Talisman

One of the best-selling hobby boardgames of the mid-80s, Richard Harris's Talisman, was recently republished by Black Industries, a subsidiary of Games Workshop. Despite its fantasy theme, it is intermediate in complexity between most of what appears in the hobby market and the sort of thing published by mass-market boardgame producers. You can almost imagine it being published in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, during the first flower of game design as a creative enterprise, under the aegis either of Mr. George Parker or Mr. Milton Bradley.

That's a bad as well as a good thing, of course; though enjoyable, Talisman is not precisely a game of deep strategy. Indeed, it's mainly a game of luck. During your turn, you roll a die, and move as many spaces as indicated by your roll; however, you have a choice. You can move right, or you can move left. You examine the two spaces on which you may land, and select the better one. 90% of the time, the choice is obvious. If superior boardgames, as Knizia says, offer a limited number of choices each turn but make them difficult ones, well, Talisman fails at the starting gate.

There's a little more to the game's strategy than this: the game has three tracks (outer, middle, and inner), of increasing difficulty, and choosing the right moment to transition from one to the next is also strategic. Yet by and large, victory is the product of luck rather than good planning -- not invariably, but often.

Mind you, this also makes the game something that can be enjoyed by a wide range of ages; I began playing it with my children virtually from the moment they could read, and they continue to enjoy it to the present day. Since luck is the main factor, even as small children they could be competitive. Enjoyment is sustained during play through what I term "variety of encounter;" landing on a space usually means drawing a card from the encounter deck, and the results are highly variable, from monsters to fight, to characters who help you, to magic pools that can increase your character's stats (a necessity if you wish to ultimately get to the center of the board and win). In other words, you never know what's next, and a fortuitous turn of the deck can alter the game quickly.

Talisman is not, therefore, a triumph of the ars ludorum at its finest, but it is simple, engaging, and fun.

The most recent edition improves on the previous one mainly by providing better components: The characters are no longer flimsy cards inserted in plastic bases out of which they slip too easily, but cardboard inserts that remain in place. The cards themselves are far studier, and laminated; the cardboard chits used to record character stats are replaced with differently colored plastic pieces. This last is not an entirely successful innovation; while the plastic pieces are less likely to disintegrate with years of play, the raised numbers on the pieces are of the same color as the base, making them damn difficult to read. (The cardboard ones were printed in black on color, making them easy to see.) Additionally, the text printed on the board (every space contains some) is now in a smaller font, which does provide more space for attractive illustrations--but requies glasses of players who, like me, can no longer read 8 1/2 point type unaided.

Still and all, it's the same game -- light and enjoyable entertainment, suitable for a party or convention setting, and now in an attractive and sturdy edition.

N.B.: The publisher's site says Talisman is out of stock, but it's available online from a variety of vendors (one of whom is linked above). Since this edition was published just last October, and is so quickly out of print, I imagine it will be back in print rather soon.