in us. The discipline required for a monthly deadline has been good for us, although we’d certainly welcome freelancers to contribute so we can focus on pushing our other titles forward. There’s no question that Modern Dispatch has impacted our release schedule.

Green’s Guide to Ghosts was our first release of the year, and in the author notes you can read for yourself how that title grew like a mutated, radioactive ant from a 1950’s sci-fi movie. It was a change in direction for us, since it was the first title dedicated to expanding a setting rather than a standard adventure. (Not that our adventures are ever standard, mind you.) Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to sell significantly better or worse than our adventures.

After Green’s Guide to Ghosts, we started editing Skinwalker. It was a big document, and we were taking it in sections since Jerry was still working on the appendices. Ed had an idea for some horror rules, and we decided to slip in a small title while hammering out Skinwalker. We were also very lucky to entice an old friend of Ed’s to join our team as Lead Editor. Trey is a real pro (as in, he also does this for a living), who adds a new level of polish to our titles. Of course, nothing is ever quite as fast and easy as you expect, but eventually we released Fear Effects. Skinwalker was further pushed back while we finished up Brainwashed, a “short” adventure to support Fear Effects. Finally, with the release of Brainwashed, we were dedicated to knocking out Skinwalker within a couple months.

Then, I happened to see a post by Jeff Varnes on a gaming site. One thing led to another, and before we knew it we had our first imprint deal. Dirty Unicorn Games is responsible for the amazing Flatlands collection of tiles and tokens. Flatlands was a great release, and it has been a real pleasure working with Jeff.

Unfortunately, it was not long after that we ran into the Fall doldrums. This is the second time in a row in which we completely lost our momentum during latter half of the year. There’s no single explanation for it, but generally speaking it’s a combination of more demanding schedules at our daytime jobs (the ones that actually pay the bills), various personal schedule conflicts, and burnout. Next year we’re going to try harder to take the doldrums into account.

At any rate, as you know we still have not released Skinwalker. The good news is that it will be out Real Soon Now. Why has it taken so long (other than the above)? For one thing, in our editing cycle each one of us takes a turn on the manuscript. That’s a time-consuming process. (As you’ll read below, this is being overhauled.) Another reason is that this adventure is highly non-linear. It took us a few tries to find a way of organizing everything so that it is easy to navigate. It also has a huge cast of characters. While the nature of the adventure means that the heroes may only interact with a fraction of possible characters, Jerry still had to account for all for them. There are full stats for TWENTY FOUR characters. Anyone who has rolled up a d20 character knows how time-consuming that can be.

Of course, we had the benefit of using the Metacreator software tool, which made things a little bit faster. Unfortunately, during editing we discovered a flaw. Metacreator wasn’t calculating everything correctly. Skill points weren’t being allocated correctly, for instance. In fact, we discovered that these errors went back to characters in Brainwashed, too. That meant it was back to the drawing board. Twenty-four recreated characters later, and the end is finally in sight.

So what’s ahead in 2006? Expect this year to be our breakout year! For starters, we are very excited about our first print title to hit game store distribution. Bloodlines (d20 System edition) will be available for preorder beginning in February and will hit stores in April. Just for the occasion we’ll be updating it to make it Fear Effects friendly and correcting any errata. If you know of any errors in Bloodlines, please let us know in our forums. Needless to say, we’ll be posting this updated version as a PDF and allowing existing owners to get the new version for free.

While Skinwalker was in the doldrums, other manuscripts continued to pile up. We now have eight drafts awaiting their turn in the production cycle. So what’s on the horizon? The Beast Within by Mike DeSanto; Modern Druids (a class book expanding on the Shaman and Skinwalker classes found in Skinwalker) by Jerry Blakemore, Fire in the Hole (Weekend Warriors 2) by Jerry Blakemore; Wild Things, a fantasy adventure by Rob Manning, Midnight Tales (themed collections of our Modern Dispatches converted to Savage Worlds), Prodigal by Neal Hyde, SteamWorks, a huge fantasy setting expansion by Korey MacVittie, and The House on Dale Island by Ed Wetterman. Dirty Unicorn Games is working on a pair of titles for release in the next few months. And speaking of imprints, we also have a new imprint on board: Fabled Environments. Expect to see a series of beautiful modern maps coming from this talented team of Krista and Charles White.

Somewhere in there, we also have big plans for our first campaign book. This will be set at East Texas University, although the title is still pending. We already have notes and are really excited at the prospect of working on it. Our “mission statement” is: ETU is a setting in which college students face unknown horror and mayhem in a world much like our own, a world in which creatures of myth lurk in the shadows, science spins out of control, and magic drives the weak-willed insane… all while attempting to maintain a 2.5 GPA.

So how are we going to accomplish this ambitious (for us) release schedule this year? We overhauled our production cycle, allowing us to work on three titles at once. Skinwalker is our last title using the old system. Editing has always been our biggest bottleneck, so we also brought on board a second professional editor. With these changes, we expect to be able to release more titles without a dip in quality.

Finally, I’d like to thank all of our fans for your continued support. Your support and encouragements make our work worthwhile. I sincerely mean that. We at 12 to Midnight all have other full-time jobs, so the time and dedication we devote to making quality games is at the expense of our own leisure time (assuming “sleep” is considered leisure time). It is your support that keeps us going. Thank you.