State of the Mongoose 2025
Mongoose Publishing is just finishing its 24th year in business and our silver anniversary is just a year away!
I am Matthew Sprange, owner of Mongoose Publishing, and the State of the Mongoose is our yearly address to the gaming community. Here we will be covering how we have been getting on over 2025 and then looking forward to our plans for 2026.
This year we will be talking about what has been happening at Mongoose behind the scenes, as well as revealing the future of Traveller, Paranoia, Shield Maidens, Pioneer, Dark Conspiracy, and a lot more!
Grab yourself a coffee (maybe two, this is quite the read!), get comfy, and let us take you through everything that has been happening, as 2025 has maybe been the busiest for Mongoose as we lay down preparations for both 2026 and 2027.
Actual Land Barons
Last year we announced the purchase of Traveller, Twilight 2000 and 2300AD in their entirety. In 2025, as well as Dark Conspiracy (and we will be getting back to that in a big way a little further on!), we were finally able to purchase the office building we have been renting for many years now.
It is quite big, as little buildings go, and while we have been maintaining it for all this time, now that it is actually ours we have loads of ideas of what we can do – redecorate everything, build a dedicated studio, fill the roof with solar panels… well, there is a lot and that can all wait until the company piggy banks have been refilled.
However, this move has all been part of the drive to make Mongoose as secure as possible while the years roll by. With Traveller, Twilight 2000, 2300AD, and Dark Conspiracy all under our belt, as well as now ownership of our building, we are becoming more resilient to any ‘outside forces’ that might wish us harm in the future. Self-sufficiency is not really a thing for a company, but all of this goes to making Mongoose ever more stable and enduring as we move closer to employee ownership.
The Coming 50th for Traveller
2027 is going to be a Big Year for us – for it will be the 50th Anniversary of Traveller, the science-fiction RPG that is just five decades young!
This year, we have spent a great deal of time working out how we are going to celebrate this milestone and a few decisions have been made. First off, there will not be one single ‘Traveller day’. Traveller is just too vast for that, so we will be conducting celebrations throughout the year.
We will be roughly splitting 2027 into three parts, covering Traveller of the Past, Traveller as it is, and Traveller of the Future. You will see regular updates on our developing blog, Planet Mongoose, that delve into the mysteries of the Charted Space universe, interviews with Traveller luminaries, our presence at major conventions and lots, lots more…
What we want to avoid is making Travellers’ 50th anniversary product-based. I mean, there will be new products linked to the Anniversary, such as the Pirates of Drinax Anniversary Edition, and each new Traveller book released in 2027 will get a shiny gold anniversary badge, but we want the celebration to be… more.
The framework for all of this is now in place. In 2026 we will be filling in all the details to make Traveller’s 50th something to remember!
The Business Stuff
The purchase of Traveller, Twilight 2000 and 2300AD took a good portion of 2024 to digest, but this has been done more or less successfully. Existing licences of these properties were maintained and a small number were added, and plans put in place to set each on a stable path for the future.
Buying our office building was another big event, though aside from dealing with lawyers and the Land Registry (great fun any time of the year), there was not a massive administrative burden, especially as we were already responsible for so much of the building’s upkeep and management. No, the burden here was financial and our first priority for 2026 is to shore up our war chest to pre-purchase levels – the war chest being another factor that makes Mongoose much more secure as we enter another year.
This was obviously a considerable investment for Mongoose’s future and, as with the Traveller purchase, this also had an effect on the bonuses the staff here received. However, it was the staff who made the decision to buy the building for the company, knowing their take-home would be affected. That said, we have still been able to pay bonuses to each staff member totalling better than 60% of their salary. After a few years now of doing this, every staff member at Mongoose either has their own home or is about to purchase one, and our next aim is to get their mortgages paid off over a few short years. After that, we will be seriously ramping up company pension contributions for everyone.
The reason for this is much the same as acquiring Traveller and the office building for Mongoose – it makes everything a lot more secure for the people who work here as we head into the future.
All of this, as readers of previous States of the Mongoose will know, goes towards the ultimate goal of employee ownership of the Mongoose. At the moment, we very much act as if we are already employee owned, in terms of the decision-making processes that we have and the rewards staff members receive for their hard work – in short, Mongoose is a gaming company run by gamers who directly benefit from the games they create. As we have said before, when you purchase a Mongoose book, the vast majority of the money you pay goes to the people who created it – not printers or shippers, not utility companies or landlords, not a big, smiling, fat cat sitting at the top, but the actual creators.
As part of this process, people working at Mongoose must get to grips with not only their specific roles but also learn how to run a company with little to no supervision. At times, this means me actually leaving the office and either going home or retreating to a quiet part of the building, with instructions that I am only to be disturbed if, you know, the office is actually on fire or something.
This leaves everyone at Mongoose to run the company themselves, handling all the day-to-day functions as well as any emergencies that arise. We were hoping to do this more often in 2025, but with new staff members, the purchase of the office, and the planning for Traveller’s 50th, we have managed this for a total of… one week. Which is not great.
Efforts must be doubled, but I am all too aware that the answer for many long-term questions is rapidly becoming ‘we’ll do that in 2028, after the 50th Anniversary.’ Which is also not great.
Mongoose has been built to scale up, in terms of sales, very, very well, to the extent that it matters little (in terms of workload!) if we sell 2,000 copies of a new release or 200,000. This approach keeps costs relatively low, which is the principle reason that staff here can be rewarded so well. The obvious solution to the issues outlined above would be to hire more staff… which is what will directly impact the pay that goes to each individual member of staff… so we try very hard to avoid doing that.
However, needs must, and so this year we brought in Chris Griffen as a full-time, office-based writer. Travelling all the way from California (to Swindon!), Bella convinced the Home Office that he would be a valued member of staff who should be allowed to stay in the UK for a prolonged period of time. Veterans of Traveller will need no introduction to Chris’ work as he has worked on many great Traveller projects, such as the mighty Singularity campaign, whose PDFs are now in the hands of the Kickstarter backers who helped bring it to life. Having Chris in the office means he can now work far closer to everyone else who creates our books, which can only improve their depth and quality.
We are also currently advertising for another Layout Artist, as at time of writing this we have 40-odd manuscripts either already in our hands or about to arrive. At the current pace this represents releases stretching well into 2027 and maybe beyond, so as we add new product lines (such as Pioneer and Dark Conspiracy) we will be well-served by having another hand able to put books together. We are hoping for this new face to start in early 2026.
Mongoose had another staff member join us this year, in a marketing capacity. However, as has happened before, we unfortunately found that it did not really work out. The inevitable conclusion here has to be that we do not understand marketing. At all.
Avoiding the temptation to simply declare that word of mouth and quality of product have both served us perfectly well in the past and so why not simply continue, we are going to try a new tact in 2026. We have started reaching out to third party marketing agencies to see what can be offered there. Maybe they will be a silver bullet in getting the good word of Traveller and our other games out, maybe we will simply begin to learn what does and does not work for marketing. Either way, we are reluctant to give up on this avenue and will take another swing at it.
Another event that affected the whole industry this year was the coming of seriously increased tariffs and the trade war. The effect on Mongoose? Well, I can say we were glad we were not a boardgame or card game manufacturer (and, to an extent, miniatures). People from such companies were ringing the alarm bell, and we could see why – the effect on them looked just awful.
As for us… it was okay, really. Over the years Mongoose has printed in a wide variety of countries, including Canada, the US, the UK (which must rank as one of the most expensive places in the world to print full colour books, though it remains reasonable for black and white – in fact, our Classic Traveller Book 9: Pirates was printed just down the road from us), Europe, and Hong Kong. We had developed a very good relationship over two decades with a couple of firms in the latter, and we were able to escape the worst of tariff charges because of the nature of our products. However, having printed in a wide variety of companies in the past allows us to stay agile if needed and while changes can cause delays in the arrival of books (looking at you, Clans of the Aslan!), moving printers at short notice is something we are able to do if needed. At the current time we are printing in Europe (as are other UK RPG publishers, we are given to understand).
