Mongoose Traveller Pocket Edition
- Thread starter Allensh
- Start date
dmccoy1693
SOC-13
ThunderChilde
SOC-13
According to my FLGS, the official release date is the 15th. He will likely have it in the the Tuesday Shipment. On further note, he still has no information on a release date for Bab5 from his vendor.
Anyone know any different?
Anyone know any different?
traider gim
SOC-3
i got my lil black book off of ebay. i gave it the ol once over. i can say that i realy like it. its got good layout, good art work, good mechanics, its small and handy, the font is good. looks like mongoose has a winner! i am actually going to try it. i think most of you will enjoy it also.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
New character generation chapter artwork! Much better!
The ships section suffers from two brand new problems, however.
The powerplant fuel table is gone, a victim of the footnote removal Matt mentioned at one point.
The deckplan for the Heavy Freighter appears to have had a Transporter accident, and is not useful. Thankfully, the original edition's deckplan fix PDF is still available, and is correct.
The ships section suffers from two brand new problems, however.
The powerplant fuel table is gone, a victim of the footnote removal Matt mentioned at one point.
The deckplan for the Heavy Freighter appears to have had a Transporter accident, and is not useful. Thankfully, the original edition's deckplan fix PDF is still available, and is correct.
Yep, those are the two errors - the Powerplant table being the more important of the two, because it has an use in designing ships. It has been mentioned on the Mongoose forums, and acknowledged by a rep - so it should get adjusted in subsequent printings. The Powerplant table is pretty easy to remember though - basically it goes up in increments of 2 (tons of fuel used for 2 weeks), at each ascending Drive code. i.e. A = 2, B = 4, C = 6, etc.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Why can't they ever get stuff like this right first go?
Anyway, I'll still be getting one =)
Anyway, I'll still be getting one =)
It's not unusual from a game company - White Wolf used to have stuff like this all the time when I used to get their books. The thing is that Mongoose, like White Wolf, is very prolific. This is both a strength and a weakness - a weakness because you can get mistakes, a strength because there is loads of support and the game feels 'alive' to a good number of gamers, and means you are more likely to get a game going in my experience.
The lack of QC is costing them. I've just bought MM, MHG, and MT&G... MM sucks due to poor writing. (Infantry including mounted troops? BOVINE EXCREMENT!!! Troops on bikes have entirely different mobility regimes...)
MHG doesn't solve the PP issues; biggest mistake Gareth made in the design was dropping power points in MGT, MHG perpetuates that. (I can thus build a triple 50Td Meson Monitor at a mere 200Td...)
MT&G and MHG both suffer from dropping in the deckplans as low-res graphics (about 100dpi) instead of vector EPSFs. Meaning you can't zoom in on the PDFs.
Mongoose has dropped the quality control ball, and not bothered chasing it. They either need to slow down a bit, hire more and/or better staff, or lower prices.
There are lots of good ideas, but the just keep missing the mark overall.
MHG doesn't solve the PP issues; biggest mistake Gareth made in the design was dropping power points in MGT, MHG perpetuates that. (I can thus build a triple 50Td Meson Monitor at a mere 200Td...)
MT&G and MHG both suffer from dropping in the deckplans as low-res graphics (about 100dpi) instead of vector EPSFs. Meaning you can't zoom in on the PDFs.
Mongoose has dropped the quality control ball, and not bothered chasing it. They either need to slow down a bit, hire more and/or better staff, or lower prices.
There are lots of good ideas, but the just keep missing the mark overall.
Even though they happen to be one of the very few rpg companies around that are in a state of significant growth? They must be doing something right...
I have no doubt that Mongoose could and should improve, but compared
to other RPG producers they are really not that bad, I have seen many
much worse products over the years.
I've bought quite a few worse... all in the $5 bin.
For the price regime, they do quite poorly. They also were in a dire financial straight, and resolved it by dropping 4 lines. They closed their internal print-house, in part due to QC issues. Only 2 of their lines are carried locally... Paranoia and Traveller. Both of those on strength of name alone. (Boscos will carry traveller stuff so long as the minimum order is 2+ units, since their ordering person is a completist... and gets one of each for himself.)
