Talislanta for 5E D&D

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How much do you guess the all in pledge will be?


  • Total voters
    12
Overall, this should be good for Talislanta. I bet almost no one under 30 has heard of it and that's over half the gaming population.

I wonder if they'll keep archetypes as an option. It would speed up gameplay for some people if they could pick a character sheet, add a few bits, and be ready to go.
 
Wonder how they do the "race-as-class-turned-to-11" justice in 5E. But yeah, the first editions where pretty D&D-like, and the power/magic level was high enough, so this might actually be a good fit. And after a while, you can ask the players whether they want to see that really nice alternative system you conveniently have prepared.
 
Could be a stretch goal. But the artwork and updated time line got me sold.
 
My heart aches, the art is gorgeous, but I am a hardcore fan of Tal's system (with a preference for 4E.) It just breaks my heart. An announcement of it coming is here.

I literally just expressed these same sentiments in the Talislanta: The Savage Land thread (not realizing this thread existed). Right down to the heartbreak, I am right there with you.
 
My heart aches, the art is gorgeous, but I am a hardcore fan of Tal's system (with a preference for 4E.) It just breaks my heart. An announcement of it coming is here.
...I'd rather get a hardcopy of The Savage Lands setting, instead. I like the art in it, and it's in the original system:shade:.
 
I literally just expressed these same sentiments in the Talislanta: The Savage Land thread (not realizing this thread existed). Right down to the heartbreak, I am right there with you.
Comrade hug? Seriously. I've almost no use for 5E rules. I've played them to death since they came out due to other people's focus on it, but D&D isn't a selling point for me.

I'll also be honest--I know a few people who will pick it up because "Hey, it's different." Most of what I've seen through 5E wise is people playing 5E as 5E for itself, they don't want a new setting. They want to play elves, and dwarves, and half-orcs, and the same old same old thing. Admittedly, I like those things, just not D&D's version of them. Oh, some will play the newer D&D races, usually whatever gives them the best bonuses for their class. Sighs.

I feel we're going to see a D20-like crash soon, I hope not, but even D&D fans sometimes run out of steam in getting new stuff.
 
Comrade hug? Seriously. I've almost no use for 5E rules. I've played them to death since they came out due to other people's focus on it, but D&D isn't a selling point for me.

I'll also be honest--I know a few people who will pick it up because "Hey, it's different." Most of what I've seen through 5E wise is people playing 5E as 5E for itself, they don't want a new setting. They want to play elves, and dwarves, and half-orcs, and the same old same old thing. Admittedly, I like those things, just not D&D's version of them. Oh, some will play the newer D&D races, usually whatever gives them the best bonuses for their class. Sighs.

I feel we're going to see a D20-like crash soon, I hope not, but even D&D fans sometimes run out of steam in getting new stuff.
Maybe we see a crash. Talislanta does have a tendency to arrive at a location just as the impending doom comet arrives.
Last one was....made for 5e, planned to be made for Savage Worlds (before an edition change came), planned to be made for Pathfinder (before an edition change came), made for a long time system on life support(Omni), made for d6 (alive?). I recall 4e Tal being converted to d20 during the last rpg crash. I mean the power to take down trends, people, companies of this game seems so strong I half suspect Sechi is a necromancer
 
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I feel we're going to see a D20-like crash soon, I hope not, but even D&D fans sometimes run out of steam in getting new stuff.
It's possible but I don't think it's any more likely than a mtg crash. Just like mtg, individuals will get burned out others will take their place. Hasbro has picked up the pace on publishing but is still well less than one a month. The D20 crash was precipitated by 3.5 screwing over 3rd party publishers; hopefully they've learned from that.

Many D&D players are into playing the mechanics more than anything but I see quite a few using it because it's there and are doing mostly character based stuff or lots of other things.

What's really left to do, mechanics-wise for Talislanta? This isn't Hellboy where the only version (only version any time soon?) is 5e. The Savage Land kickstarter had ~2,000 backers. To get more physical books and adventures, it could really use some new fans.
 
So related to the actual 5th edition if Talislanta.
Which books were actually printed vs pdfs? I think I have all the books but I can't tell.
Anyone know?
 
Wonder how they do the "race-as-class-turned-to-11" justice in 5E. But yeah, the first editions where pretty D&D-like, and the power/magic level was high enough, so this might actually be a good fit. And after a while, you can ask the players whether they want to see that really nice alternative system you conveniently have prepared.

Into the Unknown does 5e race-as-class and it is pretty cool.
 
