Talisman takes you on a journey through magical lands, as you endeavor to reclaim the Crown of Command. Each turn will see your hero advancing, battling, gaining knowledge and power necessary to defeat the guardians lurking between the Portal of Power and the Valley of Fire.
Fantasy Flight Games has sipped a new Talisman Revised 4th Edition, and if ever you’ve been interested in this franchise, then this edition of the title is very much worth your while.
A Fantasy Flight revision usually means high quality stock, high quality pieces, new rules, and ongoing support in an online community. But aside from the granted staples, this Revised Edition sports new decisions on how to improve upon Talisman’s mechanics to take the franchise to the next level.
For one, the designers wanted to keep the player count high (2-6) but decrease the time ti takes to play (under 2 hours). Considering we rarely have entire afternoons to lose ourselves in a marathon sessions of old school Talisman, this seems like a good thing to us.
They’ve also introduced new rules that help characters from dying so bloody often; the premier example being the new Fate mechanic. Each character has a pool of fate, each token giving them the ability to reroll one die result when it’s needed most dire. But fate is rare, and once it’s used the character will have to venture out of their way to get more, like spending a turn at a temple to pray for Fate instead of life, for instance.
Additionally there was a careful look at the major features surrounding the character factions, and they were rebalanced to make playing Evil characters a more viable option.
In a similar fashion, the game’s locations have gotten a mechanical face lift to ensure there’s always something to do for your character, no matter how remote the location he finds himself in the world.
Fate tokens are a new component and game mechanic. I’ll first explain the mechanic –how players use fate. For players who are curious about the development process, the last half of this article explains why fate was introduced in the Revised 4th Edition.
How Fate Works
Each character has a fate value listed on the right side of the character sheet. This number shows how many fate tokens the character starts the game with. During the game, a player may reroll any of his character’s die rolls (such as movement or attacks) by discarding one of his fate tokens. This is done on a one-for-one basis – spend one fate token to reroll one die. It is important to note that a character may only reroll a die once; he must accept the new result and cannot reroll the die again by spending more fate. Another important note is that if a character rolls more than one die, such as praying at the Temple space, he can only spend one fate to reroll a single die. He cannot, for example, spend two fate to reroll both dice.
Players must use fate wisely. Not only is it a limited resource, but also because rerolling a die does not guarantee a favorable result.
Developing Fate
The following section discusses the benefits of fate and how it affects the game.
More Control
Talisman has always been, and always will be, structured around randomness. Players roll to move, roll to attack, roll to resolve card or board encounters, Adventure and Spell cards are drawn randomly, and even which character you use is determined randomly. The benefit of this randomness is that it promotes variety and an incredible amount of replay value.
However, one side effect of all this randomness is that it can feel like the game is playing you instead of you playing the game. If a player finds himself with a long streak of bad luck and feels he has no control over the outcome, he tends to slip into a state of complacency. The player feels like he is simply standing by and watching what happens to his character instead of actively participating in the game. Fate was introduced as a resource that allows you to try turn your luck around and break out of the rut. Managing fate gives you more control over your character’s development during the game and leads to greater player immersion.
Greater Diversity and Flavor
Another benefit of fate is the ability to create greater diversity in characters. Some characters have a higher fate value, giving them greater control over their destiny, while other characters, like the Troll, are left to the mercy of ol’ Lady Luck. Adjusting fate values is also used as a tool to maintain greater balance between the different characters. Some characters just need a slight boost to balance them with the power level of other characters, and giving them an extra point or two of fate is often more balanced than giving the character another special ability.
More fate themed cards will be featured in upcoming expansions, adding to the story and immersion of the game. The image at top of this article shows that fate has a light side on the front as well as a dark side on the back of the token. Although this makes no difference in the core game, future expansions will add significance to the light and dark sides and turn fate into both a blessing and a curse.
