Mongoose Publishing's Rep...?

[Razz0putin]

I think mongoose has gotten better but I think that they suffer from being the company that puts out the most product. So they crank stuff out which is good in that they have stuff to sell however it's not so good when they don't have time to put the care into them which like I said they've been doing better on.

 

[Jolly Giant]

My mongoose experiences has been limited to the Slayer's Guide to..., Encyclopedia Arcane and Quintessential series. IMHO, they can all be summed up in the same way: Good fluff; but the crunch is of so poor quality as to be completely useless.

 

[Captain NeMo]

I'll just say that most mongoose products at my local store are in the bargain bin. Despite having no experience with their products, that's certainly something to keep in mind...

 

[Numenorean]

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

 

[Psion]

Well, for a long time, I took a "look before you buy attitude" with Mongoose. Lots of people were down on them, but I had concluded that their good stuff was very good; eventually I identified the authors I could pretty much rely on to put out good stuff (Mearls, Younts, Hanrahan), and I sort of wrote off their problems to not being selective enough with authors.

Then, being the drow lover I am, I picked up Sheoloth without looking at it thoroughly beforehand.

My mistake. The NPCs in the book were... well, let's be frank, it was close to the shoddiest rules material I had ever seen (I'll give FFE's Green Races and Monstrous Wizards compendium the booby prize there). It should have never been allowed to see print in that format.

I went along quite happily using my "buying by author" philosophy, and it served me well for a while. Then Quintessential II happened. Younts made a valiant effort to work within the guidelines he was given, but the guidelines sort of sabotaged him. Mongoose's take on "substitution levels for mixed classes" was interesting, but ultimately, I feel it missed the mark.

Mongoose seems to have taken a philosophy of creating materials you wouldn't find in other books, and often reached out a little further with their rules variants. While in some cases, it has paid off, I think that there is no formula that will make this work consistently. That's why I feel that the Quint II series was a failure in my eyes.

I don't hold a lot of interest in Mongoose's OGL games, so can't comment too much there.

Mongoose still has a few diamonds in the rough, and Mongoose has expressed awareness of the problem and a desire to do something about it. I am finding some of their classic play books pretty good, especially the ones by Hanrahan (Planes and Dragons). Lizard is also an author that I think does a good job, and I have high hopes for Ultimate NPCs.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Mongoose at one point seemed to me to be a "quantity over quality" sort of company. No way could I collect their Quintessential guides, just because there's way too many of them. Some of the Encyclopedia Arcane books had some interesting subject matter, but didn't really have the punch I was hoping for.

Mongoose has, as mentioned above, improved considerably - especially with their licensed properties. I think the last thing I picked up from them was OGL Cybernet, and that was fantastic.

I think it's a matter of what you're looking for from them.

 

[Nellisir]

I bought a few Mongoose books in the beginning, and was severely disappointed in them (Quint. Fighter being the only one I can recall now). I picked up a few odds & ends over the years from bargain bins, and have upgraded them to "Look & buy" (up from "don't even look"). Some of the material is great, some of it isn't. I'm a "crunch-miner", and the Quint. II books are turning out to be great for me -- I buy the pdf's on DrivethruRPG and cut n' paste to my hearts content. Slayers Guides to Elementals and Undead are both great, and the Book of Dragons has some really good ideas.

Rules implementation and editing are not usually A+ material, particularly in the older books (more often C+). The production values in the older generic (vs, say, Conan) hardbounds is (was) pretty low -- this turned me off a bunch of books.

But my impression is they're working hard to turn this around, and my personal opinion of them has improved enough to order at least two books sight unseen.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[MonsterMash]

Well they have a heap of product which doesn't appeal to me or hasn't been done well , but also a number of good lines of products.

In the Plus column:

• Conan RPG and supplements
• Pocket Rulebooks
• Paranoia XP
• Generally much better licenced products than standalone D20 stuff

In the minus

• lousy editing and proofreading on a lot of products
• entire lines of products which do not appeal - Quintessential, Slayers Guides, etc....
• Poor execution on some products (bad crunch)

My opinion anyway, but they are trying to improve the proofing and editing.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The problem I have with Mongoose is the lack of playtesting for a lot of their material (especially the Slayers' guides and the magic books). Some of it is so broken it's nearly useless. I just don't feel comfortable allowing Mongoose material in our game, other than as fluff.

 

[twofalls]

My only experiences with Mongoose was their early stuff, they flooded the D20 market with substandard material in both content and editing (IMO). I was so disgusted by what I was seeing that I completly lost any respect for the company and their products and expressed that opinion to all my gamers and told the owners of my two FLGS that I wouldn't be interested in any of their material. One of the store owners told me that a number of game store managers had told Mongoose to slow down their production and focus on quality or they would drop their line's all together. I have no idea if there was any fallout from that, or where it went from there. None of my players have purchased a Mongoose product since that time. Now, granted, that was years ago and I've not put my hands on a Mongoose book since then to even look at the cover. Mabye things have changed... maybe.