With the death of the old year and the birth of the new, we frequently find ourselves examining the year we just left behind and the months in front of us. As in previous years, I’d like to share with you my perspective on how 12 to Midnight fared in 2007, followed next week by a look ahead to 2008.

The year started off looking like it would be our brightest yet. We released our first fantasy adventure, Marsh of the Wild Things, and had several more titles written and merely awaiting their turn in the editorial cycle. However, these titles we put on the backburner because we had an even bigger project in the works–a 12-part serialized adventure by Ed Wetterman. We planned on following that up with several other adventures at a rate we had hitherto been unable to match. Unfortunately, we still can’t claim to have matched that schedule.

Yet, as I said, things started off well. For the last months of 2006 and the first several months of 2007 Ed was a writing machine. I mean it. While I can’t say he was tireless, he was certainly a real pro. Like a marathon runner, he pushed through the exhaustion and kept on going. You see, our goal was to release one new installment a week each week for June, July, and August. In late Spring, Ed completed all 12 installments–nearly 300 pages of material–and we began playtesting.

That is where things started going wrong. It became apparent that some of the middle episodes were confusing until put in the context of later episodes. That may not sound too terribly bad on paper, but in practice it meant that players felt frustrated and confused for three episodes until everything was explained in the fourth. Leaving players frustrated was not an acceptable outcome–even temporarily. After having worked at our full time day jobs then coming home and working another several hours every night for months on end, it was as if we’d come in sight of the marathon finish line only to have it moved another four miles. We were exhausted and crushed, and we just couldn’t keep up the momentum. 12 Hours to Midnight is an excellent adventure, but the rewriting of those three episodes was not something anyone could stomach. We released a new Pinebox adventure, The Beast Within, but for the most part we were all past burnt out. Work on other adventures mostly ground to a halt for several months while we recharged our batteries.

Part of that recharging involved traveling to Origins. For some of us (including myself), it was our first experience at a national gaming convention. I’m just a simple guy from Texas, and I gotta say Origins blew me away. I loved meeting so many online friends and making new ones. It was wonderful to put faces to names I’ve gotten to know over the last four years. I know that I can speak for all of us when I say that Origins did a lot for helping us get back on our feet. We left with great memories and renewed purpose. I’ll get to the renewed purpose part next week.

This fall and early winter were all about building up our momentum. First, we brought own two new members to the 12 to Midnight team. Neal Hyde joined as a writer/editor and was followed shortly thereafter by Brendan Quinn as webmaster. Brendan worked magic behind the scenes and brought our very own store online by the beginning of October, in time for our annual Halloween sale. This was one of the projects that we started at the beginning of the year but were just stretched too thinly to complete. Brendan really jumped in and exceeded our expectations. We also brokered an agreement with Silven Publishing to carry on their titles and the Silven brand after they closed shop. This has added more than two dozen titles, mostly fantasy, to our catalog. We released Ed’s Midnight Tales, two freebie adventures in a new series called Bites of Midnight, a freebie e-publishing guide, and launched a major charity initiative called the Midnight Charity Project. The year ended with a very busy month as many of these projects finally bubbled to the surface near-simultaneously.

 I think it is safe to say that 12 to Midnight has regained our momentum and the year 2008–the fifth year anniversary of our first release–will be our best year yet. Tune in on Monday to learn why.