Hello,

I played Talisman mostly within the Digital Edition. There, playing with No Respawn (permanent death - bloodbath) is great ; if you die early, you can just start another Talisman game, or do whatever you want on your PC. If you die late, same deal ; and sometimes it is fun to win the game by killing all players one by one, without having to reach the crown.

However in real life, if someone happens to die after the first 15 minutes, it can be a bit of an issue ; surely the person does not want to spend the remaining 4 hours just sitting and watching.

On the other hand, if we play without the No Respawn rule, when someone dies after 2 hours of the game ; they have to respawn in a world where they have less than 1% chance to do meaningful actions. It just feels like rolling the dice over and over - whatever you do, you are so far behind anyway that nothing will allow you to win the game. In the worst case (or best?) everyone dies, and well it's 2 hours gone, everyone has to start over with new characters.

So my question is : how do you handle the situation where someone dies in the middle of the game ? as in, when everyone has like 6-7 str/craft, a bunch of items and followers. Or do you follow a kind of modified permanent death rule ?

People have come up a few different options around here. In Bludgeon's "Great Talisman" rules, there's a new batch of cards called Injuries. When a character would normally be killed, they instead gain an Injury. It's a permanent penalty for the rest of the game (like -1 Strength), but it's far less severe than losing all your accumulated Strength, Craft, Followers, and Objects (though there's still a chance you'll lose some of your belongings).

In Earl Wynn's Talisman Overdrive, there's the Great Beyond - a mini-realm that the recently deceased wander until they're able to reincarnate or resurrect. That one is a bit more challenging to implement unless you're also using some of Earl's other sets, especially his Astral cards.

For the Restless Dead expansion I'm currently working on, I considered having killed characters transform into Ghosts, somewhat like turning into a toad, with the random chance of becoming some other type of undead (like a more powerful, and possibly permanent, wraith). At this point, I doubt it'll be included in the Restless Dead. Might become a separate spin-off if I get around to fully developing it.

In my Timescape expansion which you can read about in another thread, after a character dies a mighty wizard appears on the board that you may visit with your new character and take on an alternate road to victory, either by hindering other players´ progress, or by progressing fast through the Timescape realm.

I developed the expansion with exactly that thought in mind. So the players whose characters die late can still have fun playing the game.

Thanks a lot for both of your answers!

Timescape sounds great, but I have no idea how to print out these cards by myself.. Perhaps there are online websites that allow you to print your own cards?

The injuries set sound easier to implement ; i can roll a d20 to choose the injury and remember it.

Other alternatives I was thinking of..

- There is the inheritance house rule in the base game rulebook. The issue I have with that, is that sometimes you want to kill someone specifically so you can take his stuff; the inheritance rule disallows that.
- When you die, you lose all your items/followers as usual.. But you retain the lower half (or upper half? Not sure yet) of your strength/craft counters. That way, you are of course handicapped, but you have enough of a boost to not suffer through the early stage of character progression again.