Spooks, Enemies, and Scenario Ideas

Reading through the Enemies section and the introductory "Death's Messenger" scenario, you can hardly fail to notice that Talisman Adventures has a generous share of spooks and unquiet dead. If you are familiar with the board game, this will not come as any surprise. Among the ghastly crew are Shadows, Spectres, Barrow Wights, Wraiths, Death Knights, Liches and Lemures. Players themselves have the option to play a Ghoul as their character. All of this corresponds to the board game, where all Enemies are sub-classified as Monsters, Animals, or Spirits, and there are a healthy (or unhealthy?) serving of the latter.

There are real riches for the GM in the descriptions of all types of Enemies in the guide, where it will be found that each has something individual about it (generally backed up by a simple-to-play but thematically-appropriate Special Ability) that immediately suggest hooks for encounters and even scenarios.

It isn't just the Spirits and Undead  that have abilities or background information that help create interesting encounters ideas, the same can be found throughout the descriptions of Enemies in the GM's guide. Furthermore, the manner that Enemies are grouped into related types in the guide (Animals, Cultists & Outlaws, Goblinoids, Monsters, Spirits, Undead, Dragons, Elementals and Fae), offers an easy starting point for scenario structure. Some Enemies within a type have a relation to each other (Ogres boss about Goblins, Fae typically belong to the factions of either Light or Dark), and many will have a terrain or location within the Realm where they are mostly found.

These features of course aren't unique to Talisman Adventures, and a Monster Manual has always been a primary resource for GMs in many game systems to kickstart adventure writing - right back to when the usual way to write an adventure was to draw a dungeon and fill it with a variety of bad guys. 

What's particularly admirable here is how the designer has taken foes from the board game, and presented them in a way that lends itself to the two key facets of the RPG experience - preparation (adventure writing/campaign plotting) and play (through the simple and fun implementation of Special Abilities, Benefits & Banes).

Here are some encounter and scenario ideas that leap unbidden to mind from perusing the Spirits and Undead:

The Will o' the Wisp is a weak spirit that can barely manifest as a humming, glowing light: it will try to lead wanderers astray, and tend to gather in larger and larger numbers until they are able to then swarm and attack heroes. Possible encounter: Your heroes are crossing a lonely moor, and see a dim light off the path. Do they follow it? If they don't, they will eventually notice that the light is following them. And that it has been joined by two more lights...

The Lemure is a recently dead spirit still inhabiting its body, that may not be recognized by players as undead and may itself be unaware it is deceased. Possible scenario hook: The heroes have delivered a letter to the City's Inspector of Drains. But the official's office is in total disarray, and the inspector himself dishevelled and stark-eyed, wandering about, bumping into furniture, and muttering incoherently...

A Death Knight is a resurrected and enslaved warrior, and has an effect called Unsettling Visage against someone who knew it in life, causing a negative modifier to rolls unless the hero resolves that they must release the soul of their former acquaintance. A great way to bring a dead NPC or Follower back into the campaign!

Shadows stalk a victim relentlessly (owing to being "trapped in their own personal miseries"), but cannot pass through open sunlight or onto holy ground. The heroes find a terrified Merchant hiding in a churchyard. Shadows flit and lurk on the perimeter. Is the Merchant merely unfortunate, or does he carry some item which has drawn the evil spirits to him?

Zombies (properly Putrid Zombies) stink. No particular plot hook in mind, just wanted to share stinky Zombies.

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Talisman Adventure RPG News: At the GAMA trade show, Pegasus's Tim Huckelbery dropped some tantalizing hints about future releases for Talisman RPG. Of course, right now many are eagerly awaiting the unfortunately-delayed release of the print version of the game, but it is heartening to know that things are already under way to follow that up. See this interview at icv2.com for more! It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that a sourcebook for The Dungeon is mentioned. I'm curious about how Dungeon crawling will be expanded in Talisman RPG, and have some ideas of my own about an approach which follows from the core rule book's Exploration rules - about which I will get around to posting before too long...

The Test

One of the first things I tell people when describing Talisman Adventures RPG, is that the game has a system that really puts the focus on the players, and that the crux of this is the game's central Test mechanism. Of course, many other RPGs use a central Test system, and many would also put a fair claim to being player-centred, so this description does require further elaboration. Thus, this.

Talisman, like all the smartest RPGs, is a d6 system. Polyhedrals are fun, and the "fistful of gems" appeal was surely one of D&D's big draws back in the Times of Yore. But even from the very earliest days of RPGs, savvy designers eschewed the exotic lure of the d20 and the side-use-as-caltrops of the d4, to stick with the fundamentals of the familiar, yet ever-open-to-statistical-creativity, d6. Traveller and Tunnels & Trolls being fine early examples. 

Talisman adventures uses a 3d6 Test. A given activity has a difficulty number assigned to it (e.g: 9 for routine, 13 for challenging, 17 hard, 19+ for heroic). Skills, abilities and circumstances add (or subtract) modifiers to the roll. If the target or higher is rolled, the player has achieved a success. Clearly, the magic of the bell-curve alone gives the 3d6 roll an edge over the flat percentages produced by your d20. Where Talisman's Test really gets interesting and picks up some colour and game-play fun, is how samesies (ie any doubles or triples rolled) are treated.

You see, rolling a Success in Talisman is not enough. Any standard Success (ie, with no samesies) is generally considered to be a mixed result - the desired outcome achieved, but with some drawback, disadvantage or extra cost. For example, in combat, this would involve striking your foe, but taking some damage in return.

