Would love some house rules to shorten the gameplay time of Talisman.

Why? Me and my friends love to play Talisman but it just takes to many hours to play talisman so instead we choose other games that are faster to finish, and its a shame as we love talisman. So i thought maybe someone have some good house rules to speed up Talisman cutting down the time from 5+hours down to 1-2 hours, if possible. I dont really want to do this but better than not to play Talisman at all. Thanks!

How about an official way to shorten Talisman, instead of a house rule?

Play with the Harbinger expansion. Shortened our games by 25%.

I have treid many things to shorten the game. I think the best way is to reduce the cost of level ups; e.g. 6 or 5 points to trade in instead of 7.

three thingas we do: one-we use the runestone supplemetns(and we allow the use of 6 points,instead of just 5),two-we do turn ins at 5 strength or craft and you get a Bonus 1 to ANY of your stats (str,craft,fate,life,gold). we usually manage to get out the door in about 5-6 hours.

Thanks for all the answers. Lowering the turn ins to 5 is a great idea to speed up the game.

Im not familiar with the runestone supplemetns, maybe somone can explain?

We are usally 4 players and it takes about 5-6 hours which is way to long. My friends live further away and have families, thats why why no longer play talisman, just takes to many hours. Thats why it woud be great to cut down the time to 1-3 hours.

One problem could also be that the Adventure cards are so random. One time a friend didnt encounter any monster for about 10 rounds, so he didnt upgrade any of the stats. Dont know if there is a good solution for this to speed up the stat upgrades?

Ok what do you think of this House rule to speed up the game:

Place all Monster cards in one pile and the rest (items, places etc) in another. There are now two adventure card decks. When you land on a tile you always draw a monster. If you defeat it you will "loot" the monster, drawing a card from the other deck.

This way you will encounter more monsters, and this will make all characters level up faster and make the more game balanced as you will always draw a monster. And if you defeat it you will draw another card. 2 cards on one tile. this will also speed up the game.

Thoughts about this idea?

Thermop

Ok what do you think of this House rule to speed up the game:

Place all Monster cards in one pile and the rest (items, places etc) in another. There are now two adventure card decks. When you land on a tile you always draw a monster. If you defeat it you will "loot" the monster, drawing a card from the other deck.

This way you will encounter more monsters, and this will make all characters level up faster and make the more game balanced as you will always draw a monster. And if you defeat it you will draw another card. 2 cards on one tile. this will also speed up the game.

Thoughts about this idea?

This idea is a good one to help speed up the game, but can be pretty deadly as you fight every turn. One way to alleviate that would be to remove all objects only from the deck, then leave in everything else. Draw an event or stranger or place or follower? Encounter that card. Draw a monster and defeat it? Draw an object (or add followers here too).

Here some House rules:

- Get 1 bonus at the first rounds. every one choose 1 craft, 1 strenght, 1 fate, or ecc... at the start of turn

- cost of level up 4,5, 6

- cost of level up strenght\craft are the same, you choose

- If you die, You don't respawn with another character. the last player wins.

- If you are in the crown, you win - or - if you are in the crown, command spell is 100% success

- You proclame a number of rounds, you can enter in the inner region in that time. if you fail, you cannot enter anymore and you loose the game

- If you obtain a Talisman, you gain 1 life, 1 fate, 1 strenght, 1 craft, 1 gold, 1 spell

- you roll only two dies in mines and crypt. (choose another power up for the dwarf)

- sentinel has less strenght: 6,7,8

- every time you defeat a character, you gain a strenght in combat or a craft in psichic

- every time you defeat a creature (no enemy: sentinel, spirit in crags, thief in the forest, farmer in the tavern, werewolf,...), you gain a strenght in combact or a craft in psichic

- you start the game with 2 or 3 golds

- you can litterally change the rules for cards, characters, spaces

the game is fairly fast if you play to finish fast most games should be 45-120 minutes.

The key is to keep turning cards/rolling dice in short order, roll move, reveal, resolve next.

A few rules that might help:

Testing at the portal of power does not cost S/C when failing

death is just a timeout for 3 turns revive at 1 life, lose all strength only causes a loss of 1 or 2, toads keep objects and followers. (controversial but if you want to shorten the game removing the reset mechaninc is key)

If you dont want to concentrate on the game and rush through it but want to make the game shorter, i'd recommend reducing the requirements to enter crown of command (make the tests at crypt/mine 2d6+1 fx, reduce fiend strength by 1, werewolf by 2,). That's the best way imo, the early game is most fun, trying to "level up". Alternatively adding 1 or 2 to S/C will shorten significantly, skips the early part of the game, goes straight to middle.

Like just about everyone, we have that problem too - the game is typically 4-6 hours for us.

We've come to realize the biggest contributor to this is ourselves. Typically, we find ourselves wanting to explore all of the expansions, piling up on strength and craft. We find that we can cut our games in half just by making a run for the end much earlier than instinct tells us too.

We have a working theory that you only need about 8 in either Strength or Craft, 4 lives and a few Fate to spend, in order to have a chance on taking the crown (providing you are playing the traditional end-game).

There has been many times when a player has been "forced" to chase after a player through the inner region, far sooner than we thought possible, and they've made it to the crown.

