Picked up a copy plus the Dungeon and Reaper. We had a gaming session this weekend with a couple new players plus a couple of us who used to play the old 2nd ed. way back in the day. I have to say that everyone had alot of fun, the game was as easy to teach to the new players as it used to be and the vet's all agreed that the few small changes have improved the game. We were all very pleased.

The only thing I would really like to see are more expansions like the dungeon which expands the board. How about 1 on each corner? The City, like the old game? Some others? Looking forward to frostmarch but...need more spaces. We did find that to get the characters tough enough to make that final run, one of the new players got a bit bored of going around and around in the outer region. More spaces delivered by expansions will really help.

So any info on planned expansions in the future or about how often FFG is planning on coming out with additional content?

One other point to note. After the first couple turns, gold became pointless. A couple players had a ton of it and nothing to do. It seems you can: buy armor and a sword, and use it to heal. Maybe a few other things but after a couple turns it really means little to the game.

At one point I had the mercenary and this is a perfect example of what I am talking about the game needing more of. A use for gold as you go deeper into the game.

We have only played once, so am I missing anything or is this a pretty accurate observation?

One more note...

Fate.

Still torn on what I think. I'm used to the 2ed rules, which is all I have ever played before this. Part of the games charm was characters dying and people having to start over. It seems that fate really keeps everyone from ever dying. We had 0 deaths. The excitement of living on the edge that was in the older game was not there as much. It was obvious that everyone saved fate for that one roll that was needed to keep from loosing life. Over and Over. Way to many ways to replensish fate too. If in the game, adding fate should be a really rare occurance making it much more special. As it stands, fate might as well be another pool of life. The only player that was ever really worried about dying (until someone had the crown that is) was after he ran out of fate.

On the other hand, we also all agreed that fate was a neat idea and a good addition to the game. We all liked it and would continue to play with this rule. It just needs to be much more useful for other things. Yes, fate was used on occasion to change rolls other than attack but not as often as you would think as players quickly realized the "healthy" benifits of having fate stored up.

"fate" just seems to take a bit of the flavor away from the original game as it is too available and gets players way to comfortable with just about any combat.

Input from anyone else? I have read that FFG is going to do some new things with fate. Anything that will make it get used much faster so that replenishing it does not mean that you will live forever?

Characters die. That's part of the game. If the new version has been built to keep players with the same character the whole game then, something has been lost in the translation.

Ok fibbed, one more note.

The Dungeon expansion is very good! Hope FFG picks up on this and continues. The original dungeon from the 2nd ed was terrible and nobody ever went in. The monsters were overpowered and there was nothing to find that was of value. All of our vet players agreed that this is an incredible improvement over the original dungeon. I think that in our game I even went through twice. The first time was a bit early and I failed miserably in the end battle. Second time went well for me. It was nice that the average dungeon creature was tougher than out on the main board, but the rewards definitly made up for it. The current dungeon seems to be very well balanced and it was heartily enjoyed by all!!! Please, please, more "board" expansions like this one.

You might poke around a bit more into some of the old topics. Talk is that FFG will produce one small (cards only) and one large (expansion board) per year. The Dungeon was the last one; next up is Frostmarch (cards only); so it may be about half a year plus before anything further may pops up with another board.

pirateclem said:

It depends on what for adventure cards are laying on the board.

Academy and Instructor(promo) says that you can spend 3 gold for training.

There is also a wizard shop where you can buy spells etc

But i agree that FFG must include more cards to spend your gold on.

Maybe that FFG can increase the purchase cards somehow later in the future with the city expansion..

pirateclem said:

I recently had a game with basic game and reaper. We had 5 players and 4 deaths, and we couldn't even finish the game.

Btw 3 of the deaths were to blame on the reaper. I hate that guy, as he killed two of my characters by being sent to me by other players.

pirateclem said:

Well, i cannot say that Fate is easy to replenish, but only evil characters have a high chance to replenish fate.

And it's fair enough because it's very difficult for them to heal somewhere.

Because of fate, they have a high chance to stay alive.

