I play with a few house rules, and wonder if and what other people do?

1. A roll of 6-1 is an automatic win - this means that that craft/strength one monster can kill you later in the game, and you have a slim chance to kill big things early in the game.

2. When spending fate to re-roll a dice, if you fail your re-roll, you can pay 2 fate to try again.

3. The day/night card gets a counter on it, when an event is pulled you take the counter off, then the next event flips it. If it's day and a lunar event (day) is pulled, a counter is added, and vice versa for night.

4. Draw dragon tokens when a one or a six is rolled on the dice for movement (using the riding horse means a chance at 2 tokens)

5. We deal five characters and pick one to start, but if you die in the middle, you choose your character.

6. When playing with the dragon tower, killing the Lord of darkness takes you to the entrance, not the CoC (on a kill of 8 or more)

7. Sometimes we skip the reaper and werewolf altogether, or just play with one or the other, sometimes we use D8s to move them around the board.

Obviously these aren't for everyone, and have evolved over the last couple years of playing. Does anyone else have any interesting house rules?

Instead of the Knight being unable to attack good characters, he instead misses a turn to pray for forgiveness if he does attack a good character.

I play with as max strength and craft of 12. That way any end boss isn't easily killed and doesn't make any player too powerful.

Jimmythecritic said:

Not harsh enough for me considering his other abilities as a goody-two-shoes.

Froman said:

This is a common one that I've always found sensible and efficient. It's about 2.3% chance of either happening, so not a big tilt of the odds. On the other hand, we've often (sometimes) played combat rolls using two dice for both combatants. It gives a broader range of results with a curved rather than flat set of probabilities. It allows low attribute characters an attributt based chance to take out high stat creatures rather than a purely random one, and there's no need for an autokill comparison. But it's not for everyone…. no house rule is.

With the continuance of back doors into the CoC (or whatever else takes its place), we have essentially plugged them all… and made the Valley of Fire live up to its namesake. As an example (right-click and "View/Open" in New tab/window for enlargment)…

These cards are in the "Space Expanders" expansion available at TalismanIsland.com and FantasticDiversions.com

As a house rule I decided to use the Talisman for more than what it is for.

With Arnkell and Cloak of Feathers it became rather an obsolete item, well, considered it gave the game a name, it should be more flexible and something people should still be glad to have.

First thing that came to my mind was that it should protect against fire, which it actually does, and they even implanted it in the Wall of Fire card. So it protects against any dragon breath attacks, against the fireball, Pyromancer ability as well as the Wand of Dragonfire.

Thats what Ive come up with so far, thinking about some other uses. I want players to want to actually do the warlock quests to get a talisman, so the game doesnt end up as a run for Arnkell.

Interesting notions overall, Cruan,

Cruan said:

No it doesn't. By the standard rules, if you were to step into the Valley of Fire, nothing would happen to you. And yes, even though the space says you can't entire without a Talisman, there are still ways you can end up there without a Talisman… and nothing happens to you.

This hole in the game has existed since at least the 2nd Edition and was never fixed… nor made into something that mattered. Hence the PoF card above… and when combined with some tactics and a couple of spells, I've actually used it to kill of an opponent once.

Hi, interesting thread to share the house rules, maybe people find some interesting or something you haven't thought of will come up.

Here goes:

1. When choosing characters we roll and the one rolling highest may choose first to remove 2 chars from the game and then everyone draws 2 random chars and pick one to play. The other one becomes there second and we play that if you die both your chars you are out.

2. We play with the alternative play style of Dragon expansion where you don't use the tokens but instead draw a red dragon card and place it on top of adventure deck everytime an strength enemy is drawn and green card when craft enemy is drawn and yellow when objects are drawn.

We have also altered it a bit more so only red cards are drawn when enemies with strenght 3 or more is drawn, same with craft for green and for yellow only when magic objects are drawn.

3. We have made the enhanced the 2 of the inner region spaces the golden dragon space and vampiric dragon tower space:

Golden dragon: you roll 3 dices for yourself and pick the 2 lowest + amount of yellow dragon tokens and roll 3 dices for the dragon and pick the 2 highest. If your score then are equal or higher than the dragons you may pass. Otherwise you will loose 1 gold (If no gold then lives)

Vampiric dragon: you roll 2 dices and cannot fate the dice rolls. The result is instead 2 dice rolls - amount of yellow tokens.

4. Assassin have to loose one turn after using his special ability

5. We play with the alternative rule of moving in the dungeon/highland where once you enter you may only move forward until you declare that you are fleeing then you must go back until you are out again before entering again.

6. You can max carry 12items, meaning if you have a horse&cart + mule you are still limited to 12 not 16.

7. We always play with first character entering crown draws alternative ending.

1. Raiders - Take all of your Objects and gold just like in the 2nd edition.

2. Dungeon/Highland - We use D6 numbered 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3 and also roll a standard D6 to see if the Leprechaun teleports or the Troll regenerates, etc.