Into the Unknown does 5e race-as-class and it is pretty cool.
It's a lot easier to do when you have a) not that many races and b) not that many class features. Now Talislanta has a lot of a and 5E has a lot of b., and if they want to keep both, it's a multiplicative horror. Then again, with "four EPIC books"...

I wonder how they "archetypes" will work out. It's not like all the Tal "professions" were that different, and there aren't any late-game abilities to emulate anyway, but just sorting everything into "you're ranger, you're an eldritch knight" won't be that evocative. Maybe lots of factored out powers that then are just referenced in "archetype" lists. This way you could have a few pages of core 5E abilities and then 45-90 pages for the race-professions that just refer to them.
 
I'm a long-time RPG guy but I have to confess that I've never played Talislanta. In fact, other than their "no elves" ads in Dragon, I think that I know zero about the setting. :sad: Can anyone give me a quick overview of what makes Talislanta so cool?
 
I'm one of those odd ducks who has also never played it. However, I do like free stuff, so will at least check out the core books to see what all the fuss is about. What's the best edition top look at? I probably don't need all five....
 
I find the Big Blue Book, i.e. the 4th edition to be the most accessible introduction. It has a rather simple yet universal ruleset, all the information you need in one place and excellent art and layout.

As for what makes Talislanta cool, I'd say that it's the style of fantasy. Picture it as a mixture between the Star Wars cantina, but with a lower animatronics budget. So your "normal" is plenty of colorful people, although a lot of them "just" differ in color and might have pointy ears or brow ridges. Quite often, different culture means different anatomy, although there's a core group of human-ish cultures.
Magic is common, but the world often is a bit more Sword & Sorcery, not patterned after European medieval structures. Very "Points of Light", where you have to make treks across the desert in a sail-powered wheel-barge or even take to the air in flying ships to get to your safe target.

Basically it's fantasy turned to 11: more races, more magic styles, more space. It often sounds quite confused, but it actually works better than more "grounded" fantasy melting pots. I can only recommend grabbing a free PDF and reading through the race descriptions and the background parts, it's very hard to summarize this. The Traveler's Guide in 4E is good, although having browsed through the character archetypes beforehand might be a good idea.
 
Holy shit. So you're telling me that the John Harper who designed Talislanta 4E is the same John Harper who did Blades in the Dark? How could I not have known that? Well, 4E it is then.
 
Can anyone give me a quick overview of what makes Talislanta so cool?
I don't know that I'm very good at this, but here goes:

Talislanta is a post-cataclysmic fantasy world that, in the original game*, is far enough removed from apocalypse that it's on the verge of regaining some semblance of the advanced society it once was (the past was so technilogically & magically advanced as to approach transhuman levels). It's a world teeming with a variety of sentient species (some or many of them created by the now-extinct peoples who brought on the cataclysm), and it consequently a place ripe with conflict - even if it's bubbling just under the surface. The wild, untamed places are, however, extremely primal and exceedingly dangerous. In this way it operates a lot like a "points of light" style setting, where each point of light has a varying level of luminescence. But there are ruins of the lost age and lost knowledge in those wild places, and so there's plenty of reason to go adventuring.

Culturally, none of the cultures draw on western influences. The setting more closely resembles The Dying Earth on mushrooms. There are strong eastern influences throughout the races presented. And while I have my favorite standard "bad guys" in the setting, none of the cultures are explicitly good or bad.

One of the selling points for me is that the game goes for breadth rather than depth. You have a lot of interesting places and societies to choose from for adventuring, but there's not a lot of canon you need to absorb to get into it. This, to me, makes it easier to pick a place that seems interesting and just make it my own.

*Talislanta: The Savage Land takes place much more near to the cataclysm and so plays more closely to a gritty sword and sorcery game.
 
Holy shit. So you're telling me that the John Harper who designed Talislanta 4E is the same John Harper who did Blades in the Dark? How could I not have known that? Well, 4E it is then.
John Harper didn't design it exactly. I mean the core action table is I believe the same in 1-5th edition.
 
John Harper didn't design it exactly. I mean the core action table is I believe the same in 1-5th edition.
No, he did the 4th Ed game design, I get that, and the editions aren't all that different. I'd just never seen Talislanta connected to him at all and he's not exactly a unknown designer at this point. It's like some just reminded me to check this cool game out, and only after a dramatic pause told me that a designer I really like was the core edition guy for it.
 
