Hello, my friends and I are planning a somewhat daunting task of designing a custom version of Talisman. We are going to use the existing 4th edition board with the four current expansion boards. Outside of that, everything else will be custom made - characters and their models, the adventure deck, the purchase deck, and so on.

My question is: does anyone know the actual ratio of cards when you factor in all the expansions? As in, how many monsters, followers, event cards, strangers, etc are in the deck. If anyone had info that was detailed enough to get into how many of each event was beneficial or negative, how many monsters are Spirits vs. Animals, and so on, that would be even better...but that's doubtful.

I would just pull out all the cards and count them myself, but our collection is spread out through multiple people. Hopefully someone here has this info handy already for statistical purposes though...maybe it's a bit of a long shot.

Any information even remotely related to this topic would be greatly appreciated. Has anyone undertook an endeavor like this before and has some tips to look out for when designing the game from the ground up? Any advice on whether I should match the amount of adventure cards 1:1 or just do a flat 200 card adventure deck while preserving the proper percentage of monsters to items to events etc?

Thanks!

Onslaught said:

Ummm... if you have the decks, you should be able to figure this out for yourself, which makes one wonder what you're really after in completing this project.

Additionally, other than recreating the exact distribution so specific card(s) detail(s), there's a lot more to it than just the count of cards, such as

• average and median of S/C among all Enemies and those of specific types
• ratio or bonuses (and deficits) among Followers, Strangers, Events, Objects, etc.
• distribution of Place and Stranger emphasis, subtypes, alignment lean, etc.
• Financial gains of Gold and other potentials and opportunities for purchase of goods and services.
• and more...

But I don't think anyone is going to do that kind of inventory for you... nor share developed spreadsheets of deep data built from owning the game and expansions. You might find some card counts (inventories) by simple type and subtype if you search BoardGameGeeks.com

Thanks for the awful reply I guess. I like how your tone suggests I'm somehow involved in something sinister, oh look out guys he's up to something here...this could be big...he's making cards for a fantasy board game...

As far as all of the other stuff you mentioned in regards to the ratio of beneficial to detrimental encounters, the number of cards which help/hurt you based on good/evil/neutral, and so on - I clearly pointed out that I would be interested in that information in the first post, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to point out that "ummmm and even if you did get the info you wanted, my analysis of the info you want is even better!"

I think this is my favorite part though:

"nor share developed spreadsheets of deep data built from owning the game"

So you're implying that if someone in the community had the exact data that I was looking for in readily available form, they wouldn't provide it (for reasons unexplained, though you hint at the suspicion that I don't own the game or something as if it's a very exclusive membership club). Did you even read my post where I mention that I would just pull out the cards and count them myself if each part of our collection wasn't owned by different people?

I thought this would be the ideal community to get feedback on a project like this, I thought for sure other people would have tried the same thing by now and I was eager to get input; especially on the decision of: should I simply design a slightly modified version of the existing game (matching established game mechanics with a few twists to match the non-fantasy genre I have planned) with a 1:1 ratio of the old cards (i.e. for every 7 strength dragon, there's one 7 strength droid, for every "gain one spell" event there's a "gain one cybernetic implant" and so on) or instead take this opportunity to make a flat sized X card deck while preserving the old ratio of hurtful/helpful/etc percentages that the professionals have used in our existing game.

Maybe someone else has the data I'm looking for or perhaps input on how to change/improve upon the existing ratios to make the game even better. In fact, I'm open to all suggestions for slight tweaks to the existing mechanics to improve upon things, but I can't start tweaking the minor details until I have designed the base deck of cards to tweak for balance.

Once again though, my deepest thanks for making my first post on this board and first encounter with fellow Talisman players a very negative one.

Sorry if I came off negative, but the way you framed your request when read word for word implies that you don't have all the game components yourself that you want inventoried. If you do have them, I am left wondering why you have not inventoried them yourself. I think that question would occur to any brewer hanging out in the homebrew section.

As to improving upon the balance of any of the encounter decks, it would depend upon what any of us would consider to be an improvement. Too basic choices would be to make it easier or harder by changing (in sync) the number, median and average on Enemies vs other cards. Another would be whether to change the ratio (and median and average) of Craft vs Strength enemies. And third would be whether or not to consider addtions for Neutral alignment to be more than the alignment of no alignment (in other words, cards like Stranger and Events that are beneficial to Neutrals instead of just for Evil and Good). There are lots of other possibilities as well, but only you (and perhaps you group) can decide what would by an improvement by you own tastes.

JCHendee said:

For the third and hopefully final time, our playgroup split up ownership/cost of each set, for example all I have on me is revised 4th edition and Highland, while our friend in Brazil has Reaper, and my Canadian cousin has original 4th edition and the other expansions. And even if I did have them all in one place to count right now, I still would have asked online to see if anyone had already broken down the ratios.

Furthermore,

That's enough of that you two! No flaming is permitted on these forums. Stick to valid points please and no personal attacks.

Ell.

Some years ago I did a little of statistics when I was working on my own expansion (shelved and unfinished I'm afraid). Unfortunately it was for 2ED and only for a few expansions, not the main Adventure deck. I needed some idea of how to distribute different types of cards. It's not much but it might be a little helpful.

Expansion - Event(%) / Enemy S+C(%) / Stranger(%) / Object+Follower(%) / Place(%)

Dungeon - 22% / 33% / 5% / 20% / 20%

Timescape - 22% / 25% / 5% / 48% / N/A

Jaskinia (Cave) - 10% / 30% / 15% / 25% / 20%

Przedpola Piekiel (Foothills of Hell?) - 20% / 40% / 25% / 10% / 5%

"Jaskinia" is an expansion to polish version of Talisman (it was mentioned on forum many times already). "Przedpola Piekiel" is, in my humble opinion, one of the best fan-made expansions to 2ED and most vicious and dangerous one I've ever seen.

I hope it will be of some help.

It's very helpful, and it will go a long way towards determining the overall composition of my final complete adventure deck. Thanks!