3. Dragon tokens are drawn once per round proceeding clockwise with a different player each turn instead of once every turn.

4. Instead of drawing dragon tokens as above, we sometimes play it as follows: Whenever a character draws one or more Enemies during his turn, before he encounters any cards, he must draw one dragon token at random from the pool and resolve its effects.

Ell.

We barely use houserules. I have seen many who try to fix the game after what happened in one session, but Talisman is a very random game in which no two playthroughs are the same. We do have some stuff to shorten the time it takes to complete the game, one thing is that the inner region have a spell barrier, meaning you can cast spells within but not in and out of that region.

We have a tonne of houserules, viz:

1. Draw three, pick one character card

2. We use a special die (faces are available at Talismanisland if you want 'em) to keep track of both NPC movement and dragon scale draws, as well as monster combat rolls.

3. Level-up always takes one more trophy point than the level you're currently at: this slows down the ultrapowerful characters late in the game.

4. Dark fate and bright fate must be chosen when you get them: bright = add or subtract one from a roll; dark = reroll.

5. Horses and mules may be led into the dungeon, but not ridden.

6. When falling into the dungeon, rather than landing on the entrance space, we roll a d6 to see which tunnel space you land in. 1-2 = closest to Lord of Darkness, 3-4 = next-closest, etc.

7. We randomise all treasure acquisition.

8. We use alternative space descriptions for the village and the tavern, including new rules for the Mystic, Healer, and Smith.

9. You still need a talisman to get into the dragon tower.

10. For alternative endings, we make a stack of 8 cards, including some homemade cards. You roll a d6 and count that many hidden ending cards down (this eliminates the different printing colour/quality of the back of the homemade ones). It also means that two of the cards (possibly including Horrible Black Void) are out of the running entirely, but you don't know which ones.

11. We use a special deck of items you can buy at the Smithy in the village. I had Artscow print them out, and though they're larger than the regular Talisman deck, since we're not shuffling them with anything else, it's OK.

12. We use the Toad King and Ice Queen NPCs.

13. Most important rule: if there is any vagueness about whether something is legal, or about the timing of a spell, or whatever, always go with the result that gives you the best story afterward.

In our games we don't allow more than one warhorse to be used. This is way too more powerful, of course if you lose a life then you lose all of your warhorses, so there is no need to have more than one as it is useless.

Quite and extensive list, Z., almost as bad as some of my games… though only with veteran players. Some thoughts…

Zozimus said:

Interesting, but punches a hole in the game where certain resources are concerned. If those are Purchase card horses, then essentially the player in the dungeon has locked out anyone else from purchasing one… as… if that horse owner gets into the middle region, most equine cards can't be used there, so they are worthless other than keeping other players from getting them. Oh, and can i assume you do not allow horse&card or warhorse in the dungeon at all? That's the way we do it, though we don't allow horses but do allow mules… and we have a donkey as well.

Zozimus said:

Sensible!

Zozimus said:

Do share.

Hey, JC,

I'm not sure what you do with the horses in the Dungeon … do you mean that if you enter the Dungeon, you have to ditch your horses? We did that at first, but then other players just swooped by and scooped them up. Oh, wait….do you mean that if you make it through the Dungeon and into the inner regions, you'll have no use for horses anyway, and you might as well leave them for others to use? That makes sense, except that we don't always go into the Dungeon with the intention of making it all the way to the Lord of Darkness; sometimes we just tool around in there, powering up and usually getting our clocks cleaned, and then hightail it out. If you left the horses at the Dungeon entrance, I guess it gives you a chance to pick them up again on the way out….but others could also steal them. Hmmmm…..and what do you do when you fall through one of those Dungeon tunnel collapse cards (can't remember the real name)? Does your horse die in the fall?

I sense more house rules in the making.

For a Smithy card I made called, creatively, "BOW", you can shoot a faceup enemy from up to three spaces away, but once it's dead, you still have to collect your trophy. If another character is able to land exactly on the space containing the trophy on their turn, they can take it first; whereas all you have to do on your next turn is to roll at least the number of movement to take you past it, and scoop it up on your way by.

Maybe if you leave your horse at the Dungeon entrance, something similar could work: you can pick your horse back up on the way by, but if another character is able to land exactly on it, you run the risk of losing it.

As to the alternate tavern and village, the "Tavern Revisited" is a space expander I got from Dorian Hawkins on Talismanisland. The "Village Revisited" is something I did (poorly) on Photoshop, here:

Some of the instructions for the Blacksmith only make sense if you use the Smithy deck we made. If you don't like the idea of the Mystic changing alignments on a whim (I know your views on alignment a little! ) , then thematically you could imagine the office of the Mystic being occupied by three different mystics on different (unposted) schedules, each with a different alignment. You roll the dice to see who's in at the time

Hi, Z. Life got busy so it took a while to get back here.

