Talisman Brings Out Our Worst

Last game night, I brought my Talisman (second edition) board game. It’s been a couple of years since we played it, and it’s a really fun game. Unfortunately, I had forgotten — all of us had forgotten — the arguments we can get into when trying to figure out some of the rules.Ninety percent of the rules work just fine — they’re clear, direct, and precise. But the 10% that are unclear, indirect, and imprecise cause major arguments among us. I don’t know why, but this game just brings out our worst sportsmanship.Before we finished our four hour game (yes, one game took four hours to play), a couple of us commented, “Now I remember why we haven’t played this in so long.”Normally, I enjoy playing any game with these guys, but with Talisman, we all argue pretty heatedly about rulings. I mean, it even got to the point where when I said, “Wait a second,” because I wanted to cast a spell (see the spell cards next to my sprite character in the picture) before the player to my left took another action, he said, “There’s nothing in the rules that says I have to stop just because you say ‘wait.'” And he continued drawing cards and doing his turn. I was dumbfounded. (That is so totally out of character for that player.)And when someone tries to play a spell on someone else, the target player always tries to do something in response to take effect before the first player’s action takes effect. And arguments start over why the target player can’t do this — arguments that end up with someone pissed off. (I believe this is the direct influence of Magic: the Gathering, because I never saw this rule assumption when I played the game back in the 80s and early 90s, before MtG became a phenomenon.)Talisman is a well designed and fun game, on paper. But for our group, it’s something of an evil force that makes us unfriendly. We’ve played the game a couple dozen times over the five years we’ve been together, and every time — every time — we’ve had some ugly arguments over it. What is it about this game? No other game affects us so.We play some pretty intense, challenging, aggressive, and competitive games, but we’ve always been good sports. When we find a rules problem in a game, we try to figure out the logical, reasonable, and most true-to-the-spirit ruling we can that satisfies everyone playing. But we never can with Talisman.After this past game, we all agreed I’d put it away and should never bring it back to the game night. It’s evil. It’s EVIL, I tell you. I wonder if having a priest exorcise it would help?Bullgritbullgrit@totalbullgrit.com