So, with all that, how is it going at Mongoose?
Well, busy – ever busy – and while I would like to be putting more money into the pockets of our staff, the big purchases have eroded that a little. However, each acquisition has made Mongoose a little more stable and a little less expensive to run, which will translate into more money being available to the people who work here. I calculate that these investments have put my plans to get mortgages paid off back about a year and a half from the original goal. That means we need to stabilise a little in the first quarter of 2026 but, after that, I plan to start putting serious dents in the mortgages the people here have.
A Word From a Mongoose
I have been giving some clues about what it is like to work at Mongoose – I thought it might be a good idea to bring in someone who actually works here to say a few things about it in their own words. Last year we did this with Abby. For 2025, I asked Cassie, one of our layout artists, to pen a few words:
“Wow, what a busy year it’s been for us all at Mongoose HQ!
“We have continued with our employee ownership training, and have become more confident when it comes to running the company when Big Boss Matt is out of the office. Some extra jobs are just second nature now and are getting done without any hoopla or lengthy discussions on when, where, and/or who will do the tax returns, customer service, purchasing shipping supplies, or dealing with any other jobs other than our main roles. It’s been a little bit of a juggle at times but we all help each other when needed. All in all, running the fundamentals of the company is becoming second nature to us and we are looking forward to stepping up and learning more about running the ship in a more thorough way next year, hopefully taking the helm over for extended amounts of time so Matt can focus on what he loves most; writing amazing RPGs!
“We have welcomed Chris Griffen as a full-time Mongoose here. Having one of the main Traveller writers sitting right beside you helps a lot to quickly get understanding of what a specific ship part looks like without waiting for an email to return from across the pond. Chris has slotted in perfectly with our team, and he also makes fantastic food when it’s his turn to cook.
“We tried a few new things out this year to improve our outreach to people, such as some exciting actual plays from Oxventure and 12 Sided Studios. We aren’t too convinced at their success but let us know if you enjoyed them.
“We also took a swing at exhibiting at the 3-day Comic Con at the Excel Centre in London. Though somewhat enjoyable, it was also bloody nightmare! To start, two of my colleagues went to the Excel to set up but became incredibly ill and would not be able to work there (I blame Matt for taking them out to a Warhammer competition the weekend before, they must have caught something). Well, Matt and I cleared our weekend plans and stepped up to man the stand for the whole event. We got through it together, utterly exhausted. We ended up travelling to London everyday and back due to having animals to look after, while Chris stayed at the Excel hotel and manned the stand in the morning and the evening, then going back to his room and getting some Pioneer writing done. Saturday evening ended in catastrophe when Matt took a wrong turn and we ended up driving through central London in rush hour – it wasn’t all bad, as Matt got to hear my rendition of Cher’s ‘Believe’ which I’m sure he would tell you he thoroughly enjoyed!
“I’m looking forward to next year, and seeing where these all our new exciting projects take us. Watch this space…”
Business Summary
2025 has been (yet another) expensive year for us but, yet again, we managed to do it all without borrowing a penny and without breaking every piggy bank. The current financial position is reasonable, and we should be able to get back onto the front foot within a very small number of months in 2026.
One thing we have not been able to do quite so much is our office trips, due to the workload. We managed to occasional cinema trip, nice restaurant and escape room (we are still really bad at those), but did not even get round to our regular wildlife park trip, so no scratching the heads of fluffy exotic animals. Now, I imagine that may not seem like a Big Deal to everyone, perhaps something that does not really belong in the ‘business summary’ section, but it is one of the things central to Mongoose.
So, this is certainly something that will be remedied in 2026!
2025 and the Mongoose
We managed to get a lot done and dusted this year, but here are a few of the highlights.
There was a desire to get a few more books out in 2025 but, in truth, we did quite well. The problem, from our side, is that Singularity and the prep for Pioneer sucked a lot of graphics time away from general releases. This is the issue with Kickstarter projects, as they require a great deal of work that would otherwise be targeted at getting the rest of our release schedule out. The flip side to this is that a) Kickstarters are a lot of fun to work on, b) the staff tend to get very nice bonuses from them, and c) backers get more for their money – art budgets tend to get thrown out of the window on the meteoric Kickstarters for a start!
Clans of the Aslan finally arrived, after having been delayed by tariff shenanigans (it should have appeared at the end of 2024), which convinced us that Randy Dorman was absolutely the best choice to work on our next ‘empire’ book, the Aslan Hierate. The manuscript for that was duly delivered and Randy is now working on an Aslan-centric campaign, the brief for which was ‘Game of Thrones, but with cats’. However, those two are for 2026.
As I type this, Cluster Truck is being finalised and should land before end of the year – we have been seriously enjoying this one, as it is a self-contained campaign set outside of the big empires where Travellers will be space truckers, pulling cargo between worlds and getting involved in all sorts of mischief. This is a more light-hearted campaign than our others, more Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit than Duel. We even have the Travellers being constantly harassed by a slightly portly law enforcement officer in mirrored sunglasses (worn even when he is on a ship) who is just convinced they have done something wrong.
Another set of six Journals of the Travellers’ Aid Society went onto general release, and these seem to be immensely popular amongst Travellers – and rather than tailing off, they have been getting more popular as we reach volume 18! As soon as they launched, people were asking when the next set would appear… It will be a while yet as we need to collate more articles and Travellers’ 50th anniversary will take some time away from that – but I think it is fair to say that JTAS is not going away.
The Fifth Frontier War continues to grow in ferocity, with this year’s releases setting all the foundations for what is to come. Adventures like the Riverland and Opening Moves have, thus far, allowed Travellers to influence the course of the war in small ways, normally focussed on a single world here and there that may prove to alter the battle lines later on. However, the big stuff is on its way…
One sourcebook proved really quite popular, though we had half expected this to be the case. The Borderland details two clusters of worlds in the Trojan Reach that are all ripe for adventure (and integrate well with the Pirates of Drinax mega-campaign), but the key is that they are nicely separated from the rest of the sector. This means that Referees can run a true sandbox campaign but in such a way that the Travellers will not go shooting off in an unexpected direction. A self-contained sandbox, if you will, the best of all worlds!
Our friends at Markosia released the compiled Far Trader comics as a graphic novel (with a choice of both hardback and softback). Written by Traveller-veteran Chris Griffen, Far Trader is the tale of an out-of-luck crew of Travellers needing to take slightly-less-than-honest jobs in order to keep flying – pure Traveller goodness!
It is always fun to work on Paranoia manuscripts, and WJ MacGuffin and his team have been pulling absolute blinders (slaying, for the younger readers), steadily increasing both quality and level of satire in their writing. This, for me, culminated in the recent release Powers That Be: Trust No One. Focussing on both service groups and secret societies, this might well be the best thing ever written for Paranoia (controversial!). If you like your real world satire baked into amadcap utopian underground city ruled by an insane loving Computer… you really want to take a look at this book.
Shield Maidens suffered this year with constantly re-scheduled projects. Both the Vanaheimr sourcebook and two fiction releases missed a 2025 appearance, but they are now set for 2026.
And finally, as we get towards the end of the year, we are continuing our tradition of a free Christmas present for our fans – this time for not one but two of our games. No spoiling the surprise, but this is an idea we had back in 2024 and we got the writer beavering away at it very early on. It will be, as they say, a good ‘un.
So, that was 2025. What can you expect from Mongoose next year?
Traveller in 2026
With over 40 manuscripts either already in our hands or in advanced states of completion, and most of them being Traveller-themed, there will be no shortage of new places to explore in 2026.
