Quick read :eek:

Art is fantastic and I'm very pleased with the perfunctory read so far.
Hoping to sit down and read more thoroughly this weekend

Anyone have the link to get a legal copy of the PDF pf the latest version?

Quote from: sureshot;1024154Anyone have the link to get a legal copy of the PDF pf the latest version?

TSL is not widely available yet.

Man, this is so frustrating - I just realized after half a year my pledge didn't go through.

Does anyone know when it will be available for sale?

(I'm actually waiting for the 5e version, but would probably buy the current version just to see how it looks).

EDIT: found a preview on the KS, looks good, but not that much art in these pages.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/82wolxat4g7fjmr/AAADMiWa0Td-Yv3V3RnnHbjqa?dl=0&preview=Talislanta-TSL-WIP3.pdf

EDIT 2: is it just me, or is talislanta a great fit for Dark Sun? I like Vandar (are these the Thrall now?) more than muls, I think, although I am curious to see if they are all blue now - I liked the colorful versions.

Quote from: sureshot;1024071Any idea when print versions will hit stores?

Officially - no. D6 and 5e editions are in final layout. I *assume* the print editions will all hit around the same time - but don't hold me to that. That's up to Nocturnal.

Quote from: sureshot;1024071The only issue I ever saw with Talislanta was a lack of exposure imo. No advertising or not very much of it. Word of mouth by gamers is good yet they need to do more. As well as a lack of expansions for the setting. One of the reasons why a rpg like Pathfinder does well is that it releases new sourcebooks on a constant basis. I'm not saying they need to release as much yet a core book with little support will not work this time around.

I agree with tenbones on what I have seen about the art. Rpgs are imo a visual medium and the new art is good and makes one want to read the rpg more.

Here's the odd part - among many "odd" things about Talislanta. Pretty much everyone from the "good ol' days" knows the (in)famous "NO ELVES" advertisement. It's still a big in-joke even now. I don't think it as lack of advertisement recognition. But it probably turned off a lot of "classic Tolkienesque" fantasy lovers which made a significant portion of the population.

So many people avoided it. Which is a shame, because in context the core system of Talislanta was (and remains) amazingly solid with a far smaller mechanical footprint than D&D, so much so had Talislanta been a "traditional" fantasy RPG, I'm convinced the system alone would have garnered a lot of fans. Combined with the unique setting of Talislanta, I believe it was just ahead of its time. Too far ahead perhaps, like Tekumel, which setting-wise shares a very unique (and deeper) set of conceits that probably gets lost on most average gamers.

Talislanta had a lot of supplements (see Talislanta.com and download it all!) but yeah - it never quite hit that critical mass, but yet it never really died either. Certainly not for me. Hence somewhere between the start of this very thread and this post I ended up writing on this project, LOL. And here I am - spreading the word of mouth.

Quote from: Tetsubo;1024134I'm still thoroughly bummed that the Pathfinder edition will never see the light of day. It was the only one I was interested in.

Bummed for you man. But with the loss of Stewart, Nocturnal got put in a very bad position they're still recovering from.

Same issue with the Savage Worlds edition, which I think the setting is perfect for. I was asked if I'd be interested in doing Savage Worlds conversion, but I have other projects in the fire and my price was probably too prohibitive. So it got axed.

Quote from: HorusArisen;1024146Quick read :eek:

Art is fantastic and I'm very pleased with the perfunctory read so far.
Hoping to sit down and read more thoroughly this weekend

Make sure you send in those typos when you catch them! I've found a few already.

Quote from: tenbones;1023995The game has dropped (PDF first for backers - print is incoming). If anyone has any questions/comments etc. feel free to ask.

Could you comment on the Vangar/Thralls?

Quote from: tenbones;1024172Make sure you send in those typos when you catch them! I've found a few already.

Lol I'll do my best but to say I'm unobservant is under exaggerated :cool:

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1024179Could you comment on the Vangar/Thralls?

Vandar are the pre-cursors of the Thrall. They are the original templates that would later evolve into the Thralls of the New Era which most Talislanta fans will recognize.

