"Burrow wurm. If you lose, then you fall through his hole on the first vault space in the dungeon."
Ooh, I like that one.
Your best Houserule
Jake yet again said:
Rule one: For Spell regeneration characters you only regenerate your spells at the start of your turn. No constantly casting spells til you get the ones you want.
Rule Two: Treasure!
Sort out all the "5" cards (Followers and Items) from the remaining cards. This deck is called the Treasure Deck. whenever you encounter an enemy it may have some treasure.
Animals do not have treasure.
Enemies with Strength / Craft <= 6 have 1 treasure. Enemies with Strength / Craft >6 have two treasures. Enemies with Craft and Strength values (e.g. Chinese Dragon) always have at least two treasures. End of game bosses (e.g. Ice Queen) have four treasures!
Monsters are always smart enough to use their treasures to the best possible effect, so a Giant with a Ring gets +1 Str. Dragons will employ goblin servants to his Sword (and thus get +1 Str), etc.
For one shot items, (e.g. Potion of Strength) presume that that the item has one charge / dose left after the enemy has been defeated. Prior to that the item / follower will recharge every time. Hence the enemy will always benefit from the Potion of Strength, but the victorious character will only be able to use it once.
Enemies have made a deal with the Powers of Darkness and are unaffected by the negative effects of any items. Thus if a roll of a 1 would cause them to lose a life, they do not lose a life. This deal is so powerful that evil enemies can use "Good" items. In addition, they seem to have an endless supply of gold, should a follower / item require gold to function (e.g. Mercenary) (Of course they will have spent their last bag when the player defeats them)
Enemies with items that give them spells will use these spells against the first player that attacks or is attacked by them, using them in the manner which would reap the worst benefit fro the player in question (e.g. A Spectre with a Genie follower might use Mesmerism to steal the Maiden from a character attacking it. that way the Spectre gets +2 Craft and the player loses 2 Craft)
Optionally, Craft enemies (such as Spirits) have spells equal to their Craft / 4, fully rounding down all fractions (0-3, no spells, 4-7 1 spell, 8-11, two spells, 12+ three spells)
I love this idea. It's almost a totally different game from Talisman, but it would be a nice change of pace once in a while, I think.
"6. blessings
blessings are the light side of the fate points. they can bé earned instead of taking a fate point, but not at gamestart or when regenerating fate. only 1 blessing can be used per turn. after a roll it can be used to add or subtract 1 from the die roll."
I like your blessings rule a lot. I'm going to try to get my husband to agree to use it during our games.
"i give you more of my houserules here. would be nice if you give some comments on them."
I like your other rules, too, individually. It would take a lot of getting used to, though, to implement them all, and a lot of house rules reference checking. The thing I love about Talisman is that, once you have all the basic concepts down, you hardly ever have to refer to the rule book; everything you need to know is almost always printed on the cards that you draw.
For that reason, my husband and I have only one house rule: you can't be turned into a toad as long as the princess is your follower.
Most (not all) house rules are not complex. You hear them once, and you've got the down. Some of the better ones are this way, and even commercial changes and additions such as the potential of Dark Fate fall into this category. The "blessings" are a good example of a house rule like this... and better than Dark Fate. No one will have to look it up.
Why don't compile all these suggestion in a text document and upload it somewhere? (Somewhere = Talismanisland)
Because there is no real standardizing going on here. The number of minor and major variations in differing approaches to even one tiny aspect of the game are just too vast. I wouldn't want to be the one to do it, and I would feel guilty even suggesting someone else take it on... and face the inevitable "hey, why isn't my variation in there?"
ADDENDUM: Some people may wish, if really needed (and not always), to create their house rules in "modules" rather than collected documentation. There are now what are called "rules card" templates available. You can find them Strange Eons using Jon New's Talisman plugin to go with. I believe mine may be or will be there in it. It's just a character card sized template for slapping in complete details for a particular HR and all of its basic detials. You can look at examples by going to TalismanIsland and downloading the "House Rules #1" package that I put together. Most of what's in it will not appeal to most people here. I contains selections of HRs developed by many people over two decades of Talisman. I amalgamated variations together for what you see in those cards... and of course, any group could and should modify what they find in them to suit their own tastes.