The Infinity Suite: After he wrote Cluster Truck, Martin Dougherty could just not get the lighter-sided Traveller campaigns out of his system. So, we thus have The Infinity Suite. Set in the isolated ‘Islands’ subsectors in the Great Rift, the Travellers will be rock stars trying to complete their masterwork – amidst massive debt, pursuing repo men, a growing lawsuit… but it is all rock and roll to them.
Vehicle Handbook Update 2026: This was a victim of scheduling, not least because it is, by its nature, very graphics intensive. However, layout of the updated Vehicle Handbook is about to commence. Headed by Geir Lanesskog, this tome is a complete revision of the vehicle rules in Traveller and while the resulting stat blocks will seem familiar, the engine behind them is really quite different. Geir has also managed to increase the breadth of vehicles possible, plus also popped in a separate Vehicle Catalogue to cover machines from across the Tech Levels!
The Aslan Hierate: Akin to The Third Imperium book, this is the next in the 'empire' series. Written by Randy ‘I am actually Aslan’ Dorman, The Aslan Hierate takes a look at these aliens from their first evolution to the great expanse that is the Hierate. Far from a self-contained empire, Randy picks apart the Hierate, inspecting how the clans function together (or not), how the minor clans stay mobile beneath their overlords, how the corporations can operate beyond clan-control, how war is conducted – all wrapped up with a detailed exploration of the Hlakhoi sector, deep in the Hierate.
The Fifth Frontier War: Now we start to enter the full scope of the war. Battles are raging across the Spinward Marches and beyond – and, as before, we are looking to put players in the front seat of the war, in positions of ever-increasing importance. Even if the histories do not record their names, their actions will start to have a powerful effect. For example, Favourites at Court has the Travellers take the role of Imperial nobles and their entourage tasked by the Duchess of Mora to bring Duke Norris to heel. They will have the opportunity to solidify Imperial forces… or bring utter ruin to the sector’s defence (I mean, they are Travellers, I think we can put bets on how that is going to go…). Meanwhile, in Consular Envoy, the Travellers will be escorting a Zhodani diplomat on a mission in the Trojan Reach to start trouble in the Imperium’s soft underbelly. Other Fifth Frontier War books will see Travellers take command of a Sword Worlds raiding cruiser, bear firsthand witness to the fall of an Imperial world – and that is aside from a close look at the ships being used by the likes of the Darrians, Sword Worlders, Vargr and Federation of Arden.
Pioneer
If you are reading this before the end of November ‘25, you still have time to leap into the Kickstarter that is currently running for the Pioneer RPG!
Pioneer is a ‘Traveller-adjacent’ game, self-contained but resting on very familiar mechanics. Set 10-30 years into the future, the Core Rulebook will allow players (Pioneers) to explore the Solar System, using the latest technologies to achieve a series of firsts – they will be the first to build a permanent moonbase, the first to mine an asteroid… and in the first full campaign book, Ares Ascendant, the first to set foot on Mars.
The Kickstarter is offering the Core Rulebook, the Ares Ascendant campaign, and Mission Control, a book full of smaller missions to get your Pioneers up into space and firmly on the cutting edge of exploration. You can get in on the action right here: (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mongoosepublishing/the-pioneer-rpg-explore-the-solar-system) where you will also find a free preview pack that contains the core rules and a complete mission to rescue a stranded capsule in Low Earth Orbit.
You can also check out the two-hour Actual Play of Pioneer from 12 Sided Studios right here:
Dark Conspiracy
This is something I have been working on a lot myself and, as such… I think it is a big one!
We had the chance to acquire Dark Conspiracy earlier in 2025, and I immediately saw that it was a solution to a problem we had been having for a long time.
There was a game outline that we had been working on for years, with the working title of Codename Veil. However, we could never quite get it to work in a way we were happy with, so it kept getting sidelined. With Dark Conspiracy, I figured out that we had found the missing component that would draw everything together into a cohesive universe.
Dark Conspiracy is a Traveller-adjacent and deeply horrific game that features a world under dire threat by Dark entities, hidden from us as they sink their claws into society. The Operatives will need to work out what they are, and, most importantly, what they want…
We are splitting this game into three ‘eras’, each spearheaded by its own Core Rulebook. The first, Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War, will be appearing in the summer of 2026. Set in our own modern world (you can set it in your own hometown, if you wish!), a tiny number of people are just beginning to understand that the Earth is in terrible danger – but no one actually knows anything about the threat so they are operating under a terrible veil of ignorance.
The players of Dark Conspiracy (Operatives) are all specialists recruited by an organisation they have the barest understanding of. They will have three major objectives every time they go up against the Dark:
The core tone of Dark Conspiracy is going to be absolutely horrific, with a heavy dose of ignorance on the part of the players. To begin with, they will simply not know what it is they are truly facing. They may have ideas of what the ultimate threat might be… but they will almost certainly be wrong as, at the time of The Unseen War, no one in the world really has a grasp on what is happening.
Fixing that will need a good team of players.
We are embracing concepts of the Traveller rules in Dark Conspiracy. For example, there are no ‘super’ characters in this game, and combat is deadly. This is something players will get to grips with rather quickly during their first encounter with the Dark.
However, we are also looking at the ethos behind Traveller, such as the self-contained/self-generating campaigns that are possible. For Dark Conspiracy, players will be assigned missions but can also initiate their own investigations. To do this, there is a system whereby the Referee feeds them (perhaps random!) ‘conspiracy headlines’, maybe something like ‘living goo found on ships in the Bering Strait’ or ‘they’re turning the freaking frogs gay!’ Have fun finding your own sources, though we will present a long list in the Core Rulebook. Players take each headline and conduct specific investigations, with the aim of (eventually) presenting the Referee with their own conspiracy that they are very convinced is correct. The Referee is then able to build a mission for them to engage in, proving their conspiracy and foiling the machinations of the Dark… or finding out that what they thought was going on is actually something very different.
We are properly embracing conspiracy culture with that particular system, with players likely going round and round in circles trying to justify their conclusions in the face of mounting (and possibly contradictory) evidence. They will be plotting all these connections on a ‘web’ chart to surround the conclusion at the centre… though we are looking at optional rules to use a pinboard with the objects of their investigation getting connected by bits of red string…
The next ‘eras’ will be Dark Conspiracy: The Open War (set a few years on when things have really started to go downhill – this will be closest to the original game) and Dark Conspiracy: The Final War, where the Operatives will not only have more solid knowledge of what they are battling against, but also the resources to, maybe, do something about it.
However, these are a fair while away and will take a few years to play. Together, they will allow groups to either play in the era they most favour or… for the truly committed… create Operatives in The Unseen War, and follow their progress right through to The Final War in a massive campaign spanning humanity’s survival… or fall.
The ‘player-facing’ rules, covering Operative and Cell creation, plus the tools they can use to take the fight to the Dark (both mundane and… not) are pretty much complete. We are now working on the Dark Minions and integrating them into the game.
Watch out for lots of previews in 2026!
2300AD
There are two big announcements for 2300AD in this year’s State of the Mongoose.
On the back of the TAS programme on DriveThru being opened up to Classic Traveller, we are proceeding with 2300AD TAS, opening up the community programme to this universe as well. What this basically means is that you will be free to draw upon the current edition of 2300AD material, plus the Traveller rules, and create your own supplements, sourcebooks, adventures and tools for 2300AD – and we are looking forward to seeing what you can come up with.
We are aware that fans of 2300AD are very hungry for new material and so this should be some fertile ground for publishers!
As for the second announcement…
We have been for some time of the opinion that while 2300AD is a great source of enjoyment for its fans, it is a universe that just seems to scare the willies out of the normies, usually accompanied by questions like ‘where do I start?’ and ‘but what do we do in 2300AD?’
