Okay, I’m just going come right out and say it. I wish I lived in this house.

It’s got a big basement, 1 bedroom on the ground floor and three more on the second floor. It has separate dining, “sitting”, and living rooms. It has a wrap-around porch. This house is, in a word, awesome! It’s also perfect for your next roleplaying adventure. It would make a great headquarters for your heroes, a dangerous location for a hostage crisis, or even a pulse-pounding, room-by-room search for a kidnapping scenario. Whether your campaign is of the action, mystery, pulp, crime, or horror variety, you can’t go wrong with having a multifuction house floorplan like Modern Floorplans: Craftsman Style Bungalow.

Remember, this floorplan, like all our others, comes in a variety of styles and configurations. Within the PDF you’ll find versions that are tiled, scaled to a single 8.5×11 page, or full size “plotter-ready”. You’ll find versions with furniture or without, with grids or without. For a measly $2.95, you get this map in just about any format you could want.

Modern Floorplans: Craftsman Style Bungalow is available at Midnight Cellar and RPGNow.

I should know better to post news on April 1, but I’m too excited to wait any longer on this. You may remember that we announced how Fear Effects would be available as a GM screen. Well, April is release month and late last week I was mailed a proof. I got so excited looking at this thing that I just had to share it with someone. I picked YOU!

Sure, I’m a dork. At least I have cute kids. Take advantage of online and FLGS merchant discounts for preorders, or look for Fear Effects (TWL1002) in game stores in the latter half of April.

-Preston

Horror website Flames Rising just posted a review of Skinwalker. If you’ve been sitting on the fence about buying it, now’s your chance for another opinion. We want to shout out a big thanks for the review!

Okay, I critically failed my roll to keep everyone updated on 12 to Midnight’s plans. Exactly one month ago when I announced the Last Rites print edition, I said I’d be back in a week to tell you about the following release. Before I knew it, the holidays had jumped out from behind a dumpster, knocked me out, and took my wallet. Well I’m finally back, with part 2 of our plans for 2009.

In April we’ll be releasing a special print edition of Fear Effects for Savage Worlds. Fear Effects is exactly what it sounds like– a set of fear rules. The nice thing about Fear Effects is that it doesn’t require a sanity score or additional record-keeping. If you fail your Guts roll, you make a roll on our fear chart rather than the standard table found in the Savage Worlds rulebook. Did I mention that our chart has 100 possible outcomes, versus the standard 10?

The original Fear Effects was conceived as a santiy toolbox. Ed wrote the rules with several variants and options that you could choose based on the kind of horror campaign you were running. It was a great idea, but we got some feedback from you that all those choices led to deadlock. With this version we decided to streamline things and give you a single set of rules to play by. Don’t worry though; all those options and variants will go into a free download from Midnight Cellar.

We had another reason for streamlining the rules. We really wanted it all to fit onto 5 pages plus a cover. Why? Because we’re releasing Fear Effects in a handy GM-screen format! Fear Effects, like Last Rites before it, will be 6×9 folded. That’s just a little bit more narrow than your Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition book, which should mean that you’ll be able to slip it between the pages and carry it everywhere you carry your rulebook. However, it unfolds to 3 panels per side, giving you a compact GM screen with the entire 100 item Fear Effects chart on one side and the rules summary on the other.

All of this for only $4.99! At that price, you can buy two and give one to a friend! The item number is TWL1002, and you should be able to pre-order this item online or in game stores in another month or so. Speaking of preorders, don’t forget that you can preorder Last Rites of the Black Guard at your FLGS. Just ask for TWL1001.

Other than the Midnight Charity Project and a random release here and there, I know from the outside it may seem like 12 to Midnight has gone dormant. From the inside, I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. In fact, we have several exciting releases scheduled for 2009, so rather than summarize them I thought it would be more fun to give each release its own moment to shine.

First, the big stuff. In 2009 you’ll be able to find print editions of 12 to Midnight Games in your friendly local game store. The first of those is Last Rites of the Black Guard, the very first game we published and still one of our spookiest, most popular adventures. This will be an all-new edition in released for the Savage Worlds system in 6×9 softcover. That is almost exactly the same size as the Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition, so they’ll look great on your shelf together. Last Rites is getting a new introduction, new layout, new artwork, notes for alternate endings, Fear Effects notations, and more. It’s also being officially moved from Rosetta, TX to Pinebox, TX to fit right in with our other adventures–oh the benefit of hindsight!

The new print edition of Last Rites of the Black Guard will be hitting game stores in early March, and some online stores are already taking preorders. If you’d rather order it from your store, the item ID is TWL1001. The book is set with a retail price of $16.99, but the stores taking preorders are selling it at 20% off. The price is higher than we would have liked to set it, but this being our first release we weren’t sure how many copies we’d sell and we needed to make sure we at least broke even. This is where you come in. If you want to see more 12 to Midnight releases, and see them cheaper, please order this book. Order it for your friends, order it for your GM, order it for anyone who is a fan of horror. Once we have an idea of how many of you want our games in print, we’ll be able to adjust the price to be as affordable as we can manage.

Incidentally, if you want to own an autographed copy as soon as they’re available, we’re auctioning off a single copy for the Midnight Charity Project beginning December 12.

So, that’s our March release. What’s next? You’ll have to tune in next week, when I reveal our April print release.