So, I seem to be one of the few fans of the new Mongoose Rune Quest, despite my extreme annoyance regarding the number of books, size of books and so forth.

Two of my recent purchases in the line were the Magic of Glorantha and Cults of Glorantha books... not because I really want to PLAY Glorantha (lord knows, I have 75+ pages of setting material sitting right here on this Forum....), but because I'm a lazy bastard and wanted to save some energy on writing down cult information, and I was hoping to find expanded rules for spirit magic.

First, the magic of Glorantha is about as worthless as tits on a boar. It's really just a chance to expand sorcery for 'God learners' and 'Dragon magic'... which isn't really dragon magic at all. Okay, its for Glorantha, rather than the core books. Bah.   God learner magic appears to be half assed 'behind the scenes stuff' with the only really character level stuff being the magic cybernetics stuff.  Interesting, but not really needed for the current game.

Cults is even worse. Poorly organized and arranged, with a vague nod to pantheonic groups, it doesn't even have that many cults in it, and some of THOSE seem to be lifted verbatim from the 'core' books, serial numbers filed off... to be honest, the Cults seem to be pretty lack luster all things being equal. Pick a few skills, a couple of runes if you feel up to it, and slap on some minor special ability and presto. Disillusionment, here I come!

But that isn't the reason for this bitch. I can savage these two in reviews for that. No. I just took a peek at the Cults volume 2 book. Guess what I found?

Spirit magic!!!

What the ever loving FUCK is spirit magic doing in Volume 2 of CULTS?  Do these ass monkeys have the first clue how to arrange information?  By the Great Doug, they could learn better organizational skills by studying under Kevin Fucking Siembeida!!!

I realize that I've got five pounds of book, but three pounds of that is covers. I'm seriously considering cutting the pages from the books and organizing them in a fucking binder... in ORDER... to make this work.

Shame, cause I do love the system and should be putting it through it's paces in another week or so.

I don't play any of Mongoose's RPGs really, although I own Starship Troopers.  I'm more concerned with their minis games.

Based on their investment into that market and the titanic failure Battlefield: Evolution appears to be heading towards, I think Mongoose might sink or be in deep shit very soon.

I agree with you, Spike, that their RPG decisions are...weird.

Mongoose has a pretty bad rep in the D20 fantasy field... yet it's where they cut their teeth, and I'm told they did very well for themselves there.

I find that if you chose your authors carefully, they have some pretty cool stuff, but Mongoose is definitely a publisher to browse or read reviews about before you buy. (I still remember snatching up Sheoloth at GenCon on too shallow a read... ouch...)

Quote from: Caesar SlaadI find that if you chose your authors carefully, they have some pretty cool stuff, but Mongoose is definitely a publisher to browse or read reviews about before you buy. (I still remember snatching up Sheoloth at GenCon on too shallow a read... ouch...)

Yea they seem to use freelancers quite a bit and the results vary quite a bit.  I'd largely given up on them as had several others but they did a good job overall on Conan which partially redeemed them.

Their Paranoia XP rocks, but I was severely underwhelmed with RuneQuest.  Boring, boring, boring.

-O

I don't mind a boring systems book, and the Glorantha world book looked exteremely well put together... if ultimately useless to a pika like me who can invent awesome settings in my sleep

What I DO need, however, is all the tools of the game put together where I can use them.  Putting spirit magic (shamanism if you will) in a setting book otherwise completely unrelated to magic... when they have a magic book out that DOESN't really add generic magic to the game... strikes me a singularly foolish.

The OGL Conan is pretty cool and well put together. At least the pocket edition is. I'm looking forward to the release of the the 2cnd edition, but only so I can pick up the first in HC for cheap.

Quote from: NicephorusYea they seem to use freelancers quite a bit and the results vary quite a bit.  I'd largely given up on them as had several others but they did a good job overall on Conan which partially redeemed them.

I wouldn't blame the freelancers.  

Their editing is absolutely atrocious, and they have definite "quantity over quality" philosophy when it comes to all their releases.  

This is apparently part of why they're one of the worst companies to freelancer for.