These were questions that we started to tackle with the current box set, but we believe we can do better.
So, for 2026 and 2027 we will be focussing primarily on adventures and sourcebooks for 2300AD, areas that (while remedied somewhat by the excellent Project Bayern and Invasion campaigns) have not been massively pursued. During this time, we will be working on a comprehensive (and standalone) 2300AD Core Rulebook and accompanying titles that will provide a one-stop shop for newcomers to the 2300AD universe. Our aims here are:
Expect to see this one around the middle of 2026.
Shield Maidens
Shield Maidens is the game of female warriors charged with divine power in a Viking/Cyberpunk-themed universe where players take on both empires and gods as they surf the Bifrost to the Nine Realms.
It has a special place in our hearts, though fell victim to scheduling this year. However, writing has been completed for the Vanaheimr sourcebook, a title that explores one of the worlds of the gods. The Shield Maidens will navigate the lands of Freya (and perhaps meet their goddess), while defending its borders from those seeking to usurp and destroy the Vanir.
Paranoia
More missions to fail, more treason to ignite, and more rules to ignore! That is our plan for 2026.
Amidst such missions as Swap Meet and (Un)Fair Competition, we are working on Traitorous Little Git, a new hardback for Paranoia. This is very much a player-facing title on… well, how to play Paranoia better with blackmail, threats, Favours, online treason in Alpha Complex, and so on. The goal with this one is to help players enjoy Alpha Complex more by opening their eyes to the nefarious scheming possible in this game.
You know, if they are not already at each other’s throats by the end of character creation…
Video Games
Our friends at Evil Twin Artworks are now hard at work on the video game Traveller: Vanguard. And some glorious news here – we have seen it! It exists! We have played the prototype, taking a squad of noble Zhodani into battle against the vile, capitalist Imperials (or, conversely, playing heroic Imperial Marines desperately fending off the aggressions of an oppressive thought-controlled regime…).
Set during the Fifth Frontier War, Traveller: Vanguard is a multiplayer, turn-based, strategy game. Players command an entire boarding force and engage in tactical, squad-based combat. Currently in the prototype stage, Evil Twin will have more information soon and you can get the latest updates hot off the press by joining the newsletter here:
Traveller: Vanguard Updates - Evil Twin Artworks
Virtual Tabletop Platforms
VTTs are a thing… and they are not going away!
One of the most consistent questions we have is when Traveller and our other games will be appearing on platform X, Y or Z. Unfortunately, it is rarely a simple process, but we have appointed a crew (headed by Colin Richardson) to cover them and progress has been made!
Fantasy Grounds is the longest running VTT platform that we have had a partnership with and our coverage, while not complete (and there will always be a lag between a title being published by us and it appearing on VTTs – it is just the nature of the beast), is very broad. Expect to see more appearing here in 2026, and it is worth checking out as the core software for Fantasy Grounds is now available for free!
With the merger of Roll20 and DriveThru, a few hurdles were removed that allowed us to move forward from our initial appearance there in 2024. A lot of challenges were overcome, enabling us to release a good number of titles. This is a focus for us, so expect to see more appearing across the next couple of years.
We have recently started work with Alchemy, one of the new kids on the block, and they have proven to be both good and professional. They are currently working on more Paranoia books and will be moving onto Traveller in 2026.
Lastly, we have Foundry – technically speaking it is a wonderful VTT, though it has a steep learning curve. We are in the process of getting the core Traveller books into the right format so we can properly test the new Foundry Marketplace.
In all of these areas, we could certainly use more developers getting involved, especially with Foundry, and those who wish to work on a wider range of game systems. If you are one of these.. drop us a line and we will pass you onto Colin!
Traveller Digital Tools
Veterans of our forums and Discord channel will know this has been a long-running saga and a bit of a unicorn in what the end result will be.
The basic idea is to create a full set of Traveller digital tools available online, drawing together ideas that have come from so many different places into one cohesive whole. We have some idea of what we would like to see, but the devil is very much in the details for a project of this scale.
As a concept, we would like to take a leaf from the mighty Travellermap.com created by Joshua Bell. Using that idea as a base, the UI and performance would be updated/modernised and then something-something Traveller creation, and ship building, and trading, and combat, and planet creation all get integrated…
Yeah, we know how that all sounds and, being realistic, we would not suggest pinning your hopes on the 2027 anniversary year as the time where things start appearing. I think this is going to take a while. However, know that serious conversations are being had on how to proceed and start building this tool set.
And into the Future
A year ago in the last State of the Mongoose, we listed a series of primary goals for 2025. How did we do?
“Mongoose Publishing is a company dedicated to providing the best, comprehensive in-universe experience to its customers, and a fun, engaging and prosperous life for its employees.”
That really encapsulates our entire approach to business. We have a business model that more or less works, and have found that by concentrating on the wellbeing of our staff and ensuring we do as much as we can to improve the enjoyment of our fans and customers, things tend to work out. I do not foresee us changing this theme any time soon.
And I think that is about it! If you have reached the end of the State of the Mongoose 2025, thank you so much for sticking through nearly 8,000-odd words, and thank you for continuing to support us for another twelve months. We very much hope to see you again in 2026 as we continue to explore new universes, both scientific and fantastic.
All that is left is for everyone here at Mongoose to wish you all a very Merry Christmas with much turkey and mince pies, and a prosperous New Year filled with whatever brings you joy.
Stay safe, keep gaming, and good luck!
Matthew Sprange
Managing Director
Mongoose Publishing
Mongoose Publishing is just finishing its 24th year in business and our silver anniversary is just a year away!
I am Matthew Sprange, owner of Mongoose Publishing, and the State of the Mongoose is our yearly address to the gaming community. Here we will be covering how we have been getting on over 2025 and then looking forward to our plans for 2026.
This year we will be talking about what has been happening at Mongoose behind the scenes, as well as revealing the future of Traveller, Paranoia, Shield Maidens, Pioneer, Dark Conspiracy, and a lot more!
Grab yourself a coffee (maybe two, this is quite the read!), get comfy, and let us take you through everything that has been happening, as 2025 has maybe been the busiest for Mongoose as we lay down preparations for both 2026 and 2027.
Actual Land Barons
Last year we announced the purchase of Traveller, Twilight 2000 and 2300AD in their entirety. In 2025, as well as Dark Conspiracy (and we will be getting back to that in a big way a little further on!), we were finally able to purchase the office building we have been renting for many years now.
It is quite big, as little buildings go, and while we have been maintaining it for all this time, now that it is actually ours we have loads of ideas of what we can do – redecorate everything, build a dedicated studio, fill the roof with solar panels… well, there is a lot and that can all wait until the company piggy banks have been refilled.
However, this move has all been part of the drive to make Mongoose as secure as possible while the years roll by. With Traveller, Twilight 2000, 2300AD, and Dark Conspiracy all under our belt, as well as now ownership of our building, we are becoming more resilient to any ‘outside forces’ that might wish us harm in the future. Self-sufficiency is not really a thing for a company, but all of this goes to making Mongoose ever more stable and enduring as we move closer to employee ownership.
The Coming 50th for Traveller
2027 is going to be a Big Year for us – for it will be the 50th Anniversary of Traveller, the science-fiction RPG that is just five decades young!
This year, we have spent a great deal of time working out how we are going to celebrate this milestone and a few decisions have been made. First off, there will not be one single ‘Traveller day’. Traveller is just too vast for that, so we will be conducting celebrations throughout the year.
