Chris Achilléos: Passing of a Visionary

 

Sad to hear that the gifted artist Chris Achilléos has died. The cover to the 2nd Edition of Talisman (as above, image from Boargamegeek) is one of my favourite pieces of gaming art. I like the description from Chris Achilléos' own website:

"On the surface, this shows a warrior's quest to make his way up and higher to reach a certain goal within the game. Here, his way is blocked by a fierce dragon. However, if one was to look deeper, then the picture tells a more serious story!"

I've looked and pondered what the "more serious story" might be. Does it relate to the venom dripping from the Dragon's fangs, the stacks of armour from (presumed) previously defeated heroes? Or more subtly, is it related to the branching stairway, or something in the distant misted peaks?

Dragonmeet Loot Report!

Dragonmeet was the second in-person gaming convention I made it to this year, which would be a good showing for me even pre-Covid. This was my first time at the venerable UK RPG institution which I believe I had probably originally learned about in the pages of White Dwarf in the 1980s. There has to be a first time for everything of course, and getting all the way down to London is a Big Deal, so thanks to a combination of circumstances 2021 was a go for me.

Although showing up was a fairly last minute happenstance and as a result I wasn't on time to be able to offer a booked session of Talisman Adventures, the organisers had set aside a generous amount of space in one of the halls for demonstrations, and so I was able to buttonhole a few attendees and talk to them about the innovative new fantasy RPG from Pegasus Spiele. It's still a fresh experience to get the opportunity to chew people's ears off about the system and the setting in person, and particularly enjoyable to have people come up to me of their own free will interested to hear about it.

A father and son team even sat down for a turbo-charged play through of the Dread Wyrm Egg Hunt, which we managed to get done and dusted after about an hour of accelerated action. Speed of play was assisted by the heroes' no-nonsense approach - this was the first party to play the adventure who didn't try to rescue Grurt the goblin as he dangled over a chasm clutching a suspiciously egg-shaped bundle: one player stamped on Grurt's fingers, and the other (a Sprite) flew down and deprived the goblin of his precious goods as he plummeted to his death.

With a six hour drive back up North, I didn't quite have as much time to fully appreciate the convention as I may have liked, but I did get to do a quick tour of the stands and pick up some loot.

I took the opportunity to be the first of three (in the five minutes that I stood there) middle aged men to tell Games Workshop co-founder and Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone how a Puffin Book Club purchase of Forest of Doom/Citadel of Chaos/Warlock of Firetop Mountain changed my life. I imagine that the experience may sometimes be as wearing on the wizard of gaming as getting killed yet again in Deathtrap Dungeon, but he certainly bore it very good-naturedly. Loot acquired: signed Forest of Doom mini messenger satchel.

Mr Livingstone was sharing a stand with today's bearer of the Gamebook Crown of Command, Jonathan Green. There's an interesting interview with Mr Green on the latest Grognard Files podcast, particularly speaking about the whole history of the gamebook phenomenon. His own latest release is Dracula Curse of the Vampire - a 1000 paragraph monster, wherein the player can take on the role of the count or one of his hunters. It is lavishly illustrated by German illustrator Hauke Kock,whose work is easily the equal of the best of the illustrators of the 1980s and I greatly look forward to playing it. Loot acquired: signed Dracula Curse of the Vampire paperback.

 

Elsewhere, I spoke with designer Paul Baldowski about The Dee Sanction and The Cthulhu Hack. Right off the bat I need to confess that a significant draw for me is the A5 booklet: it hits me with nostalgia dopamine seeded by Tunnels & Trolls, the Elite manual and Traveller. Easy win for Mr Baldowski.

The Dee Sanction is enormously appealing. Its designer describes it as a product of having to do something with a history degree. Players are covert agents of magician Dr John Dee secretly using the dark arts to protect the devilry-beset Realm of Elizabethan England. In addition to an intriguing and original premise and choice of setting, the game system is novel and compelling, centering around "threat and consequence", involving an expected degree of character mortality and disposability. Hence the character sheets that come with the Essentials Kit are dry wipe... Loot acquired: The Dee Sanction Essentials Kit.

 

Finally I had to pick up something for the family. What better than the extremely endearing and not entirely un-Dixit adjacent card game by Bez Shahriari "A game about WEE WHIMSICAL CREATURES and trying to identify them after someone makes noises". And this I have got played, and my kids love it. Loot acquired: A game about WEE WHIMSICAL CREATURES and trying to identify them after someone makes noises.