Somewhere near the bottom of the features to do list for Talismania.net (read that it will be a while untill it gets done) will be a hosue rule page where you can read through house rules on the page, each one that you want to play and then press a button and a compiled rule book of those house rules and how they interact with the main rules will be printable.
But as I said I reckon we are talking at least 2-3 months till I can tackle this feature
That approach to generated HRs may be nice for some, but you may be building an elephant when most people would want a set of mules to pick and choose how many are needed for a particular journey. Our group has a few HRs we use regularly, but not enough to print out a whole list. Rules cards allow for mixing and matching not only the rules for the night... but also according the current mix of players at the table. They are quick and easy to hand around if someone doesn't remember the details of one rule that comes up... and there's not need to page through an additional manual on top of the one that came with the game.
Thats a fair point and I may incoperate a "Single house rule card" option for printing. However I wont be doing it just for the sake of the site, each time I write custom scripts like this, I get better at it 
tjedgar said:
However I wont be doing it just for the sake of the site, each time I write custom scripts like this, I get better at it
Oh, well yeah, that's good too! 
Hahahaha! We do the Toad Chant, too! So satisfying...
We only run with 1 house rule.
"You may choose to leave the Crown of Command at any time. Once a character has entered the CoC, any rules pertaining to characters having entered remain in play."
It's a hold over from my 2ed days. We figure if a character wants to leave, they have a pretty darn good reason to (Hunting gold hoarding Alchemists comes to mind) and should have that option. After all, they are going to have to get by the inner region again to get back in.
We are looking at adding a second rule.
"Treat the Pit Fiends as a multiple card draw in the other regions."
This would cause the space to be more challenging based on how many were rolled (Str 4,8,12,16,20 or 24) and would be any where from 1 die roll (character wins on first try) to as many die rolls as the chracter has life counters (adjusted by life protections such as Armour or Spells).
-Salute
Shadw said:
We only run with 1 house rule.
"You may choose to leave the Crown of Command at any time. Once a character has entered the CoC, any rules pertaining to characters having entered remain in play."
It's a hold over from my 2ed days. We figure if a character wants to leave, they have a pretty darn good reason to (Hunting gold hoarding Alchemists comes to mind) and should have that option. After all, they are going to have to get by the inner region again to get back in.
We are looking at adding a second rule.
"Treat the Pit Fiends as a multiple card draw in the other regions."
This would cause the space to be more challenging based on how many were rolled (Str 4,8,12,16,20 or 24) and would be any where from 1 die roll (character wins on first try) to as many die rolls as the chracter has life counters (adjusted by life protections such as Armour or Spells).
-Salute
Forgot one.
We deal each player 3 character cards to choose from at the start of the game because there are so many characters now.
-Salute
We use an incremented streangth/craft reward system. If you have an unmodified streangth/craft of 2, you only need to trade in 3 trophy points to get bumped up to a streangth/craft of 3 and so on...So getting to that craft of 17 from your current value of 16 will take 17 total craft points worth of kills; like a Demon, Ghost and a Wraith.
What really keeps the game moving for us is that more than one person is taking their turn at the same time. It's quite simple: If 4 people are playing, two people roll and move while the other two monitor their actions. That way the game usually takes about as long as two players would normally take.
*If players move to the same location during a turn: Who ever rolls the lowest die roll for movement encounters the space first and is in a defensive position when the other player arrives; leaving him vounerable to an attack. It adds a little tweak to game play here and there. Yes, it can be used to a players disadvantage at times, but it's a game and it's for fun right? Just like chess, once you let go of your playing piece on the board, that's where going to go.
