TALISMAN RPG

Fantasy comfort gaming

APegasus Spiele n adaptation of an almost 40-year old boardgame, the Talisman RPG is a difficult game to praise. Not because it’s bad, but rather because so many of the things that underpin its strange charm can so easily sound like criticisms.

The gameplay, for example, offers little beyond the same dungeon crawling and dragon-slaying that has dominated the RPG scene since its inception. Its rules system is functional rather than exciting, and the only factor keeping its setting from being completely generic fantasy is the inclusion of ghouls as a playable race. Even the olde-worlde parchment design of the rulebook feels like something conjured up in the early 00s.

Really, just one of these factors should be enough to doom any modern RPG to obscurity. Any yet, mash them all together and somehow they produce a game that’s as warm, comforting and reliable as an old pair of socks. To play a game of Talisman RPG is to stop worrying about boundary pushing or redefining the rules of narrative, and just spend a few hours indulging in classic fantasy adventures with a neat little ruleset and a few new toys.

The ruleset in question is handled by a framework of systems that should be familiar to anyone who’s so much as dabbled in RPGs – or, indeed, the Talisman boardgame – before. Character creation, for example, relies on the classic old trope of blending archetypal races with archetypal classes and them spicing things up with a few skills and special powers.

Fortunately, there are a handful of neat ideas and twists that help to make Talisman RPG’s heroes stand out a little from the crowd. The priest class, for example, is barred from using weapons, and there aren’t too many RPGs out there where you can rock up to a standard party as an undead minstrel and still fit into the general aesthetic.

25-40m 3-8 8+ £35

unicorn?!”. As with all games like this, it’s actually those worse at the game that make it most fun. Making said unicorn is difficult enough from a range of shapes, let alone landing four of the line symbols to do it with. You’ll laugh at the failed attempt, your fellow players will laugh trying to diagnose what it is.

Artbox therefore is a fun game for the family, with enough silliness to tempt a surly younger player, and potentially a good gateway style game. However, once the initial novelty wears off, the wish to play it again is limited, and whilst it’s nice to see additional rules included for when you’ve mastered the play, these too wear off after a while. That said, Banksy and Neil Buchannan had to start somewhere, and Artbox is as good as any an art based game to test your friends with.

❚

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