Breaking News! Talisman RPG is hitting the streets!

The eagerly awaited actual print copies of Talisman Adventures RPG have finally arrived with publisher Pegasus Spiele, and should be winging their way to buyers and suppliers. Designer Ian Lemke has shared these pictures of his copies of the standard and limited editions. There had been some speculation about the difference between editions - it seems the limited has a plush faux-leather cover and metallic corner-protectors. Also, glad to see confirmed that the world map and the cardboard Fate tokens come separate from the books.

Pegasus have also updated their free handout download on Drivethru RPG, which now includes an all-new Character Creation Supplement. The supplement provides for random details for Ancestry and Class (including height and weight, both omitted from the core rules, but Frequently Requested). Now you can find that your Sprite is 80cm tall, weighs 15kg, is 223 years old, cherishes a Badly Carved Tusk and believes that "Truth told does pain unfold". Neat!

Toads & Diamonds is also included, an entertaining romp for 2nd - 3rd level characters, now updated for the current iteration of the rules. Still does not contain a map for the caves - an admittedly entirely unnecessary extra feature I may needlessly remedy in the near future (for much as I applaud playing without maps, they are fun to draw).

Do not trust the Wee Faeries

At the GAMA trade show, Tim Huckelbery teased the news that there are a number of sourcebooks in the works for Talisman RPG, and expected to follow the publication of the game some time this year. "Tales of the City" and "Tales of the Dungeon" were mentioned. The sourcebooks will have more material about running adventures in those settings, more character classes and kindreds, and a GM adventure in the setting. It seems reasonable to speculate that these sourcebooks are following the structure of the game's "corner board" expansions - leading me to also be keen to some material from the "small box" expansions get into print (Harbinger campaign book plz?)

There are a lot of reasons why it makes sense for the RPG to follow the pattern set out by the board game - doing service to the popular elements of the board game setting, using a ready-made structure for releases that will make sense to (hungry hungry) consumers, and making use of the work that has gone before on the setting.

My connection to the Talisman  board game has largely been a nostalgic one to the early days of the game, but exploring the RPG has also made me pay a bit more attention to the material that was developed by Fantasy Flight for the 4th Edition.

The campaign I am currently running for the RPG has been using a lot of the Faery elements of the setting, gradually emerging in the story as part of the conflict between Titania and Oberon, Queen and King of the Faeries. They are probably most familiar to the general public as characters in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, but were introduced (as far as I am aware) into the world of Talisman in FFG's Woodland's expansion to the game. Woodlands included a whole slew of elements from the lore and legends of faeries, including a lot of the darker elements and creatures in Irish and British mythology. These have been carried over and worked into the background of Talisman RPG.

For the GM of Talisman RPG, this is particularly useful. It means that you can go to the boardgame to look for further ideas (concerning which more in upcoming posts!), and also gives a pointer to elements of mythology to look into for inspiration. In my own game I was particularly drawn to including Fomorians, Sluaghs, and dark and mysterious Sidhe, from avid childhood reading of the Slaine the Barbarian in 2000ad, and also playful but sinister pixies and fairies drawn stolen wholesale from Jack Vance's Lyonesse - both of which works were based on roots in Irish mythology. 

I cannot pretend to know enough about the source material to point in the best direction to go on this, but a quick search on Gutenberg throws up Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens, which needs no better recommendation than the illustrations by the incomparable Arthur Rackham., and the delightful Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by William Butler Yeats - if you only read the opening of "The Trooping Fairies" you will be richer for it:

"Do not think the fairies are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them. Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person amongst them, the lepra-caun—the shoemaker. Perhaps they wear their shoes out with dancing. Near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived amongst them seven years. When she came home she had no toes—she had danced them off."

I can add one fragment of faery lore from my own experience - well, second hand experience. I recall hearing an elderly gentleman on a radio phone-in in Ireland. Asked by the host "And do you believe in the Good Folk yourself?" he replied: "No, but I wouldn't trust the wee feckers either."

Lost Without A Map?

 Last week I suggested the classic fantasy novel The Princess and the Goblin as prime material for a Talisman GM to work up into an adventure for players. The story has a clear, clean setting (making it easy to adapt into an RPG adventure), and interesting little tweaks on familiar fairy tale tropes (which suit it well to  the world of Talisman). There's much more worth saying on this subject.