To get an unqualified success (in game terms, a Great Success), the player needs to roll doubles somewhere among the three dice. Triples will result in an Extraordinary Success, and some better-than-anticipated or legend-inspiring outcome. 

There's more: one of the dice rolled is a different colour from the others, and referred to as the Kismet Die. Unlike the other dice, rolls of the Kismet Die cannot be altered by special abilities or effects. A roll of 6 generates Light Fate, which might be banked by the player or trigger some immediate bonus effect (or spent to turn a Standard Success into a Great Success, but never a Great into an Extraordinary, triplsies must be rollsied). A roll of 1 by contrast generates Dark Fate, triggering misfortune, or indeed being banked or spent by the GM (e.g. to activate a colourful range of Enemy special abilities).

I referred to the player rolling doubles on a Test. What happens when the GM rolls doubles? Prepare for your mind to be blown: The GM does not roll for tests! OK, I don't doubt that there are other game systems that have tests rolled by the players-alone (I'm unfamiliar with them myself though), but the concept is rigorously applied in Talisman, and well-explained throughout the rules.

It's not just that players make the rolls, the GM is encouraged to allow players to outline the parameters of success and what outcome they expect from their roll (which the GM will arbitrate and interpret with their usual Godlike finality, naturally). It is around this aspect where I have found some real scope creativity from the players is strongly encouraged and rewarded, leading to some interesting situations, and a more collaborative style of story-telling and play.

There are lots of standard situations (combat, exploration, encountering Strangers) that can be resolved by what risk becoming standard checks, but as players and GM get familiar with the mechanism, it will hopefully be put to more novel use. 

I ran an adventure which had reached its climax (and the end of our allotted game time) with the heroes facing a horde of foes overwhelming in number, and the Golden Wotsit in an unreachable position. So between them, the players described their implausible and comedic heist, we agreed what Tests they would roll against, and the hoped and feared outcomes, then between us we narrated the final, show-stopping outcome, wherein the Ghoul masqueraded as a Cabbage Salesman, the Troll demanded the return of his stolen Pitons, and the pixie made an Indiana Jones style swoop for the Wotsit, exeunt all pursued by a befuddled and outraged horde...

Hm, maybe you had to be there. Anyway, as I play, I find myself increasingly inclined to push control of what will happen next into the hands of the players. There are admittedly times where this works better than others, and I find that the challenge can be to manage it in a way that doesn't undermine the players' suspension of disbelief. There needs to be a  firm foundation of GM-expected outcomes and situations (ready to be amended or dispensed with), or things risk getting very random and chaotic. 

That the game system is fun to play has been a baked-in failsafe, regardless of whether players want to take the lead on the narration. Combat is fast-moving and entertaining, following the exact same Test system, though with a lot of suggested Tests for actions and outcomes to give a solid framework to fall back on. The level of challenge for a bunch of heroes can vary a lot depending on the make up of warriors and spell-casters, but this again tends to lead to creativity (either in the levels of outrageous mayhem inflicted, or in the schemes and tricks to avoid annihilation). 

There's a lot more to be said on this subject and I will likely return to it again. Next week: Spooks, Enemies, and Scenario Ideas.

Talisman Adventures RPG

Initial disclaimer: the content in this blog is in no way official content from Pegasus Games, Games Workshop, or any other publisher. Everything herein represents my opinion and views unless expressly stated otherwise – all errors (and there will be plenty) whether about game rules, publishing schedule, or basic grammar, are mine and mine alone. 

Talisman Adventures is the new tabletop RPG from designer Ian Lemke, set in the world of Games Workshop’s adventure board game Talisman (created by Robert Harris). It's a fast-moving game system, with some neat innovations in the mechanisms designed to keep the focus on the players, and encourage their creativity and active participation in how adventures unfold.

The world of Talisman leans more into Jack Vance and the Brothers Grimm than Tolkien, and works in very dark elements with a balancing measure of humour and whimsy. The RPG carries a lot of the flavour of the board game (and builds on it) : with players typically taking the role of a  Troll Warrior, Ghoul Assassin or Pixie Druid, each leading a mixed assortment of terminally accident-prone Followers, seeking fabulous treasures at the humiliating peril of being turned into a Toad... 

Over the past year I have had the pleasure of running demo sessions of the game on behalf of the publisher, Pegasus Spiele, to introduce Talisman Adventures to new players. (For some reason 2020 has seen a lot of people interested in trying out playing tabletop RPGs online...)

I’ve had a lot of fun running these sessions, and met some fine folk from the UK, Europe and the USA.  In the works are a couple of short one-off adventures for the game, supplemented by an ongoing campaign which the players keep things moving in all kinds of unanticipated directions. Expect future posts to contain some thoughts and ideas from these experiences. 

There are more demo sessions planned to give new players a taste of the game at a number of online RPG conventions in 2021*, and there may even be some face-to-face games in the real world if things like the UK Games Expo manage to go ahead. Links will be posted here!

Next Post: The Test (Examining what it is about Talisman Adventures' central Test mechanism that makes the game so player-focussed and how it contributes to creating novel and surprising gaming experiences)

*There should be online sessions available at the GAMA Expo (Tuesday 23rd March, 12.30 & 16:00 GMT), and Pegasus's CONspiracy convention (Friday 26th, Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th March 20.00 GMT). The games will be hosted on Discord - check back here for links to sign up (if not found on the convention sites).