Rawsugar , thanks for the ideas for the rules to speed up the game. But i just need to respond to the first part of your reply regarding a game dont have to be longer than 45-120 minutes if you as a player just play "fast". But there is a difference between "playing the game" and "having fun and playing the game" me and my friends dont gather to play the game in "hardcore mode", we play the game having fun and talk about stuff.

This takes me to the reasons from chemical22 . And you are correct, the biggest contributor to making talisman such a time consuming game is ourselves . Now when you mention it, i dont actually think any of us - me and my friends - have thought about when we actually can go for the crown of command. We just play and think that we need stronger characters.

Maybe the game could be played without haste and have fun at the same time, we just need to learn when to aim for the crown of command.

But as the game is so random with the cards its hard to say. I still want to try the simple house rules you mentioned in this thread to see if we can cut down the time to 2-3 hours.

Thanks for all the answers. Lowering the turn ins to 5 is a great idea to speed up the game.

Im not familiar with the runestone supplemetns, maybe somone can explain?

The Runestones were stat and situational modifiers. They are avaiable at the Talisman Island to download : http://www.talismanisland.com/?page_id=4888

Rawsugar , thanks for the ideas for the rules to speed up the game. But i just need to respond to the first part of your reply regarding a game dont have to be longer than 45-120 minutes if you as a player just play "fast". But there is a difference between "playing the game" and "having fun and playing the game" me and my friends dont gather to play the game in "hardcore mode", we play the game having fun and talk about stuff.

We play the exact same way - we're all in our 30's-40's and just use it as an excuse to get together, grab a pizza, drink some beer and talk crap about each other.

If we sacrifice that, it's not much of a game .

I play with 2 groups:

The first one is actually the people who introduced me to the game some 20 years ago, we play talisman max once a year, they dont care for the random element, prefer eurogames like agricola.
A turn with those guys usually involves painstakingly reading every card sometimes explaining the rules because they aren't very familiar with them, and every thing is solemnly announced. The reason it is announced is partly cuz thats the kinda people they are but also because other players' turn takes so long half the players lose focus and start chatting away, sometimes half an hour passes with noone touching the dice. A game is easily 4 hours with those guys. We're old friends though, so it's all good.


The other group is people i met later and I introduced them to the game. We had a period where we played every few weeks, play much less now. We chat, tease, joke...but we usually keep half an eye on the board, which isn't hard asa a full round is usually less than minute. Everyone knows the game so we dont need to announce everything and we can just reveal the cards, no need to read them. Sometimes we get engrossed in conversation and half an hour passes - and we play half a game while talking.

It's not neccesary to sacrifice fun or conversation for speed if the players are all familiar with the game, and if you have such a group of friends I recommend you try playing a few games with more focus. After a while you find you can easily talk while playing, and the game is actually more fun that way.

Just remember if you include a novice to slow the game down again;)

stray thought, not tested, wording may be a little clumsy:

Talisman arena:

1. All characters start game on the black knight. Characters cannot leave the middle region, if an effect would cause them to do so, it has no effect.

2. If a character ends movement on a space where one or more other character stand, the character must attack or use an ability on one of the other characters

3. At the end of each players' turn if no other character lost a life, the player whose turn it is may roll a die, if the roll is equal to or lower than the number of players in the game heal 1 life.

4. At the end of each turn move all cards on the board to the outer region on a space of your choice, the cards count as being in the middle region for the purpose of targeting with spells and abilities

5. If a player kills another players' character, that player may roll an extra dice for movement for the rest of the game, this bonus is cumulative.

6. Dead characters do ot respawn

7. The game ends when only 1 character remains.

The third rule can be suspended but it levels the playing field somewhat for characters whose main abilities lie in adventuring rather than fighting other characters. Even with that these rules greatly change balance. Assassin fx becomes a much better character.

Expansion might be added: players could be allowed to choose which deck to draw from and count as being in all (non-inner) regions for the purpose of whether items work. The game could be played on expansion boards instead of middle region. if a card refers to a space not in play it has no effect

alternatively whenever a character takes a life he may decide what region all players count as being in and what deck they draw from

The house rule my friends and I use most often to speed up the game is that at the start of the game each player takes any 3 tokens (craft, strength, life, fate, gold) from the box. Craft and Strength are usually viewed as the best choices, but a couple extra lives and/or fate can be a boon as well. The basic idea is to jumpstart the game so that at the onset it's as though your character has been running around the board for a couple hours without you.

Additionally we've played that once the Portal of Power is opened it stays open, this allows lower level characters to make a last ditch run for the CoC. The thematic justification we use for this is that despite the fancy name the PoP looks like a regular wooden door, so once someone has used Strength to kick it open or Craft to pick the lock anyone can walk on in.

Lastly, I personally don't like the idea of disallowing players from drawing new characters if they die and I'm not even convinced it would speed up the game. A 'quick' game of Talisman is still going to take 3hrs to play, so if someone is killed 30min into the game they might as well go home ( Sorry Frank you're dead, you can't hang out with us anymore ). This highly incentivizes conservative playing; for example fighting a dragon would be a bad idea because holding onto lives would be more valuable than gaining a Strength. On the other hand using the optional 'Inheritance' rules greatly mitigates the cost of dying and thusly encourages risky play.