We will be roughly splitting 2027 into three parts, covering Traveller of the Past, Traveller as it is, and Traveller of the Future. You will see regular updates on our developing blog, Planet Mongoose, that delve into the mysteries of the Charted Space universe, interviews with Traveller luminaries, our presence at major conventions and lots, lots more…
What we want to avoid is making Travellers’ 50th anniversary product-based. I mean, there will be new products linked to the Anniversary, such as the Pirates of Drinax Anniversary Edition, and each new Traveller book released in 2027 will get a shiny gold anniversary badge, but we want the celebration to be… more.
The framework for all of this is now in place. In 2026 we will be filling in all the details to make Traveller’s 50th something to remember!
The Business Stuff
The purchase of Traveller, Twilight 2000 and 2300AD took a good portion of 2024 to digest, but this has been done more or less successfully. Existing licences of these properties were maintained and a small number were added, and plans put in place to set each on a stable path for the future.
Buying our office building was another big event, though aside from dealing with lawyers and the Land Registry (great fun any time of the year), there was not a massive administrative burden, especially as we were already responsible for so much of the building’s upkeep and management. No, the burden here was financial and our first priority for 2026 is to shore up our war chest to pre-purchase levels – the war chest being another factor that makes Mongoose much more secure as we enter another year.
This was obviously a considerable investment for Mongoose’s future and, as with the Traveller purchase, this also had an effect on the bonuses the staff here received. However, it was the staff who made the decision to buy the building for the company, knowing their take-home would be affected. That said, we have still been able to pay bonuses to each staff member totalling better than 60% of their salary. After a few years now of doing this, every staff member at Mongoose either has their own home or is about to purchase one, and our next aim is to get their mortgages paid off over a few short years. After that, we will be seriously ramping up company pension contributions for everyone.
The reason for this is much the same as acquiring Traveller and the office building for Mongoose – it makes everything a lot more secure for the people who work here as we head into the future.
All of this, as readers of previous States of the Mongoose will know, goes towards the ultimate goal of employee ownership of the Mongoose. At the moment, we very much act as if we are already employee owned, in terms of the decision-making processes that we have and the rewards staff members receive for their hard work – in short, Mongoose is a gaming company run by gamers who directly benefit from the games they create. As we have said before, when you purchase a Mongoose book, the vast majority of the money you pay goes to the people who created it – not printers or shippers, not utility companies or landlords, not a big, smiling, fat cat sitting at the top, but the actual creators.
As part of this process, people working at Mongoose must get to grips with not only their specific roles but also learn how to run a company with little to no supervision. At times, this means me actually leaving the office and either going home or retreating to a quiet part of the building, with instructions that I am only to be disturbed if, you know, the office is actually on fire or something.
This leaves everyone at Mongoose to run the company themselves, handling all the day-to-day functions as well as any emergencies that arise. We were hoping to do this more often in 2025, but with new staff members, the purchase of the office, and the planning for Traveller’s 50th, we have managed this for a total of… one week. Which is not great.
Efforts must be doubled, but I am all too aware that the answer for many long-term questions is rapidly becoming ‘we’ll do that in 2028, after the 50th Anniversary.’ Which is also not great.
Mongoose has been built to scale up, in terms of sales, very, very well, to the extent that it matters little (in terms of workload!) if we sell 2,000 copies of a new release or 200,000. This approach keeps costs relatively low, which is the principle reason that staff here can be rewarded so well. The obvious solution to the issues outlined above would be to hire more staff… which is what will directly impact the pay that goes to each individual member of staff… so we try very hard to avoid doing that.
However, needs must, and so this year we brought in Chris Griffen as a full-time, office-based writer. Travelling all the way from California (to Swindon!), Bella convinced the Home Office that he would be a valued member of staff who should be allowed to stay in the UK for a prolonged period of time. Veterans of Traveller will need no introduction to Chris’ work as he has worked on many great Traveller projects, such as the mighty Singularity campaign, whose PDFs are now in the hands of the Kickstarter backers who helped bring it to life. Having Chris in the office means he can now work far closer to everyone else who creates our books, which can only improve their depth and quality.
We are also currently advertising for another Layout Artist, as at time of writing this we have 40-odd manuscripts either already in our hands or about to arrive. At the current pace this represents releases stretching well into 2027 and maybe beyond, so as we add new product lines (such as Pioneer and Dark Conspiracy) we will be well-served by having another hand able to put books together. We are hoping for this new face to start in early 2026.
Mongoose had another staff member join us this year, in a marketing capacity. However, as has happened before, we unfortunately found that it did not really work out. The inevitable conclusion here has to be that we do not understand marketing. At all.
Avoiding the temptation to simply declare that word of mouth and quality of product have both served us perfectly well in the past and so why not simply continue, we are going to try a new tact in 2026. We have started reaching out to third party marketing agencies to see what can be offered there. Maybe they will be a silver bullet in getting the good word of Traveller and our other games out, maybe we will simply begin to learn what does and does not work for marketing. Either way, we are reluctant to give up on this avenue and will take another swing at it.
Another event that affected the whole industry this year was the coming of seriously increased tariffs and the trade war. The effect on Mongoose? Well, I can say we were glad we were not a boardgame or card game manufacturer (and, to an extent, miniatures). People from such companies were ringing the alarm bell, and we could see why – the effect on them looked just awful.
As for us… it was okay, really. Over the years Mongoose has printed in a wide variety of countries, including Canada, the US, the UK (which must rank as one of the most expensive places in the world to print full colour books, though it remains reasonable for black and white – in fact, our Classic Traveller Book 9: Pirates was printed just down the road from us), Europe, and Hong Kong. We had developed a very good relationship over two decades with a couple of firms in the latter, and we were able to escape the worst of tariff charges because of the nature of our products. However, having printed in a wide variety of companies in the past allows us to stay agile if needed and while changes can cause delays in the arrival of books (looking at you, Clans of the Aslan!), moving printers at short notice is something we are able to do if needed. At the current time we are printing in Europe (as are other UK RPG publishers, we are given to understand).
So, with all that, how is it going at Mongoose?
Well, busy – ever busy – and while I would like to be putting more money into the pockets of our staff, the big purchases have eroded that a little. However, each acquisition has made Mongoose a little more stable and a little less expensive to run, which will translate into more money being available to the people who work here. I calculate that these investments have put my plans to get mortgages paid off back about a year and a half from the original goal. That means we need to stabilise a little in the first quarter of 2026 but, after that, I plan to start putting serious dents in the mortgages the people here have.
A Word From a Mongoose
I have been giving some clues about what it is like to work at Mongoose – I thought it might be a good idea to bring in someone who actually works here to say a few things about it in their own words. Last year we did this with Abby. For 2025, I asked Cassie, one of our layout artists, to pen a few words:
“Wow, what a busy year it’s been for us all at Mongoose HQ!
“We have continued with our employee ownership training, and have become more confident when it comes to running the company when Big Boss Matt is out of the office. Some extra jobs are just second nature now and are getting done without any hoopla or lengthy discussions on when, where, and/or who will do the tax returns, customer service, purchasing shipping supplies, or dealing with any other jobs other than our main roles. It’s been a little bit of a juggle at times but we all help each other when needed. All in all, running the fundamentals of the company is becoming second nature to us and we are looking forward to stepping up and learning more about running the ship in a more thorough way next year, hopefully taking the helm over for extended amounts of time so Matt can focus on what he loves most; writing amazing RPGs!
“We have welcomed Chris Griffen as a full-time Mongoose here. Having one of the main Traveller writers sitting right beside you helps a lot to quickly get understanding of what a specific ship part looks like without waiting for an email to return from across the pond. Chris has slotted in perfectly with our team, and he also makes fantastic food when it’s his turn to cook.
“We tried a few new things out this year to improve our outreach to people, such as some exciting actual plays from Oxventure and 12 Sided Studios. We aren’t too convinced at their success but let us know if you enjoyed them.