We always draw card(s) according to how many cards the space tells us to draw. no matter how many cards are in the location already. It can get kinda ugly at times when you really want to drink from a fountain of streangth when there's two dragons and an ape in the way...and you still have to draw an unknown adventure card when you land there.
Interesting, but perhaps a bit too chaotic for me with simultaneous turns... still, an interesting notion.
You do have to wait for everyone in one group to finish their turns before the other group starts their turn otherwise choas will develop for sure. Also, if you have a new player, you better make sure the person in the opposite group that is monitoring "The New Player" really knows how Talisman works (good teachers make good players). I have yet to ever play with more than 6 people at any one time, but it works out quite nicely. I'd say most games still last 4 to 5 hours.
We used to have all the evil players in one group and the good in the other with the neutral players balancing out the sides if it was lop-sided. Everyone we play with is pretty honest at this point, so we've just lumped any player into either of the two groups lately. We usually try to make any Talisman session we play have a balance of good and evil players. People just volunteer to play a particular alignment before we start the game, picking out three randomly drawn cards from the good, neutral, or evil piles during set up of the game. I even went to the bank and got actual United States currency to use in the game. I've been using 50 new gold colored $1.00 Lady Liberty / Andrew Jackson coins in place of the somewhat cheesy plastic gold piecies for a few months now. Using gold colored coins that were fresh of the mint seemed like a cool thing to do, so I did it. I've even considered letting any player that wins to take home any gold he has at the end of the game, why not? Kinda adds some fun to a game when you do stuff like that.
By the way JCHendee, I've been using twelve of your alternate ending cards (including the Usurper) as possible random endings to the game, very nice - thank you! I like your Balance card packs (1, 2, & 3) but I haven't printed them out for a game yet...soon though (it's a lack of spare time issue).
What I did incorporate was "The Gauntlet" and "The Wildlands" (downlaoded from TalismanIsland.com) home brews from a member here by the name of "DTH" . I expanded the Cavern Board to around 6"x18" to make it feel like an extra place to go in the game because it can get kinda dwarfed by the Dungeon and HIghland expansions. I recommend going to Kinkos or some other copier store to get the board laminated if anyone decides to do this as well. I lay it right on top of the inner region until someone enters the Plain of Peril, using the Warlock's Cave as the entrance to the Cavern. Having random inner region cards and Gaurdians at the Valley of Fire spruced up the game quite nicely.
Thanks guys!
Blackalliance said:
....I'd say most games still last 4 to 5 hours.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who isn't in a rush. 
And the rest sounds like you've got it all worked out.
Blackalliance said:
By the way JCHendee, I've been using twelve of your alternate ending cards (including the Usurper) as possible random endings to the game, very nice - thank you! I like your Balance card packs (1, 2, & 3) but I haven't printed them out for a game yet...soon though (it's a lack of spare time issue).
Yes, we use a lot of the retro cards in our games... when there are no newbies who need a clean introduction to Talisman. Glad you're enjoying the AltEnds, though most are only my take old ones (commercial or fan) from the 2E days. My groups gotten kinda bored with AltEnds in general and have been discussing ways to build "scenarios" instead. The difference is the scenario changes gameplay instead of or in addition to the end / win condition. mrjoebanana is working on something like this HERE.
You might hold off on printing those ITB cards. I've been working on a rework of that expansion. As usual, I'm late in getting it out (life, ya know), but it should come along in another week or so. I'll make and announcement here and elsewhere when its ready.
Blackalliance said:
What I did incorporate was "The Gauntlet" and "The Wildlands" (downlaoded from TalismanIsland.com) home brews from a member here by the name of "DTH"
Very good. If Dorian's still around somewhere, I'm sure he'll be happy to hear it. Always great to hear how others are playing.
One the main House Rules that almost always gets used for use is the "True Fate" Rule. It can found at TalismanIsland.com in House Rules Pack 1. There may be a revision of it coming when a couple of more HR Cards are finished up for Pack 2.
Oh, and if you've got a picture of how Dth's boards came out, show us a snapshot when you have time.