Calamity has befallen the fabled continent of Atlantis. The mystical Atlante golems, who once raised the continent from the sea, have gone mad. Seizing the opportunity, the Lord of the Dead has thrown open the gates of the Underworld and marches against the living. Only blood and sacrifice will hold Atlantis together. In these desperate times, the gods of Atlantis search far and wide for new champions to save their realm.

I've been kicking around this idea for a while, and since I'm nearly finished with Version #1, at least, I figured now's a good as time as any to introduce it to the rest of you and start working out any kinks. Version #1 is the first draft of the project and places the new encounter cards into the Adventure Deck. At this point though, I'm considering doing a Version #2 which shifts most of those encounter cards into an Atlantean Deck. The Atlantean Region will be created out of Terrain Cards, with the Atlantis Terrain itself at the center; during your adventure, the continent will slowly crumble and potentially be destroyed entirely. I'm still considering ways in which players can reach the Atlantean Region. At the moment, I'm thinking the primary way will be to catch the eye of the Atlantean gods, by rolling a 1 while praying or losing a Life at the Chapel or Cemetery. Of course, that makes it difficult for Neutral Characters so I'd need a reliable way for them to get there. In either version, Terrain Cards are incredibly important, and both will include several new ones. Finally, there will be 20 Sign cards. These provide various bonuses and penalties based on a specific astrological sign, but you can only have one at a time.

I'll start off by showing some of the new Terrains. The Atlantis one in particular is still subject to change.

Finally, I need some help picking the card backs for the Atlantean Deck. Which do you prefer? Hypothetically, I could use the other for the Sign cards, but I want to find a more culturally neutral astrological design for them. Open to suggestions there.

Very nice! I can't wait to see more!

This weekend, I've been working on updating the cards I had previously made as Adventure Cards to work as new Atlantean Cards. Mostly a lot of copy-and-pasting onto a new template (abubu's Light Template for Strange Eons). But no new Region would be complete without a few new Adventure Cards to make sure the players can't ignore it completely by staying on the base board. That's where these cards come in to play:

Progress is still moving along and I'll hopefully have the whole thing finished after this weekend. Today, I thought I'd show off some of the Magic Objects that the Atlantean gods have left lying around the place.

Finally got the art sorted out for the basic Sign cards, though I still need to pin down all there mechanics. In the meantime, here are the four strongest Enemies you'll encounter in Atlantis.

I'm a bit behind schedule on this project, but I finally got the Sign cards done. Each Sign has three features: a trigger that causes you to gain Fate, an ability that costs Fate, and a condition that forces you to discard the Sign. You can only have one Sign at a time, but if you draw another for whatever reason, you can keep the new one by discarding the old one if you prefer. Here are a few examples.

While it's not strictly necessary, I threw together a rough version of an "Atlantis board" tonight. It mainly serves to illustrate the shape of the Atlantean Region and a few peculiar features. All together, the Atlantean Region is a 5x5 grid of Terrain cards. Atlantis itself is in the center; the Port is at one corner. A path spirals through the Region between them. At the start of the game, the other 23 Terrain cards are also placed. Of those 8 are pre-determined: you'll include a Woods, Plain, Hills, Fields, Temple, Jungle, and two Temple Towns. Those are all shuffled together with the remaining 15, chosen at random, and distributed across the board.

The Atlantean Region is unstable. During play, Terrain cards will be moved or discarded. If a player is required to discard a Terrain for the Atlantean Region, they must discard the one closest to the Port if not instructed otherwise. Any cards on the space with the discarded Terrain are also discarded, and any characters there lose 1 life and move to the nearest Terrain card. If Atlantis itself is discarded, then the Atlantean Region is destroyed; all characters there return to their starting locations and lose a life. When a player moves through a space that no longer has a Terrain card, they must stop and lose a life, after which they place a random Terrain card and encounter it.

There are two common ways for Terrain to be discarded in Atlantis. Either you were defeated by a rebel Atlante - one of the ancient constructs used to create the island - or you failed to make the proper sacrifices to maintain the land. Here are two examples:

Incidentally, the Primal Atlante reminds of of something else I've been meaning to talk about. Currently, the Atlantean Deck is sitting at around 160 (including cards with multiple copies in the deck). I figure 162 is my absolute cap here. This includes the primarily "Mayincatec" themed material. However, at one point I had ideas for about 100 additional cards, which got cut because 160+additional Terrains, Purchase Cards, etc., was already getting to be a bit much. The cut cards were mainly themed around Native American cultures north of Mexico, but also included all the Animal Enemies. I've been trying to decide what to do with those extra cards, but at this point I think I'll just include them as optional bonus material unless I can come up with some alternative idea to make use of them. Any suggestions?

