"Mongoose - What Went Wrong?" Topic

As a backer of Mongoose's Rogue Trooper kickstarter I received a message today saying that Mongoose has "passed" on the 2000AD license.

Essentially that means that Mongoose is limping along on the Traveller license. What happened? A few years ago Mongoose was a big deal, Starship Troopers was expected to challenge 40k; they had loads of D20 RPG stuff going on, a ton of cool licenses – Conan, Babylon 5, 2000AD, Runequest, Elric, Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser, etc, etc

But they always seemed to screw it up by talking big (anyone remember Battlefield Evolution?) and delivering small (anyone remember Battlefield Evolution?) They had plans for Star Wars, plans for a box set of a Stalingrad game with card buildings and figures, a la Mordheim, a Conan skirmish game… now all is dust. And don't even mention all the badly managed Kickstarters with rewards years late.

Last year I was at a show where Mongoose had a stand. The stuff they had for sale was pitiful, including IIRC a bucket of half painted used plastic GW figures. The guy behind the table (who I think I recognised as Matt Sprange) was ignoring the punters and playing on his mobile phone.

I think this is all a terrible shame. Mongoose had so much potential, they could have been a real player like Mantic Games, in fact they were at one point,but it was all thrown away with lost licenses, poor quality control, and unfulfilled promise after unfullfilled promise. It's a sad state of affairs when their head honcho's profile on TMP is based on posting battle reports for a GW game. If that's not a sad metaphor for what happened to Mongoose I don't know what is.

Can't say in this case, but anything they touch seems to have a very short life, e.g. about 6 months or less, as a casual observer of their offerings.

My guess is perhaps they're forced to pay too high a premium for licensing fees, and when things don't pan out as well as hoped, they drop them like hot potatoes. Probably better to do that than lose even more money, but it is disheartening I suspect to many gamers.

I do not know, but I have suspicions. One is the "overpromise" thing. I understand they at one point were telling people pre-painted Starship Troopers figures were in the works--whereupon sales of the existing stock tanked. Cash flow problems have ruined bigger businesses than any in the industry.
Another is that they've lost licenses with such great regularity I wonder if they may not be doing them poorly--and of course they lived by licenses, not by developing products. A license gives you an immediate boost in name recognition and publicity, but there's always the expiration date waiting.
Third, and I do not know this, is that a small business on the way up sometimes confuses hopes and reality. Salaries and perks reflect what the business may become and not what it is, leaving the firm without cash reserves or expansion capital.
I also was sorry to see them go. They're another reason I'm wary of trademarked systems. Miniatures last a long time. Rules not so much.

I have had some contact with other companies. Not with Mongoose, but others. Ludicrous optimism seems to be an epidemic. Another issue is the pace of new products and companies that shortens the life span of many offerings, as Mako stated. Does a company continue to support lines that have had their moment, or switch resources to another new shiny thing?

My personal opinion is that this industry has gone through some tremendous changes due to the easy and low risk capital offered by kick starter. I was previously against kick starter because of the lack of consumer protections and ease of fraud. Now I am starting to think it is also bad for many people wanting to get started in the industry as it allows them to get in way over their head before they are ready. Some people can handle the pressure but there are a lot of stories of others really getting themselves in trouble.

I really liked Mongoose too. I loved it when they got the Fading Suns Noble Armada license and started putting out minis and rules under their ACTA game. That's gone. I loved their ACTA Star Fleet Battles game too, which hits the right level for a minis starship game for me, that's gone to ADB (which I am thankful for, don't get me wrong), and the SL 2500 minis were great when the manufacturing issues were worked out. Again with ADB now. I picked up Traveler and a few of the supplements, glad they are still around with that (even if my group is lukewarm in playing it…).

So yes I agree that they are a shadow of what they were, and their potential. It's really too bad, but I also have to wonder if their habit of losing licenses has burned the community overmuch?

Damon.

I am still buying the occasional Mongoose Publishing d20 RPG supplements for D&D -- good stuff, regardless of Edition of rules. Wish they had continued with this stuff. The books I've purchased thus far, are good -- good enough for me to buy additional titles. They offer some of them as PDF's, on RPGNow.com, if interested. Cheers!

Starship Troopers was locally quite popular once upon a time. One of my regular opponents and I built up large collections of the stuff. I have fond memories of a well-attended multi-event tournament at an FLGS. Still have my collection, and my buddy occasionally runs convention games that are always well received. IMHO the Skinnies were rather over-powered and they kind of broke the game. Still, the basic bugs vs MI games are fun. It's sad that the franchise didn't last.