Frankly the only Mongoose product that ever interested me was Mighty Armies, 'cause the idea of getting a fantasy miniatures army for like $40 is way too cool.

My experience has been fairly good freelancing for them, when the work does end up getting published. Compared to others I've worked for the problems there have been are nothing.

Of course, I may have been very unlucky.

Quote from: J ArcaneTheir editing is absolutely atrocious, and they have definite "quantity over quality" philosophy when it comes to all their releases.

Each salaried writer is expected to produce one 128 page book, that's 76,000 words, per month. They are expected to do this as a part-time job, 20 hours per week. So, 76,000 words in 87 hours each calendar month.

About their editing process I know nothing, but I do not think they ask for 76,000 words a month so they can edit it over six months; that would mean that either they have books sitting around unpublished for years on end - in which case, why hurry them in the first place? - or that they have more editors than writers, which would be unusual for any publishing company.

But hey, some of the most critically-acclaimed rpgs have no editor at all! Unknown Armies, for example, has no editor listed. They needed one, those 336 pages could have been 128, easy, without losing any content or style.

I'll also chime in with praise for Conan OGL. Great book, great supporting material. In my opinion, the Conan line is Mongoose's masterwork. That's why it still strikes me as ironic that they made a bigger deal out of getting the Babylon 5 license. The B5 stuff is pretty good also, but really, Conan has gotten the most buzz, and for good reason.

I thought that the new Runequest looked pretty good, but I was pretty disappointed when I bought the first book and saw it was much more bare bones than it should've been. All the add-ons for stuff that I feel should've been core material was a real buzz-kill for me as far as RQ is concerned. And the really bad art I've seen for the Glorantha and Lankhmar books is even more disappointing.

QuoteBut hey, some of the most critically-acclaimed rpgs have no editor at all! Unknown Armies, for example, has no editor listed. They needed one, those 336 pages could have been 128, easy, without losing any content or style.

A bad writer thinks he needs no editor.

A good writer knows he does.

There have been occasional historical exceptions to this rule, but you are not one of them.  

(You being general, not you in particular JB.  I never got the impression you avoided good editing.)

I don't worry much about art. Good art can be evocative and add to the game, bad art can be ignored completely.

Ditto editing within the book itself.  

My single biggest gripe is the layout of the line itself. If you want to discuss  each of the seven types of magic in detail, fine, make a single Magic Book or something, don't scatter them in oddball places.

The more minor gripe is the stupidly low pagecounts of each book coupled with the choice to make them hardbound. That's really a part of the first gripe though.   If I can read on the Internet, I can ignore typos, and I can't draw for shit, so bad art just makes me feel smugly selfrighteous....

Quote from: J ArcaneA bad writer thinks he needs no editor.

A good writer knows he does.

With respect to Unknown Armies, my impression is that they acted as their own editors. So they edited for grammar, spelling, clarity and style; but they didn't edit for content.

On the dvd version of Conan the Barbarian, there's a bit where the director John Milus talks about a cameo scene he'd done, and later had cut. He said, "I knew then I was never going to be an actor. A real actor would never cut himself from the film."

Probably the same's true of a writer. A real writer will never cut their writing entirely from a book, and will find it very painful even to trim it down. I had to cut a chapter's worth from d4-d4, I felt like I was shooting Old Yeller.

Quote from: J ArcaneThere have been occasional historical exceptions to this rule, but you are not one of them.  

(You being general, not you in particular JB.  I never got the impression you avoided good editing.)

Like other writers of any ability, I can edit myself for grammar, spelling, clarity and style, but not for content. I need someone else to do the vicious cuts of the fat. I just can't do it. That's why my commercial writing is so (relatively) short, and my forum and email writing is so long.

On the self editing... somewhere I have a nice 'rant' by Spider Robinson...hard copy only... where he talks about how he got into writing, and the very nice man at Analog (I think) made him edit his own stuff over and over until he 'got it'.

The end result was a much much smaller story, and in the end a happier author...despite the pain he felt every time he cut stuff out.

Too bad I disagree with him fundamentally on many philosophical tangents he writes in his stuff... he's a sharp cat.