twofalls said:
So Matt, please tell me, and I ask this for 13 other people who are my players, after experiencing what I did early on (and again I promise to give Sheoloth a fair shake and look over) what is MGP doing now that should make me reconsider my opinion of your company in light of all the other publishers who have made good impressions on me over the years?
I would be happy to!
First off, older books - say, pre-2004. To most people's minds, this means the Slayer's Guides, Encyclopaedias and Quintessentials (there are many others, but for simplicity, we'll stick with these). You will hear a lot of varied comments about these books but, at the end of the day, you'll have to do your own thinking - after all, they are all aimed at very different types of gamers. For example, the Slayer's Guides had very little crunch and concentrated on source material for the monsters in question. Whether you will find any value in a Slayer's Guide depends on a) whether you prefer fluff over crunch and b) whether you agree with the author's interpretations of the monster. The same much applies to the Quintessential range but in reverse - there is far more crunch than fluff.
Whether these books are for you or not really comes down to opinion. There is nothing inherently 'wrong' with any of them, and I stand by our publishing of them. If they don't float someone's boat, that's cool - we have plenty more for people to try. Are they all error and typo free? No, but many are and those afflicted with the odd mistake are done so in the most minor ways that will not affect your gaming. It is the actual material within these books that will make them appeal to you or not.
As an aside though, think on this. The Quintessentials alone have been responsible for bringing in over $1,000,000 of revenue to Mongoose. Sales were high enough for us to release one every month for a solid three years. At one point we were selling, on average, a Quintessential book every thirty seconds. _Someone_ was not only buying these books, but actually buying all of them. And they kept coming back three years later. Even now, the Quintessentials form a strong part of our back catalogue and a good percentage of our monthly income. The Slayer's Guides and Encyclopaedias follow similar lines.
The point is, don't take all your information from a single source, even one as diverse as EN World. Have a look for yourself, chat to your mates down the local games store. Be wary of anyone who says _anything_ is rubbish. What they actually mean is they don;t like it.
Now, on to the meat - why does Mongoose have the reputation that several posters here have raised. We have had the occasional gaff in the past, sure - we have over 160 books in our catalogue now (at last count) and yes, there are the odd mistakes to be found in them. However, the three main offenders were Sheoloth, Ultimate Monsters and the first release of Conan. The first two we completely removed from the market, trashing all copies we had - they were simply not the standard by which we wanted people to judge Mongoose. So we destroyed them. Conan was the sole responsibility of someone who will remain nameless but no longer works at Mongoose. You would not _believe_ how furious myself and my business partner were at what had happened there. We immediatly destroyed all remaining copies in our store and began work on the Atlanetan Edition, which is now the current book.
Those are the facts of the past. After Conan, we made some huge structural changes in the company to ensure things like this could never, ever happen again. Yes, we had to acknowledge that, from time to time, mistakes would be made but they would never be of the magnitude and sheer humiliation (I kid you not) of the first release of Conan.
The process took some months to complete anhd we found some nasty surprises along the way (such as a certain ex-editor actually hiding - get this - proofing reports under his desk and then claiming he had gone through them and made the changes). In the end, however, we accomplished the following;
1. Up to Conan, projects were very likely the 'pets' of one person in the office. They had full responsibility for text and art, and saw the project through from start to finish.
Well, Conan ended that. We built a complete managerial structure with multiple checks along the line so the 'Conan Incident' could simply never happen again without a conspiracy involving half the office.
2. Some people were fired, some left just before they got fired. Whatever we thought of them personally, we had to recognise that they were no good for the company and would never do the work we asked of them to the standard we wished. We brought new people in and the quality immediatly went up.
3. We used to have things proofread just once. It now happens twice. Makes a hell of a difference. Our proofreading budget also expanded from hundreds of Dollars per month to thousands. You should find a bit of a confidence boost right there.
4. Now procedures were laid in place so writers and editors could work far more closely with one another on specific projects - this elminated any nasty surprises that are possible with a 'blind' system.
5. A Studio Manager was apppointed to head up all aspects of RPG production and ensure any problems that arose could be dealt with quickly and, if need be, independantly. It also ensured that the editors need only listen to one voice when taking instruction (a potential problem in a company run by two business partners).
6. As well as additional personnel, we also scaled back RPG releases. In short, we were able to give our people more time to work on projects of the same size than they had before.
7. We got out of our tiny little office and finally moved to digs were we had enough room to swing an elephant, let alone a cat.
8. We assigned a third line of proofreaders who do _nothing_ but check stats.
That is the core of it - there are hundreds of little details that we have constantly refined over time and we continue to do so. In short, if we see a problem, we now fix it and then double check back along the process to see how to avoid it in the future. We are not perfect but we constantly aim for perfection. However, that covers the main changes.
From the release of Conan, Mongoose changed completely as a company to the extent that someone from the past would no longer recognise the way we work. As I said before elsewhere on these forums, the books that we put out right now I would happily stack against any other publisher in the market. It is okay for someone to not like a book or disagree with something we have done - but, please, remember that when someone says a book is rubbish, what they actually mean is that it is not to their liking. There really is a world of difference
Because of the 'Conan Issue' people seem a little ready to jump on us when something goes wrong - and that, of course, is entirely our own doing (I said as much in the months after Conan was released). For example, the Shadizar Map Debacle. Now, this is something that has perhaps zero impact on the box set, should be of no interest to anyone, and could happen to any company - but sets off the 'there goes Mongoose again crowd'. In reality, we were badly let down by an artist who, aside from losing work in the RPG industry, has _no_ vested interest in the product and thus no great loss from doing what he did. He'll soldier on, somewhere in another industry. It is left to us to pick up the pieces of the wreckage he left behind. . .
However, if you want to see quality Mongoose books in action, may I suggest these recent titles;
Lone Wolf
Starship Troopers (miniatures may not be your thing, but peek at the box if you get a chance)
Infernum
A Call to Arms
B5 Galactic Guide
In fact, any B5 book of the past year
And ditto Conan supplements
The Book of Hell (still ranking as one of the best written Mongoose books of all time, in my opinion)
I could go on. . .
The point is, when someone raises a Slayer's Guide (for example) and says how pointless it is, remember a) it was produced for a market four years old now, b) it may not be his thing and c) Mongoose, as a company, has moved a long way since then. If they raise a copy of the original Conan, please be aware of how much that debacle changed Mongoose.
Umm, does that help at all?
