This topic is in place of separate ones done for previous parts of In The Balance . As time permits, I will try to post samples of spells in process for the final edition of Part 3. Feel free to critique, point out problems, make suggestions, etc. Most of the posted samples will be full resolution, regardless that they appear here in reduced proportions. Feel free to right click and save the image to print and try out a spell in a game (if you wish). Here's the first sample...

Spells that you can purchase? Hmm.... I'm interested to see the mechanic for this. Is it deemed to be some kind of Scroll?

Actually, that was a big blunder; I was so tired that I didn't realize I'd render the card in the wrong format. It should be correct now if you force a page refresh. But maybe it was a fortuitous accident.

Part 3 will include suggested house rules for alternative play, including "recall" capability for true mages and theurges (or religious characters). Once a spell is used, if it is still on top the discard pile at the beginning of your next turn, you roll 2D6 against you Natural Craft to reclaim it. There are other rules as well. But I intend Part 3 to to be usable for fairly straight play of Talisman.

...however...

I have thought about scrolls and spellbooks - and legitimizing mages and theurges better - even to the point of purchasing / researching spells that were somehow retained permanently. (Let's face it, other than a few characters always having 1 random spell, a character titled as some kind of mage isn't really in Talisman.) Of course this could also lead to some wonderful fun in stealing or peeking in others' books and scrolls.

But overall, Talisman's mechanics aren't build for such an approach. Unless done right, it would make mages (and especially theurges) overwhelming in the game. So I put this part on the back burner. If you feel like adding anything in suggestions based on my mistake, please do. Though I'm now wondering if "prayers" (Theurgy - Invocation) might be sold in the Chapel somehow. Afterall, the Catholic Church did something similar for centuries, and in some places still does.

This spell connects to the Bleeding Heart "Currency" Object in In The Balance, Part 1 . Image is full resolution (300 dpi) regardless that it is reduced here to half size. Feel free to right-click and save to print the image and try it out in a game. More spells to come as time permits until I complete the full Part 3: Spells for the In the Balance expansion.

Images are full resolution (300 dpi) regardless of forced reduction here to half size. Feel free to right-click and save to print the image and try it out in a game. More spells to come as time permits until I complete the full Part 3: Spells for the In the Balance expansion.

Nice work JC. Keep 'em coming!

JCHendee said:

The toad's kiss looks very good

And four more new spells (details as before) to review, text, and or critique.

And four more towards finishing the Spells for In the Balance. However, I should admit that none of spells coming in this package are truly "balanced," as I could not determine any true system by which standard spells were created.

All looks good.

Unless I am missing the point, this is all for an Advanced Talisman , right ?

Where do you get the artwork from? Have you found a great seam for talented free artists?

BanthaFodder said:

No, these are intended for normal 4ER as the final (?) part of my In the Balance expansion. The special sub-(sub-)-types will relate to alternative House Rules that can be used to govern spell use and (re)acquistion... yes, that means it will include a rule for how true mage types can try to reclaim and potentiall even keep a particular spell.

Later... much much later, maybe fall, I have an idea for something called "High Magic" that I may do that will expand on these classifications.

BanthaFodder said:

Where do you get the artwork from? Have you found a great seam for talented free artists?

All my images are Copyright fee, Public Domain, Royalty Free and or advertising images for varied 3D models for packages such as Poser, Bryce, Vue, Carrara etc. I use various pastiche and collage and layering, as well as filtering and art effects plugins. All the work is done by me in Photoshop CS4 Extended. Someday I'll try my hand at some actually 3d rendering, but its too time consuming for this kind of fan-based work.

As yet, I haven't found any artists willing to donate who were producing work that I would use.

And two more....

And three more... so I'm getting close to the 24 new spells to finish it off.

...and four more spells to go for a full 24 new ones. NOTE: when the final package is released, it will include some changes and updates to previously posted spells.

Two more... and two more to go. NOTE: it is likely I will wait to package the spells into an archive until I complete the Alignment card as well for Neutrals. And maybe even a new character or two.

Fantastic work. It is all looking great.

I would probably suggest that you drop the quite long-winded "drawing Adventure card or similiar from expansion board"

as it feels like an over-complication to me.

I may well have missed something else in ITB that might confuse but a more general "when you draw a card" should suffice.

Maybe refer to "...your region's deck"

Also, I would rephrase:

"An adventurer still wishing to take action upon you must roll 2D6 below its Craft"

to be more Talisman-esque with

"A character still wishing to encounter you must first roll under their Craft with two dice"

You are producing really nice cards there, would you consider doing a walkthrough of one of them and putting on TI ?

