Interesting, I think the Dragon center board is a bit boring for this kind of thing, I think an extra Highlands works awesome. But for someone who doesn't wanna spend the extra money it would work. Still debating about creating a new board, or using someone else's Dragon board that is already made...that fan created board would also be better than using the center board, in my opinion. However I don't like the 2 endings and would replace them with 2 random Dragon Lords.

It is nice to see someone else using a 2nd edition board to play 4th edition! I recently stopped doing this cause I bought 2 new tables.

I use the original 4th edition board from Black Industries in combination with FFG's upgrade set. The upgrade set contains basically everything from the revised edition, except the board, the 1 and 5 point markers and the manual, and instead provides a small readout about the differences between BI's 4th edition and FFG's revised 4th edition.

I regret having bought the upgrade set and not the entire revised edition, as the board is smaller, which leads to misalignments with the corner expansions, and the dragon tower covers most of the middle region squares, making it very messy to place cards on the middle square. In addition, several squares were revised in FFG's revised edition, which is mentioned in the manual, but is annoying to keep track off. Finally, the checkers that were included in BI's edition still counted from 1 to 4, were all the same size, and their numbers are often very hard to read (they're shaped, not printed), making it pratically impossible to see at a glance how much life, strength or craft another player has. In addition, had I bought the revised edition, I could've gifted the original BI edition to a friend.

The variant rules I described above would allow you to use the dragon tower as a corner expansion instead of a replacement to the middle region (defeating the dragon king is similar to defeating the lord in the treasure chamber of the dungeon, and does not cause you to win the game), thereby still allowing most of the set's functionality for people that step into the tower, without causing the set to have a major impact on the entire game.

I recently learned that when introducing new players to the game, it's usually best to stick with the core game.

The only inconvenience would be to sift put the character and spell cards from the expansions as only the indivdual player would see them.

For the adventure deck, I the owner migt have to act as a sort of game master, discarding the cards from expansions until the core game cards are drawn.

Honestly, I don't think it's much of an issue to add all the extra characters, adventure cards and spells, as these aren't things you need to explain in detail beforehand.

Regardless of your deck containing 60 or 600 adventure cards, players are only going to draw 1 adventure card on the fields, hills, plains or woods or 2 adventure cards on the ruins, and read those specific cards. Therefor, it is not additional information that is coming at new players, or additional options they can choose among.

On the other hand, adding actually different elements to the game, such as the reaper and the werewolf, day and night, warlock quests and rewards, alternative endings, extra boards or dragon tokens adds additional information and rules that players need to be aware of and might overload them. (Of course, if you draw a card that refers to one of these extra elements, it's best to immediately discard that card and draw a new one.)

I recently learned that when introducing new players to the game, it's usually best to stick with the core game.

Yes, I think this is true for almost any expandable game. With Talisman I put the components back into their boxes every time. I sift through all the cards and characters and everything else and put them back.

A person has to really know the basic game well to reach the point where they want more. The basic game has 104 Adventure Cards. Think about how many plays will be necessary before that becomes boring (and considering Talisman's design already has high replay value). If you meet with a person only two or three times a year, and assuming you play Talisman every time, imagine how long it will take before you bring out The Reaper.

Considering the population as a whole, it's rare to find a person or group so interested in Talisman that they want to expand it. Once you find the right group, then it's perfect; but most of my games (all people considered) have been with just the core game.

I have never had anyone have a problem learning or playing Talisman. Yeah, of coarse there are always rule problems for some cards...

The last few months my 10 year old son has been having his friends come over and they play Talisman quite well.