“We also took a swing at exhibiting at the 3-day Comic Con at the Excel Centre in London. Though somewhat enjoyable, it was also bloody nightmare! To start, two of my colleagues went to the Excel to set up but became incredibly ill and would not be able to work there (I blame Matt for taking them out to a Warhammer competition the weekend before, they must have caught something). Well, Matt and I cleared our weekend plans and stepped up to man the stand for the whole event. We got through it together, utterly exhausted. We ended up travelling to London everyday and back due to having animals to look after, while Chris stayed at the Excel hotel and manned the stand in the morning and the evening, then going back to his room and getting some Pioneer writing done. Saturday evening ended in catastrophe when Matt took a wrong turn and we ended up driving through central London in rush hour – it wasn’t all bad, as Matt got to hear my rendition of Cher’s ‘Believe’ which I’m sure he would tell you he thoroughly enjoyed!
“I’m looking forward to next year, and seeing where these all our new exciting projects take us. Watch this space…”
Business Summary
2025 has been (yet another) expensive year for us but, yet again, we managed to do it all without borrowing a penny and without breaking every piggy bank. The current financial position is reasonable, and we should be able to get back onto the front foot within a very small number of months in 2026.
One thing we have not been able to do quite so much is our office trips, due to the workload. We managed to occasional cinema trip, nice restaurant and escape room (we are still really bad at those), but did not even get round to our regular wildlife park trip, so no scratching the heads of fluffy exotic animals. Now, I imagine that may not seem like a Big Deal to everyone, perhaps something that does not really belong in the ‘business summary’ section, but it is one of the things central to Mongoose.
So, this is certainly something that will be remedied in 2026!
2025 and the Mongoose
We managed to get a lot done and dusted this year, but here are a few of the highlights.
There was a desire to get a few more books out in 2025 but, in truth, we did quite well. The problem, from our side, is that Singularity and the prep for Pioneer sucked a lot of graphics time away from general releases. This is the issue with Kickstarter projects, as they require a great deal of work that would otherwise be targeted at getting the rest of our release schedule out. The flip side to this is that a) Kickstarters are a lot of fun to work on, b) the staff tend to get very nice bonuses from them, and c) backers get more for their money – art budgets tend to get thrown out of the window on the meteoric Kickstarters for a start!
Clans of the Aslan finally arrived, after having been delayed by tariff shenanigans (it should have appeared at the end of 2024), which convinced us that Randy Dorman was absolutely the best choice to work on our next ‘empire’ book, the Aslan Hierate. The manuscript for that was duly delivered and Randy is now working on an Aslan-centric campaign, the brief for which was ‘Game of Thrones, but with cats’. However, those two are for 2026.
As I type this, Cluster Truck is being finalised and should land before end of the year – we have been seriously enjoying this one, as it is a self-contained campaign set outside of the big empires where Travellers will be space truckers, pulling cargo between worlds and getting involved in all sorts of mischief. This is a more light-hearted campaign than our others, more Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit than Duel. We even have the Travellers being constantly harassed by a slightly portly law enforcement officer in mirrored sunglasses (worn even when he is on a ship) who is just convinced they have done something wrong.
Another set of six Journals of the Travellers’ Aid Society went onto general release, and these seem to be immensely popular amongst Travellers – and rather than tailing off, they have been getting more popular as we reach volume 18! As soon as they launched, people were asking when the next set would appear… It will be a while yet as we need to collate more articles and Travellers’ 50th anniversary will take some time away from that – but I think it is fair to say that JTAS is not going away.
The Fifth Frontier War continues to grow in ferocity, with this year’s releases setting all the foundations for what is to come. Adventures like the Riverland and Opening Moves have, thus far, allowed Travellers to influence the course of the war in small ways, normally focussed on a single world here and there that may prove to alter the battle lines later on. However, the big stuff is on its way…
One sourcebook proved really quite popular, though we had half expected this to be the case. The Borderland details two clusters of worlds in the Trojan Reach that are all ripe for adventure (and integrate well with the Pirates of Drinax mega-campaign), but the key is that they are nicely separated from the rest of the sector. This means that Referees can run a true sandbox campaign but in such a way that the Travellers will not go shooting off in an unexpected direction. A self-contained sandbox, if you will, the best of all worlds!
Our friends at Markosia released the compiled Far Trader comics as a graphic novel (with a choice of both hardback and softback). Written by Traveller-veteran Chris Griffen, Far Trader is the tale of an out-of-luck crew of Travellers needing to take slightly-less-than-honest jobs in order to keep flying – pure Traveller goodness!
It is always fun to work on Paranoia manuscripts, and WJ MacGuffin and his team have been pulling absolute blinders (slaying, for the younger readers), steadily increasing both quality and level of satire in their writing. This, for me, culminated in the recent release Powers That Be: Trust No One. Focussing on both service groups and secret societies, this might well be the best thing ever written for Paranoia (controversial!). If you like your real world satire baked into a
Shield Maidens suffered this year with constantly re-scheduled projects. Both the Vanaheimr sourcebook and two fiction releases missed a 2025 appearance, but they are now set for 2026.
And finally, as we get towards the end of the year, we are continuing our tradition of a free Christmas present for our fans – this time for not one but two of our games. No spoiling the surprise, but this is an idea we had back in 2024 and we got the writer beavering away at it very early on. It will be, as they say, a good ‘un.
So, that was 2025. What can you expect from Mongoose next year?
Traveller in 2026
With over 40 manuscripts either already in our hands or in advanced states of completion, and most of them being Traveller-themed, there will be no shortage of new places to explore in 2026.
The Infinity Suite: After he wrote Cluster Truck, Martin Dougherty could just not get the lighter-sided Traveller campaigns out of his system. So, we thus have The Infinity Suite. Set in the isolated ‘Islands’ subsectors in the Great Rift, the Travellers will be rock stars trying to complete their masterwork – amidst massive debt, pursuing repo men, a growing lawsuit… but it is all rock and roll to them.
Vehicle Handbook Update 2026: This was a victim of scheduling, not least because it is, by its nature, very graphics intensive. However, layout of the updated Vehicle Handbook is about to commence. Headed by Geir Lanesskog, this tome is a complete revision of the vehicle rules in Traveller and while the resulting stat blocks will seem familiar, the engine behind them is really quite different. Geir has also managed to increase the breadth of vehicles possible, plus also popped in a separate Vehicle Catalogue to cover machines from across the Tech Levels!
The Aslan Hierate: Akin to The Third Imperium book, this is the next in the 'empire' series. Written by Randy ‘I am actually Aslan’ Dorman, The Aslan Hierate takes a look at these aliens from their first evolution to the great expanse that is the Hierate. Far from a self-contained empire, Randy picks apart the Hierate, inspecting how the clans function together (or not), how the minor clans stay mobile beneath their overlords, how the corporations can operate beyond clan-control, how war is conducted – all wrapped up with a detailed exploration of the Hlakhoi sector, deep in the Hierate.
The Fifth Frontier War: Now we start to enter the full scope of the war. Battles are raging across the Spinward Marches and beyond – and, as before, we are looking to put players in the front seat of the war, in positions of ever-increasing importance. Even if the histories do not record their names, their actions will start to have a powerful effect. For example, Favourites at Court has the Travellers take the role of Imperial nobles and their entourage tasked by the Duchess of Mora to bring Duke Norris to heel. They will have the opportunity to solidify Imperial forces… or bring utter ruin to the sector’s defence (I mean, they are Travellers, I think we can put bets on how that is going to go…). Meanwhile, in Consular Envoy, the Travellers will be escorting a Zhodani diplomat on a mission in the Trojan Reach to start trouble in the Imperium’s soft underbelly. Other Fifth Frontier War books will see Travellers take command of a Sword Worlds raiding cruiser, bear firsthand witness to the fall of an Imperial world – and that is aside from a close look at the ships being used by the likes of the Darrians, Sword Worlders, Vargr and Federation of Arden.
