Designing an Epic Campaign for TARPG

 

High on last week's wishlist for future publications for Talisman Adventures is an epic Crown of Command campaign.

Such would surely be the (*groanworthy pun alert*) crowning achievement of this game. For anyone steeped in the boardgame, and comfortable with throwing a session together with minimal preparation (see here for thoughts on Taking A Slapdash Approach to the game), waiting for someone to write and print the book isn't a good reason to prevent your players from experiencing the joy of one final victor raising the Crown to their fevered brow, or screaming to their never-arriving-doom in the Horrible Black Void...

I have thoughts (entirely unoriginal and derived from the boardgame) about the Enemies, Strangers, Locations and Events that might feature in such a campaign, but this week I want to think about it in the merely structural sense of  how many such encounters there might be, and how long it would take to play.

Following guidelines in the rules, an encounter in TARPG can give a hero from 0 to 4 Experience Points. Call this an average of 1.5 XP. XP needed to level up start at 7 for 2nd Level, then 8 for 3rd and so on until 15 are needed to pass from 9th to 10th Level. 

In 2 hours of uninterrupted play, I think there will tend to be an average of three such encounters. There'll be times of course when one combat takes an hour or more, or when an entire session is taken up with banter and folly - but averaging three XP-worthy encounters in 2 hours seems feasible.

This results in the following approximate (and liberally fudged) calculations for a 1st - 10th Campaign:

Level	Cumulative XP	Cumulative Encounters	Hours	Cumulative hours
1
2	7	5	2	2
3	15	10	3	5
4	24	16	5	10
5	34	23	8	18
6	45	30	10	28
7	56	37	12	40
8	69	46	15	55
9	83	55	18	73
10	98	65	21	94

Based on the above, it would take about a year of weekly play* to complete our Epic Quest, assuming each session includes a solid two hours of play. Allowing for interruptions this might be a 3 hour meetup - if you have dedicated players who put in a full 4 hours of concentrated gaming per week you will crush these expectations - but based on my own groups, two hours is the average amount of concentrated gameplay per RPG session.

Of course, no one is obligated to follow Rules-As-Written to award XP and level up. You might want to consider having a flat progression, and letting heroes gain a level for every two sessions. You might then plan a campaign based on it having ten chapters - which would surely be a fun and epic experience for everyone concerned. Huzzah!

Nonetheless, the above calculations give an idea of what an epic TARPG campaign should involve, as baked-in to the game design. The now proven to be entirely scientific and non-arbitrary figures of 65 encounters gives us a starting point for thinking about what the Quest for the Crown might actually involve. This leads to my next thought - what should the general composition of the 65 encounters be?

Illustration: knights quest Holy grail dragons flying battling zombies warriors in the style of Frank Fazetta (OpenAI) Maybe mis-spelling Frazetta is responsible?

* The assumption of  one-session-per-week is entirely aspirational. For my own RPG campaign group (currently committed alas to The Other Game), one-session-per-month is closer to the mark - so we'd be looking at four years to manage this. Unfortunately the same calculations put us at about 20 years to get to the end of The Other Game, so the Quest for the Crown remains strictly in the thought experiment realm.

The Library of Unwritten Sourcebooks

 

Having urged you all to run out and buy Tales of the City and Myths & Monsters, it bears repeating that Talisman Adventures stands as one of the best single-book RPG systems out there. Everything you need to play is in the Core Rulebook - excepting friends, pencils and dice! And many consider this a system well-suited to solo play, so let's call friends optional.

Accepting Talisman as an RPG where you really only need the Core Rulebook, it nonetheless behooves me to list the many future sourcebooks I would like to see, three by no means being enough.

Pirates of Talisman Island: Coastal adventures, pirates and sea monsters. It would include a section for Distant Lands, briefly describing far-off fantastical places, that could later become sourcebooks in their own right.

The Crown of Command: A 1st - 10th level campaign - ending with epic PvP showdown. Indeed, it should contain multiple endings. No spoilers, but if I run it the game there is a minimum 16.6% chance it ends with the Horrible Black Void!

Tales of the Forest: The Fae are well-treated by the Core Rulebook and Myths & Monsters, so this would be an opportunity to give us more spells (much needed!), Hazards,and a few more often darker characters from the boardgame maybe. Plus PC Leprechauns, Satyrs and Dryads.

Tales of the Highlands: Obvs. Basically, it's now established that the game requires four Tales of cornerboard sourcebooks. You could include a lot of dwarf stuff in this. People like dwarves.

Toads and Talismans: A sourcebook entirely devoted to the two essential features of Talisman. 320 pages.

And finally, if There Can Be Only One...

Timescape: Talisman Adventures through time and space. Please!!

(Image: Wizard and demon in library dungeon monsters books staircases wizards, Open AI)

Grilipus Ate My Index!

 

A few weeks ago I took a look at "Tales of the City", and thanks to a very attractive price at Bookdepository.co.uk (link here for as long as copies are left - free shipping worldwide!) I now have my copy of "Myths and Monsters" and here are my first impressions:

The book is split into two parts, one focused on Myths, and the other on... Monsters!

The Myth section really fills out some of the Talisman world, particularly with detail of the principal Big Bosses of the Realm. The boardgame has provided the RPG with a rich selection here. I said in relation to "Tales of the City" that I am not particularly enamoured of the setting as translated to TARPG, but with this volume I am finding myself seriously rethinking that - especially from the perspective of how any of this will actually work in a game (rather than whether it stands up to Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber as a reading experience). 

