Talisman – visiting an old friend

Last week we were short a couple of players, and even though I was willing to have a go of KOTOR with who we had, Terry had been talking up the old Talisman game a lot in the last couple of weeks for some reason, so we went ahead and played it with four of us over at Andy’s. It was me, Paul, Andy, and Terry.

I’ve known Terry for over 20 years. When I first started going to and working at California Renaissance Faires around 1989, my buddy who went with me to get a job there for the first time eventually hooked up with Terry, who worked at a costume booth and we stayed friends after the rather brutal break-up. Terry lived in a nice condo with another Faire person, Lisa, right above the Hollywood Bowl, and I used to hang out there a lot. You could go behind the condo building, hike for a couple of minutes across a field, and find yourself in a spot where you could see part of the stage, and hear whatever was going on there perfectly. That was kind of cool.

Lisa had this huge comic book collection, and the living room hallway had long shelves where she kept them. Paradise to me. I was there so much, you’d have thought I was going out with Lisa, but despite her drunken, clumsy advances one late night I had no interest in romance with the lady. What I was interested in was reading the comics, and playing the two boardgames she had copies of; Blood Bowl, and Talisman.

We all got pretty addicted to Talisman. It was the 2nd edition, and she had both the Dungeon and City expansions, so these tended to be loooooong sessions.

I got my own beat-up copy during the 90’s for a song, but really only had the chance to pull it out and play every 4-5 years. The last time was around 2003, I think. So anyway, Terry brought a copy she had picked up at some point, and it turned out to be a later version with plastic mini’s instead of the cardboard stand-ups. I thought it was all good, because Terry not having any of the expansions for that meant we had a chance of finishing it that night, which we did.

Everybody had cool rangers and barbarians and the like, but I got stuck with the one very lame characters; the Goblin Fanatic. It actually had OK abilities, but the figure was so lame. It used a wrecking ball for some reason (by this version of the game it had been remade a bit to look and fit more with the Warhammer Universe), and the mini had a hard time staying upright. Constantly falling over. Getting stuck with this mort made me feel like I got last choice at a convention D&D game preroll character or something. Ugh. Even in Talisman I like to connect with a character to some degree, but eventually I was just looking forward to the game being over. And Terry eventually won with the Ranger.

I for sure would like to use my older version, with expansions, next time, but that can often lead to a several hour game so who knows. I had some fun, but really, I kind of wish we had used the evening to do some RPG action whatever it was. I think as with a lot of things, my desire to play some Talisman that night had more to do with nostalgia for past games than for a great desire to use it as an alternative when the full group is scarce. I think Andy and Paul liked it a lot though, so I may just be playing again before too long. But if I get the Goblin Fanatic again, I’ll make sure I die quick this time.