Okay, this is the first of a series on the designing and play of ETU: Degrees of Horror. I’m hoping to provide enough teasers to generate interest and some feedback as well as to give our fans an idea of what goes into producing a plot point setting from writing to editing, to rewriting, to editing, to final editing, to layout, to art, financial decisions, and keeping up with the Pinnacle standards of good practice.

ETU has been percolating within us from the very beginning of 12 to Midnight, and fans who have been with us the past 4 to 5 years may remember that at the beginning it was known as SETI (South East Texas Institute). But we soon debated that it was not in South Texas, but in East Texas and the name changed to ETU.

Many of our adventures have been set in Pinebox, Texas and the college has been alluded to many times. When we decided to actually move forward on producing a plot point campaign we debated on whether to make one for Pinebox, ETU, or a more generic one for Golan County I think this conversation actually took place sometime last year. When you have 5 to 6 partners (we recently added one), sometimes these debates can get real interesting. At first we discussed if we should even do a Pinebox setting or another, vastly different one. I had developed several ideas including one based in early America (1607), another that took modern people to another planet to see if they could survive political intrigues, alien fauna and beings, and discover the true purpose of the Keepers (think Lost, but on an alien world full of fantasy and sci-fi). Preston had an idea for creating a younger kid’s plot point to get kids playing role playing games. Jerry had a great idea for the Zombie Wars, and a few others. Finally we decided that 12 to Midnight was built on Pinebox and our fans deserved a full setting with all the bells and whistles to make for a true campaign. And after many more discussions we finally settled on an ETU setting. But what could we name it?

We began with Wicked 101, but were not sure that fit what we were hoping to be selling. Eventually Preston posted on the Peg Forums and the Savages gave us many great ideas, the one we all liked the most was ETU: Degrees of Horror. We had a few meetings and worked out some of the basics of what we wanted to achieve with this release and what our requirements for it would be. We have always tried to provide professionally done adventures from writing to editing to art and layout. Many of our products have been delayed as we simply refuse to release anything until we are happy with it and even then, mistakes happen. But, I do feel that for a small, indie company we do what we set out to do. I’d put our pdf adventures against any on the market for quality and value. In fact (not to get too off task), many pdfs on the market simply are not good enough in my opinion and I’d like to see some sort of industry standards someday (this has been started a few times, but always ends with various disagreements and nothing being done with it).

Our first discussions of ETU were hammering out what the story arc is going to be and the basic presentation. At first Preston suggested having the setting include other genres like action, spy, and so on, but again we settled on the idea that we needed to be true to the Pinebox setting. One problem we have had is that many folks don’t understand what type of horror genre the Pinebox setting is. There have been many horror settings released for RPGs in the past few decades. We wanted one that was more of a cross between the quirkiness of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the slow creeping doom of a classic Cthulhu game.

I love Buffy and you will definately see that influence in the ETU setting. More to come soon…..

As I mentioned in my last update, 2006 was a year of “priming the pump”. Several slow-moving projects moved much closer to completion and changes in the market are taking us in an exciting new direction. Here’s what to expect in 2007.

12 to Midnight store: A healthy catalog and changes in the market led us to conclude that it is finally time to open our own online store. This store will sell all our e-books, as well as exclusive merchandise such as print books, t-shirts, and more. We have the e-commerce software installed and will be setting up the store in the coming weeks. Expect to see a fully operational store by the end of the first quarter. Right now we are tentatively dubbing it The Shop of Horrors, but if you ideas for a cool store name please share your idea in the forums. If we use your idea, we’ll send you some free stuff!

Swamp of the Wild Things, by Rob Manning, is the first in hopefully a new line of fantasy adventures. This adventure for 8th level heroes is so close to completion that it was almost released in 2006. However, Christmas crept too close and we decided to hold onto it until everyone has had a chance to recover from holiday spending. Look for this title later this month. We hope to release the Savaged and d20 versions almost simultaneously, but that will depend on the Savaged approval process.

The Beast Within, written by Mike DeSanto, is 95% through final edits. We will be working on art for this Pinebox adventure this month, with an eye to release by the end of February. This adventure for low-level characters could make a good introduction to Pinebox and the kickoff of a modern campaign.

Another Pinebox adventure, The Prodigal, will be entering final edits this month. Look for this one by the end of March. The is adventure was written by Neal Hyde, who is no stranger to 12 to Midnight. Neal wrote several Modern Dispatches, including the recent Aliens Among Us. After this adventure, things will be quiet for a few months until…

…12 Hours to Midnight written by Ed Wetterman. This is a 12-part serialized adventure in the style of “24”. Each hour builds on the one before, with the heroes trying to make sense of the conspiracy around them while struggling to survive long enough to put the pieces together. This is a stand-alone series set in Pinebox but not intended to be part of a larger campaign. We have committed ourselves to not releasing the first hour until all 12 episodes are ready to go. “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” this series will begin in the first week in June, with new episodes released at the rate of one a week through the summer.

Sometime over the summer, we also hope to release another fantasy title called Steamworks. This is a BIG fantasy resource for a new way of dealing with inventions in a d20 fantasy setting. The release date on this one is a bit more hazy because we are still shuffling around editorial resources, but summer looks like a good bet.

In July, 12 to Midnight expects to make a con presence at Origins. Currently all five company officers are talking about attending. While it is unlikely that we will have a booth, that just means we will be able to focus on running lots of demo games and meeting with our friends and fans. Expect us to be a fixture in the Savage Worlds room (not that d20 will be left out in the cold). We will definitely have more to say about this as the convention approaches, so expect an announcement about times and places to meet and greet the 12 to Midnight crew.

Autumn always seems to be a busy time in our personal lives, so this year we are planning accordingly. We will release one more title—Ed Wetterman’s “Mount Everest of haunted houses” —The House on Dale Island.