BanthaFodder said:

It sounds good in principle, except that the Adventure deck isn't for a "region." And certain spells (and other cards) allowing extra draws may be (1) usable for any such deck or (2) explicit to the Adventure deck. [Mechanics issues that would take too long to explain.] The long winded wording is certainly a worry, and one of my bad habits. I'll revisit that before the final release.

BanthaFodder said:

Again, in principle I agree, but the expansion does use a little different terminology at times. The reference to "adventurer" is part of the rest of the expansion's cards. I've found in play testing that most players (not all) pick that one up without any explanation or even reading the expansions document. It implies something missing in Talisman play too often... actually being the adventurer instead of just its puppet master or controller (the FPS mentality).

The 2D6 reference is part of standard shorthand familiar to many who play fantasy games. It's referenced in the expansion's documents, and used on many cards. It's especially helpful when there's a roll modifer as well and overall takes less space, sometimes leaving a bit more room to specify what kind of Craft or Strength (Starting, Natural, Current) is being referenced for the roll. Again, something more to do with my expansion than most common cards

Of course it doesn't help much when I get too wordy otherwise.

Thanks for the feedback, B, as I do appreciate it. Always welcome whenever anyone has time.

BanthaFodder said:

Ummm... I think you lost me on this one. Do you mean a walkthrough of "producing" the graphic version of the card... or creating the card concept... or both?

For concept, where Spells are concerned, there's not much to show; spells are the most unbalanced unstructured element of the game, with no real system by which the standard ones were created. No structure at all to the spell deck; just notions, and some of them make no sense via game mechanics. A few don't even really have to do with the adventurers (characters) and are mere moments of godhood for players instead. Mine are no better, since I couldn't find anything in the deck as a whole to analyze.... like I did with the Adventure deck. There are articles on that on my blog (see my signature) though I haven't done any new entries in months.

If you mean the card production itself, particularly the graphics, that might be a bit tricky. I took Jon's base templates and cut them up into multiple layers with a lot of touchy work and Photoshop layer effects so I could have a "midbar" that can be moved up and down to anywhere, rather than being stuck with just two card sizes. I also made other alterations, like a different background, which produces a more readable card in all environmental light levels (I have issues where light is concerned). I also made the font slightly narrower, careful not to affect readability too much. There are other tweaks to the templates as well. Thanks goodness Jon did all that prework for us, or I'd never been able to do any of this based on scanning actual cards.

The images components are from varous free sources, though more and more I've been using a lot of 3D model advertising / sample images for actual people and creatures. Kind of a gray area legally, but at least not a work created by an artist as part of making a living. Again, lost of layer work rather that true artist postwork, mixed with filtering and some work with "artsy" effects plugins like Topaz Simplicity. Some images have to be delicately enlarged or shrunk, and I use Genuine Fractals plugins for this.

SO, as you can see, doing a walk through wouldn't help others much unless they have PS CS4 and the plugins I'm using.

ASIDE: I love what Jon's done to add Talisman capability to Strange Eons. I even tried it myself on a couple of cards, and it worked GREAT! You should really try it if you haven't already. But I went straight back to Photoshop, as SE lacks the versitility I'm used to. Yes, using PS takes longer, but SE requires a readymade image. I could do the image in Photoshop, then export for use in SE, but by the time I'm done, I can just as quickly add and maniplate all text layers right inside my own PS templates. SE and Jon's work will still be excellent for people creating their own cards for their own group, and now more can do it easily. That's always good, so long as they aren't redistributing cards with stolen art.

JCHendee said:

Actually I was refering to the artwork. You have said before about using a 3D model which I think is a really interesting idea. I would be interested in how

you go from taking a sample figure and Talismanifying it... ( I just made up a new word! )

I had a play a while ago turning my son into a Gary Chalk-esque graphic... I used a photo and 'shopped him. Interesting result..

I would not neccessarily worry about the fact that it is done in Photoshop and lots of people have it, even if it is only Elements (as I have)

and other packages have similar filters and tools, such as Gimp that are free.

Obviously choosing an image that has the more commonly available filters would be more reproducable. As far as I can gather, those plugins

are used for scaling and smoothing. I was more interested in how you go from presumably naked figure and dress the scene, yes the layer work I guess.

(P.S. Ignore my comments in other thread about the blur if you have a plugin to do it.. )

On the other points, they were just things that stood out to me.