Zozimus said:

Yes, that's the point. You have to make a sacrifice for the potential advantages of the Dungeon. And yeah, it's an advantage in more ways than one. Too many concessions have been made vs. the Dungeon of old editions. It's always been a power-up factory and shortcut around the game's namesake for getting to the CoC. And in that, it shouldn't be dumbed down even more in pandering to those who want to play it like a video game of powerup cards… or a variation on Munchkins.

Zozimus said:

Then you better do so and get out before another character gets lucky in a movement roll and picks up that left behind horse. That's the risk… like entering any real dungeon. Even Frodo and team had to leave Bill behind going into a place as big as the Mines, and Bill wasn't even as big as a riding horse. Talisman was meant to have risks - lots of them - and too many have been removed or watered down.

Zozimus said:

That is a paradox, considering the Character and Followers have no risk of injury in that card. Then again, me and mine removed all such cards from our deck for play with Dungeon, along with any others that try to force Characters onto an expansion board in too nonsensical tricks. Harpies hauling you off to the Crags is slightly silly but more believable than a cave-in anywhere in the land… as if the Dungeon were really that big.

Yes, there are all sorts of wild justifications to make up for that card, but they don't appeal to me and mine. Removing those cards makes expansion boards a choice… sometimes even a tactic for a supposed strategy… instead of a game of Chutes (Snakes) and Ladders with a fantasy veneer.

Zozimus said:

Too much upkeep, and too much bending of verisimilitude for me. The Bow of old was better, where you could attack from afar, but without risk, and therefor you got no trophy. The Bow was a tactical way to harry other Characters or try to remove something you didn't want to encounter on a space you wanted cleared for access. Then again, the bow never really worked in other considerations.

My group has experimented with missile weapons that are used in direct combat instead over ridiculous long distances (if one looks at Talisman as a "land" instead of just a "board"), but most just didn't fully work to satisfaction. I still have those cards around somewhere; one involved the chance to wound an opponent before battle and thereby give it a -1 on its Battle (Combat) roll. We also required replentishing arrows instead of the Bow being and umarked Magic Object complete with an unmentioned "Quiver of Plenty."

Zozimus said:

Ah ha! Now I'm caught up. I remember Dorian's (and a couple other takes on the Tavern. Yours fits in well as well. And yeah, the Mystic was little more than an excuse for random Alignment changes as far back as 2E. Talisman is somewhat silly and meant to be, and overall the Mystic is just there (still) to force you into a corner if you visit the Village without any real need to be there. Same with the Enchantress. Neither was very imaginative nor suitable for a "settlement" space.

I've always wondered if the Enchantress wouldn't have been better of in the Cursed Glade, but I suppose that would be too much monkey-wrench work with the board itself.

Yeah, our bow needs arrows too…..basically, you put up to 3 gold on the bow to act as arrows. If you shoot at an enemy and miss, you lose the gold. You can buy more from the smith. It makes using it more of a risk, plus of course the possibility of not getting a trophy, or worse, giving one to an opponent. I thought that the possibility of killing an enemy without risking your life needed some sort of balance; I'm not sure if I hit it exactly, but we can always tweak it as we go.

I kind of like the idea of the Dungeon being something like an Underworld: not an actual physical place per se, but a place you end up when you fall in a hole. It conforms in a way to Faerie Tale Geography rules in my head: you know, where Tir na nOg is always "West of wherever you are". I particularly like the randomness and tension that comes from falling into it suddenly, and having to fight your way out. Talisman makes me think of that movie "Labyrinth", from the '80s, in some ways. Kind of whimsical, nonlinear, and random. Without the musical numbers, of course.

That said, no one in our group is likely to exploit the Dungeon's 'back door' to the CoC….none of us is very competitive, and mostly we just like playing for the sake of it. When someone eventually goes for the centre board, there's a fun, brief scramble as others realise they've been powerful enough to do the same for a long time, and we usually ignore rules like "no spell casting on the CoC" in favour of a dramatic finale. We even mostly ignore turn sequence if the story is better that way. I don't think anyone has ever managed to defeat the Lord of Darkness by enough points to end up there anyway. Even if we're ridiculously overpowerful, the dice have a habit of humbling us in amusing ways.

It does seem like the tavern and village spaces are somewhat missed opportunities, eh? I do like the versions we use; it makes it more interesting to go there. Otherwise, the corner spaces are largely avoided.

Zozimus said:

With the arrow quota, that sounds better along with the possible torphy loss as balance. But I'm not so sure a trophy should count for another player that also took no risk to gain that trophy. It this situation, given these rules, I would make it the option that another player reaching that trophy could discard it only… making it a loss.

Zozimus said:

Okay, I can see that even if it isn't to my taste.

Zozimus said:

. But too bad that's the way it was designed.

Zozimus said:

Yup. The standards there were abandoned by us early on. We use the corners as a matter of actual choice, not forced choice. So the Enchantress and Mystic get ignore by any but the desperate. I supposed that counts as a house rule, though all it really is … is a return to the rule from 2E governing those spaces.

We also like using Jon New's approach to horses via the "horse trader" in addition to some of our own, though we use our own version of purchasable equines of a much wider variety.