Designing an Epic Campaign for TARPG - Part 4: Adventure (part B)!

 

The Thaumaturgical Workshop has decanted the essential and ultimate nature of a Talisman Adventures RPG campaign. Yr welcome.

 

We've found that we need 15 Chapters for the campaign - each one itself a three act, six hour adventure that will take place across the Realm of Talisman.

 

Let's now use locations on the Talisman board to throw out ideas for what those adventures will be.  The locations will be the focus of a given Chapter - within the adventure itself there could be travel to any number of other places, and we don't care that we go from one side of the board to another.

 

Act I: The Legend of the Bramble Curse

 

Chapter 1: The Tavern (A mini quest, goblin or bandit foes. Stranger arrives from the Middle Region with tales of the Castle in Thorns. Epic bar-room brawl finale against Farmers)

Chapter 2: The City (A wizardy quest, shops and factions & intrigue)

Chapter 3: The Woods (A quest involving the Fae, all kind of woodland encounters. Maybe to learn from Titania how to lift the Bramble Curse)

Chapter 4: The Ruins/The Dungeon (Dungeon crawl!)

Chapter 5: Storm River (Defeating/evading the Sentinel?)

 

Act II: The Quest for the Talisman of Flame

 

Chapter 1: The Temple (Quest for Priests, Spirit Foes)

Chapter 2: The Oasis (Retrieving all their loot as stolen by wicked bandits, obvs)

Chapter 3: The Hidden Valley (Adventures & dinosaurs)

Chapter 4: The Warlock's Cave (perilous Quest - defeating a Dragon? Acquiring a Talisman!)

Chapter 5: The Castle (freeing Castle from the Bramble Curse. Returning the Prince/Princess. The Old King begs their aid to retrieve the Crown?)

 

Act III: The Quest for the Crown of Command

 

Chapter 1: The Portal of Power (overcoming some Test to enter the Inner Region - final meeting/face-off with opposing factions seeking the crown)

Chapter 2: The Crypt/The Mines (Dungeon Crawl! Spirit foes in Crypt, yer orc & balrogs in the Mines, natch)

Chapter 3: Death (big face off with Boney. Heroes have had previous encounters, this is the Big Un)

Chapter 4: The Pit Fiends & the Valley of Fire (epic Demon Foes)

Chapter 5: The Crown of Command (The Final Challenges, the PvP? - Return the Crown to the King or take it for themselves?)

 

Here's a bunch of themes to run through the adventures:

 

The Castle is under a Bramble Curse, probably by Queen Mab. King and Queen sleep, the Prince and Princess wander the land. They do not know who they are. Could become Followers of the heroes, or may just be encountered/rescued/kidnapped.

 

Meetings with Death. At least once per act the heroes encounter Boney, and certainly if ever a hero karks it.

 

A wizard or bunch of wizards who seek the power of The Wizard, and who seek the Crown. They can send the heroes on quests, or be enemies or Strangers along the way.

 

Rune Gates and Teleportation - The heroes might stumble across and slowly learn how to make use of a network of Rune Gates. Wizards can be paid to zap from one place to another.

 

Bandits/Goblins keep nicking the heroes' stuff. In Act II, they can get it back from a stash at The Oasis - perhaps a tent & turban Mos Eisley. 

 

Coming soon in the mythical Part 5, The Thaumaturgical Workshop will zoom in to look at one of the proposed Chapters, and Hell's Bells, why not make it Chapter 1: The Tavern. The Thaumaturgerer is not promising a coherent adventure that even approaches making much sense - but it might prove a starting point for your own games. 

 

Next Week however: Something else! Maybe! Possibly AireCon Hype.

***Speaking of AireCon... if there are any tickets left to play Talisman Adventures, you will find them HERE. If there aren't, don't say I didn't warn you!***

Image: zombies dragon orcs skeleton troll dungeons treasure and crown in style of english landscape painting (OpenAI)

Designing an Epic Campaign for TARPG - Part 3: Adventures!

 

Over the last few weeks, the Thaumaturgical Workshop has distilled the mathematical essence of Talisman Adventures to begin building the fundamental structure of a Campaign for the Crown of Command.

 

We have a campaign of Three Acts, each Act taking place across one of the three iconic regions of the Talisman game board. The Acts take players from 1st to 10th level, in a 100 hour campaign.

 

We'll now get down to the adventures themselves - the Chapters of each Act of the Campaign. 

 

I would like each of these chapters to be about 6 hours of play. This allows the Three Acts of the adventure to be neatly broken down to three 2 hour sessions.