Pioneer
If you are reading this before the end of November ‘25, you still have time to leap into the Kickstarter that is currently running for the Pioneer RPG!
Pioneer is a ‘Traveller-adjacent’ game, self-contained but resting on very familiar mechanics. Set 10-30 years into the future, the Core Rulebook will allow players (Pioneers) to explore the Solar System, using the latest technologies to achieve a series of firsts – they will be the first to build a permanent moonbase, the first to mine an asteroid… and in the first full campaign book, Ares Ascendant, the first to set foot on Mars.
The Kickstarter is offering the Core Rulebook, the Ares Ascendant campaign, and Mission Control, a book full of smaller missions to get your Pioneers up into space and firmly on the cutting edge of exploration. You can get in on the action right here: (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mongoosepublishing/the-pioneer-rpg-explore-the-solar-system) where you will also find a free preview pack that contains the core rules and a complete mission to rescue a stranded capsule in Low Earth Orbit.
You can also check out the two-hour Actual Play of Pioneer from 12 Sided Studios right here:
Dark Conspiracy
This is something I have been working on a lot myself and, as such… I think it is a big one!
We had the chance to acquire Dark Conspiracy earlier in 2025, and I immediately saw that it was a solution to a problem we had been having for a long time.
There was a game outline that we had been working on for years, with the working title of Codename Veil. However, we could never quite get it to work in a way we were happy with, so it kept getting sidelined. With Dark Conspiracy, I figured out that we had found the missing component that would draw everything together into a cohesive universe.
Dark Conspiracy is a Traveller-adjacent and deeply horrific game that features a world under dire threat by Dark entities, hidden from us as they sink their claws into society. The Operatives will need to work out what they are, and, most importantly, what they want…
We are splitting this game into three ‘eras’, each spearheaded by its own Core Rulebook. The first, Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War, will be appearing in the summer of 2026. Set in our own modern world (you can set it in your own hometown, if you wish!), a tiny number of people are just beginning to understand that the Earth is in terrible danger – but no one actually knows anything about the threat so they are operating under a terrible veil of ignorance.
The players of Dark Conspiracy (Operatives) are all specialists recruited by an organisation they have the barest understanding of. They will have three major objectives every time they go up against the Dark:
- Learn – not only how to neutralise the threat they are tracking, but trying find out more about the nature of the interdimensional danger posed to the world.
- Neutralise the threat – by gun, ritual, or otherworldly knowledge – whatever works, the danger is absolute.
- Maintain the Conspiracy – no one, absolutely no one, can learn about the nature of the Dark. Too much is unknown, and there are already those who seek personal or ideological advantage by making terrible alliances. The players must cover up their operations. In The Unseen War, the players are the ones creating the conspiracy…
The core tone of Dark Conspiracy is going to be absolutely horrific, with a heavy dose of ignorance on the part of the players. To begin with, they will simply not know what it is they are truly facing. They may have ideas of what the ultimate threat might be… but they will almost certainly be wrong as, at the time of The Unseen War, no one in the world really has a grasp on what is happening.
Fixing that will need a good team of players.
We are embracing concepts of the Traveller rules in Dark Conspiracy. For example, there are no ‘super’ characters in this game, and combat is deadly. This is something players will get to grips with rather quickly during their first encounter with the Dark.
However, we are also looking at the ethos behind Traveller, such as the self-contained/self-generating campaigns that are possible. For Dark Conspiracy, players will be assigned missions but can also initiate their own investigations. To do this, there is a system whereby the Referee feeds them (perhaps random!) ‘conspiracy headlines’, maybe something like ‘living goo found on ships in the Bering Strait’ or ‘they’re turning the freaking frogs gay!’ Have fun finding your own sources, though we will present a long list in the Core Rulebook. Players take each headline and conduct specific investigations, with the aim of (eventually) presenting the Referee with their own conspiracy that they are very convinced is correct. The Referee is then able to build a mission for them to engage in, proving their conspiracy and foiling the machinations of the Dark… or finding out that what they thought was going on is actually something very different.
We are properly embracing conspiracy culture with that particular system, with players likely going round and round in circles trying to justify their conclusions in the face of mounting (and possibly contradictory) evidence. They will be plotting all these connections on a ‘web’ chart to surround the conclusion at the centre… though we are looking at optional rules to use a pinboard with the objects of their investigation getting connected by bits of red string…
The next ‘eras’ will be Dark Conspiracy: The Open War (set a few years on when things have really started to go downhill – this will be closest to the original game) and Dark Conspiracy: The Final War, where the Operatives will not only have more solid knowledge of what they are battling against, but also the resources to, maybe, do something about it.
However, these are a fair while away and will take a few years to play. Together, they will allow groups to either play in the era they most favour or… for the truly committed… create Operatives in The Unseen War, and follow their progress right through to The Final War in a massive campaign spanning humanity’s survival… or fall.
The ‘player-facing’ rules, covering Operative and Cell creation, plus the tools they can use to take the fight to the Dark (both mundane and… not) are pretty much complete. We are now working on the Dark Minions and integrating them into the game.
Watch out for lots of previews in 2026!
2300AD
There are two big announcements for 2300AD in this year’s State of the Mongoose.
On the back of the TAS programme on DriveThru being opened up to Classic Traveller, we are proceeding with 2300AD TAS, opening up the community programme to this universe as well. What this basically means is that you will be free to draw upon the current edition of 2300AD material, plus the Traveller rules, and create your own supplements, sourcebooks, adventures and tools for 2300AD – and we are looking forward to seeing what you can come up with.
We are aware that fans of 2300AD are very hungry for new material and so this should be some fertile ground for publishers!
As for the second announcement…
We have been for some time of the opinion that while 2300AD is a great source of enjoyment for its fans, it is a universe that just seems to scare the willies out of the normies, usually accompanied by questions like ‘where do I start?’ and ‘but what do we do in 2300AD?’
These were questions that we started to tackle with the current box set, but we believe we can do better.
So, for 2026 and 2027 we will be focussing primarily on adventures and sourcebooks for 2300AD, areas that (while remedied somewhat by the excellent Project Bayern and Invasion campaigns) have not been massively pursued. During this time, we will be working on a comprehensive (and standalone) 2300AD Core Rulebook and accompanying titles that will provide a one-stop shop for newcomers to the 2300AD universe. Our aims here are:
- Just one standalone rulebook needed for play, fully integrated into the 2300AD universe – no more flipping back to the Traveller Core Rulebook and doing conversions on the fly (however minor).
- We will be taking this opportunity to revise and streamline the rules – while we are not looking upon this as a new edition, a dividing line between 2300AD and Core Traveller does give us the opportunity to make some tweaks to the way rules work.
- This also gives us an opportunity to take a good look at the background lore of the universe and make tweaks to curb against the divergence that has crept in during four editions of the game, as well as reflect on whether some developments in real world technologies could stand to be integrated into 2300AD (to be fair, 2300AD has been better at this than Charted Space but if we are doing this anyway, we should at least consider some new angles). Consistency will be king.
- Any changes to the rules that do happen will be accompanied by a PDF that you will find in your 2300AD box set downloads – this Core Rulebook will not be a ‘necessary’ purchase for existing players just, we hope, a convenient one in a quality-of-life kind of way.
Expect to see this one around the middle of 2026.
Shield Maidens
Shield Maidens is the game of female warriors charged with divine power in a Viking/Cyberpunk-themed universe where players take on both empires and gods as they surf the Bifrost to the Nine Realms.
It has a special place in our hearts, though fell victim to scheduling this year. However, writing has been completed for the Vanaheimr sourcebook, a title that explores one of the worlds of the gods. The Shield Maidens will navigate the lands of Freya (and perhaps meet their goddess), while defending its borders from those seeking to usurp and destroy the Vanir.