 

Dungeons Deep

It is known that all the real news for Talisman Adventures RPG hits the steam-powered presses of  Talisman Island first. Your humble Thaumaturgerer cannot compete with the industrious gnomes who scour and glean the beaches of The Island to find every last scrap or bottled message that washes up thence from the Maelstrom. Also, spot the obvious and very clear publicly-available announcements that completely pass over my befuddled head. 

Anyhoo, the latest scoop is that nestled in the back pages of the Free RPG Day release "Curse of the Rat Queen" is an exciting glimpse of the first sourcebook for Talisman Adventures: "Tales of the Dungeon". There is an image of Fresh New Art (! Adventurers approaching a Dark Fiend seated on a Throne of White Energy) and some text outlining the contents. See above.

Lead designer Ian Lemke has elsewhere mentioned in interview that the intention is to release a series of "Tales of..." sourcebooks for the game. The natural conclusion is that these sourcebooks will mirror the Corner Board expansions for the board game ("...the City" has been mentioned and one assumes "...the Forest" and "...the Highlands" might follow). If only from a marketing standpoint, this seems to be a Good Idea.

I am impatiently excited to see how dungeons (indeed how The Dungeon) will be handled. Idle speculation follows:

Looking at the boardgame, the original 2nd Edition Dungeon appeared to be intended as a vast region beneath The Realm of the whole board, such that exploring it might take the adventurer anywhere in the land (indeed, straight to the Crown of Command on rolling a 6). In the 3rd and 4th Editions of the game, the Dungeon is bigger in game terms (with more spaces and many more possible encounters), but located off towards the ruins - and although defeating the Dungeon Lord can also land the hero on the CoC, this is clearly as the result of passing through a magical portal rather than actually emerging through a trapdoor.

The game in all editions has other dungeons - the Mines and the Crypts in the Inner Region - each of which we might assume to be of epic though entirely abstracted-away proportions. Notably, they also have exits to all corners of the land (though not direct to CoC).

There are also the Cave and Crypt encounter cards, where gold, dragons, demons and Lost Turns lurk. Mini-dungeons if you will - also, given the potential enemies within, themselves epic though in an entirely concentrated form.

Back to the RPG. I have previously noted that none of the so-far published adventures uses a map of anything except the occasional encounter location. Toads & Diamonds is the only adventure to feature a dungeon - again, there is no map, but the physical relation of locations to each other is described (ie, what exits there are from each location and where they lead). 

So, will "Tales of the Dungeon" include maps?

I love maps, especially dungeon maps - who doesn't? They are incredibly useful to help the GM to describe locations, which allow the players to picture, and make decisions, drawing maps themselves, exploring and getting deeper into a "real" Other World. But there are significant drawbacks. Dungeons are Old Skool Fun, but they are hardly fresh, new experiences, and maybe it is hard to avoid concluding that pretty much since at least Doom and Tomb Raider, computers might do them better now. 

A map can constrain action as much as it provides a solid framework - limit imagination, and force attention to nit-picky, draughtspersonly considerations. Did Tolkien describe every foot and inch and the location of each door, direction of each corridor in Moria? Or did he conjure a vast underground realm, of haunting deeps and colossal scale, not by covering every corner and detail but by giving a sense of its physicality and 'reality', but allowing the story to sweep along, describing the locations where the action occurs, and blurring over the connecting  stretches.

Talisman Adventures is particularly well-suited to the latter approach, through the use of its Exploration roles - the Guide and Watcher tests. These are especially well-suited to Dungeons that are at an epic, Moria-like scale. I've written about using the Exploration Roles in Dungeoneering previously, with reference to the caves in the Princess and the Goblin. I've decided to try and put it into practice for reals, and am now working up an adventure that will be a foray into The Dungeon on a rescue mission. I will be leaning heavily on Moria to try and get the effect I am after, and will be sure to report how effective (or otherwise) this proves to be in actual play.

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Last Warning: Talisman Adventures RPG at Dragonmeet, Novotel Hammersmith, London. Saturday 4th December 10am - 2pm, in wherever the Demo Hall is. I am there to Talk Talisman & Toadings, answer questions about the RPG - and give punters a chance to try out the system (quite possibly by taking a Delve into the Dreaded Dungeon...).