As popular as Starship Troopers (the book is), I never thought as a wargame it would have legs. Too few factions (just three!). I'm looking at the HALO games now (and I am an unabashed fan of the franchise!) thinking the same thing, as you can really only get Covenant, UNSC, Rebels, and now Forunners. Maybe if they split off the Sangheili as it was implied in HALO 3 into their own faction (but that does not seem to have held up in HALO 4 & 5?)…

Damon.

Garand

Why does that matter? WW2 wargaming does pretty well with just 3 main "factions" – ACW only has 2!

Mike

WWII has more than just 3 factions, "Main" or not:

USA
UK
Germany
Soviets
Italy
Japan

Start adding in "sub" factions or minor factions (arguable about some of these, and some would be major factions depending on time period), like:

China
Romania
Hungary
France
Netherlands
Norway
Finland
Denmark (short lived, admittedly)
Belgium

To name a few.

So no, WWII has a lot of variety,

Why it matters though, is both for variety for the gamer side of things, and variety for the modeler/collector. I don't do ACW gaming as I have no interest in pre-1900 American history, so I can't comment on its popularity. But with made up fictional universes that do not have a long and dense "fluff" that history does, it has to rely more on variety to keep games interesting IMHO.

Damon.

I was just thinking about this the other day.
Mongoose used to be the "young hopeful" with a ton of product lines and neat stuff.

Maybe it all was a bit choppy around the edges, but they had a lot of games I really liked and they did a great job on Traveller and a decent job on Runequest.

Matt frequents these boards. I'd like to hear his thoughts on this. In years past he has done 'State of the Mongoose' on his site, and I always enjoyed it. The new edition Traveller is really nice, but there is scant little else they offer these days. It would be nice to hear what Matt thinks their present and future is.

Relying on a license is never a long term business plan, you make tons of money on it and the license holder is gonna want a big slice of that pie come renewal time.

I've found Matt's Age of Sigmar Blog a great resource.

Now for the bad part. I quit buying anything from Mongoose many, many moons ago….

Starting with Battlefield Evo onto many RPG's, I found that the company had no shortage of good ideas, but they just never managed to execute with any quality control.

poor play testing, poor proof reading, poor printing, poor quality control, are 4 things that I've had to suffer on mongoose produced products that I've purchased, some of the early D20 products were good and quirky, but once they started publishing a lot, things felt rushed, the steampunk D20 was an example of this, the original traveller books had a few QC problems, my copy of secret of the ancients, had whole chapters missing, and when contacted they gave me the code for a PDF download as a replacement, not much use for reading away from the PC, and the copy of 2300 that I was given as a present had black blocks across numerous of the starship deckplans. Also with the current release schedule having changed massively a few months back they start to get into unreliable territory, I know from things published here that the Bayern supplement for 2300 was well advanced / complete, and it was up for release, then one day gone.. no mention on the mongoose forums of it ether. Id be doing a full page / index check and count, then an examination of any maps, plans etc, before I paid for anything else, great potential but not very good execution.

What happened to the starship miniatures game? It seemed very popular from what I saw.

Dudes and dudettes,

You are making me feel bad. Stop talking about my personal hobby aspirations and achievements.

Metaphorically,
Snafu

The outcome of the Judge Dredd miniatures game was what sealed the deal for me. One of my all time favorite IPs reduced to well… you know.

Too bad about Judge Dredd. Maybe Rebel can pick up some of the non-iconic molds like they did with the SST stuff?

Hopefully the price on the stuff I want won't be too high on eBay… :(

I know from things published here that the Bayern supplement for 2300 was well advanced / complete, and it was up for release, then one day gone.. no mention on the mongoose forums of it either.

Not gone away at all. It was complete and submitted for the 1st edition rules, but the recent update to 2nd edition means a few changes. Biggest changes are due to new design systems. There are a couple of enabling titles in the pipeline ahead of it.

G.

It's a shame… They still have a Victory at Sea miniatures line in the works, but no news on that for over 3 years now.

Victory at Sea is the only naval game I've actually enjoyed.

The Victory at Sea line is another example of their problems – A fun system , good for conventions and getting people into miniatures and enjoyable club naval games /
They added a WW1 book and kept promising more along with 3 + years of promising a 2nd updated edition of the original . Then add to that their wasting their resources on the proposed miniatures line .
Typical Mongoose