I like what we have here. Much comes directly from myth and folklore (Oberon and Titania, Baba Yaga, the Norns), via various expansions of the boardgame - particularly the Woodlands, whose designer Sam Bailey arguably deserves a credit here and elsewhere in TARPG. Most entries are presented with a couple Story Seeds that could be enough to kickstart GMs in creating an adventure or campaign.

We also have another element of the boardgame introduced: Events! Spooky and mystical happenings that can randomly affect the game - or again become the start of an adventure or campaign idea. This is a rich resource for GMs, and of value whether you want to embrace randomness and the need for sudden invention, or ideas that you can take and carefully work into your game.

The second half (or rather: the other three-quarters) of the book gives us our Monsters. Following the pattern of the Core Rulebook, there are some fun and varied powers. Again, the boardgame has given the writers a rich vein to mine here, and the opportunity to expand on some that were little more than a name and a picture such as the Blightwood Terror and Ashfield Looters.

I count about 170 creatures listed here - against just 70 in the Core. There is maybe some dilution of quality.We have an entry for the three Draconic Lords of the boardgame's Dragon expansion: Varthrax, Cadorus and Grilipus. They each have identical stats and powers, just a different list of learned spells. I find learned spells a bit cumbersome as a GM - I need to spend some time before hand making sure I have an understanding of what each does, and figuring which the enemy would be most likely to use. It would have been better if each Draconic Lord had at least one different special ability. These maybe stand out more because you find them in the very last pages of the book where the Index would otherwise be, and it is hard not to think there could have been one entry for Draconic Lord, with a box describing the character of each. But we do get the lore and different Cultists for each, so the duplication of stats and abilities isn't the whole picture.

There's another value of Myths & Monsters which the Draconic Lords are a positive example of - a source of challenge for higher-level heroes. My play of Talisman Adventures has all been at the low levels, because I run one shots, and have not yet managed to get my teeth stuck into a campaign. There are a wide range of Threat Values for enemies here, and I think that'll prove useful for GMs to find fitting foes for their players to face. There are some tough looking critters here.

The one thing I think the book needs (happily in place of an Index) is some encounter tables categorized by levels of play - ie for 1st - 3rd, 3rd - 5th, 5th - 7th, 7th - 10th level heroes. I would imagine this would run to quite a few pages if it was to cover location type etc, so wouldn't be surprised if it was considered and dropped. It would make a fitting addition to the Free Downloads section of the digital store for the game though...

Having a variety of monsters to pick from is a fundamental building block for the GM of a fantasy RPG. This should prove a welcome addition for anyone who likes what they found in the Core Rulebook but wanted more.  This might be my favourite of the three sourcebooks. None are essential, because the Core Rulebook is complete and self-contained, but I think this one packs in the most - and running to 160 pages helps there. The book is indeed packed with content: Grilipus ate the Index, and is coming for you next!

 Image: Zombies, dragon, orcs, skeleton, Troll, dungeons in the style of English landscape painting (Open AI)

Talisman Adventures at Airecon 2023!

 

The proliferation of mass attendance game conventions over the last 10 years has been one of the most visible and exciting products of the popular resurgence of all things 80s. And when it comes to 80s nostalgia, little matter if that be 1980s or the 1880s. Thus, when Spring arrives it is only natural to head to Harrogate, the elegant Yorkshire spa town where Airecon has rapidly established itself as the #2 gaming convention in the UK. (Yes, that was a stretch, but it inexplicably delights me that Airecon is in Harrogate).

I'm attending my first Airecon in March - and am bringing Talisman Adventures with me! I've managed to get six (count 'em!) sessions of the RPG accepted to offer for RPGers, which I am very much looking forward to running. This is the perfect opportunity for newcomers, the merely curious, or dyed-in-the-wool Talismaniacs, to get together round a table and play this most excellent RPG.

I'll be offering two sessions each of The Dread Wyrm Egg Hunt, Marauders of Wheppersnade Cove, and Death And Never-ending Glory In The Infamous Dungeon Of Inescapable Doom (D.A.N.G.I.T.I.D.O.I.D.). Gluttons for punishment might book to play multiple adventures and carry their character across all three! Any soul foolhardy enough to undertake such a mind-mangling endeavour will be well-advised to be sure to then book themselves a therapeutic submersion at the Turkish Baths or a table at Betty's Tea Room to recover afterwards.  

Booking now open!
 

Don't hesitate: Seats are certain to go fast! (Surely?)

(Image: Wise Red and Gold Dragon Fighting Knights in Victorian Harrogate, Open AI)

Fantastic Forest-Feemed Fun For Free, Folks!

Talisman Adventures has been out and on the market and getting played for over two years now. We have three printed sourcebooks, four official digital scenarios - or five with the Quick Start - but of course we want more!

More from Pegasus and GW would be very nice indeed (I will share my Wishlist next post...), but what the game has really been missing, is more fan-created content. I've looked, but I can't find much: please send me links if you know of any.

However, as of today there are two high quality contributions to remedy that deficit: Pat Bonham's "Three Gates in The Wood" and David Colombelli's "The Enigmatic Tree" - now available to download for FREE at Talisman Island's Talisman Adventures Resource Page.

These two were winners in my recent(ish) competition to write a short encounter for the game. They are both designed for a GM to drop in as a Hazard or Interesting Location in a forest exploration - and the two complement each other very nicely. They could easily be combined for a single session of play. Check 'em out! And then get your keyboards tapping and share some of your own ideas: that's what really builds an RPG. 

Big thanks to Pat, David, and to Jon (Talisman Island) for all your work on this.

(Illustration (c) David Colombelli 2022)