 

At approximately 30 hours for each Act of the campaign, we're looking at each Campaign Act consisting of Five Chapters. Hammering my sums to fit neatly to this, requires about 10-12 XP-worthy  encounters for each chapter. This seems a bit high, and probably undermines a whole bunch of my earliest assumptions - but might mean players expecting to earn 3 or 4 XP from a single session of play, which I figure is reasonable. Going back to my "average of 1.5XP per encounter", this now suggests 6 to 8 encounters to make up a Chapter (ie, an Adventure). Keeping things neat to all my previous made-up assumptions and guesses, I'm going with six encounters per chapter. I.e. one encounter per hour of play, which seems about right.

 

Here is what we have so far:

 

The Campaign for the Crown of Command will comprise three Acts. Each Act will comprise Five Chapters. Each Chapter will comprise Six Encounters. 

 

Entirely destroying the Three Act structure, the mind-bending, gods-enraging Chapter 4 will dare to speculate about what those Adventures might be... Be sure to return to the Thaumaturgical Workshop Next Week!

 

Image: a prince a lute player a maiden a glowing orb treasure and a dragon in the style of a Tenniel illustration (OpenAI)

 

***HOT OFF THE PRESSES***

 

The pdf of Talisman Adventures is  FREE TO DOWNLOAD until the end of March! That's about 300 pages of top-notch RPG - for nuttin'!

 

What, you still haven't booked a ticket to play Talisman Adventures at AireCon? Three weeks to go and you're sitting on your hands? Crimminy, you is laid back! I shouldn't be telling you this, but if there are any tickets left, you can get them HERE

 

Designing an Epic Campaign for TARPG - Part 2: Acts

Last week, we used the power of Maths to determine that an epic 1st-10th level campaign for the Crown of Command should include 65 encounters, and about 100 hours of play.

This week, the Thaumaturgical Workshop will drill deeper into those numbers. We're scientific beings, we Thaumaturgerers, let no-one tell you otherwise.

The Talisman Adventures Core Rulebook has some helpful advice for GMs on Writing Adventures (p.147). It recommends a classic Three Act structure for adventures - something largely followed and demonstrated in the printed scenarios for the game.

Let's consider an over-arching Three Act to apply to the whole campaign. We're going to be drawing a lot of quick inspiration from the boardgame throughout this design process - so we'll have each of the Three Acts of the campaign focused on the Three Regions of the Realm. Act One will take place in the Outer, Act Two in the Middle, and Act Three in the Inner Region.

Levelling-up slows down as a hero gets more powerful. From last week's sums, we saw 28 hours of play bringing a character to 6th Level, 55 to 8th, and 94 to 10th.
 

Thus, Act One covers level 1 to 6, Act Two covers 6 to 8, Act Three covers 8 to 10. Players are going to want to actually get a chance to play their 10th level heroes - 6 hours-worth of Finale will bring us to a neat 100 hypothetical hours of play.

The structure of the Campaign for the Crown is beginning to suggest itself:

Act I: The heroes learn of the loss/theft of the Crown, and the possibility that if they can acquire a Talisman and dare face all manner of perils, they might retrieve it (for themselves or for the old King?). They will travel the Outer Realm having a bunch of varied adventures - meeting up with possible patrons (a representative of the old King - perhaps the Prince or Princess; a Mystic visionary; a High Priest; one of the Fae Lords), follow a couple wild goose chases, end up getting a lead on the certain location of a Talisman (in the Middle Region).

Act II: The heroes quest for a Talisman in the Middle Region. They are now directly involved in the conflict between different factions that want to take control of the Crown. They may visit the old King's castle, which is likely under some kind of bramble-entwined enchantment. They may acquire a Talisman by completing a quest at the Warlock's Cave.

Act III: The heroes, now themselves mighty and legendary, venture into the Inner Region itself. They have to face the perils of the Mines or the Crypt; they meet Death, and face other epic Strangers and Foes. Arriving at the Crown itself will lead to an epic finale - (possibly Player vs Player?), which varies depending on the Patrons/Factions/Paths the heroes have taken (or on the entirely random roll of a die).

Next week here at the Thaumaturgical Workshop, we will break down each Act of the Campaign, and look for Adventure in the resulting smoke and shards. Bring a hammer.

Image: cartography clockwork map steam powered robots cogs and pulleys electic sparks renaissance (Open AI)

 ***LATE NEWS!***

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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.

Combat options include: Non-combat

Discussion on RPGGeek with another player of the game, led me to thoughts for this week's post on the rich potential for Non-combat options in Combat in the Talisman RPG. Here were the key points leading to this consideration:

- Leather armour is rubbish. It can take 3 hits in the first combat (probably only slightly reducing the first blow that lands), 2 hits in the second, 1 in the third then it is scrap until you pay more than the cost of the armour to repair.

- Priests (generally) cannot attack. They can fight in Psychic combat, but only against Insubstantial foes - they can't psychic blast a Goblin.

