Well my friend is having me and my youngest son over for Talisman tomorrow (Saturday). He's been playing the DE version and is finally warming up to the updated rules.
However, he's trying another experiment. He went through the entire Adventure deck and removed any duplicates of any cards except gold. So only 1 of anything in the entire deck.
I think this will hurt leveling. But I always head to the Highlands right away anyways.
We'll see how it goes...
Have fun. I'm sorta the opposite - "how come there aren't more Vampires in the deck?"
The game went well. It was very nice playing by the legit rules! The game was fairly balanced, but there were some long stretches to find enemies at times. he did decide to do the same with every expansion except dragons. Even did such with the spell deck.
My son, ended up having all 4 Talismans, which we never saw before. He also went to the center but he found the Horrible Black Void.
Let me back up a bit here. We played with Henchmen, and my friend had his main character die early and had his henchmen turn into his main character and it got toaded, so he fell behind. He did get a Trick or Treat, I was a little behind my son, but he was in the Inner Region. I was in Highlands and summoned him with the War Gong. This brought him back out, and I quickly defeated the Eagle King teleported to my friend who had the Trick or Treat and took it from him, and then a Flail, and then landed on my son and trade it for a Talisman, where we were now at the 1st step in the inner region. Realizing I would pound on him step after step in the Inner Region (we were playing the Dragon Tower) now that I had a flail, he decided to flee to the middle region. My friend had his turn and rolled a 1. he sent the Reaper on me, I had no fate and rolled a 1.
So after this my son went to the center and found the Void.
So we all had some big wipes, and it was fun.
However, he's trying another experiment. He went through the entire Adventure deck and removed any duplicates of any cards except gold. So only 1 of anything in the entire deck.
I assume the motivation for this house rule is because older editions only had 1 of any given monster. I've played a fair bit of 2nd ed in my youth, but I never really paid attention to how many of a card were in the deck.
So it worked out okay? You mentioned long stretches between monsters, would you say this slowed the game down in any significant capacity?
Most of the rules he (they) have been hesitant to follow are (some of these may have been played wrong even in the 80's & 90's):
Monk and warhorse (stating quota only)
Get sent to a new space after losing a battle and ending the turn
no unfinished quests in the inner region (tho we allowed it yesterday because we played with a different inner region)
leaving the CoC
and a few other smaller rules that I can't remember
--
I would say it slowed it down a little. We played 10/1/2 hours with 3 people, but we have had long games before, many of them, and we don't mind. I think I would have leveled much faster if the enemies had not been cut down, but it ran evenly since there weren't lots of higher level monsters either, and we definitely saw cards we never played before!
He also now agrees with me about day/night too! He will be removing it from play. He also wants to remove both the werewolf and the Reaper. I play with the Reaper, but not the werewolf. He thinks these 3 things slow the game down, and I agree. But using just the reaper is fine with me, its fun, even tho it gacked me last nite badly!
I don't play Talisman seriously, I am there to have fun, and if I get toaded or Reapered, I don't mind.
In our last big game, 5 players I think, I showed them all the combination of the Reaper and the roll only 1 card, as an example of some cards being too powerful which I learned here. I will never play that combo again, its just too mean.
He likes to keep the cards, but thinks the Reaper is the criminal here. :-)
he is like level 17 in the DE version, so has been playing a lot of official rules. None of his games are online only against the PC.