I am just getting into Talisman and saw some posts about leveling. Is there a mechanic in the game (commercial or fan-made) to level up your characters? And if so, how do you do it?

Mykul

Talisman works by increasing your stats. If you want to call that leveling you can. You turn in experience points from trophies to increase your stat. 7 points of Craft creatures will increase your Craft by one, 7 points of Strength creatures increase your Strength by one.

Some followers, items, pools/streams, will increase your stats as well.

Okay, was aware of that, but that is only good for that game, right. They reset for the next game, right?

Fresh new characters next game. Otherwise the game will become weak.

There is a degree of leveling the the digital version however.

There is a degree of leveling the the digital version however.

only if you play with runes

runes are such a terrible idea. I'm glad almost noone uses them.

If you were to play consecutive games: you could take the character with the highest score in strength or craft divide it by 5 and using that as a factor to increase enemy strength and craft (decimals depending how good people are at math, probably best in most groups to just roundd up or down to full numbers) . So if the highest score was 15 you use a factor of 3: dragons now have strength 21, bears strength 9, wights craft 12. You also apply the same factor to number of trophy points needed to gain more S/C so the dragon is still worth 1 point of S. Also apply factor to any test of S/C portal of power rolls 6d6, maze requires craft 15. I rather like the idea tbh^^

be aware, of course, that the whole reason its preferable to have shorter games is that there's a fair amount of snowballing: if you're behind you're likely to stay behind and doing so for several games doesnt seem very fun. Spells like random and toadify might equalize though (as might using the rule that instead of 7 you must deliver equal to the number you want to raise your S/C; in that case have enemies counted as their "factored" S/C)

also you'd need some rule for resurecting between games at the state you were in before you died or race to the crown ending (no command spell, first to the crown wins--> go next game)

I'd suggest you keep just 1 object and 1 follower (and check S/C after these have been chosen) otherwise adventure cards will be diluted really fast.