Talisman 2nd Edition Rules Pdf

[Jennifer Kovachick]

DesignIam Lemke, Brian Campbell, Bandes Stoddard, Rabbit StoddardWriting: Richard August, Lee Hammock, Michelle Klein Houser, Ian Lemke, Fred Love,Brandes Stoddard, Rabbit Stoddard, and Robert TurkEditing and Proofreading: Brian Campbell and Tim Huckelbery

Full Disclosure: I was given a comp copy.Fuller disclosure: I was going to buy the game anyway. Fullerer disclosure: I enjoy writing reviews and getting free pdf's. If you send me a pdf, I will probably write a review about it.

Basing a game off of something that already exists has to be a tricky proposition. Obviously, there's something about this movie or book that you like, but sometimes things that are good in a media aren't so great in games, or vice versa. This gets even more complicated when you're basing your game off of...another game. There's already rules, expectations, a play style already developed.

This is why I was always interested in this project as soon as I heard about it (that, and that Changeling the Dreaming's Ian Lemke was going to be involved). How would keep the things that made this board game with blatantly boilerplate fantasy elements unique? How would you keep that "80's fantasy movie" element to it? How would you make a game about trying to kill the other players work in the teamwork-focused RPG element? Could you make a game out of that??

Talisman is a 300 page core book with modern professional-grade quality. Each page includes clean, easy to read text with the classic "old book" page decorum. New artwork (as opposed to "stolen from the cards") is splashed on almost every page. The books design is easy to navigate, well-divided into Player's and GM's section (they're even color coded!), and is what you'd expect from a "professional game company". It has a table of contents AND an index, and is very easy to read and search.

Next is a "what is roleplaying/this game?" chapter. Clean, focused writing brings the new players up to speed in a non-threatening way. Obviously made for new players, it was helpful but not snooty about it.

After that we get major focuses on the main locations such as the City (with a lot of details cribbed off an expansion board), villages, forests and crags. Again we have plenty of information to help you get a good picture of the setting but with plenty of wiggle room for your own stories or ideas. The middle and inner regions are barely touched on, but there's enough in the core book for plenty of adventures even before you start crossing bridges or creating your own worlds.

Next are Ancestries, aka "Races but without the baggage of calling people 'races'". We have the expected dwarf and elf, but there's also ghouls and trolls and sprites and some weird satyr guys called Leywalkers. Each Ancestry will increase one of two select aspect's max value, gives a few special abilities including environmentally-focused rerolls (ie, "dwarfs do better underground"). There's also 3 backgrounds you can choose from/roll for, a kind of "are you a city human or a backwoods human?". These not only give some more mechanical bonuses, but also a bit of flavor to help flesh out your character. Like everywhere else, there's some solid descriptions of what these people are like but none of them are going to shackle you into a concept.

After you've gotten experience, you can spend it as you'd expect, including more Special Abilities. Each class has a number of class-specific special feats up their sleeves. Many of these have prerequisites that are "you can take this if you didn't take that", which is kind of a fun way to really make that choice count, and they all have an "Improved" rank if you really want to be the best at what you can do. We close with gear, gold, and a very diverse selection of magical spells, schools, and scrolls. Yes, you can turn someone into a toad.

But wait there's more! Book II, the GM guide, gives us a friendly introduction into how to roleplay, how to GM, and how to adapt your game to your characters.There's some alternate rules, some simple examples of how to use and understand the Fate mechanics, and more. You can tell a lot of this advice comes from experienced roleplayers who know some of this stuff will come up without being too bossy about it.

The more mechanically impacting chapters are next. A big part of the board game was Ally cards you could pick up or strangers that might help or hinder you. This chapter has a ton of useful people you could run into and simple mechanics to tell how much they like you. Then we dig into Followers, how loyal they are how they work. Again, a ton of flavorful examples (bears! Spirits! Messenger pigeons? Butlers! Undead!), with simple ways they can help and a specific way to increase their loyalty (I love that "feed them" is so prevalent). There's also guidelines for building your own.

The last few chapters are about how to run an adventure (such as how to use traps, environmental modifiers like darkness, drowing, etc), and things to give your players as rewards (experience, gold, magic items, etc). Again many of these are directly inspired by the cards from the game, balanced out to work in the new format, and there's a ton of treasures described. Finally, there's a quick adventure that uses a lot of familiar elements and walks through the system and scenes with friendly advice. The adventure is purposefully simple and set up so you can put it wherever you would need it in this game world or another. There's some additional appendixes of optional rules, level-specific tips and charts, and finally a handy Index.

This is a game that was made by people who had obviously played and loved Talisman. There's a hundred little easter eggs in the writing and art, and you can tell that everyone who worked on this has, probably while waiting for the guy playing the Thief to come back from the fridge (you didn't win yet Bill! You still need to roll above a 4! It's been an hour!), wistfully glanced at the board and gone "I wonder what it's like in there...". The writing is welcoming enough for newcomers of both the Talisman universe and roleplaying in general.

The other game that this reminds me of is WEG's D6 Star Wars, the first edition, and that is highest praise coming from me. it's detailed analysis of it's source material, keeping the heart of what fans loved about the original but finding and expanding the playability of it for a group of players. The mechanics are beautifully simple but with plenty of options. The writing, as I've said, is a great mix of "here's enough to kindle your imagination, now run with it". I have no doubt that this could easily handle not just "regular" Talisman, but any other fantasy world you'd care to play with. Due to the adaptability, the mechanics feel like they could handle just about any other genre with a bit of work and creativity, from grim horror to godlike summer blockbusters.

The game's biggest strength is also its main weakness. Talisman was a game from the 70's, designed to be open-ended with it's world since you were supposed to fill in the details and cribbing a lot off of other media (Tolkein, fairy tales, etc). This means that things can be vague or at least not to detailed. The religion is just "Good" or "Evil" with very little differentiation, there are mummies but no Egypt, Mammoths and Apes in the English countryside, some ancestries feel really ingrained but others feel a bit "oh, there's those guys", and a lot of things just...happen in the history. This is closer to early D&D where the book is an open stage with a lot of props, as opposed to a World of Darkness where everything has been spelled out for 5,000 years and sixteen books.

The table will have to do some heavy lifting to make the world make sense. This can be fantastic with the right group, but it's a setting that relies on the players and GM working together to make those decisions and set the tone for the game to really make it sing. I feel like when the contracts all run out and Pegasus Spiele puts out "Magic Knick-Knack: The Adventure Game", the world will be able to be tied together in a way that will feel more solid and unique.

It's an rpg based off a board game that's almost as old as I am with infamously wobbly rules where everything is at best an archetype, at worst stolen from a book or movie. So the fact that Lemke and his team were able to create a game that can support dramatic to comedic with no problem? With a system that is elegant and quick and fitting to the inspiration but still complex enough to handle some real challenge? With enough framework to let you play immediately but still full of room to build your own challenges? All with professional quality that revels in the setting details and age of the work in a new way? With mechanics to let me handle henchmen and helpers and everything else in the game?? The audacity.

Talisman: The Magical Quest Game is a fantasy-themed adventure board game for two to six players, originally designed and produced by Games Workshop. The game was first released in 1983 and has gone through three revisions. As of 2021, the fourth edition (2008) is the latest version. The board game sold over 800,000 units by 2000.[1]

The game was created by Robert Harris for the amusement of himself and his friends. The game's original objective was to become prefect of a boys' school. Changing the theme to fantasy, and naming the game "Talisman", Harris signed a royalty publishing contract with Games Workshop, and the game was shown at Games Day 1983. After releasing the third edition, Games Workshop bought out his remaining interest.[2]

The primary object of the game is to reach the Crown of Command at the centre of the board. The game contains three regions: Outer, Middle, and Inner. Players start in the Outer Region and try to progress to the Inner Region, through the Valley of Fire, and claim the Crown of Command. The game's name, "Talisman", refers to the rule that only characters possessing a Talisman card may enter the Valley of Fire.

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