The Tidal Wave of Junk...

[diaglo]

I know that Mongoose Publishing has never been an EN World darlin', but I have to say that some of their earlier titles like Necromancy: Beyond the Grave, Demonology: The Dark Road, The Quintessential Witch and The Quintessential Rogue were some of my favorite 3PP purchases and I still enjoy them to this day.

this post reminded of The Quintessential Fighter... which was another product that beat WotC to a release of an area in the game. mass combat.
it wasn't very good. but it was the only thing available for this version of the game at the time.

others obviously learned from Mongooses' fast and furious pace to publish and leave out things or test them before release. as proved by better mass combat products after this one.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Whatever happeend to Mongooses(?) Conan OGL RPG? Is it still out there? Do people play it? I never hear anyone talking about it any more.

I suspect they are doing okay, they publish materials for over a dozen game lines. Support them all with an in-house periodical (or two). 10 releases this month, almost 3 dozen scheduled for the next couple of months. Adventures in Hyboria is coming out next month, one of about 30 products for the Conan game. Fantasy Craft (spycraft d&D) looks tempting to me.

 

[TheWyrd]

Of the things getting discussed...

Scarred Lands - Loved it. There was a sense of mystery about the books and the world had a clear 'sense' about it. That 3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition feel was dead on.

Mongoose - I picked up the Quintessential Psion & Psychic Warrior books. After reading about how my Psychic Warrior could get bonus Power points by flaying his flesh, I decided not to go back to Mongoose.

Atlas Games - I picked up a few of their books way back when. There was an adventure about an undead dance that kept repeating. I loved that adventure. The 'source' books weren't as memorable.

Overall though, the avalanche hit me pretty hard fairly early and I just let it wash over me when all was said and done.

 

[Darrin Drader]

It's interesting that of the two biggest producers of crap, Fast Forward and Mongoose, one of them is still actually in business. And pursuing the exact same strategy, just spread out over a bunch of games. Maybe they just have deep pockets.

While I won't comment on Mongoose's early stuff, I have to say that they really improved the quality of the products they started putting out somewhere around 2003 or so. I'm extremely happy with the job they did on Babylon 5, Paranoia, and Conan. I think you don't hear about them as much around here these days because their latest efforts involve reviving Runequest and Traveller, both of which turned out quite good. Overall, I think they're a solid RPG company and I have absolutely no qualms picking up anything they produce if it interests me.

 

[Mournblade94]

FFG = Fantasy Flight Games. Midnight. Dawnforge. Dragonstar. Great board games.

FFE = Fast Forward Entertainment. Crap. The only publisher to make Mongoose look like its books were well-balanced, playtested and well-edited.

Please correct your post!

You know what got me about Fast Forward Entertainment crap?

They had completely IRRELEVANT artwork to their product.

They put out a viking supplement... what was on the cover?

A hot blonde, in skimpy black leather armour using a KATANA.

What got me about that, is it told me they were not even TRYING to make a coherent supplement.

 

[jaerdaph]

You know what got me about Fast Forward Entertainment crap?

They had completely IRRELEVANT artwork to their product.

They put out a viking supplement... what was on the cover?

A hot blonde, in skimpy black leather armour using a KATANA.

What got me about that, is it told me they were not even TRYING to make a coherent supplement.

You're thinking of Viking Age by Avalanche Press (and she was a brunette, not a blonde). Ah, those Hustler er... Avalanche Press covers. Did anyone ever get past the cover to know if the actual content was any good?

 

[Galloglaich]

Yes it was, perhaps ironically, very good as I mentioned earlier in this thread though I haven't read that parituclar one, their Celtic Age and Vlad the Impaler books were some of the best researched historical RPG supplements I ever saw.

Whoever decided to do all the cheesecake on the covers made a serious mistake though. If they could have done something marginally more tasteful / and relevant to the subject matter it might not have been so bad... I don't know i guess it worked for Robert Heinlein.

G.

 

[JustKim]

You're thinking of Viking Age by Avalanche Press (and she was a brunette, not a blonde). Ah, those Hustler er... Avalanche Press covers. Did anyone ever get past the cover to know if the actual content was any good?

I have Viking Age along with most of the other Avalanche supplements. Viking Age was hard for me to track down and I'm glad to have it in print (the PDF is a bad scan). Avalanche Press is a historical wargaming company, so their research is amazing and Viking Age is no different. I would say Viking Age is the single best gaming book you could pick up for a Norse game, for nonrules content. The rules content is among some of the worst, from ability score adjustments for women to the Behead feat to ordinary squirrels sniping low-level characters and sending them into a rage.

Since I find rules content a lot easier to manufacture than authentic Norse feeling, I thought it was a good book. But, yeah, Behead feat.

 

[diaglo]

edit: off the top of my head i know i own products from: AEG, MEG/TH, Ambient, Atlas, Bad Axe Games, Bastion Press, Sovereign Press, Paizo Publishing, Creative Mountain Games, Darkfuries, Dog Soul Publishing, Dog House Rules, Eden Studios, EN Publishing, XRP, Goodman Games, Malhavoc Press, Green Ronin, Mongoose Publishing, FFG, FFE, Necromancer Games, Troll Lords, Privateer Press, Red Spire Press, Open World Press, WotC, Fiery Dragon, L5R, White Wolf

some more i remembered later in the day:
avalanche
sword sorcery studios aka white wolf
kenzerco
paradigm concepts inc
and valar

 

[Olaf the Stout]

FFG = Fantasy Flight Games. Midnight. Dawnforge. Dragonstar. Great board games.

FFE = Fast Forward Entertainment. Crap. The only publisher to make Mongoose look like its books were well-balanced, playtested and well-edited.

Please correct your post!

Whoops! Thanks for picking that typo up for me. I'll correct it now.

I own several Fantasy Flight Games books and think they are great. Fast Forward Entertainment was definitely the company I was talking about.

Olaf the Stout