So with the armour restrictions, Scout, Thieves and Minstrels can be very fragile in a fight (while the Sprite Warrior cheerfully charges into the midst of countless foes). And unless Turning Undead, the Priest stands about wringing her hands and waiting to cast Heal on the bloodied Scout.

The armour rules in Talisman were one of the biggest changes between the playtest and full versions of the rules. This has been explained as arising because the previous rules (wherein armour always reduces damage by a certain number points) had the effect that warriors were hardly ever receiving injuries at all. So, as per rules as published, armour now 'ablates' - it adds a number of Armour Points to a hero's Life Point total, those points get reduced by damage until the armour is gone, then damage is taken against Life. And one point of damage each combat is (semi) permanently reduced from the armour's effectiveness - until the armour is useless, or the hero gets it repaired.

Leather armour provides just 3 Armour points - typically halving the first blow a hero suffers in a fight, and having no effect thereafter in that combat, and very little effect at all in the next two combats after which it is usually written-off for the session. 

Now, there could be all kinds of ways to fix leather armour in the rules (that's fix as in fix the rules, not repair the armour...), but that does lead one to consider whether there is any actual need to do so - i.e. is it actually a problem if leather armour is only of limited effectiveness? For one thing, it's surely the case in most other games that leather armour is of limited effectiveness - i.e. in D&D your thief's Armour Class will mean that regardless of their awesome Dexterity modifier, in a fight they will be hit more often (and take more damage) than the slow-moving tank in plate mail.

Other game systems allow a thief to Hide in Shadows, maybe to strike from afar completely safe in the carefully measured distance from combat. Your archer who lurks in Talisman is running almost as much risk as the warrior who has heedlessly charged into the midst of the fray - a Failure or Standard Success is still a threat to them, whatever the distance to the Enemy.

But what the risk for the leather-clad and the lack of direct attack options for the Priest both emphasise is that in the Talisman RPG, it often behooves a player to think of something else to do during combat. 

The basic Test system makes resolving any kind of action very straightforward, and pattern of outcomes makes it easy to fit these into a combat situation.

For an illustration, let's see what happens when four heroes (a Warrior, Minstrel, Scout and a Wizard) are attacked by 8 Goblins.

The Warrior cheerfully leaps into the fray. Rolls a Great Success, and handily decapitates a Goblin. Our Wizard zaps a second gobbo with a Lightning Bolt, though as it was only a Standard Success, they have to expend a further Spell Point. Simple enough following rules as written so far, and neither hero has taken any damage. The Scout decides to make a Ranged Attack from a distance (let's say they're about 15 metres away, but both players and GM are happy to consider the Ranger as having placed himself close but not quite amidst the combat, and with a large boulder to hand to duck behind for cover). The attack fails. In this case, the GM decides that although some of the goblins have bows and slings, it makes more sense for one of the 6 unoccupied goblins to get to inflict melee damage on the Warrior. Gobbo hits, rolls 9 damage, and the Warrior's chain mail (having stopped the blow) is now hanging useless.

Now the Minstrel is up. Minstrel thinks: "If I attack, even if I hit I'm unlikely to take a Goblin out like the mighty Warrior and Wizard, and will probably take some damage. Then me and the Warrior will have to make Defence Tests against the remaining enemies - and this might easily finish me off, could even be a problem for the over-confident Warrior now their armour is gone. It'd be humiliating to get wiped out by a bunch of Goblins..."

The player asks the GM if their Minstrel can sing a song to distract the remaining Goblins. The GM considers, and agrees that the Minstrel can try this. If the outcome is a Great Success, they will completely distract the remaining four Goblins. If a Standard Success, they will distract two goblins completely, but will need to defend (with a +2 bonus) against one attack (and the warrior against another). If they Fail, the Minstrel and Warrior will just have to make the four defense tests: hard lines, but not much worse than if they hadn't attempted the stunt (and better than if they'd simply Failed in an attack and taken automatic damage). An Extraordinary Success might win the whole group of Goblins over, making them happy to throw down their weapons and join in a song and dance...

If GMs encourage players to take these kind of actions, the possibilities in play are endless, and ought to be entertaining and rewarding for everyone concerned. There's lots of things in the rules that lend themselves to this kind of play - the fact that there isn't an initiative order, that players are allowed to take their actions in the order they prefer, for example. 

Priests should not consider themselves useless to a party if they can't attack and there's no Undead to repel or isn't a (leather armour wearing) hero to Heal yet. They could harangue a group of enemies with a theological screed, to similar effect as the Minstrel's action above perhaps. 

When there are fewer Enemies, such that defending against unoccupied foes is not a concern, heroes might generally be well-advised to consider making an Assist action to help one of their fighting allies rather than seeking to take a full action of any kind - but if this feels less fun or involved for the player, then they need to get their thinking hat on and come up with something to do other than hitting an Enemy... Once players are in the habit, it ought to be something that they are eager to do. 