Good characters can easily go to the chapel to replenish his lives

Fate has become a part of the balance of talisman, and some characters have only 1 fate while others have 4 fate etc

A troll for example is so powerful, he does not have to rely on luck, while a priest is weaker, and have more luck to survive on the board.

pirateclem said:

One thing is for sure. FFG will bring 3 more regions to the land of Talisman( same as third edition)

The regions that exist in the land of talisman are:

The Forest region

The Snowy Mountain region

And the City region

(Dungeon is already available)

One important thing to note is that there exist a Wizard Tower in the Inner region(not shown yet) that will become later the Dragon Tower, by the Dragon King that will come from out of the sky, with his legion of dragons. The owner of the Crown of command exist in that tower too.

Imagine a huge tower on the middle of the board !

pirateclem said:

No, you aren't missing anything. The game has shifted over editions. A major goal for 4E is to speed up the game. Even in 2E, the opportunity to put gold to use was limited, but over time, the opportunities came up. When the game is faster, opportunities are naturally fewer. Personally, I don't care for it; many others prefer the approach to speed.

pirateclem said:

I doubt you'll find agreement to that to be widespread; and don't assume what you see on these forums is representative to game's true community diversity - it isn't. The possibility of losing even before a game is over (and that's what death is in Talisman), adds some tension to any game. That one gets to start over in Talisman is essentially a cheat, eliminating this psychological feature and misleading some people into thinking it is something makes Talisman special. It says more about that viewpoint than it does about the game. If the death were permanent, like in most other long standing games of human civilzation... well, Talisman isn't that way, so we'll leave it at that.

In my 2E days, deaths of characters in any game were, I would guess, less than 20%. High enough for a little tension but not so high that they interferred with the game... and there's nothing charming about that. Too many deaths equals too many weakened opponents equals too many easy wins with no real challenges... equals a boring game.

pirateclem said:

Hmmm... re-review the rules on Fate, because at a guess you may not be using / playing it correctly. By probability calculations done correctly, Fate is extremely weak, overly generic, and merely a blind luck do-over the way it is implemented. Calling it Fate is almost ironic in the literal sense. It is also possible the players believe it is more than it is and are leaning on it psychologically too much. I would also question how often and how people are replentishing since even for Evil characters it is not exactly "easy" to acquire.

pirateclem said:

So... you don't like that it somehow means characters die less.... but you still want it to do more than that?

pirateclem said:

Speak for yourself. It was the most often accessed expansion board by our group that played it over 7 years. Though I should add that no expansion board was ever played upon more than that main board. About a third of those I played with are still around from time to time. One bought the new Dungeon. It's not terrible, but we've only used it twice since its release. We don't find it better balanced at all. With new rules connected to movement modifying cards, such as Horses and others, we watched several people just race through it... boring. And what happened (again) to your thrill with watching characters die? You seem to keep changing your mind on that one.

Overall, if you're happy with it, that's great. But there some around here who'll expect better logic if you're going to maligned another edition of the game. Much as I now play 4ER and enjoy it, the speed focus has weakened the game to hoarding toy fest with pure luck having greater influence on who wins. The fact that your concern with the 2E Dungeon was tougher monsters (meaning more real Strength and Craft points) and not enough toys (easy addons for no effort) says more about how you'd prefer to play than the actual quality of the 2E Dungeon.

And the exact inverse is what I don't like about the 4ER dungeon. To each their own.

For me, one of the charms of Talisman is the player deaths. No matter how well you think you are doing theres always going to be some horrible run of cards that are going to shaft you. Even when you die if you get a lucky run you can make a dramatic comeback.

In 2nd ed, we found the Dungeon to be a very well used set particularly by characters who were a bit behind the leader, there was always a chance of being able to dodge the worst of the cards and get a lucky 6 at the end. If anything, the new Dungeon hasn't been used that much in recent games. I am using the Fight or Flight rules which I found stop players over using the Dungeon to power their characters up.

I am however playing my own cazy version of the game where I have converted every expansion from every 2nd and 3rd ed set so I can't honesty say I am playing straight 4th ed so maybe things are a bit distorted in my games!

Geoff