Rest assured that even if you only see one adventure from us in the second half of 2007, we are still working as much as possible. The latter half of the year is when we will focus our energy on our big campaign book, code named ETU. This campaign is set on the campus of East Texas University in Pinebox, and takes characters from college freshmen through graduation (hopefully) as they struggle to survive conspiracies, strange creatures, mad science, and mysteries of the occult—all while trying to maintain a passing grade. This book includes new student-flavored character options, details about the ETU campus and surrounding Pinebox, an extensive adventure generator, and an optional metaplot spanning all four (or five, or six) years of your college career. While it is highly unlikely that you will see ETU in 2007, it should be well positioned for a release in the spring of 2008. This book will be released first as a Savage setting, followed by a d20 System conversion.

Gil’s All Fright Diner is a novel by A. Lee Martinez, 2005. Review by Ed Wetterman

This book was a treat. This book was not a serious horror, nor was it serious in tone. It is a funny look at two classic characters of the horror genre, Duke-the werewolf, and Earl-the Vampire. This is a buddy story full of adventure, romance, horror, and some of the most fun characters you can find. Here is the publisher’s blurb from the back of the book:

Welcome to Gil’s All Night Diner, where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never know what might be lurking in the freezer…

And maybe—just maybe—the end of the world, too.

If you were ever a fan of Douglas Adams or of Robert Asprin, you will definitely like this book. Several scenes made me bust out laughing and I was surprised that I really liked it. The undead cattle, the jailbait sorceress, and her little cult of one were too funny and well developed.

Writing: 4.5 Stars
Martinez scored with this book and I think it accomplishes all he set out to do. The writing is not superfluous, and he takes common ideas and turns them so that we see them in new ways. This ain’t your momma’s vampire and werewolf! I really liked the relationships in the novel and the character interactions were fun reading.

Plot: 4.0 Stars
The plot carried this book where it needed to go, but the character’s interactions are what really made this book for me. The young sorceress using her feminine wiles on the dumb jock that is her one occult member was awesome fun, as was the ghostly romance. It was predictable in some places, but overall this was very well plotted out and a good, moving story.

Gaming Uses: 3.5 Stars
This book’s story could easily be placed in that little old town of Pinebox, but it was a bit on the silly side too. You would want to make it a bit more serious for a true horror game, but there is plenty here to use in your game. My favorite would be the possessed magic eight ball. Good stuff!

Final Score: 4.0
This is a great quick read and a very funny tale. Check it out.

Ed Wetterman
12 to Midnight

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.

Spirit, a novel by Graham Masterson, 2001. Review by Ed Wetterman

Spirit is a great ghost story with a surprising twist and a neat adventure that could easily be put into the gaming genre. If you like ghost stories, or are looking for a new way to present ghosts, this novel is for you!

I’ve read several Graham Masterson books the past year, and have reviewed one here previously. He is one of my favorite horror novelists and I find his work easy to read, with good plots and great characterizations. Here is the hype from the back cover:

Peggy Buchanon was such an adorable little girl, all blond curls and sweetness. Then came the tragic day when her family found Peggy floating in the icy water of their swimming pool, dead, her white dress billowing around her. Her sisters, Laura and Elizabeth, couldn’t imagine life without Peggy. They knew from that day forward their lives would be changed forever. But they couldn’t know the nightmare that waited for them.

Peggy may be dead—but she hasn’t left them. As the sister grow up, a string of inexplicable deaths threatens to shatter their lives. No matter how warm the weather, each corpse shows signs of severe frostbite…and each victim’s dying moments are tortured by a merciless little girl in a white dress, whose icy kiss is colder than death.

Writing: 4.5 Stars
Masterson is quickly becoming one of the horror masters, and I look forward to getting more of his books. His writing is tight and he uses just enough imagery to provoke a scene in your imagination, but doesn’t let his descriptions detract from the action which comes quickly. His characters are well-rounded and “real” and I always find at least one character within that I can relate to. In Spirit, this character was Elizabeth Buchanon, the heroine of the novel.

The only reason I don’t give this novel a 5 Star rating, is the sex. Again, I’m not a prude, but I really don’t need the detailed descriptions of the sexual situations. Unfortunately, I think that has become part of the formula to sell a horror novel today. There are two scenes that I found a bit too raunchy and thought it distracted from the story. So this is definitely an R rated novel.

Plot: 4 Stars
Masterson is great at plotting a novel, and each chapter flowed well into the next. The characters grow from young girls to adults and the ghost of their sister follows them and takes a very “protective” approach to her living sisters. He uses many tried and true “horror” elements throughout the novel, including spontaneous combustion, cold-spots (ghostly spirits), faerie lore, a preacher who is a sexual predator of children, and graphic descriptions of gory deaths. He developed a new twist on the idea of how spirits operate, and I thought it was very original. I’d say more, but that would definitely spoil the book for the reader. The story takes place beginning in the early 1940s and continues until the early 1950s. I really couldn’t understand why this story wasn’t placed in modern times, as I didn’t see any real reason of the “dating” of the plot, though I do like that period of history.

Gaming Uses: 5 Stars
Spirit is a great ghost story with many modern gaming applications. He develops the idea that a spirit may be caught in his/her own imagination at the time of death. This made for a very interesting final scene, and could make for a great adventure as well. This would make a great backstory for a modern character, and there are enough ghostly and original twists to make for a great series of modern “haunting” type adventures.

Final Score: 4.5
I really enjoy reading Masterson’s novels, and if you are looking for a great ghoststory, or for ideas for your home game, you could do much worse. I recommend this novel, and look forward to another one from him.

Ed Wetterman
12 to Midnight