I own the original 1st Edition Talisman (1983) along with the first four expansions (Expansion, The Adventure, Dungeon, Timescape). It would be a shame and a waste if I could not somehow use the new FFG Talisman base game, plus expansions, with mine. I don't know if the rules, boards, cards, characters are totally different, or what. Since the Revised 4th Edition (as well as Black Industries' "Fourth Edition") is based upon GW's 2nd Edition, I hope that I can do this. I wonder if using the Upgrade Pack would help. I don't relish having to set aside my whole Talisman collection and have to re-purchase everything. It's just saying that the original Talisman is now officially dead and a whole new incompatible system is in place; "Buy it or forget it", in other words.

Anyone know more? Help! Thanks.

Some initial thoughts...

The 14 characters in the base 4th edition game are the same as in 1st/2nd edition. In Revised 4th edition the characters are almost the same except for the addition of Fate points and a couple of tweaks (eg Monk now only adds his starting Craft to Strength in battle not his total Craft). Also in Revised 4th Edition some of the Adventure cards and Spells have been tweaked (most notoriously, Raiders are not as dangerous now). The Revised 4th edition board also has a few changes to integrate the Fate rules, but many players who don't like the Fate rules just refer back to the earlier board versions.

Overall, though, there is a large degree of compatibility between all editions. The main problem of integration is the different card backs and sizes. You could just simply shuffle everything together - it won't look pretty, but there is a sufficiently large number of cards so that predicting what is coming next will be nigh-impossible other than what set the card came from. I guess certain specific cards may need to be removed to avoid confusion between versions, though you could always agree that each card is played as written, even if there are slightly different versions within the same deck.

Hope that helps.

Archdruid, I like your point of mixing the old and new cards. It would certainly be easy enough to remove any new and/or old cards of the same type or item if a conflict arises, or, as you said, just leave them for variety. It would be interesting to add a new FFG board to the old GW game, and just play it. Hmmm. That would be very interesting. It makes the new Talisman more attractive. Thanks much for your posting.

When I had this dilema we chose to roll two dice for movement.

One die was for your actual movement, the second (different Die) was for the two different adventure card decks.

We did the same thing when pulling spells, roll a die for which deck to pull from.

danjr, your idea sounds really good.