Paranoia
More missions to fail, more treason to ignite, and more rules to ignore! That is our plan for 2026.
Amidst such missions as Swap Meet and (Un)Fair Competition, we are working on Traitorous Little Git, a new hardback for Paranoia. This is very much a player-facing title on… well, how to play Paranoia better with blackmail, threats, Favours, online treason in Alpha Complex, and so on. The goal with this one is to help players enjoy Alpha Complex more by opening their eyes to the nefarious scheming possible in this game.
You know, if they are not already at each other’s throats by the end of character creation…
Video Games
Our friends at Evil Twin Artworks are now hard at work on the video game Traveller: Vanguard. And some glorious news here – we have seen it! It exists! We have played the prototype, taking a squad of noble Zhodani into battle against the vile, capitalist Imperials (or, conversely, playing heroic Imperial Marines desperately fending off the aggressions of an oppressive thought-controlled regime…).
Set during the Fifth Frontier War, Traveller: Vanguard is a multiplayer, turn-based, strategy game. Players command an entire boarding force and engage in tactical, squad-based combat. Currently in the prototype stage, Evil Twin will have more information soon and you can get the latest updates hot off the press by joining the newsletter here:
Traveller: Vanguard Updates - Evil Twin Artworks
Virtual Tabletop Platforms
VTTs are a thing… and they are not going away!
One of the most consistent questions we have is when Traveller and our other games will be appearing on platform X, Y or Z. Unfortunately, it is rarely a simple process, but we have appointed a crew (headed by Colin Richardson) to cover them and progress has been made!
Fantasy Grounds is the longest running VTT platform that we have had a partnership with and our coverage, while not complete (and there will always be a lag between a title being published by us and it appearing on VTTs – it is just the nature of the beast), is very broad. Expect to see more appearing here in 2026, and it is worth checking out as the core software for Fantasy Grounds is now available for free!
With the merger of Roll20 and DriveThru, a few hurdles were removed that allowed us to move forward from our initial appearance there in 2024. A lot of challenges were overcome, enabling us to release a good number of titles. This is a focus for us, so expect to see more appearing across the next couple of years.
We have recently started work with Alchemy, one of the new kids on the block, and they have proven to be both good and professional. They are currently working on more Paranoia books and will be moving onto Traveller in 2026.
Lastly, we have Foundry – technically speaking it is a wonderful VTT, though it has a steep learning curve. We are in the process of getting the core Traveller books into the right format so we can properly test the new Foundry Marketplace.
In all of these areas, we could certainly use more developers getting involved, especially with Foundry, and those who wish to work on a wider range of game systems. If you are one of these.. drop us a line and we will pass you onto Colin!
Traveller Digital Tools
Veterans of our forums and Discord channel will know this has been a long-running saga and a bit of a unicorn in what the end result will be.
The basic idea is to create a full set of Traveller digital tools available online, drawing together ideas that have come from so many different places into one cohesive whole. We have some idea of what we would like to see, but the devil is very much in the details for a project of this scale.
As a concept, we would like to take a leaf from the mighty Travellermap.com created by Joshua Bell. Using that idea as a base, the UI and performance would be updated/modernised and then something-something Traveller creation, and ship building, and trading, and combat, and planet creation all get integrated…
Yeah, we know how that all sounds and, being realistic, we would not suggest pinning your hopes on the 2027 anniversary year as the time where things start appearing. I think this is going to take a while. However, know that serious conversations are being had on how to proceed and start building this tool set.
And into the Future
A year ago in the last State of the Mongoose, we listed a series of primary goals for 2025. How did we do?
- Complete the acquisition of the building that Mongoose currently rents, thus putting in place the final brick of security for the company’s future. (Achieved! This was a longer process than we had anticipated, but we finally got there and Fortress Mongoose is now an official part of the family.)
- Continue shoring up the company war chest, which is part of the strategy to make Mongoose stable. It is by no means in a critical state but the larger the war chest, the longer the bad times Mongoose can endure. Just common sense, really. Connected to this, continue to ensure that the staff are, individually, in a more secure and comfortable place on a financial level. (The office purchase happened at the end of 2025, so we have had limited time to shore up the war chest to its original levels. However, despite the expenditure, staff members have had bonuses equal to more than 60% of their normal salaries which, however you look at it, ain’t bad.)
- Tackle marketing head-on, likely by bringing on a Marketing Tzar/Grand Architect into the fold. (We took a swing and missed. A new approach is needed.)
- For the past few years, I have been listing some form of staff rewards as a goal for the company – which is beginning to feel a bit lazy to me, but looking after staff is kind of our thing. For specifics in 2026 though, I want to put one more person into their own home, get another’s mortgage completely paid off and put a serious dent into the mortgages of the others. For our (hopefully two, by the time we roll into 2026) newcomers, I would like for them to have a decently-sized deposit in their hands with a view to getting them into their own homes in 2027.
- That should not interfere with the process of rebuilding the war chest, which is a strong component of making Mongoose a stable company resilient to world events (which we are expecting to get more impactful, not less). It will, however, likely limit investments outside of gaming which, to be honest, I am okay with at this stage. On the one hand, having investments underwriting salaries makes everyone’s jobs very, very secure – and on the other, we want to remain a gaming company not some investment management firm (feels a bit ‘grubby’). So, having an inflated war chest at the end of 2026 will be the aim here. Well, unless someone else sells us something we cannot say no to…
- We are going to take marketing by the horns… by giving it to someone else. We will be talking to third-party marketing agencies, likely starting on the digital/Internet side of things, to see what is possible and what our expectations should be.
- Speaking of third-party agencies, in 2026 we are going to get us some proper licensing representation. Over the years, we have been on the licensee side of the table but with the acquisition of Traveller, Twilight 2000, 2300AD and Dark Conspiracy, we are now looking beyond simple foreign language translation licences. I have said before that one of my dreams is to have Marc Miller sitting in a cinema and seeing the words ‘Traveller originally written by Marc Miller’ on the screen. Such a thing, if possible at all, is a long ways distant… but we can start the process in 2026, and there are plenty of other avenues to explore as well. However, this will mean running with the Big Boys, so we need some professional representation there.
- Prepare for Traveller’s 50th Anniversary in 2027. This is a lot, but we know the direction we are going in and just need to fill in the details. Hopefully this time next year I will be reporting that we are good, all set to go, and you will start to see the results in a little more than a month as we roll into 2027.
- Here is a more minor one, but should improve the quality of life for players – I very much want to update our Free Downloads page. Make it easier for us to update (it is a bit of a mare at the moment), make it easier for you to find the right downloads, and expand the downloads available for each of our games. Yes, I am aware that I first said this in 2024 – hopefully I mean it this time.
“Mongoose Publishing is a company dedicated to providing the best, comprehensive in-universe experience to its customers, and a fun, engaging and prosperous life for its employees.”
That really encapsulates our entire approach to business. We have a business model that more or less works, and have found that by concentrating on the wellbeing of our staff and ensuring we do as much as we can to improve the enjoyment of our fans and customers, things tend to work out. I do not foresee us changing this theme any time soon.
And I think that is about it! If you have reached the end of the State of the Mongoose 2025, thank you so much for sticking through nearly 8,000-odd words, and thank you for continuing to support us for another twelve months. We very much hope to see you again in 2026 as we continue to explore new universes, both scientific and fantastic.
All that is left is for everyone here at Mongoose to wish you all a very Merry Christmas with much turkey and mince pies, and a prosperous New Year filled with whatever brings you joy.
Stay safe, keep gaming, and good luck!
Matthew Sprange
Managing Director
Mongoose Publishing
