Talislanta: Fantasy Roleplaying

Talislanta #IRN1001

by Stephan Michael Sechi, John Harper, Adam Sonfield

Talislanta is a world unlike any other. This book features The Traveler’s Guide: over 300 pages of detailed information covering the history, cultures, creatures, and geography of Talislanta. Easy-to-use Action Table system: a single adaptable mechanic for combat, spellcasting and skill use, so there’s no need to constantly refer back to the rules during play. Over 120 character archetypes – with everything a player needs to know to start adventuring in the world of Talislanta. A comprehensive Game Master’s guide helps you plan adventures and introduce players to the rich and diverse world of Talislanta.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy

502 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Stephan Michael Sechi is best known for creating the Talislanta RPG, originally published by Bard Games. Along with contributing and producing many more books in the Talislanta Milieu (including a fiction anthology), Sechi also wrote Bard's Atlantis and Complete Adventurer series, recorded three CDs based on music from Talislanta, wrote the Pandemonium! RPG, and adventures for both Cyberpunk 2020, and Over The Edge RPGS.

His interests are eclectic and include the writings of William S. Boroughs, football, the music of Steely Dan, The Police, and Tom Scott, the art of Phillipe Druillet, Moebius, and Rodney Matthews. He plays saxophone and has worked/recorded in the studio.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please note this review is not based on a cover-to-cover read, because I would've plucked my eyes out after the first two hundred pages of poorly formatted text and still had another three to go.

The vast majority of this book is information about the world, but organization is a joke--everything is categorized by where it comes from, and it's all lumped together. This looks like it was put together in MS Word, but by someone who isn't really clear on when to use Header 1 and when to use Header 2.

As promised, the world does not contain elves, but it contains a few thousand races that might as well be elves, so the idea that they're somehow elf-free is kind of disingenuous. As promised, there's just so much going on here. In fact, there's entirely too much; this is absurd. They couldn't even offer races and classes--it just got to the point where they gave up and printed more than 100 pregenerated characters. Character creation is, no kidding, pick someone from the list, then tweak a few stats.

The only use I can think of for this book--and I'm going to use it this way so I can feel like I didn't throw away my money--is for something like Amber, when you need random fantasy worlds in a hurry, in which case you can just flip this book open to the relevant section, and you've got two pages of detail to describe an entire society, which is about all Amber has time for.

[Jerome · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite edition of my favorite fantasy rpg setting. This one mixes several aspects of the 2nd & 3rd edition and streamlines the mechanics into a single action roll. It's too bad that successive publications went with the D20 ruleset. Talislanta is a rich world with a unique history, unique races, and unique societies, but manages not to stray too far from the familiar to be inaccessible. The fourth edition put out by Shooting Iron Press, packs so much information (much of it culled from numerous Bard Games & Wizards of the Coast books) into a single volume that the only criticism I can level against it is that heavy usage will eventually break this book's spine. Fortunately for me, I own two copies.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have the softcover 3rd ed.