A lot of Talisman players have been playing this game for a long, long time. Those of us who are newer to the game might not like everything we see. Either way, I'm pretty sure that most gaming groups have their own little tweaks/twists to the game (or been playing the rules wrong, as I am pretty certain we have been ). Why not tell everyone how you play YOUR game?

OUR HOUSE RULES

1. "Blood Thirsty" : You can encounter a character AND the space they occupy (in that order).

2. "Easy Pickings" : We generally trade-in on 5 instead of 7. Though we are considering playing an incremental increase of 5 per increase up to 5 and then next level to raise i.e. Strength 6, requires 6 trophy Strength, Strength 7, requires 7 trophy Strength etc.

3. "Sudden Death" : whoever gets to the Crown of Command first, wins.

4. "Stat Cap" : Strength and Craft can only ever be raised by 10 each. E.g. Warrior has Strength 4, you may only raise it to 14, which includes Objects and Followers. We also found this made characters like the Troll etc more special as no one could ever reach the heights they could.

5. "Quick Learner" : If you gain a Spell, you can discard one first to gain the new one.

6. "Spellbinder" : You can only cast 1 spell a turn and do not refresh spells until the beginning of your turn (prohibiting spell cycling).

7. "Drop It!" : You can ditch an object you are carrying in your current space at any time during your turn.

8. "The Bell Tolls For Thee!" : if you roll a 1 for movement, at the end of your turn, move the Reaper to your space and immediately encounter him, as opposed to rolling for his movement.

Because my troupe also likes to keep playing until they are pretty much ensured victory (I'm talking stupidly high stats), we also changed the difficulty level of all the "bosses" in the Inner Region. I did try to convinced them otherwise but everytime I went for the victory run, my bad luck would convinced them that they were right to wait, which, I suppose they were I guess, as long as everyone is happy playing Talisman for 3 hours, then that's ok..

This hasn't been used in the R4th, but it was prominent back in the 2nd ed + Adventure days:

Cut-throat

If you draw an Enemy card and fail to kill it, next turn you don't move away, instead you encounter the enemy again, until you or it is dead (or you manage to evade it).

Last Man Standing

Anytime you die, you're out, last char left alive wins (or gets a point).

Naturally, combining these two made for some very quick games, 1st turn Dragon, early Demon (or late Demon for non-Crafters) were dreaded. Hence we usually played best of 5 series (first to 3 points, IF you got a Crown of Command win, you netted 2 points in a best of 5). PvP was also a good way to get a point. Finger of Death was a truly terrifying spell with this method.

Dam said:

Cut-Throat... that's cool I might suggest that for draws in combat.

Funniest part was that 2nd ed + expansion + Adventure included a few enemies that if you lost a combat against, not only did you lose a life, but the enemy also gained one (looks like Expert Rule Book only lists Vampire as such, finnish translations had errors then). Towards the end, the enemy would have more life than your char .