Quote from: Blair ReynoldsRight and proper gentlemen, your attention, please. This is a public announcement: Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will no longer pursue games supplement production. Newly completed, the long-anticipated Call of Cthulhu adventure supplement The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, which was to be RM308's premier publication, will instead be published by Pagan Publishing with an estimated release date as Summer 2008.
My apologies.
As the lone chief editor, operations manager, financial coordinator, sales representative, and sole artist, illustrator and designer for the entire company, I laboured for several years to get The Mysteries of Mesoamerica, a lavishly illustrated 150-page opus and RM308's premier publication, into production, devoting many hundreds of hours, early mornings and late evenings, weekends and holidays -- every spare scrap of free time -- to its design and development, anticipating my return to the games publishing forum. But as 2007 came to a close and I began final preparations for MoM's release -- at the same time preparing the foundation for the next supplement, The Mysteries of the Old West, Volume I (like 'Mesoamerica, another monster supplement in excess of 175 pages!) -- I realized that it would be impossible for RM308 to continue as it had. It was simply too much for one artist: rendering cover art, interior illustrations, NPC portraits, maps, spot art and layout, and struggling to maintain the production schedule of a respectable, marketable games publisher. As the sole proprietor, I concluded that RM308 could never become what I'd originally intended it to be.
It must be said that I had meanwhile also grown increasingly disenchanted and frustrated (again) with the games industry's orthodoxy, mediocrity, vapidity and apathy. Especially where Lovecraft and roleplaying are concerned, I feel strongly that too many bubbly, juvenile, tender-hearted milksops have infested the genre: Pollyannas promoting a kinder, gentler version of the Cthulhu Mythos by way of Cthulhu plush dolls, Elder Sign earrings, 'Niggurath nursery rhymes, Miskatonic Christmas carols, and buttloads of other flippant silliness.
And it's not just the gaming industry. The general population of devotees among "Lovecraftian circles" suffers from a fairy tale misconception of the Mythos, one that I believe would turn poor Howard in his grave if he could see the candy-ass travesty that his grand universe has become. The mainstream Mythos is a dumbed-down and diluted, popularized and trivialized, emasculated cartoon, wholly separate from the dark, unutterable, obscene and blood-soaked savagery that is the true essence of the Mythos, and my contempt for this fashionable, New Age, Hello Kitty Lovecraft is well known.
So no more games. RM308 hereby retires from its ambitions at roleplaying publication. Again, my apologies, especially to Brian Appleton and John Crowe, my trusted colleagues and brothers-in-arms.
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing will now concentrate its efforts on the development of my former personal works, Black Sands: Betrothed (the original), Black Sands: Catalogue of the Ten Thousand Churches, and Black Sands: Temple of the Compass. This "creative course correction" will be more manageable and feasible than full-time game supplement production, and will more faithfully reflect my personal (hardcore) concepts of the greater Mythos. More importantly, the rendering of these books will better serve and honour my lord and master, the Great Phæraoh Ahau Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, Father of Knives, Cæsar of the Ten Thousand Tongues and Architect of the Monument of the Great Rain -- blessings be upon His name! I've long considered my personal works to be secondary to CoC, but no longer.
Previews will soon be available for your inspection at my new website: //www.RM308.com, and I hope to receive your continued support.

Cheers,

Blair Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief
Room 308 Graphics & Publishing

Quote from: Ian Absentiaappears that he's discovering, like so many, that his hobby is not maturing at the same rate he is.

!i!

Quote from: Abyssal Maw"...he's discovering, like so many, that his hobby is not maturing at the same rate he is."

That is brilliant.

• Grovelling Introduction.
• Egomaniacal description of working hard towards an unachievable goal.
• Perceived struggle through adversity.
• Whinge about how Mythos has changed.
• Miss the point that CoC was always tongue in cheek.
• Blatant plug for other work.
• I'm-so-mythos-is-hurts ending.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaYou know what I mean, right?  It's sort of the inverse of the Peter Pan Syndrome.  Instead of never growing up yourself, you find yourself frustrated that your favorite hobby isn't changing in lock-step with you.  And I'm not referring to RPGs specifically here -- it happens with any hobby.  One day you decide that you've grown up and you look back and wonder why your hobby didn't grow up with you.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaYou know what I mean, right?  It's sort of the inverse of the Peter Pan Syndrome.  Instead of never growing up yourself, you find yourself frustrated that your favorite hobby isn't changing in lock-step with you.  And I'm not referring to RPGs specifically here -- it happens with any hobby.  One day you decide that you've grown up and you look back and wonder why your hobby didn't grow up with you.

Quote from: beeberand "crap supplement?"  geezer, go publish something yourself and get back to me after that :rolleyes: