Mongoose?

[Gardensnake]

Hi All,

Without getting into an edition war, I was just wondering why there seems to be such negativity towards the Mongoose edition of Traveller. It's not perfect I know, and it isn't Classic Traveller, but it has at least kept Traveller semi-relevant by having product on the shelf. I do find it odd that Mongoose had it's license renewed with the publication of T5 but I guess Marc decided too and he has every right to do so. So, why does Mongoose receive so much negativity?

Thanks,

William

 

[atpollard]

Since we are well into the realm of opinions, here is mine...

1. Most of the Mongoose negativity is past tense. It was far stronger once than it is now because at one time it ran somewhat unchecked and now many of the rudest posters have gone elsewhere to hate other things.

2. Some of it is deserved. Nothing personal against Mongoose, but "you can't please everyone", so some people will just plain hate something, whatever it is. Within the limits of the rules of the board, they are free to express their opinion.

3. Some negativity is from people who wanted something different, and are expressing an attitude of disappointment.

So now that we have the opinions portion of "why haters hate Mongoose" out of the way, I have a suggestion to offer ... accentuate the positive.

Specifically, if you have something you like, then start a discussion about that.
In the case of Mongoose Traveller (MgT), here is what this Classic Traveller (CT) fan has to say about it:

Most of the mechanics are close enough to CT that it feels similar and I really had a great deal of fun playing it. I was particularly impressed by the trade rules. When we played, it was great fun to use all of the different skills to locate different cargoes that required different adventures to close the deal ... and when one of the deals went sour, the computer skill generated cargo (in a hurry) kept us from lifting off with an empty cargo hold.

I would have preferred fewer skills per term and fewer engineering skill specialties in character generation - my CT roots showing - but I liked the life events.

I am sufficiently in the minority that even Mongoose revised the original Mercenary book, but I played in exactly one Mercenary campaign in 30 tears of playing Traveller and it was with Mongoose Traveller using equipment from the original MgT Mercenary 1st edition book and it led to many great role-playing opportunities.

So rather than cursing the darkness, I recommend that you just light a candle.

Welcome and have fun.

 

[rancke]

Without getting into an edition war, I was just wondering why there seems to be such negativity towards the Mongoose edition of Traveller. It's not perfect I know, and it isn't Classic Traveller, but it has at least kept Traveller semi-relevant by having product on the shelf. I do find it odd that Mongoose had it's license renewed with the publication of T5 but I guess Marc decided too and he has every right to do so. So, why does Mongoose receive so much negativity?

What are you talking about? Mongoose isn't receiving any negativity that I'm aware of. An occasional bit of constructive criticism, perhaps, the odd request for clarification, possibly, but no negativity to speak of.


Hans

 

[Fovean]

Early on many Mongoose publications were plagued by poor editing and typos, unclear examples of play, low rez deckplans with no airlocks and so forth. Much of the vitriol was due to that, as well as some changes to core Trav concepts that many felt were "not" Trav (changes to classic ships and the trade rules, for example, or the task system, or... insert complaint here ).

To their credit they've made a huge effort to correct the issues and have done re-issues of some early material, notably their vehicle handbook, Mercenary 2.0 and some 2300 titles. They also made a big effort to get "corrected" versions of material out to customers, sometimes electronic versions but I believe at one point they sent new print versions to customers as well.

Personally I love what Mongoose has done. I feel its revitalized the line, more so than T5 has been able to do, though both versions have their problems. I'm with the above posts - while there was a lot of hate and harsh criticism early on, I find nowadays people have embraced the line and it continues to grow and move the great game forward.

 

[pendragonman]

Early on many Mongoose publications were plagued by poor editing and typos, unclear examples of play, low rez deckplans with no airlocks and so forth.

...

A Traveller Tradition.

 

[Gardensnake]

What are you talking about? Mongoose isn't receiving any negativity that I'm aware of. An occasional bit of constructive criticism, perhaps, the odd request for clarification, possibly, but no negativity to speak of.


Hans

It's a general trend I've noticed. Nowhere near the level I've seen T5 get but the Mongoose edition does tend to be the red headed step child of Traveller.

William

 

[Patron Zero]

My biggest disappointment with any Mongoose product for Traveller came with the Traders & Gunboats reboot, simply said the deckplans presented seemed an after-thought in how poorly presented such were delivered.

Just my opinion but the parties responsible for the book's layout were at fault and simply had no consideration for players and referees whom choose to employ deckplans for miniatures play.

GDW and other licensed published did maintain a high quality standard when presenting such materials, a bit sad that Mongoose thumbs it's nose to what I consider a Traveller tradition in design and presentation.

 

[Carlobrand]

I'm not aware of any unusual degree of animus toward Mongoose in particular - other than the name. Mongoose? Really? How does one pluralize "Mongoose"? And it's not even a goose - it's some sort of relative of cats. It's clearly intended to confuse me. Which is admittedly rather easy to do.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Long story short, I used to work for them, and my very negative experiences of dealing with that company's management and editorial staff, in particular, have perhaps unfavourably coloured by perceptions of their subsequent output, including their "version" of our favorite game. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but this has never been a fair planet, my fellow Earthlings.

My first contact with Trav was with the Classic edition, and, as I'm very fond of it, I tend to feel content and complete, needing naught else.

 

[Gardensnake]

Long story short, I used to work for them, and my very negative experiences of dealing with that company's management and editorial staff, in particular, have perhaps unfavourably coloured by perceptions of their subsequent output, including their "version" of our favorite game. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but this has never been a fair planet, my fellow Earthlings.

My first contact with Trav was with the Classic edition, and, as I'm very fond of it, I tend to feel content and complete, needing naught else.

I can understand that.

William

 

[Quint]

I'm a fan of Mongoose Traveller, and I'm a LBB Grognard with a huge collection of other materials. I'm a fan because not only is it in print and I can send a player out to buy a copy of the rules, it is a rule set that really seems to support more than just the OTU.

There are many shout-outs to a variety of other SciFi settings (some explicit, some implicit) as well as the actual licensed materials that use the engine. These can be used in the Mongoose AOTU, or they can be cherry-picked to be used in an MTU. IMHO if the material doesn't work for you, or in conflicts with your version of the OTU, then don't use it. I'm generally of the opinion to use it and simply have a bit of "mysterious tech" but then again I'm a guy who loved the old Paranoia Press supplements and set ay number of adventures in The Beyond...

D.

 

[Timerover51]

I should preface my remarks in that I purchased Mongoose Traveller so that I could work with Attack Squadron: Roswell by Zozer Games. For those who would like to see what a well-written game module looks like, I would highly recommend it.

As such, I started out with a bias towards accepting Mongoose Traveller for what was in it, in its 2013 incarnation. It is different than Classic LBB Traveller, which I started with, but then, so are the other Traveller versions. I like it better than some of them. I do like the possibility of alternate power plants and alternatives to the standard jump drive. Basically, I view it as some do Traveller 5, a tool box to pick and choose what I would like to use. I am not so happy with some of the supplements, but that is due to my background.

Overall, I am more than satisfied with my purchase of it. I view it as fully worth the money spent.

 

[GypsyComet]

There is much distrust and some outright hatred of Mongoose among the miniatures crowd for the number of such games that have been touted, released, supported either minimally or with excessive QA/QC issues, then dropped. Mongoose has always had an explanation for each case, but sometimes that has just made the perceptions worse. The miniatures crowd doesn't cross over with the Mongoose Traveller crowd all that much, so this forum has actually been spared the worst of the venom, but there are some folks who won't touch Mongoose ever again, and choose to remind others of this with some volume.

The first response otherwise summarizes the early opinions of Mongoose Traveller. Most of the people who were really angry are also inconsolable due to the nature of their complaints, but most of them stay out of Mongoose discussions now.

The sad part is that many of these wounds never heal, and that Mongoose is not the first edition to draw this sort of reaction. T4 and T20 both drew a great deal of disdain from the old grognards, GURPS Traveller players remain their own mostly separate group, and heaven forbid you should bring up TNE in some circles.

By comparison, the reactions to Mongoose Traveller have been relatively mild.

 

[mike wightman]

The frist round of criticism for MgT came from the play testers for the core rulebook.

There are draft versions of rules that never made it to the core rules which were replaced by inferior versions.

There were your first grumblings of complaint.

Next came some of the early supplementary books - Mercenary stands out here as just being absolutely ridiculous in some areas.

The grumblings got louder.

Finally we get to the worst affront to the CT crowd, MgT alien modules over write other sources and get stuff wrong new interpretations of canon that conflict with old canon.

The wailing grew louder still.

Mongoose rode out the storm, continued to support the game, continued to release adventures, supplements, setting books and gradually the vitriol was replaced with fair criticism.

The MgT core rule book is a solid set of rules for running a Traveller game. Hidden within the MgT line of adventures and supplementary books there are some real gems. The most important thing is they still release stuff, and there is a lot of MgT related product from third party publishers. MgT is alive and well and doing its job.

The imminent kickstater for Lift Off will be interesting to see, and how that version affects the popularity of the MgT line

When people on rpgnet ask for a recommendation for a science fiction roleplaying game I always point them in the direction of MgT for an in-print edition and the FFE CT disc to get all the background they will ever need.

 

[aramis]

The frist round of criticism for MgT came from the play testers for the core rulebook.

There are draft versions of rules that never made it to the core rules which were replaced by inferior versions.

due to a single broken mechanic which was easily solved. Just change the roll 2d6 for 8+ to 2d6 for 8-, and leave the time and effect dice intact, and problem solved.

There were your first grumblings of complaint.

Next came some of the early supplementary books - Mercenary stands out here as just being absolutely ridiculous in some areas.

The grumblings got louder.

You skipped the entire lack of physical QAP during their experiment with doing their own printing... the first major product released was the 2008 core rulebook...

Mind you, minor issues by comparison to some other company's issues, mostly just warped hardcovers... but due to MGP having crowed about how printing their own would save them money, then having a (supposedly massive) run of warped books, and due to promises they made, having to replace a lot of them...

That was a major black eye.