No, he did the 4th Ed game design, I get that, and the editions aren't all that different. I'd just never seen Talislanta connected to him at all and he's not exactly a unknown designer at this point. It's like some just reminded me to check this cool game out, and only after a dramatic pause told me that a designer I really like was the core edition guy for it.
If it helps J. Tweet did 3rd edition
 
If it helps J. Tweet did 3rd edition
That I did know. I also like Tweet a lot as a designer, so I have a couple of reasons to dig in and find out what I'm missing.
 
The only edition that I've played is 2nd Edition in high school but I have all the pdfs from the Talislanta website.
 
Tweet also wrote a pretty great introductory adventure, Scent of the Beast which easily leads into the Sub-Men Rising game by frequent collaborator Robin D. Laws. Always wanted to run that...
 
Comrade hug? Seriously. I've almost no use for 5E rules. I've played them to death since they came out due to other people's focus on it, but D&D isn't a selling point for me.

I'll also be honest--I know a few people who will pick it up because "Hey, it's different." Most of what I've seen through 5E wise is people playing 5E as 5E for itself, they don't want a new setting. They want to play elves, and dwarves, and half-orcs, and the same old same old thing. Admittedly, I like those things, just not D&D's version of them. Oh, some will play the newer D&D races, usually whatever gives them the best bonuses for their class. Sighs.

I feel we're going to see a D20-like crash soon, I hope not, but even D&D fans sometimes run out of steam in getting new stuff.
I think it's due to critical role and other streaming channels, but 5e, more than any version of D&D before it has become something of fandom of its own.
 
I think it's due to critical role and other streaming channels, but 5e, more than any version of D&D before it has become something of fandom of its own.

Maybe, but I feel that has always been a strong strain in D&D fandom. 1e seems like an edition that attracted a fair number of fanatical types as well.

I recall a poll on a forum dedicated to AD&D asking what everyone's favourite non-D&D classic system was, listing classics like Ghostbusters, Toon and Paranoia, and not only had few been played but there were a bunch of comments that they didn't even know of these games! Not knowing Paranoia and you gamed in the 80s/90s?

I mean, now that I think of it, is there a 5e-dedicated reddit or forum that dogpiles or outright prohibits talk of other editions? We have 2-3 forums on the net dedicated to OD&D, 1e and an even more 'purist' or 'Gygaxian' 1e.

Some are more tolerant of discussion of other editions than others but such schisms in the fandom doesn't suggest more broad-mindedness than one finds in 5e fandom.
 
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Maybe, but I feel that has always been a strong strain in D&D fandom. 1e seems like an edition that attracted a fair number of fanatical types as well.

I recall a poll on a forum dedicated to AD&D asking what everyone's favourite non-D&D classic system was, listing classics like Ghostbusters, Toon and Paranoia, and not only had few been played but there were a bunch of comments that they didn't even know of these games! Not knowing Paranoia and you gamed in the 80s/90s?

I mean, now that I think of it, is there a 5e-dedicated reddit or forum that dogpiles or outright prohibits talk of other editions? We have 2-3 forums on the net dedicated to OD&D, 1e and an even more 'purist' or 'Gygaxian' 1e.

Some are more tolerant of discussion of other editions than others but such schisms in the fandom doesn't suggest more broad-mindedness than one finds in 5e fandom.
Yeah, I'd seen a similar thread on a mostly-D&D forum as well. For a lot of people there Traveller and RuneQuest were those new-fanged systems which do everything differently, and that they've never played:shade:.
 
I think it's a bit inherent to the RPG scene prior to VTTs. You need a group of people to play the game. You need them to commit to multiple sessions. You need to learn the rules. So anytime you need to change any of those things your increasing the chances that the game fails for everyone. That's a good argument for a bit of bullying to constrain a group. It's less important these days but still required
 
I think it's a bit inherent to the RPG scene prior to VTTs. You need a group of people to play the game. You need them to commit to multiple sessions. You need to learn the rules. So anytime you need to change any of those things your increasing the chances that the game fails for everyone. That's a good argument for a bit of bullying to constrain a group. It's less important these days but still required
Only if your playstyle requires that everyone would know the rules:thumbsup:.
 
I've played lots of games with one or more players who don't the rules from their asshole. So long as they're willing to learn on the fly, and can manage the idea of playing a character, it works just fine.
 
I've played lots of games with one or more players who don't the rules from their asshole. So long as they're willing to learn on the fly, and can manage the idea of playing a character, it works just fine.
+1 to that.
And, for the record, a lot of these games were using GURPS.
 
GURPS is a game that even people who play don't actually know where the poop hole is. Sad but true.
 
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