Mongoose Publishing's Rep...?

[S'mon]

Sadly my long reply to Ranger REG got eaten by this crappy PC (*grr*). Basically it boiled down to "Ian Sturrock (Conan, Slaine) good, Mongoose editing (and most work of Mongoose BBEG Matt Sprange) bad"

 

[MonsterMash]

Are there good [role-playing game] authors in the UK?

Well he may write mainly GURPS stuff these days, but Phil Masters is consistently good.

Ian Livingstone and (one of the) Steve Jacksons

 

[swrushing]

Mongoose's mew jermiah RPG was chock full of editing errors, some major, and just confirmed my previous view of their quality.

They go back on the "won't buy" list.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I tend to look before I buy, no matter what publisher. Except for Malhavoc Press, of cause

Mind you, the Mongoose book I use most and love most has got to be Chaos Magic. Brilliant. Reminded me of Mage quite a bit...

 

[Pip-Boy 2000]

I tend to find that Mongoose products are not to my taste. For example, their sourcebook,The Quintessential Fighter (for D&D 3e) is fairly well-done, but some of the information contained therein seems... a little out there. A lot of strange weapons that make you wonder, "Why did they put this in the book...?" So I personally feel that Mongoose is a little iffy as a publisher.

But, as others have mentioned, if you try before you buy, you can't go wrong. Let me also suggest that before buying any roleplaying sourcebook, you go to Google and enter the search terms: <title of book> review . RPGNet tends to have reviews on just about any gaming book under the sun, and you can find miscellaneous reviews all over the Web.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Odd as it sounds The Quintessential Fighter was where I first started liking Mongoose. I wanted a mass combat system, and there it was. And it worked!

There were some balance issues, fighter schools needed a price to pay beyond money (the answer that both Mongoose and I came up with separately was an experience point cost). In fact I liked most of the Quints. And Seas of Blood remains the only D20 supplement that I have ever worn out. (It was loved to death, and died happy.) I liked the fact that the books went in directions that most companies weren't going, even when they felt like house rules that had been written down.

Yes, they are a bit amateurish, but I look back at some of my old favorite gaming supplements and can't say that they were any less so (Thieve's World by Chaosium, Free City of Haven by Gamelords, City State of the Invincible Overlord by Judges Guild... my old favorites) in short they hit a nostalgia button.

Lately I have been running an OGL Steampunk game. Goodness! it has editing problems. I had to rework a great deal of the material, but still feel that it is a good game, just one that could have benefited from another six months of development time. Having tinkered with it I like it fine, but then I view the D20 system as a salad bar, and as time passes wish that I had more items as PDFs, just to make cannibalizing systems easier...

The B5 material has so far had okay editing, the second release of Conan seems fine, but I think a lot of people will be going over the editing in Mongoose books with a fine tooth comb, as they are now suspect.

The Auld Grump

 

[Emirikol]

Mongoose is making the Lonewolf RPG and minis. I certainly hope they do well because i have high anticipation for this line.

I was very disappointed that the book had:
a) no color
b) no artwork

The novels themselves had practically more artwork than a comic book, but the intro to Lonewolf has none. Oh well. Seems like guys with a lot of money and motive, but not a lot of responsibility.

jh
10 years of playing in HYBORIA and Shadizar becomes the City of Romance and Waterways

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I've liked a few of their books. Thought Judge Dredd was particularly well done.

Then I bought Cyberpunk OGL. The editing was horrible - you've got to see it to believe it. Cut and pastes left from D20 modern, references to non existant rules, janky tables - just went on. Rendered the game basically unusable without me spending days rewriting it. Couldn't be bothered, consigned it to the 'never look at again' pile of RPG books. To make it worse, some of the ideas were really interesting - just no usable ruleset to go with it.

I'm with twofalls on this:

Meh. Why bother. There are so many other publishers whom I can trust...

It'd take a lot of recomendations from people I trusted to give them another go. It'd be on a product at a time basis as well.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Meh. Why bother. There are so many other publishers whom I can trust, and so much other material on the market, I prefer not to gamble my dollars. I can trust Fantasy Flight Games, Sword and Sorcery Studios, WotC, and a handful of small publishers to provide me with excellent material. Mongoose lost me as a potential customer years ago, and I don't mind telling my friends the same.

I have to agree with this, so much so that if I'm ranting about some rule or other my players always ask if it's from Mongoose.

 

[WildWeasel]

Also, Mongoose has a bit of a rep for trying to snipe major releases from other companies. WotC announces Draconomicon, and bang, Mongoose is now working on Classic Play: Book of Dragons. PP solicits for the IKCG, and a week or so later Mongoose announces OGL Steampunk.