Talisman - Session Report

My son was crawling around under my bed the other day when he came across my 1983 copy of Talisman. He then proceeded to mention it about every other hour for the next few days, until I finally agreed to play a game with him yesterday.

I always play this game with a number of house rules, the important ones are...

1) Start with 4 gold.
2) You can use as many weapons as you can carry.
3) You can wear as many armours and helmets and use as many shields as you can carry.
3) You can have as many spells as you have Craft.

These three rules allow you to get started quicker, you have enough money to buy an axe and you can build up some strength quickly by carrying a couple of swords and whatnots.

My son started off with the Woodsman and I had the bad luck to get the Ninja. I dislike the Ninja because he cant take followers.

Almost immediately I ran into trouble losing gold to a couple of adventure cards, a life to a dragon and another to the depredations of my sons Woodsman. While I was sailing downhill into deathsville he was collecting tons of gold and followers.

He switftly used his woodsman abilities to capture a Lion to fight with him. He also got a Unicorn, and a female whos title I can't remember, the Champion, horse and cart,warhorse and the Gnome. Then to rub salt in my wounds he used the other woodsman ability to cross the river to the middle region without an axe.

I then made the mistake of telling him that I'd be coming up the stairs to follow him. So... he toaded me with a spell. My next three turns moving only one space and losing what few goodies I'd managed to gain.

While I was toadying around he made a few circuits of the middle region losing a life in the desert but also picking up plenty of Craft from a pool.

When the toading had worn off I ended up having to do a lap of the outer region to get back to where my stuff had been left. Every roll made me either go the wrong way because the alternative would be a big baddie, including at least two dragons by this time.

He visited the wizard, got a mission and was returning to get his Talisman by the time I'd managed to pick up my lost goodies and cross the river.

The alarm went off, we had five minutes left. I was expecting to have to use the other scoring house rule which we apply when no one has won and time runs out. ( The rule is that you score 1 point for each point of your statistics, and 1 point for each gold ).

In two twift turns I lost a life in the desert and the last to a monster.

I resurected as the Druid back in the outer region and my son managed to get to the entrance to the inner region when time ran out. I told him that he was easily going to win on points, but the sad look in his eye told me he wanted to try for the finish.

I caved in and told him we would speed through his run on the Crown of Command. Smiles all round.

He entered the mines, using his Gnome follower, easily passed. Met a single vampire, losing two followers. Met a single lizard, wasted it and entered into the Crown of Command sauron

Once again I was totally beaten by "Him".

Game time, 1 hour.