Talisman Adventures RPG has a game system which lends itself to the kind of adventure-writing proposed here. Firstly, we have the Test system used for resolving challenges, which among other merits, encourages the players to take a lead in developing the story. Secondly, Monster & Stranger descriptions and abilities which are "ready to play" straight from the GM guide. So potentially, the right setting, with a cast of characters and their sets of individual goals, might be all a GM needs (Disclaimer: Individual GM & player styles and abilities will vary, adapt this advice to your own experience, and proceed with caution! Or just go for it). There is a significant third element found in Talisman Adventures, which should, I hope, become clear.

Let's take a closer look at the setting for The Princess and the Goblin, as summarised last week: We have a) the Castle, which is on the side of b) a Mountain, on which there is c) a Village and beneath which there are d) Goblin Caves (and e) Mines dug by the Villagers). There is something very striking about the (so far) published adventures for Talisman Adventures (The Corpse Watchers, Death's Messenger, and Toads & Diamonds). In all three adventures, there are no maps. OK, there are actually two floorplans of locations in Death's Messenger, but there are no maps showing the relation of one location to another - not even in Toads & Diamonds which has a dungeon. I have no idea if this was intended, or if the result of practical considerations related to publication, but (being someone who is very drawn to maps) it caused me t give serious consideration to the benefits of playing without maps showing rigidly defined locations - and of this being accepted and understood by all at the table. 

Talisman Adventures RPG has an Exploration feature (using the ubiquitous Test mechanism), which makes more sense if the game has no maps (or only maps which are loose in what they define). Part of the procedure is this - when players are travelling, they are assigned roles. One is The Guide - they make a Guide Check against a certain difficulty (modified by factors such as difficulty of terrain, certain skills or followers, or indeed whether the characters own a map), and the Failure, Standard Success, Great Success and Extraordinary Success outcomes could determine how long it takes to reach the destination, whether players get lost, or whether they encounter a baneful or beneficent location. 

As players get more familiar with this system, they may get more inventive in making suggestions for outcomes, and the GM's guide has dozens of ready-to-use locations and obstacles. These are largely drawn from card encounters in the board game, and indeed having them occur in an unexpected, or indeed unlikely or improbable fashion should appeal to players and GMs who enjoy that feature of the board game.

In the GM's guide, the Exploration feature is applied to a fairly typical wilderness situation. In Toads & Diamonds, the dungeon (though not mapped) is physically described (ie which chamber leads to which). But the same Exploration rules  could be applied to dungeon exploration in pretty much the same manner as to overground adventures. This may fly against usual dungeoneering instincts - surely you gotta have a map for a dungeon?

In The Princess and the Goblin, the princess in question wanders in forgotten corridors and floors of her father's Castle at the beginning of the story, until eventually she finds herself at the mysterious chamber of her even more mysterious grand mother (a very intriguing Fairy Godmother type). She is later only able to retrace her steps to that chamber when the story demands it  sorry, when The Time Is Right. In game terms the chamber can be found on the roll of a Great (or perhaps only Extraordinary) Success. No map is required, only a general description of the location (up a hidden high tower, at the end of long corridors and stairs that cross and intersect confusingly). The suite of the Fairy Grandmother is the only significant location in the Castle in the story, but the GM could easily throw in a trap chamber, or encounters with guards/servants/ghosts to allow for other Exploration outcomes.

The same can be applied on a larger scale to the Goblin Caves, and dungeons in general. The GM can describe Levels of a dungeon which represent how deep into the cave system the heroes have gotten, and have locations listed for the different outcome types. Think of this in relation to the different locations in the Mines of Moria in Lord of the Rings, exploration of which would be much better-suited to a game system that uses abstractions rather than a physical map. 

So, as an example, for the Goblin Caves in The Princess and the Goblin, below is a table of locations/encounters, categorized by Guide Test outcome results. There could be multiple possible outcomes for each result type to allow variety for continued play, or to give the GM a range of choices depending on player tastes/session tempo, etc - here I am just giving one example for each (which could be enough for play, if the GM is confident). Those familiar with the actual rules of Talisman Adventures RPG will be aware that for now I have ignored the other principal character role in Exploration, The Watcher. This is largely for the sake of simplicity - I'll go more in depth into different roles in (dungeon) exploration in coming weeks.

