Greetings my fellow humans.

In my quest to create my own board games, I've played many, many others and tried out numerous mechanics. One idea we had a while ago suddenly leapt out at me while I was in the shower (not an experience I care to repeat!) and I think it would work well with Talisman.

The core idea here is to give more decision making power to the player without harming the game or making it less random. Here's how it works.

1. There are two Hands of Combat Cards, each with 8 cards, one for the baddies and one for the players.

2. 6 of these cards are numbered 1 through 6. These equate to a d6 die roll.

3. 1 of these cards is labelled "Fumble!".

4. 1 of these cards is labelled "Critical!".

5. When you enter combat, you shuffle your Combat Cards and draw one. Add the value of that card to your Strength or Craft and you have your Combat Result.

6. If you have an ability to reroll, you draw another card and REPLACE the value of your previous card WITHOUT shuffling.

7. If you have an ability to roll an additional die, you draw an additional card and choose the one you want.

8. If you draw a Fumble! card, you roll a die and subtract that from your Combat Result.

9. If you draw a Critical! card. you roll a die and add that to your Combat Result.

10. When moving, you do not roll a die for movement. Instead, you may move any number of spaces up to 6. However, each time you move a space, you shuffle your combat hand and Exhaust a card. An Exhausted card is placed face down on the table and is no longer available until the end of your turn. Therefore, moving far seriously reduces your odds of having a good result but doesn't completely remove it, thereby maintaining an element of randomness.

11. When you finish moving, reveal the last Exhausted card. The value of that card is the result of your movement, therefore triggering effects like The Reaper.

12. If you have an ability which allows you to add or subtract to your movement, you may move one space without exhausting a card.

13. If you have an ability which allows you to roll an additional die for movement, you may move 2 spaces for each card you exhaust.

14. If you have an ability to reroll your movement die, you may return one Exhausted card to your hand, sight unseen.

15. For all other effects requiring dice rolls, e.g. Praying, The Enchantress, roll a die as normal.

Putting aside the aversion of card playing for combat, you've got a lot of nice tie-ins here. But most could be accomplished in one way or another using a die... or two dice. Fumbles and Criticals would be nice to have, and with 8 cards they wouldn't come up quite so often as on 6 sides of a die, but most of the F and C mechanics on die combats come up even less than that in the way they are rigged... either through use of 2D6 combat or a progresive/cascading roll of a second die on certain results for 1D6 combat. There's also a problem that the critical could become more common do to those random discards for exhaution. If anything, exhaustion should knock out the potential of a critical hit first and foremost.

The movement option attached to this is an interesting one; the harder you press, the more tired your are. I like that. But much as I think characters should always be able to "seek" standard and known singular non-draw spaces, being able to choose target spaces that are "in the wild" just doesn't work for Talisman. Those spaces conceptually represent multiple occurences of such terrains to some players, and there should remain some balance between control and randomness in achieving those vs. stable locations / settlements such as the Village, CIty, etc.

Or did you intend the control movement approach to be an option of "choice" vs. rolling a die for movement, and thereby suffer the consequences? If so, this might also be achieved through a die mechanic. I've actually heard of one and how to implement it, but I'll leave that for another topic.

All that aside, I realize you're probably also looking at this for a mechanic in another game, but I'm in the dark there.