If the players get stuck in a rut - always trying the same stunt, perhaps to the extent that the heroes are facing less challenge than desired, it'll be for the GM to reign them back in, perhaps following the outcome of a Failed roll or Standard Success. In such situations, the GM needs to draw on their ingenuity to keep the game challenging but also to take the story forward in novel and interesting ways. Shame if the Minstrel loses his voice, or if the Priest experiences a Crisis of Faith...

Baked TATORS - The Test Part II - Combat Outcomes

I've previously written about the innovative test system at the heart of Talisman Adventures, but in doing so have barely scratched the surface of the subject. Motivated by a question on RPGGeek, I recently put together a 2-page reference sheet showing all the suggested outcomes for tests found in the Talisman Adventures rulebook - the Talisman Adventures Test Outcome Reference Sheet (TATORS).

Writing up the tables made me appreciate the sometimes subtle differences between different types of tests - clearly illustrated by the results for different type of combat action. A Standard Success (rolling sufficient to pass the test but not rolling doubles or triples) should usually be a somewhat mixed outcome - the character achieves what they are trying to do, but there is also a negative effect. For a Melee Attack, this means that the hero hits and inflicts damage on their Enemy, but the Enemy also inflicts half normal damage on the attacking hero. Pretty straight forward. With a Ranged Attack, the hero hits, but a range of possible negative side effects includes that an Enemy inflicts half their ranged damage against the attacking hero OR that an Enemy inflicts full melee damage OR  that an ally must make a Defence Test against an Enemy ranged attack. OR that the attacking hero loses an additional 1d3 ammo. 

Why all these different outcomes for ranged attacks? In melee, we can picture a pretty straightforward situation - the hero is out there, in the fray, swinging their sword and facing direct confrontation from the foe - so a straightforward roll for half damage makes sense as the usual outcome. Ranged attacks could really vary. One assumes that for a ranged attack the hero would often be standing in some kind of sheltered position - but if they are standing in the fray themselves, it makes sense that they have to take full damage from a melee attack owing to their increased exposure. If enemies have ranged weapons, and the hero is standing back or behind cover, it makes more sense for them to take only half damage. But maybe the GM feels that it would make more sense for the enemy to target another hero - in this case, that character does get to make a Defence roll - hopefully giving allies less reason to curse their shot-slinging companion. And if the attack was made in such a way that the GM does not feel that the enemy would actually get a responding attack (firing from up on a city wall at an unarmed enemy) then expending more ammo to get their shot.

For Spell-casting outcomes, Failure and Standard Success do not result in any automatic ENemy action - but rather loss of additional spell points or (combined with rolling a [1] on the Kismet die) forgetting the cast spell. Depending on the spell type and situation, you might sometimes want to apply a similar result to a failed or standard Ranged Attack (for example, if casting a direct attacking spell), but the outcomes allow consideration that the spellcaster may well have put themselves out of harm's way, or that the spell is being cast to buff another character (and having the Enemy inflict damage as a result lessen its usefulness).

Psychic Assault outcomes lie somewhere between a Ranged Attack and Spellcasting in terms of the type of result. The result of becoming "strained" (and having a cumulative penalty to further attacks of this type) features strongly, which is an important balancing element on what might otherwise become an unlimited source of devastating brain-bolts. It gives a very different, and thematically appropriate, flavour to this type of attack.

I referred earlier to suggested outcomes, and I think its important that the GM not feel bound to only give the listed results - the rules themselves frequently refer to given outcomes as suggested. It's good to follow them closely just to be consistent for players, but varying the outcome might often be more appropriate depending on circumstances. Perhaps a hero launches a melee attack on Enemy who has just attacked their friend - maybe the outcome of a standard success should be that the friend makes a Defence Test against a further melee attack, rather than the attacking hero taking half damage. Or maybe for a change you might want the axe-swinger to pull a muscle and experience a similar "strain" as a Psychic Assault, or to blunt their weapon (reduced damage until repaired). 

The options are endless, and GMs will find many suggest themselves during play. Best of all, you can sometimes find that players might come up with outcome suggestions themselves, and if these make sense, fit the situation, and/or add to the fun it's a good idea to go with them - but important to avoid a set-piece becoming exploited to the detriment of the game. When that happens you might want to get a little more punitive on the Standard Successes or when a [1] is rolled on the Kismet die to 'encourage' players to rethink their approach...

You can get your TATORS at the Talisman Island resource page here, or download from RPGGeek. I hope its a useful reference - but also that it encourages GMs to come up with novel outcomes that fit their game and entertain the players. 

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.

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.