Eyeball
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2010
- Messages
- 2,541
I've been messing around with the PC version of the old board game Talisman and I gotta admit it's a lot of fun.
For those not in the know, Talisman is a fairly simplistic 2-6 player board game originally released in the 80ies about questing for an enchanted crown located at the centre of the board. Each player picks an RPG-staple character to serve as their playing piece, warrior, priest, thief, troll and so on, each character having varying stats and special abilities, and then roll dice to move around the game board.
As you can see in the above picture, the gaming board is divided into 3 rings, the outer and middle ring seperated by a river and the middle and inner ring by a mountain range. All players start in the outer ring and need to work themselves to the center of the board to claim the Crown of Command and win the game.
Each square contains either a special feature (shops, temples, inns, crypts and so on) or generic fields/woods/hills where you need to draw a card from the adventure deck, depicting either a monster, treasure or special event which you will then have to deal with. The closer you are to the inner ring of the board, the more dangerous the encounters will be, so all players will need to power up their characters before attempting to approach the inner region and claim the Crown.
This is where the "RPG" part comes into play - each character has 4 statistics: strength (used for fighting monsters), craft (used for fighting spirits and demons), fate (your rerolls) and life, with the starting values varying per character. Each stat can be raised by gathering magical items or treasures or by killing monsters, so Talisman's early game takes on an interestingly "grindy" nature where all the players try to strengthen their characters while hindering the other players from becoming stronger through adventuring, theft, magic or battle. The stat system works well, is easy to understand and gives a clear goal of what you need to do in order to progress in the game.
Battle is carried out via dice rolls. You and your opponent take your strength score and add it to a roll of D6 plus magic weapon bonuses and soforth. Whoever has the highest score wins and gets to either take an item or deduct a life point from an enemy player or have a chance of increasing their stats if they killed a sufficiently powerful monster. Although very simplistic, the model works well and battles are resolved quickly, making even 4 player games progress very smoothly without having to spend much time waiting for the other players.
Keep in mind though, Talisman is a game that likes to troll you. Spells can nerf your carefully powerleveled character, rare events can kill you outright and bad dice rolls can really screw you over, but it's great to play online for that reason. The dickiest and most cunning player has a great advantage over less ruthless players, but Talisman is still a very dice-heavy game which also requires a lot of luck in drawing the right cards and spells, making strategy often take a back-seat to rollplaying.
Although I love the board game, I am frankly not sure I can recommend the digital version of Talisman. The game itself is a lot of fun due to the aforementioned "haha fuck you!" factor that a lot of the cards introduce, the game looks pretty and the interface is servicable enough.
But at its current stage of development and bugfixing, it is simply too unstable to play online consistently, with as many as half my multiplayer games ending in a server crash or DC and there being no way to log back onto games discontinued for that reason. It is also quite pricey, with a 14 euro price tag for the base game and a SHITLOAD of DLC adding more characters and cards. You can buy a "season pass" for about 47 euros, but seriously, that is excessive for a board game port.
I suggest picking it up at 50% off sometime in the not-too-distant future. It will absolutely be worth it by then, as they've hopefully ironed out most of the connection issues by then and added some more fun expansion packs, as the addition of more characters really makes the game a lot more fun.
So if you like fantasy competitive board games, don't like being boggled down in lots of complicated stats and want something easily accessible for all, I can absolutely recommend you pick up Talisman DE.
For those not in the know, Talisman is a fairly simplistic 2-6 player board game originally released in the 80ies about questing for an enchanted crown located at the centre of the board. Each player picks an RPG-staple character to serve as their playing piece, warrior, priest, thief, troll and so on, each character having varying stats and special abilities, and then roll dice to move around the game board.
As you can see in the above picture, the gaming board is divided into 3 rings, the outer and middle ring seperated by a river and the middle and inner ring by a mountain range. All players start in the outer ring and need to work themselves to the center of the board to claim the Crown of Command and win the game.
Each square contains either a special feature (shops, temples, inns, crypts and so on) or generic fields/woods/hills where you need to draw a card from the adventure deck, depicting either a monster, treasure or special event which you will then have to deal with. The closer you are to the inner ring of the board, the more dangerous the encounters will be, so all players will need to power up their characters before attempting to approach the inner region and claim the Crown.
This is where the "RPG" part comes into play - each character has 4 statistics: strength (used for fighting monsters), craft (used for fighting spirits and demons), fate (your rerolls) and life, with the starting values varying per character. Each stat can be raised by gathering magical items or treasures or by killing monsters, so Talisman's early game takes on an interestingly "grindy" nature where all the players try to strengthen their characters while hindering the other players from becoming stronger through adventuring, theft, magic or battle. The stat system works well, is easy to understand and gives a clear goal of what you need to do in order to progress in the game.
Battle is carried out via dice rolls. You and your opponent take your strength score and add it to a roll of D6 plus magic weapon bonuses and soforth. Whoever has the highest score wins and gets to either take an item or deduct a life point from an enemy player or have a chance of increasing their stats if they killed a sufficiently powerful monster. Although very simplistic, the model works well and battles are resolved quickly, making even 4 player games progress very smoothly without having to spend much time waiting for the other players.
Keep in mind though, Talisman is a game that likes to troll you. Spells can nerf your carefully powerleveled character, rare events can kill you outright and bad dice rolls can really screw you over, but it's great to play online for that reason. The dickiest and most cunning player has a great advantage over less ruthless players, but Talisman is still a very dice-heavy game which also requires a lot of luck in drawing the right cards and spells, making strategy often take a back-seat to rollplaying.
Although I love the board game, I am frankly not sure I can recommend the digital version of Talisman. The game itself is a lot of fun due to the aforementioned "haha fuck you!" factor that a lot of the cards introduce, the game looks pretty and the interface is servicable enough.
But at its current stage of development and bugfixing, it is simply too unstable to play online consistently, with as many as half my multiplayer games ending in a server crash or DC and there being no way to log back onto games discontinued for that reason. It is also quite pricey, with a 14 euro price tag for the base game and a SHITLOAD of DLC adding more characters and cards. You can buy a "season pass" for about 47 euros, but seriously, that is excessive for a board game port.
I suggest picking it up at 50% off sometime in the not-too-distant future. It will absolutely be worth it by then, as they've hopefully ironed out most of the connection issues by then and added some more fun expansion packs, as the addition of more characters really makes the game a lot more fun.
So if you like fantasy competitive board games, don't like being boggled down in lots of complicated stats and want something easily accessible for all, I can absolutely recommend you pick up Talisman DE.
thanks for the write up. Gonna grab all the 80% off DLCs and a 4-pack. Figure the rest out later.