EDIT: Here is an image of the Atlantis region in practice, minus the board. I don't have it arranged in a grid here so the path is easier to see without the trail on the board. It features several of the new Terrains (not final versions) I'm using, including one that's for a little expansion I'm planning but haven't really talked about yet, so... spoilers.

I'll be honest:

I would love to play this, but as a separate game.

Atlantis being an expansion might hold this back because on its own the theme will be very strong and as an expansion it will only be a small part of a giant machine that is talisman.

To be honest myself. I keep going back and forth on whether I'd prefer this as a separate game as well. At least for now, as an expansion, it let's me work out some core concepts. I had the same problem when I tried doing my own Timescape expansion, and realized that there was a separate game about space exploration attempting to break free. That one is more likely to take shape as a new game since it does have its own victory condition right now. That's what's holding Atlantis back as a distinct game, since its has no end-goal in mind except the Talisman victory condition. There's a clear lose-condition (Atlantis is destroyed), but how do you win? The two alternate endings I've been considering, but haven't written yet, might shed some light on that - defeating the Master Atlante and ending the rebellion, or defeating the lord of the underworld and stopping the undead invasion. But we'll have to see how that shakes out.

Anyhow, as far as the Atlantis-as-an-Expansion is concerned, I've made some additional tweaks after toying around with it a bit yesterday. I realized that the Region needed something to pull players in, so a new version of El Dorado is being added to the list of locations with a dedicated spot. It's halfway between the Port and Atlantis. With the new version of El Dorado, the Warrior and Cultist are stronger, and players now have a chance to gain a Treasure. The new Treasures added with Atlantis are mainly those divine Magic Objects.

Can't wait to see the finished project. Where will I be able to download it from. Will you be sending it to Jon at Talisman Island.

2 hours ago, TavernSkell said:

Can't wait to see the finished project. Where will I be able to download it from. Will you be sending it to Jon at Talisman Island.

Once I get everything finalized, I'll be sending it off to Jon, yeah. Still got a few issues to work out and a couple cards to re-vamp.

I was toying around with a new mechanic for the set earlier today. Most likely it'll be part of a Alternate Ending, or maybe I'll just save it for a potential spin-off game. Either way, I don't think it'll be part of the basic usage for Talisman: Atlantis. The basic idea is, at the start of a player's turn, they draw a random Terrain card. If says something other than "Draw # Cards" then it gets discarded and nothing happens. If it says something like "... Draw # Cards," then the player discards that many Terrains from Atlantis and places the new card down on the empty spot closest to Atlantis. Most of the time, that just means swapping out the last terrain for a new one, but eventually the Draw 2 Cards and Draw 3 Cards Terrains will devour the entire continent without player intervention.

First, if you want to check out the Altantis expansion, here's my Google Drive link to it (Defunct link; see top of page 2 for new link). You'll notice two folders inside. Altantis Core are all the essential Atlantis Cards: the Atlantean Deck, The Signs Deck, new Treasures, Terrains, characters, purchase items, etc. There's also an Atlantis Bonus folder, which is currently empty. That'll be extra cards for the Atlantean Deck, a few more characters, and possibly some Spells. But you can use the Atlantis expansion without any of that. Once I get the bonus folder finished and organize everything in nice printable sheets again, I'll send it all off to Jon.

Second, I had some time to test out the Atlantis stuff yesterday and today. My cards are cheap cardstock at the moment, but they'll do the job to work out the kinks. Yesterday's test game was brutal. I had the Dragon Hunter, Gypsy, and Warlord running around the Atlantean Region exclusively, and ended up with the four strongest Enemies and half a dozen fireland tokens out in a hurry. The random Terrains weren't kind to us either. The Dragon Hunter did the best, but even he got killed one or two times, before I called it.

Today's game featured three of the six new Atlantean characters: the Flayed Priest (played by the Valkyrie), the Atlante (played by the Magus), and the Coatl (played by the Celestial). They're the three oddest out of the bunch and I wanted to see how well they'd do. I also used on of the new Alternate Endings, that's specifically designed to make Atlantis a bit easier to deal with. It takes the six strongest Enemies in the Atlantean Deck and uses them as end-game bosses. The downside is that bits of Atlantis fall apart whenever Night falls and the end-game bosses get stronger as it does. I've included a picture here of the end game, when the Atlante finally defeated one of the end-game bosses.

