Post originally by Matthew Sprange at 2004-06-13 02:49:50
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Hi there,

While I do not agree with everything said in this particular review, you do raise a valid question.

I do own Mongoose, and I pay a great deal of attention to both reviews and message boards. If Someone has a problem with Mongoose or any of its books, then I like to find out why.

After the Conan-debacle (second printing will be out for Gen Con, Conan fans), we had a real sea-change here at Mongoose. In other words, myself and the other Director of the company blew our stacks (putting it mildly ) and made sure that the mistakes made there could never, ever happen again.

To this end, we;

1. Shuffled some staff, lost others and brought some new people on. A new full-time editor was taken on, thus spreading the workload further.

2. Widely expanded our proofreading program. Whereas before we spent a few hundred every month on proofreading, we now spend thousands. Every book now gets proofread at least twice. When I mentioned this in another forum, some people expressed surprise that this was not done already - in mainstream publishing, you never proofread just once. However, in this industry it is the norm. That said, we believe that because of mistakes made in the past, Mongoose must hold itself to a higher standard. Our proofreaders are now all professionally experienced and/or trained.

3. The entire RPG production side of the company was restructured, in terms of both staff/management and the actual process books go through, from initial brief to electronic files leaving for the printers. Many new safeguards are in place to the extent that the problems that arose with Conan _cannot_ happen again without almost everyone in the company being culpable. As strange as it may seem, this was not the case with Conan and previous books, which had a tendency to become 'private' projects within the company. Yes, I seriously appreciate hindsight. . .

4. A common filing system was set up, so that the editors could work more closely with the writers through all stages of a product's development despite them, sometimes, being continents apart.

5. Two Statistical Analysts have been brought on board. Every stat, no matter how minor, is now checked and double-checked.

6. We have doubled the number of playtesting groups on our books and more are still being added.

All this was done within a month of Conan coming out and, if you take a look at our more recent books, the difference shows - Mongoose is a very different company now than it was even six months ago. As an example of our new policies and directives in action, check out the Lone Wolf RPG, the Book of the Planes, the Road of Kings (due out next week, I believe), the new range of Quintessentials and the Narn Regime Fact Book.

I am not going to tell you that you will never find a mistake in any Mongoose book - if the big boys with hundreds or thousands of employees, such as WotC or GW, do not manage it, then it may not be possible for us to consistently produce 100% error-free books. However, that does not mean we will not give it our very best shot.

That said, you will notice a marked change. In the end, I do give a crap about how people view Mongoose and what they say in reviews and on message boards. I give a very big one. More importantly, I will try to do something about it.

Ezekiel, if you are willing to write up a complete review, drop me a line mentioning one of the new books above. I'll get a review copy off to you so you can see (and hopefully tell others) the changes we have made.

Regards,

Matthew Sprange
Mongoose Publishing