• Region's Card : Yes, I thought that but reasoned it was ok to refer to the Adventure deck as the deck for the Outer Region and Middle Region. I am assuming that all new regions will have their own deck and to future proof, as they are known as regions, the symantics would fit better than "board's deck" - but maybe that is better.
• 2D6 : I understand the commonality with D&D and the suchlike, I do not recall seeing it before in Talisman (although only played 4+ed twice and only 2 player so by no means gone through the deck. Don't remember in 2ed though. So I understood what it meant, it just didn't seem to be in the talisman style. One other thing, it has been even longer since I played D&D but I thought it was 2d6 rather than 2D6 - seems less intrusive.
• Character/Adventurer : Same sort of thing really, adventurer seems more correct but I think I normally see character.
• StrangeEons: Yes looks great for layout. Shame it will not work on my Mac. I does run on my work laptop but I hate using a laptop at home.

BanthaFodder said:

I don't actually work with the 3D models themselves... yet. I go to places like Renderosity.com and DAZ3D.com and look for characters, places, backdrops, etc. and see what pieces inside of images I might need for a particular card. Then comes masking of parts, or careful manual erasing of vector clipping of the parts. Sometimes, depending on the graphic(s) acquire, a simple multi-layer filtering isolates the needed part of the graphic in part of whole.

There are also other tricks, such as duplicating the image into another layer, increasing contract or lightening the midrange, so that object limits within too much shadow become visible. I work with this layer, eliminating all that isn't needed, them use a CTRL-Click on the layer to make a selection. I go to the original graphics layer, and use the selection to extract the part needed with all of its original contrast and shadow. And there even more tricks than these. The process of preparting the pieces (or a whole image itself) care vary widenly depending on what I need from it and the condition of the graphic itself. Sometimes jpeg "artifact" repair is necessary, and again, the methods vary depending on the graphic.

Once all piecs are assembled, a common trick to bring just a light "art" effect to image is to use Topaz Simplifiy. I duplicate the finished image into three layers. The bottom one remains as is, the middle is given a BizSim simplification which elimimates details too small and emphasis color in a very rough watercolor effect. The top layer is hit with Soft Pencil render. Then the topic is set to Mutliply, Darken, Overlay, or whatever works best over the BizSim layer, next comes filter changes in the middle BizSim layer to work best with Pencil layer. Last comes change of opacity to the top and middle layers to bring through any extra detail I want to resort from the bottom original layer. Again, this is only one common process I use, and there are many others that may be used for other images. I would be very difficult to show all of this with any standardization... not to mention the extra time involved to do so.

I lean very heavily of plugins to avoid all the work that REAL graphics artists do, since I'm just a dabbler myself. I don't do any of the heavy work of real artists as found in some highline photoshop magazines... or as likely went into the production quality graphics that FFG did.

BanthaFodder said:

I tried a little rewording via your suggestions in trying to refer to a "board" more clearly. In some cases, a card specifically states Adventure deck, because the spell should not be use anywhere but on the main board. Too many complications would arise, such as with Earthbind, where on a touch expansion board it could just make this too tough. Or maybe as for Prophetic Visions... what happens if you cast that in the Dungeon and never hit another draw card space before leaving - yes it could happen. Suddenly your back on the main board and still holding a dungeon card you can no longer encounter. It would just be too complicated.

Explicitness is necessary in some cases, and it can be wordy if requiring differentiation between the Adventure deck, other encounter decks, or both. Some would say "then don't bother, stick to simpler stuff." Pish! There's plenty of simple stuff already, in fact among spells, its hard to come up with something new that isn't yet anothe joke spell or a godlike power that is about players and not characters. So, I push the limit and try to face the wordiness ( ) as best I can.

BanthaFodder said:

Die roll notation has been around longer than even D&D, so more than 30 years and counting. That Talisman doesn't use it is only because all of its standard rolls are almost always 1D6. If that were different, they'd be using more shorthand too. As to the Talisman style, I had thought about that, and it gave me legitimate pause. But in the end, I'm not looking to recreate anything already done, style or content wise. There are plenty of expansions past, present and future that will do this. My main concern is that what I create is reasonably understandable (...cough.. cough... which hasn't always been the case).

BanthaFodder said:

Yes and no. FFG tried to institute new terminology (not always in the best way). So term changes are already part of Talisman history... care to wager on whether we'll see even more? Some of them were terrible! Calling something "Starting Value" (of Craft, of Strength, of... whatever) is both wordy and unclear. Something like "Starting Strength" gets straight to the point and was the previous perfectly clear approach. Same with "Battle" considering everyone knew the difference between Combat and Psychic Combat. If the wanted more clarity, they should have gone for "Physical Combat."

