Psst, have you ever heard of our lord and saviour, Talislanta? It's a nifty fantasy game from the 1980s with metal races and weird shit and absolutely No Elves But Lots of People With Pointy Ears. You might want to check it out since all the books are free: www.talislanta.com.
Anybody tried Talislanta since the last thread?
Other urls found in this thread:
plus.google.com
reddit.com
enworld.org
app.roll20.net
kickstarter.com
twitter.com
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>vs Rajan
That is clearly an Aamanian, all seeing eye helmet and all.
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Quite right. It just seemed like he had a Rajan black headdress on top of his helmet.
Are you playing Talislanta? If yes, whereabouts IRL?
I'm debating on it for the next campaign. It is either straight Talislanta, my homebrew work in progress or homebrew setting using Talislanta system. Rural Germany.
Nice, but quite far from me (Canada). Which version of Tal?
4 or 5
Was there a German version of Talislanta made for your market, or are you using an English or French version?
I thought the setting was quite imaginative.
Unfortunately, most of it is too strange and difficult to grasp or find a foothold to like or care about for close to 95% of all players, even ones who are otherwise pretty good, so it'll always just be a niche setting at best I think.
You're right, even for most roleplayers who pride themselves on their creativity and imagination it's a hard slog.
But for those who make it's the best world.
Damn you and these threads! Now I've gone and downloaded all the books and have to read them all!
There was one, but I'm not using it. It's 2e. And besides I don't like switching languages between related reading material.
I don't think it is actually difficult. People are just prone to very quick reflexive emotional responses.
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Some Tal links, none of which are terribly active but hey, it's a small game:
G+ community
plus.google.com
Ribbit
reddit.com
Recent review of Talislanta on ENWorld:
enworld.org
A game on roll20:
app.roll20.net
The recent kickstarter for Talislanta: The Savage Lands
kickstarter.com
Great! Hope you enjoy them and manage to find someone to play it with.
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Ran my players through a brief campaign over the winter that was a revamp of a prior campaign from back when the game first came out. 3rd edition Tal, started in media res during a bombing of Cymril. The party helped people escape, then took the war to the Submen homefront.
It was equal parts Dirty Dozen, Hamburger Hill, and The Adventurous Simplicissimus
Way to go!
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This artist made Imrians suitably creepy and icky.
But I always thought some of the "evil savage" races should get more magic stuff. Like Imrians should be some sort of Aquamancer-cum-Cthulhu-Cultist or something.
Mud-Men should be primitive alchemists, running all sorts of experiments in their mud pits.
And a lot of the civilized, decadent cultures like the Farad and the Hadjin should be under the covert influence of the Malum wizards.
It is not like they explicitly don't have mages.
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So if I wanted to be a basic Male Human Fighter, what would be the equivalent in this setting?
The posterboy Thrall warrior is the typical warrior of a group from the western lands (most typical origin for a party). He scores extra points in genericness by being a clone soldier.
If you want something more humble, pretending to be in low fantasy, a Marukan is your guy. He is, dare I say from shitfarming origins.
From an opressively religious society, the Aamanian is your DEUS VULT choice. Might veer into paladin.
Or simply choose a quite human looking race and wing a custom archetype or use lifepaths from 5e to build a pure warrior career. Aamanians, Saristas, Zandir and Gao Din are quite understate in natural looks.
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Neat
You've got to love that their iconic race, the race with the most appearances in ads and cover art, is defined by its colorful skin in a game where all the interior art is black-and-white.
Hadn't heard of Talislanta before. What's the selling point besides the '80s fantasy setting?
I really hope 80's revival dies soon
Lots of strange races, lots of weird cultures and magical traditions. Cool landscapes, like seas of glass, cerulean forests, red crystal deserts. Neat ideas taken from the novels of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith and E R Burroughs.
In terms of mechanics 1980s Talislanta had a system that was 10x simpler and easier than AD&D at the time. It was the original "D20 System", with streamlined, unified rolls and a skill-based system. At a time when AD&D was still telling people they couldn't play orcs and dwarves could only be level 12 magic-users, Talislanta was an open breathe of fresh air.
It had really awesome art for the time as well.
You don't have to read them all. I usually suggest reading The Chronicles of Talislanta for fun (it has no rules), then either the 2E or 4E core rulebook for the mechanics.
I ran games for years with just those two.
Many of the books from different editions/publishers are just rehashes of the same core stuff, so you do not have to "read them all".
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And it is on multiple covers, in color.
I don't see why the pattern or shade element would be invalid for a Tattoo or why books should refrain from describing color if there are printed black and white. Seems arbitrary.
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I don't get what that Za Bandit is doing and why the Stryx are gasping.
Me neither. The both the color and B&W illustrations of the thrall are some of my favorite fantasy illustrations ever.
I mean look at this guy: he's about as bad-ass metal as it gets!*
>*it gets slightly more bad-ass when he's riding a mangonel lizard
I love you user, keep making these threads. they are my favorite ones
It is from the submen rising campaign. Zairach, one of the villains has a case of split personality. Him switching behavior might be the context of this scene.
>Fuck, even the Beastmen are plagiarists
I love you too, user, in the Platonic way that Talislanta loves you and everyone else in the world.
Let's drink a Kang skull goblet of our enemies' blood together some day.
Skål!
Sláinte!
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Which is, what, 5% of the art? They're not working with the restrictions of their budget very well.
Paranoia used to have the exact same problem. Everything in Alpha Complex revolves around color, and they couldn't show it anywhere inside their books.
I think it is fine and pretty much a non-problem. Illustrating what the color red looks like isn't going to be high on many peoples priorities.
If the budget for color isn't there meddling with the setting and cutting down references to color won't improve the product.
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Cool but gigantic pictures, might want to recompress those into JPGs.
Well, my Tal game fell through as almost all the players flaked out, but I did find a new group to play with.
Maybe some day the Talislanta dream will come alive again.
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