For the price regime, they do quite poorly. They also were in a dire financial straight, and resolved it by dropping 4 lines. They closed their internal print-house, in part due to QC issues. Only 2 of their lines are carried locally... Paranoia and Traveller. Both of those on strength of name alone. (Boscos will carry traveller stuff so long as the minimum order is 2+ units, since their ordering person is a completist... and gets one of each for himself.)
Blame the US economy for the 'price regime'. In the UK, they are quite reasonably priced....and one of the major reasons why the pocket book was introduced was to reduce the cost of the corebook for the US market.
Good companies drop titles all the time - go look at how Games Workshop is run sometime - but when a company announces that it is about to double it's staffing numbers over the coming year, you should really consider it to be a successful company. They closed their in house publishing entirely to do with QC issues, btw, which actually rallies against your argument somewhat. If Paranoia and Traveller were both successful on their name alone, then why have previous editions failed?
Good companies drop titles all the time - go look at how Games Workshop is run sometime - but when a company announces that it is about to double it's staffing numbers over the coming year, you should really consider it to be a successful company. They closed their in house publishing entirely to do with QC issues, btw, which actually rallies against your argument somewhat. If Paranoia and Traveller were both successful on their name alone, then why have previous editions failed?
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Rhialto the Marvelous
SOC-13
...not to mention the tiny fact they were taken over by another company. Whether that should be called growth or shrinkage is open to debate...
They haven't been taken over, they've merged as a partner company.
A company that they'd been working with to publish games from their major licences since 2001 already, and have now decided that they can work closer together with similar aims? Oh yeah, that's a sign of weakness!
Christ, you people are full of the cynical juices tonight!
A company that they'd been working with to publish games from their major licences since 2001 already, and have now decided that they can work closer together with similar aims? Oh yeah, that's a sign of weakness!
Christ, you people are full of the cynical juices tonight!
When they keep producing crap?
Paranoia is done out-house; it goes to MGP for print and publish.
Dragon Warriors, likewise. Again, selling on nostalgia value of the name.
The merger with Rebellion is not a partnership; Sprange was bought out. He's just an employee now. That may be a good thing...
... but until the quality control improves, it is nothing but a thing.
They have been harped upon for their lack of QC for the last 2 years. They've had the Traveller license for one of those.
They picked certain narrow aspects to work on; those aspects are not the ones the fans are most upset about.
$40 is what I pay for a very nice, low errata 300 page book from BWHQ... one page of errata in 3 years, most of which are not typos, but clarifications.
Mongoose has 2 pages on 200, not counting the simple non-obfuscatory typos and layout errors.
The RPG industry really needs to cure their mass cranio-rectal insertion and actually get decent proofreading. On of the neatest games I've ever read was unplayable due to typos and spelling errors...
Hunter makes a serious effort. Marc Miller wasn't to the point of being ready for it when the T5 playtest was public. That's just about all BI cared about during the WFRP2E playtest, grammar and spellling.
And then there was the loving attention to detail provided by Liz Danforth, which meant 30 years with no errata for T&T5... 1979 to present. Loads of addenda, but no errata needed.
It can be done.
Your view is so bitter and askew, it's not even worth arguing with. Not much of a surprise coming from this forum 'community', which has a reputation, and even the site owner has expressed exasperation with.
Frankly if that is your outlook, then at least I can take sadistic pleasure in the fact that you've got 10 more years of Mongoose Traveller to look forward to. It's a pity that they can't weed out some of the crap that exists in Traveller's long standing 'fan-base', but hey, you win some you lose some...
Frankly if that is your outlook, then at least I can take sadistic pleasure in the fact that you've got 10 more years of Mongoose Traveller to look forward to. It's a pity that they can't weed out some of the crap that exists in Traveller's long standing 'fan-base', but hey, you win some you lose some...
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