I recently learned that the forum here will be shutting down at the end of the month. It's the end of an era, that's for sure, but I'll be continuing to work on Talisman projects for a while. I'll probably post updates over at the Talisman subreddit, if you'd like to continue seeing what I'm up to. And obviously, I'll be sending the finished product over to Talisman Island once they're done. In the meantime, I thought I'd post a few samples of projects I've already got in the works for release after I'm finished with the Isles.
THE GUNSMITH
This is a small expansion that just adds a new Gunsmith purchase deck, containing some early firearms (Pistols, Muskets, Blunderbusses), a character who will start with one of those, and a few means of acquiring them in the game. These weapons have a chance to be quite powerful, but also run the risk of breaking or running out of ammo, forcing the character to discard them.
Four Corners of the World: The Isles (And Beyond)
This one shouldn't come as a surprised. To keep things balanced with the rest of the Corner regions in my set, the Isles will be getting its own batch of bonus cards. The Gunsmith Deck will play a big role here, which is why its coming out first. As usual, this will also include interactions with other expansions: utilizing Lunar Events, Light and Dark Fate, acquiring items from the City's Shops, placing Terrains, etc.
There will also be eventually bonus content for the Isles so that you can use it with Hearth & Harvest and Bardic Inspiration.
Gems of Power
As far as I'm aware "Gems of Power" were introduced in Bogusz Ostrowski's The Vision expansion, with more being included by Earl Wynn in his various expansions. I liked the concept behind these, but haven't included them yet in my material. Mainly because I've had this little expansion in mind for them. Instead of having the Gems of Power in various Adventure Decks, I'll be adding a dedicated Gems of Power deck. Characters can acquire these Gems in various ways, but the most common way is to find the generic Gem of Power cards scattered around the world (2 in each Adventure deck). This way players won't know which Gems might be found in which regions.
The Great Gate
This is the big one and may be broken up into several volumes. This expansion gives you a host of new mini-Regions to explore by traveling through the Rune Gates. This functions similarly to the Gate Chains added by Earl Wynn's Overdrive expansion and uses similar terminology, and with a little tweaking it should be easy enough to make them compatible if you wanted to include those. The core components include a special Rune Gate card that serves as the central hub for these mini-regions, a Gateway Deck which determines which of the mini-Regions are currently available, and small 54-card Adventure decks for each of the mini-Regions. Each of these mini-Regions is mostly inspired by the myths and folklore of various areas in the real world. I currently have about 20 mini-Realms planned, with all but 2 of them complete at this time. Of those, there are two that heavily re-utilize my old Atlantis expansion - so they give you an alternate way of interacting with those cards in an abridged format. Here are a few samples of the realms you'll be able to explore eventually:
The Inevitable Timescape Expansion
Like so many before me, I'll surely succumb to the siren's call of the Timescape eventually. I haven't fully settled on how I would tackle this if I do. At the moment, I see two possibilities. One utilizes the mechanics provided by the Great Gate, allowing characters to explore various points in time as well as in space. With this option, I've already got 4 future timelines written up (not included as part of the 20 from the Great Gate). These are a Wild West timeline, a Noir timeline, a Cyberpunk timeline, and a post-Apocalyptic timeline. With each of these, I've emphasized that these are continuations of the Talisman setting into new eras and. consequently, are primarily fantasy settings with a new aesthetic.
The other idea I've had for the Timescape would be a more traditional Space Opera type setting (though still retaining fantasy elements), utilizing its own planet-hopping board. The twist of note here is that there would be two overlapping timelines in the Timescape: a Golden Age and a Dark Age. A character's fate influences which future they encounter. A lightbound character interacts with the Golden Age aspect of the Timescape; a darkbound character interacts with the Dark Age aspect of the Timescape. Unbound characters can navigate between them. I still need to decide what to do with Fateless characters. In any case, I haven't really done any work on these options yet.
