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Admiral Squish
2012-06-28, 07:26 AM
Long ago, I had a book called 'The Talislanta Worldbook'. Keep in mind, this was long, long before I had ever heard anything about tabletop games, and certainly before I knew anything else about them. Back then, the book was simply an atlas of a strange and fantastic world. Often, I would pretend to be different creatures from the book, or just read it over and over again.

Just recently, the game was brought back to my attention. I'm surprised how well I remember the book. But I'm curious about the game now, too. Does anyone else know of Talislanta? Has anyone played it?

For those not initiated, I'll sum it up as this. Talislanta has over 100 races, and none of them are elves. That's the most interesting part, to me. It's not new takes on old legends or a rehashing of ideas we've all seen a thousand times before. Everything in the setting is original, and it's really quite intricate. If you're interested in learning more, here's a link to the site (http://talislanta.com/). It turns out they've made their entire library free to download.

Yora
2012-06-28, 09:25 AM
The fact that they keep shouting the fact that they don't have elves always makes me feel suspicious that contempt is the main driving force behind everything.

Morph Bark
2012-06-28, 09:56 AM
So how many of these races are dwarves?

obryn
2012-06-28, 10:11 AM
I remember it, and remember buying at least one core rulebook.

The system - at least as I remember it back then - was kind of rudimentary and disappointing. Most of the book was devoted to the races (or maybe that's the part I just read the most; dunno.) Also, even back then, I could see that the advantages of having (say) 4 arms , three brains, or being able to fly more or less outweighed most other considerations. :)

-O

Yora
2012-06-28, 10:15 AM
So how many of these races are dwarves?

I've downloaded the players guide, and so far I have not seen any dwarves.

But it's all a lie! I've already seen four races of elves! They are not called elves, but they totaly are. :smallmad:

Man on Fire
2012-06-28, 03:03 PM
I have a buddy who played this. Once he heard about my interest in it he told me exactly what Yora said - there are several races that are Elves in all but name. My interest faded instantly, I have no respect for games that are lying to me.

a_humble_lich
2012-06-29, 05:58 AM
I played a quite lengthy campaign of this quite some time ago. To modern eyes the system is a little clunky, and there was no effort put into balance (as was fairly common in that era), but it was a fun game. While you are right, there were elves, they just called them something else, it was one of the first fantasy settings I can remember that deliberately tried to move away from Tolkien based fantasy.

One interesting tidbit, the original game was published by Bard games. After they went out of business in 1990 the game was picked up by a brand new company who published the third edition. That little known company was called Wizards of the Coast.