	Failure	Standard Success	Great Success	Extraordinary Success
Entrance to caves	Goblin guard cave - must encounter goblins!	Can avoid guards, continue searching	Can proceed to Cave mid-levels	Find secret route to Deeps
Cave mid-levels	Trap Cave! Use one in GM's guide, or invent	Goblin guards	Can proceed to Cave Deeps	Find a Lost Treasure (GM's guide or invent)
Cave Deeps	Monster Cave! Weird goblin creatures, or eg a Manticore	Main (guarded) entrance to The Hall of the Goblin Palace	Secret entrance to The Hall of the Goblin Palace	Secret entrance to Goblin Prisons

More Next Week!

Footnote: In case you missed it above or otherwise in the news media, can I just say 1991 Russian TV Adaptation of Lord of the Rings, and dare the curious to take a look.

Further Footnote: This Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th April is Spirit Games' 2nd "Digital Beer & Pretzels" online gaming convention. I am running two sessions of "Bring Me the Egg of Perlew Crag" (working title!), an introductory scenario designed to throw new players straight into the action of Talisman Adventures RPG. If you are interested in joining in, please head on over to Spirit Games website and sign up! You also might want to check out some of the friendly & fun board gaming on offer over the weekend.

The Princess and the Goblin

 "The Princess and the Goblin" by George MacDonald is often regarded as the first fantasy novel. It was an acknowledged influence on both C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien, and generally speaking, there is something about the way it takes familiar old fairy tale tropes (Princess, Fairy Godmother, Goblins, Castle, Working Class Hero) mixes them up, and tells a gripping tale with some unexpected turns and developments. Furthermore, as it was first published in 1872, it is firmly in the public domain and free to download at Project Gutenberg. 

I blithely claimed in my first post post that Talisman owes more to "Jack Vance and the Brothers Grimm than to Tolkien". This may not be strictly true. However, in addition to reflecting my own feelling for the particular atmosphere of the game's world, it might also serve as a good rule of thumb for how to look for inspiration for fantasy RPG adventure: look a little bit further than the Lord of the Rings and you may find rich pickings.

For a GM looking to write an adventure, there are lots of great ideas to steal from "The Princess and the Goblin". Let's take the setting, which is a compact, self-contained little world: we have a castle, by a mountain, a village of miners live on the mountain, and caves full of goblins live under it. The King is absent, the Goblin King resents him, and there is a plan afoot for the goblins to tunnel into the castle and kidnap the Princess . The goblin forces are bolstered by  bunch of goblin animals - ordinary above-ground animals that from life below have twisted into all sorts of ghastly shapes. The Goblin Queen has fearsome Granite Boots (to hide her deformed feet and to instill obedience).

All excellent starting points for an aspiring GM's adventure-writing. We can change things round (they plan to kidnap the Prince; the Absent King is wicked and perhaps stole something of value that the poor goblins want or need back; the miners resent the King and they plan to undermine the Caste and blame it on the Goblins...), or just steal a single element (Granite Boots of course, or maybe a spider-legged goblin pig). 

*** 

I like to go to Project Gutenberg for literary inspiration - yes, because it is all free and legitimately sourced, but also because there is some some damn good stuff there. Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter and Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley are there, but not alas the Charwoman's Shadow) and everything by L Frank Baum for starters (most scenarios will benefit from flying monkeys, or a glass cat perpetually seeking compliments on its pretty pink brains). 

There are also many collections of folk tales that I will have to post about separately sometime, though if I may draw attention to two contrasting favourites - the entirely over-written but charming Traditions of Lancashire collected by John Roby, (amongst much else there is an extended dialogue with His Satanic Majesty (so named) in The Dule Upo' Dun) and the elegantly concise Korean Folk Tales of Pang Im and Yuk Yi.

Granite Boots of Shin-Kicking: Enemies: On a roll of 1 on the Kismet die, a hero or Follower takes an additional 1d6 damage. The GM may spend 1 Dark Fate to increase the Threat of any adjacent Goblinoids by +2. Heroes: These boots allow the wearer to spend 1 Light Fate to inflict an additional 1d6 of damage in a melee combat.They also allow a reroll for all Intimidation checks, with +2 on Intimidation checks against Goblinoids.