This time around was much easier on the characters. Partly this was due to having the main board accessible too. We got the Shrine and a couple of the pools and streams early on, so that led to early bonuses without much effort (and why the Flayed Priest, who has a Life value of 2 managed to get 7 life by the end of the game). We only got one of the events that places a fireland token (the one on the Temple). The other two were self-inflicted by the Flayed Priest and his Xiuhcoatl. I also made a change to how Terrain loss and movement works in Atlantis. The old way, as described previously, had land discarding from the Port toward Atlantis, and a player moving through a blank spot had to stop. Now, players can choose any Terrain to discard, except the corners and Atlantis unless they're the only ones left. This helps prevent the situation we had with the Dragon Hunter / Gypsy / Warlord game, where they had two Deserts, a Barrens, a Volcano, and a Tarpits out from the beginning. Now they can choose to get rid of the more troublesome Terrains and home for something better. Also you can now move through blank spots and only lose a life if your movement ends there. The old way was screwing over anyone who arrived in Atlantis via the Port.

I love it! Dude! Thank you for making the file available for download! I'm excited to explore this expansion and see how I can work it into my set.

I hope you enjoy it. And if you spot any typos, let me know! I saw one right after I posted the link (The Etched Desert says "you" when it should say "who"), so I'll have to fix that.

Also, I may have to nerf a few of the weapons. They mostly add to attack rolls, so work in battle or psychic combat equally, as long as you get a die roll. If something prevents you from rolling, they don't do anything. That's the intent at least, but all the "you don't roll a die against..." Enemies got pushed to the Bonus deck, so now the Macuahuitls are just monstrous. Something to keep in mind if you want to add them to your set before I get around to fixing them on my end.

Hi Reedstilt , I see you are using few of my templates, so I have some questions:

• You are using PSD version or SE3?
• If SE3, then standard or HD version?
• Did you try to print standard and HD version to compare printout quality?
• Do you have any problems / suggestion / requests how to improove those templates?

@Earl , same questions to you

I'm using your SE3 HD versions, and thanks for all of them! They've been a big help. I haven't compared a standard version to an HD version print out yet. The only issue I've had with them so far is that when they switch over to the large text box version, the image usually ends up misaligned between where the Portrait Adjustment screen thinks it is and the actual card thinks it is. It's shifted down on the card compared to the Portrait Adjustment. It's a minor inconvenience at worst , since I just have to shift things up to compensate, but its the only notable issue I've come across.

Can you send me screen(s) with example?

edit : ok ... I already know what you meant, so i'll try to fix it

SE3 plugin fixed (you can find new download link in first post of this topic )

I've been using the Standard Def SE3 to make cards-- they still look great when printed professionally, but I'm excited to pick up the upgrade you've just posted! I was having the same problem as Reedstilt, so thank you for fixing that!

I'm actually surprised to hear that you're using the SE3 versions too. Your Shinkai cards seemed to have been based on abubu's Necromancy card, but they were different enough that I assumed your were using the PSD versions and edited them further (rotating the skull, adding corner spikes).

Also, tangential question, but if anyone knows how I can get the Lightbound and Darkbound symbols in SE3, I'd love to know. Maybe they're already in there, and I just haven't noticed yet.

3 hours ago, Reedstilt said:

Also, tangential question, but if anyone knows how I can get the Lightbound and Darkbound symbols in SE3, I'd love to know. Maybe they're already in there, and I just haven't noticed yet.

Just use <lf> or <df>.

I can't believe it was in there all along! Thanks for point that out. Now time to go crazy with Fate-bound effects!

On 10.03.2018 at 7:32 AM, Reedstilt said:

I'm actually surprised to hear that you're using the SE3 versions too. Your Shinkai cards seemed to have been based on abubu's Necromancy card, but they were different enough that I assumed your were using the PSD versions and edited them further (rotating the skull, adding corner spikes).

Maybe Earl used SE3 plugin version prepared by arthan (?) ... it was based on first release of PSD templates. After some time I made small changes / fixes to templates (so PSD and SE3 versions looks the same - more or less).

18 hours ago, abubu-pl said:

Maybe Earl used SE3 plugin version prepared by arthan (?) ... it was based on first release of PSD templates. After some time I made small changes / fixes to templates (so PSD and SE3 versions looks the same - more or less).

That's the one, yep. Was too lazy to upgrade until recently, lol

I was so inspired by Reedstilt's Atlantis expansion (and I've been working on adding additional areas to my gate-chain / Slipgate hub board) that I decided to rework a few cards and add some in that work as like a compatibility patch with Reedstilt's Atlantis. The above is a replacement card for the Atlantis terrain card, and it is the main card of the chain that links to the Slipgate. I'll be including this patch (but not Reedstilt's expansion as a whole, just my additions to it) as an optional module for the Slipgate expansion when I finish it in the coming weeks so you can play with Atlantis however you want to.

Also the bolded/italic terms on the Gem of Retention refer to mechanics in my Afterlife expansion, which I just realized I have not yet sent to Talisman Island. I will, though! I have a huge update I'm piecing together to send to Jon as soon as I can pull the pieces into a single file (and after I've finished the Slipgate expansion.)

I've also added the following cards which can be drawn from the encounter deck: