Flashback Friday - Talisman
Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
Talisman the Magical Quest Game, desgined by Bob Harris was published in 1983 and has been a much loved and a much loathed game ever since. I once asked Mr. Harris if he had a choice, would he rather be remembered as "Robert J. Harris, the author," or "Bob Harris the designer of Talisman?" He answered that although he didn't expect to be remembered at all, that one of his great pleasures was recieving letters from children all over the world about the fun and happiness that Talisman a had given them.
Does Talisman bring you fun and happiness, or bordom and misery? Love it or Hate It? Do you Still Play It?
Yet as I play more bad adventure games, like Runebound 2e, which all copies should be forcefully collected and burned, I find myself respecting Talisman more. I prefer Relic because I like the 40k universe better than generic fantasy and, while less wild and freewheeling, is by far less prone to producing the kinds of games that turned me off to Talisman. I wish any version of the game was shorter. I like silly fun, but I top out around the 1 hour mark.
So there it is. I don’t hate Talisman. I’d rather play Runebound 3E, but I certainly don’t hate it.
Al's ghoul killing off my Priest at the Crown of Command with his finger of death just when I thought I had won was priceless
It's also a good game to play with kids to get them into the adventure type genre.
Outside of that... I dunno. I do think want to slag the game, but I don't find myself seeking it.
repoman wrote: Al's ghoul killing off my Priest at the Crown of Command with his finger of death just when I thought I had won was priceless
I AGREE! It was more than that though, the entire game was a blast! You and me and Mike all battling it out in the center ring at the end was just exactly what Talisman is all about, and reminded me why I have so much affection for this game. It's more than just nostalgia for a time when it was a groundbreaking game that me and my buddies lost ourselves in. It's that it is a genuinely FUN experience where winning is part luck and part strategy, but the strategy is not so intense and demanding that it takes you away from the fantasy. As you mentioned it also allows players to have a good time together WHILE playing. I LOVE THIS GAME!
A couple of years ago, I played Relic. It was probably more or less the same game, but I found it long and unenjoyable. I kept drawing tough encounters and then rolling badly, so I was permanently stuck on the outer edge of play while other players slowly advanced. We called it quits after four hours when it became apparent that only the owner of the game was still having fun.
Shellhead wrote: I played old school Talisman once. I was pretty neutral on it. Decision-making was pretty much limited to left or right, and everything else was about rolling the dice well.
I feel that this is only true when you don't know the game well. Knowing all the cards and all of your options opens up more choices.
Me, if I'm playing with them I'll pull out something else. Runebound, Imperial Assault, Warhammer Quest ACG, etc.
I think one of its secret advantages is that it was created with an eye toward mainstream audiences. People can instantly understand how to play because it does such a good job using common boardgame language in a fun way. It's not a deep game, but I don't need depth with stuff like this. I just want a game that actually feels adventurous, and Talisman does that really well.
My favorite Talisman memory remains this game of 2nd editon I played around 1996. It was everything with like 10 players. It was insane. We started at like 2 or 3 and it went almost 12 hours (lots of drinking and goofing off). I think we did like 3 respawns each or something and everyone was playing to be as nasty as possible. My friend Anthony won, at last, and the guy that owned the set gave the entire game to him. I drove Anthony home and he gave me the set because he didn’t want to keep it. I later sold that full set at my shop for like $400 around 2005.
Ah_Pook wrote: For us a lot of the charm comes from the art in 2e. I don't think we would enjoy it nearly as much with modern FFG fantasy art (yknow, competent and bland) or Warhammer 40k themed or whatever.
With the fourth edition, the board is terrific. You can tell that a GW subsidiary made it originally. There's a marked change in the art after the base game toward a less compelling FFG style.
In most ways it doesn’t have a huge difference than the Bauhaus blowing apart some mutants on some stairs, but it just seems to fall short. I honestly get more tension and narrative from a game of Claustrophobia
I just picked up 4th edition to play with my 5-year-old, and found that I've fallen in love with it and started playing solo games where I control multiple characters. Sure it's random and basically 'dumb', compared to more recent fantasy board game designs. But its very simplicity and stupidity is its genius. It is like a little fantasy world generator, where the random pull of the deck generates a different board each time, with little micro-stories every turn. In my current game the Ruins ended up with both the Cave and the Shrine, making it catnip for every adventurer on the board - until the sneaky Minstrel cast a spell to shift time and space and pull those cards halfway across the board to his location.
Despite all the randomness there is real strategy there, especially with certain characters (Particularly characters who can manipulate movement, peek at decks or redraw cards, or really any spellcaster who gets to refresh spells).
Now I'm looking to acquire all the expansions, which is a very expensive endeavor, unfortunately.
Relic might have better mechanics than Talisman in a number of ways, but the aesthetics and theme kill it for me. In Talisman I can adventure in a lighthearted Tolkienesque-fantasy realm with an elf, dwarf, or wizard, battling dragons and searching out lost tombs. In Relic I'm a weird little character bust in a grimdark, low-contrast future of endless war. No thanks.
Runebound 3e was a total bust, IMO. The characters are very samey. Worse, all the enemies also feel pretty much the same. There is no progression from easy to epic threats, no "Ah ha, now I can finally take on that dragon!" And the combat tokens add a huge amount of overhead with no payoff - the decisions are always obvious so why not just have a dice roll off? The co-op expansion was half-assed and failed to address a bunch of cards/abilities that were not designed for co-op. And no allies!
cfmcdonald wrote: I can't agree with that.
Relic might have better mechanics than Talisman in a number of ways, but the aesthetics and theme kill it for me. In Talisman I can adventure in a lighthearted Tolkienesque-fantasy realm with an elf, dwarf, or wizard, battling dragons and searching out lost tombs. In Relic I'm a weird little character bust in a grimdark, low-contrast future of endless war. No thanks.
Runebound 3e was a total bust, IMO. The characters are very samey. Worse, all the enemies also feel pretty much the same. There is no progression from easy to epic threats, no "Ah ha, now I can finally take on that dragon!" And the combat tokens add a huge amount of overhead with no payoff - the decisions are always obvious so why not just have a dice roll off? The co-op expansion was half-assed and failed to address a bunch of cards/abilities that were not designed for co-op. And no allies!
Lol, I can't believe you confirmed every concern I have about Runebound 3e.
But, yeah, Talisman is so effortless, still my favorite game. A story I love to tell is that I bought it after watching Game of Thrones, the unexpectedness of things.
Even now I wouldn't get it out over any other game in my collection although I would play it if at someone else's place (a couple of Warhammer/RPG guys in my group play it as a replacement if numbers are low at their meets), and I have actually bought the electronic version this year when it was on special but just haven't felt compelled to play it - it's just not part of my history and has no theme/mechanic pull on me either.
dysjunct wrote: I guess I’m in the “don’t get it” category. Never played it back in the day. Got the app when it came out to see what all the fuss was about. It was confusing and not fun. Deleted it after about 10 minutes. Would rather play about anything else.
Even I wouldn't play the app alone. Tried once, deleted it.
My first game of Talisman was in late 2000s? Me and 3 other guys used Vassal to play a 2nd ed Talisman. It was funny as hell, mostly we just laugh at each other. I think that first game took 7 hours over 2 or 3 different sessions. But again, yeah, it's random. Some turns could pass before something happen. But the sense of place... how there can be NPC, new locations... etc, stupid things happening, 2nd turn dragons... that's whack, and that's what I'm playing Talisman for.
Doing this takes it to a new level - my character can pick up the sword, put on the helmet, ride the horse or travel around the board with followers in tow. That added a whole new dimension.