Talislanta appreciation thread. Hopefully it's more than me and 1 other guy here

You've been doing this for like a week, keeping these threads on life support by posting art. It's kind of sad. You aren't going to make discussion magically appear like this. Either start a discussion with some actual text or accept that there isn't enough interest in Talislanta to keep a rolling thread going. I'd say give it some time without a thread, to let people build up things to talk about, but the level of discussion in here doesn't give me any level if faith in that.

Are there pre-written adventures for this?

These for 3rd ed and another one for 4e

Don't play in the bad weather........you'll get altered.

So since the first time I was reminded that Talislanta exists a few months ago, I've been wanting to run a game of it.

Something on the Southwestern coast of Faradun. Two Farad fortresses are serving Hadji nobles by providing slave wars. From gladiatorial combat to pitched battles, they allow the Hadji to pretend at being trainers or generals. Also leading safaris into the dark coast across the bay. Eventually the players getting a chance to escape into the ghostlands.

But I don't remember how to play Talislanta. Going to have to relearn it. Haven't since the 90s.

I think it'll be fun, though. Something high adventure with clear good guys and bad-guys, and an eventual quest to steal some relics from the Hadjin tombs that they learn about before escaping.

Wow, that's....really helpful! You're cute!!

Are you implying the PCs will be the slaves sent to the Hadjin to be puppet warriors?

Might be hard to control if they have any level of power or magic.

I don't know what version of Tal you played in the 90s, but if you want the simplest version try 2E.

This thread was all me, but there have been other people who started threads and posted pictures.

And it's garnering interest from people who had never heard of Tal, or had played it a long time ago, or who had heard of it but didn't know how to get the books. These people are now reading and playing about it, and joining various groups online (I know this because I've seen the counts go up recently).

So it's all good. But if it bothers you that much, feel free to filter us out.

>Space Wizards
Fucking seriously?

2e is what I have played before--I remember the cover. But it was a long time ago and I remember it being funky. I was implying that, yeah. I'm sure I can figure out something to render magic a non-issue for the early game, though, and warn the players about that.

Ayup. In floating magical sky-cities, allied with aliens from another dimension.

Magic was originally introduced to Talislanta through a crashed spaceship. Parts of the wreck are sought after artifacts.

Okay, but it doesn't seem like they refer to themselves as Space Wizards.
To clarify, I got nothing about the concept of some wizards going into space and making friends with aliums, it's jsut that havign them called Space Wizards in-setting sems tacky.

I was just being silly; in-setting they're called the Archaens, a progenitor race of super-powerful wizards who created half the races on the continent of Talislanta using sorcerous hybridization techniques and then promptly destroyed half the planet in a magical conflagration called The Great Disaster, the cause of which is hotly debated.

was it any more silly when D&D did it ~35 years ago

If that's a Spelljammer reference fuck you, man. I'm not THAT old.

mystara reference

What's the most obnoxious Tal character concept you can think of? There must be one or two.

I thought Mystara had aliens (in the DA series), but that they used tech instead of magic.

A muse.

Ferran thieves are already pretty obnoxious: they have incredibly high DEX and can spew noxious gases like a skunk. It's like the perfect thief who you really don't want to catch.

Maruk dung merchants ain't great either, they will fail at everything, a real Timmy of the party.

...

bump

And this is the beefed-up version! In 2e they basically had no skills or combat abilities other than laborer.

But with the Maruk Talismancer you could do some funky stuff with luck.

It would come down to me not liking the race fluff.
Bodor Musician is a bad cantina background filler.

Yes, weird restrictions in particular. Like Sea Nomads never stepping on dry land.

For some reason my players appear to have a serious aversion to this, so I have to work to make it palatable. Which of the editions is the most flexible in terms of how you modify characters? I recall 2e being not much more than choosing a template and a bonus skill.

If you want more detailed character creation, Morrigan's 5th edition had mountains of quirks (feats) and paths (backgrounds) to choose from.

The paths are like the terms of Traveller, in that you can combine multiple paths.