There were two reasons I chose to go with the term "adventurer":

1. I read around the forum about different people's games... watching how they describe such. Some note the "character" only once a reference to which one was used to win the game. All the actual activity described is about "players." Adventurer, as distinguished from "character" (see more in point 2) implies the idea of player and character becoming one - something doesn't get exemplified much. Calling it a character is an influence on some players that makes it separate... at best a puppet to control like in a video game.
2. Some rules and discussions have to reference a character or character card, referring to for what's on it, how to use what's on it, or what isn't there and shouldn't be misconstrued as being implied. "Adventurer" (as a term explained in the expansion's documents) refers to an active character in a game as played by a player... not "used," not "controlled", but "played." It's actually not my term; it was coined by others in my group. And I like it. It implies all that is missing in quite a number of groups I've seen or heard. Talisman may be simple, but there's too many games where its all about what the players can do to each other (as conduits to the characters) instead of getting into it. (And no, I am not aiming that criticism at you; this is a general observation only.)

BanthaFodder said:

Ow... ****, hadn't though of that. Do you have a Mac that can run mulitple OS? I know, running XP would be a lot of work to setup just to run that one little program... silly idea, eh?

I'm up for a new notebook in the next year, and as a die-hard PC user I am now considering a Mac. I don't like the Mac UI paradigm, but... I know more about the issues of Vista (and the joke that is Windows 7) than anyone should. (I spent 7 years as a partner in private IT firm based in Denver.) I need to stick with XP Pro for all the $$$$$ I have into software. So... I'll be joining the Mac world for its multi-OS capability real soon, and still be able to use XP Pro until I get used to Mac, etc.

Gotta run now. My wife and co-author is giveing me the evil eye from across the office. I'm supposed to working on the new book this morning, coming behind her drafting with the first wave of re-writes. I should have the last two spells up later today or early tomorrow.... then once the Neutral Alignment card is done, its time to package things up and send them off to Jon at TI.com. [i'm going to hold off on a couple of character card ideas, as I want to do some analysis of standard characters first.]

And the last two for In the Balance , Part 3: Spells. I will wait to package these for Talisman Island until (1) the Neutral Alignment card is done [see other topic], and (2) I complete documentation, which will include a few House Rules for those who would like to try something a little different with those new fields of magic (in the midbar) and spell classifications (in the description area).

Critiques are still welcome, as I have yet to do my final review, though please be aware that these are intended for both general play AND play by special considerations for this expansion. You may wish to look at some of the ITB documentation in Parts 1 & 2.

JCHendee said:

I agree with all you said, I was just looking at it from a conformity perspective but there is no reason to make it exactly the same.

Alas no, my plan for a new Mac has not made it past the finance committee. She said that the existing one is good enough....

It's a PPC G5 so not going to get Java6. I might well upgrade next year - I need to find a good reason.

A new one will not have a problem though as Apple recently (belatedly) released Java6 for Intel 64 chipset on Leopard and if you get a new machine. Although the next OS is due out in the summer...

Personally I stay away from MIcrosoft when I can , just moved my work laptop onto Ubuntu. (Strange Eons works fine on there) - I don't use it at home if possible though. Laptops are too cramped. Great for infrequent, remote access. Not for prolonged use. I must be getting old.

You don't necc have to dual-boot. Depends on what the app is using but you can always use a virtual machine. I suspect you mean Photoshop though so that it not really going to work I would think. I hate it that they charge you twice if you move platform, you should be able to trade your license for a different OS.

Hmm, crept off topic again. time to go...

Forgot to say thanks for the summary of the graphics. Helpful.

I have played with blender before, nothing serious though. Have checked out the plugins, they offer a 30 day trial so might give it a go.

I have been doing all that kind of stuff by hand..

And for my sins of off-topic...

I know what you mean about the cramping of a laptop, but I always keep an outfit of peripherals to use mine like a desktop. Have to, considering I work from home as a writer.

I already have XP Pro, so won't have to worry about buying or swapping OS. My old IT partner bought one of the new Macs; it natively supports both VM and dual boot, if I remember right. It ran XP PRO almost perfectly after install (needed a couple of do-hickies for some special tweaking). And yes, I need XP for my graphics works, since I can't afford to buy CS4 Mac versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc., etc. I have about 3k in base software I use regularly that I can't afford to replace all at once.

All spell graphics have been removed to save bandwith on my domain where they were stored.