In Savage Lands you're on the ground floor where the militant and cultural traditions like the tattooing to distinguish one another, starts to coalesce. Hence the cover figure, is what a Thrall would look like if they weren't tattooed. Obviously it gets a lot more elaborate in the New Era (where the tattoos themselves denote achievements). In Savage Lands - they used to denote the marks of the Sorcerers that created them. Another difference is there are no female Vandar. They're all male. But they can mate with Virago - another biomantically created race (and they are all female).

Vandar are not too different from the Thralls except they're FAR more aggressive due to the proximity of their creation and the environment they live in, which is relatively more hostile. They know one thing: battle. This whole "civilization-thing" is new to them. So everything about Vandar culture is viewed through the lens of combat and tactical skill. It quickly establishes a pecking order and allows them get on with the needs of survival. They're not bloodthirsty - it's just their programmed instinct to wage war that defines their worldview.

The timeline is a little fuzzy on purpose. Simply because the Great Disaster that wiped out the Archaen Empire was so cataclysmic it literally reduced civilization down to stone-age levels of survival. Savage Lands are the first glimmerings of these tribes vying for the emergence of possible civilization amidst the wreckage of an empire of Sorcerer God-Kings. The amount of history of the Archaen Empire in the game is pretty vast (and deserving of it's own game in its own right, imo). Savage Lands is "many centuries" before the classic New Era of Talislanta (editions 1-5).

Quote from: tenbones;1024200Vandar are the pre-cursors of the Thrall. They are the original templates that would later evolve into the Thralls of the New Era which most Talislanta fans will recognize.

In Savage Lands you're on the ground floor where the militant and cultural traditions like the tattooing to distinguish one another, starts to coalesce. Hence the cover figure, is what a Thrall would look like if they weren't tattooed. Obviously it gets a lot more elaborate in the New Era (where the tattoos themselves denote achievements). In Savage Lands - they used to denote the marks of the Sorcerers that created them. Another difference is there are no female Vandar. They're all male. But they can mate with Virago - another biomantically created race (and they are all female).

Vandar are not too different from the Thralls except they're FAR more aggressive due to the proximity of their creation and the environment they live in, which is relatively more hostile. They know one thing: battle. This whole "civilization-thing" is new to them. So everything about Vandar culture is viewed through the lens of combat and tactical skill. It quickly establishes a pecking order and allows them get on with the needs of survival. They're not bloodthirsty - it's just their programmed instinct to wage war that defines their worldview.

The timeline is a little fuzzy on purpose. Simply because the Great Disaster that wiped out the Archaen Empire was so cataclysmic it literally reduced civilization down to stone-age levels of survival. Savage Lands are the first glimmerings of these tribes vying for the emergence of possible civilization amidst the wreckage of an empire of Sorcerer God-Kings. The amount of history of the Archaen Empire in the game is pretty vast (and deserving of it's own game in its own right, imo). Savage Lands is "many centuries" before the classic New Era of Talislanta (editions 1-5).

This sounds awesome! Thank you.

Holy shit, no magic spells.  That one took balls of solid adamantium.

I like that each culture, since they are all either primitive or hyper-specialised, have unique templates for chargen, but not a ton of them, only 2-3 per culture.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1024320Holy shit, no magic spells.  That one took balls of solid adamantium.

I like that each culture, since they are all either primitive or hyper-specialised, have unique templates for chargen, but not a ton of them, only 2-3 per culture.

Yeah - the idea was for things to be more emergent in play. There IS magic - but they're treated as skills (Primitive Magic Rituals in the Skill section). More ritual than traditional Talislanta spell-casting because that knowledge has been lost.

Keeps the post-apocalyptic feel. And if one really were inclined, you could shoe-horn any of the traditional Talislanta magic-systems into the game without missing a beat. That was completely by intent from the outset.

Can't wait for it to be released to the general public. Any chance we could see the table of contents? Or a backer's review of the PDF?

Quote from: TNMalt;1024553Can't wait for it to be released to the general public. Any chance we could see the table of contents? Or a backer's review of the PDF?

What he said.