And you left out 3 months of Matthew saying no errata was needed for the core book...

and passage pricing that requires the ship be on a 40 year replacement schedule instead of 40 year mortgage, because they didn't grasp the underlying math that was presented by 3 posters (myself, and two others - all in basic agreement to one decimal place), and so set the passage prices too low to make money.

Finally we get to the worst affront to the CT crowd, MgT alien modules over write other sources and get stuff wrong new interpretations of canon that conflict with old canon.

The wailing grew louder still.

Mongoose rode out the storm, continued to support the game, continued to release adventures, supplements, setting books and gradually the vitriol was replaced with fair criticism.

The MgT core rule book is a solid set of rules for running a Traveller game.

Agreed, with the exception of the passage prices. Multiply them by 1.5 and they're workable.

Hidden within the MgT line of adventures and supplementary books there are some real gems. The most important thing is they still release stuff, and there is a lot of MgT related product from third party publishers. MgT is alive and well and doing its job.

The imminent kickstater for Lift Off will be interesting to see, and how that version affects the popularity of the MgT line

When people on rpgnet ask for a recommendation for a science fiction roleplaying game I always point them in the direction of MgT for an in-print edition and the FFE CT disc to get all the background they will ever need.

 

[ShapeShifter]

You skipped the entire lack of physical QAP during their experiment with doing their own printing... the first major product released was the 2008 core rulebook...

Mind you, minor issues by comparison to some other company's issues, mostly just warped hardcovers... but due to MGP having crowed about how printing their own would save them money, then having a (supposedly massive) run of warped books, and due to promises they made, having to replace a lot of them...

Mongoose's sad attempt to do the production in-house was another problem with the then hotly anticipated release of the Lone Wolf gamebooks: the books were very badly printed and even worse bound, being so tightly bound and poorly glued that they would immediately break once the book was opened. As an afternote, I regret not getting more of them, 'cause they are going for 5x to 7x the original price on ebay. o:

It's hard to give MgT a fair shake, knowing that other product lines in their stable went pear-shaped very quickly, and customer support was never one of their strong suits.

 

[lspitz]

I'm pretty neutral towards Mongoose Traveller, but I haven't had much exposure to it. I've only seen a draft of the core rulebook, and don't remember noting anything in it that warranted unusual praise or unusual criticism.

 

[steventirey1985]

Part of my problem with Mongoose Traveller (aside from the numerous typos, examples that are totally different than the rules they are to be an example of, missing information, 3 different spaceshit design sequences, 2 different vehicle design methods) are things that waste space like Supplement 3: Fighting Ships.

Not the supplement itself, that is fine. But I want a book with fighting ships in it. Not a book that is half deckplans. The Tigress alone takes up 1/4 of the book.The Kokirrak has 3 pages dedicated to fuel deck plans (each one like 99% fuel, so nothing really to show). Waste of space. I would rather have seen those 37 pages of Tigress deckplans made into actual ship stats. At an average of 2 pages, that is 18-19 additional ships. The Tigress (and other big ship) deckplans could of been made into their own mini-supplement.

 

[Kilgs]

Mongoose puts out a lot of product. They willingly waded into a foregone conclusion of folks disliking whatever they put out since it's Traveller. Haters gonna hate and all that.

Unfortunately, Mongoose managed to overcome this earlier hate and proceeded to forge new reasons for criticism. There are some examples above but I would add...

-Vehicle Books 5 and 6 being 90% identical despite claiming new options in each. No apology issued for blatant misrep.
-Hurried publishing schedule which significantly affects quality.
-Broken mini-mechanics and lack of playtesting.

There are some gems in the Mongoose line. I stopped buying them awhile ago although I came out of the woodwork for Merchant Prince which has some real gems. The trade system is broken unless you want your characters millionaires but changing difficulties makes it easy to fix. I also picked up Mercenary 2nd edition but that one put me back in the "not interested" category.

They have good stuff it's just outnumbered by the rest of it.

I would agree with others here though... bad product is sometimes better than no product and there's a whole crop of folks who are into Traveller now because of them. In fact, I started reading these boards only a year or less before Mongoose's release so you could consider me one of them.

As for canon and stuff... YMMV. If it's an issue, change it back. It's sometimes irritating but if it's within their license I guess folks should just exhale and move on. My issues run deeper.

 

[rancke]

Not the supplement itself, that is fine. But I want a book with fighting ships in it. Not a book that is half deckplans. The Tigress alone takes up 1/4 of the book.The Kokirrak has 3 pages dedicated to fuel deck plans (each one like 99% fuel, so nothing really to show). Waste of space. I would rather have seen those 37 pages of Tigress deckplans made into actual ship stats. At an average of 2 pages, that is 18-19 additional ships. The Tigress (and other big ship) deckplans could of been made into their own mini-supplement.

That sounds like quite a waste. For the really big ships I would find deck plans of a few areas enough for any roleplaying purpose. The bridge, a quarters deck, and engineering deck, may one or two more. A 'utility' deck to coin a term -- one with sickbay, brig, recreational facilities, things like that. And for a deck that was 99% fuel, I'd show the 1% and remark that the rest was fuel space.


Hans