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Nomad Games Monthly Round-Up - October + November 2024

20 Dec, 2024

Hello everyone, and welcome to a rare double-issue of the Nomad Games Studio Round-Up! Before launching Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we'd post these on our website - but going forward, we want to make sure that all you lovely people on Steam get these updates too!

There were a couple of big things that happened to our studio over the last two months, which is why we’re rolling them into one big bumper round-up.

But before we dive into it, we firstly want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has purchased, played and shared feedback on Talisman: Digital 5th Edition over the past few weeks.

We massively appreciate you joining us on this journey into a new era of digital Talisman, and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve got planned.

Now that the soppy stuff is out of the way, let’s get into it!

By far the biggest thing to happen in the last 2 months (and in the entire year too!) to our small studio was the release of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/908060/Talisman_Digital_5th_Edition/

On November 14th, players could finally get their hands on our adaptation of the 5th Edition of their favourite board game. Our small team were overwhelmed with feedback from you all (both positive and negative!) immediately, and we want to again say a massive thank you to everyone who picked up a copy of the game.

If you have picked up the game, please make sure to leave us a review here on Steam - it helps out small studios like us massively, and your feedback directly helps us make the game better.

Before we launched Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we headed over to the Talisman subreddit to host another AMA, answering all the community questions you wanted to throw at us!

We got an absolute ton of questions, and you can check out all the answers we gave over on the original Reddit thread!

Before we launched Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we knew that many of you would want to know what we had planned for after we launch the game! With that in mind, we put together a roadmap to go over the content you can expect to be added to the game over the coming year. Check it out!

Right now, we’re focusing on community feedback (more on how you can help with this, later in the round-up!) and fixing the more commonly reported issues. We’re also continuing to work on the remastered version of The Reaper expansion, as we know a lot of you are keen to add expansions to the base Talisman experience.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be showing off more of what you can expect in The Reaper Classic when it returns, so stay tuned.

With the release of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we of course had to put out a shiny trailer to make sure everyone was suitably excited!

Check it out below:

Not only that, but Tom (the same one writing this round-up) has been doing some streaming for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition over on our official Twitch channel - so go follow us there[www.twitch.tv] to get notified next time he goes live!

Alongside our official developer content, there have been a whole host of streams, videos and more published by various people across the internet around the launch of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition check some of them out below!

Following the launch of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, our team didn’t slow down for a single second - we launched straight into rolling out fixes, updates and more for the game.

Since launch, we’ve rolled out two hotfixes to resolve some of the immediate issues that you were all kind enough to point out for us, and we’ve also launched the first full patch for the game, adding some community-requested quality of life improvements.

We know that a number of you are still having issues, but don’t fear - our team are working tirelessly to roll out more patches and updates to improve the game.

With so much feedback coming our way since launching Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, it quickly became clear to our team that we needed another way of gathering all of the great feedback you were all giving us. While we can gather all your comments, messages and reviews together, we want to make sure that if anyone wants to give detailed, long-form feedback on the game, they can do so.

So, we’ve put together a feedback form specifically for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, where you can give us your thoughts on all aspects of the game.

Fill it out here![docs.google.com]

In October, we shared a look behind-the-scenes of how we’re bringing The Reaper Expansion from Talisman: Digital Classic Edition into Talisman: Digital 5th Edition.

We know a lot of you are extremely excited about all the new cards that The Reaper is going to bring to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, so check out our developer blog to hear all about how we’re making this iconic 4th Edition expansion fit seamlessly into the new 5th Edition look and ruleset.

For anyone who doesn't know, every month we answer questions from the community in a long-form format, meaning we can reply to your deepest questions in as much detail as we need to!

With two months of news to cover, that also means we’ve got two months of Monthly Mailbag questions to go through! So, let’s once again dive into all the questions our awesome community have sent in over the last 2 months.

From Gabrielle Sanders via Email

“I wrote a couple of years ago requesting more expansions and new cards and characters etc for Talisman. This is what we Talisman lovers all want as it is the variety of play that is so absorbing. and not how it looks. So it saddened me to see all the effort go into recreating exactly the same game but with prettier graphics and some rules tweaks. What a waste of time!

Everything that has been released has just been a revamp eg the legendary cards are just the same but with higher numbers. Also, it worries me that the older version will now be left dead in the water with no more expansions and new content. I'm sure financially it seemed a good idea. Sell the same game again to those who have already bought it.

New content, new imagination, new creations. That's what we want. I really wanted to support Nomad but it seems I must start making more of my own content and part ways. Just needed saying as all my Talisman buddies feel the same. After all, a Toad with Strength 1 is still a toad with strength 1 even if it is beautifully rendered and animated. But a Toad that can be transformed into the Prince with a spell is a fun new twist (as in one of our creations)

Thanks for listening.”

First of all, thanks for the email Gabrielle - it’s clear you’re a passionate fan of Talisman, so we appreciate hearing from players like you. We completely understand that variety is a big part of the appeal of Talisman, especially with the 4th Edition of the game.

With Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we’re going to be bringing all of the 4th Edition expansions that you’ve come to love the variety of, over into the new 5th Edition. Not only that, but we’re going be bringing new content (like the digital version of the Alliances: Fate Beckons Expansion) to the game, that you can use alongside your 4th Edition, remastered content.

During our discussions on the development of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we also discussed how Talisman: Digital Classic Edition is built upon a large amount of legacy code, making it a very difficult game to develop new content for. If we’d decided to make a new expansion for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition at this stage, for example, it would have taken us as long (if not longer) than it has to develop the entirety of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition. Now that we’ve put in the work to establish a foundation to build and expand on for years to come, we’re going to be able to make even more exciting content that we ever did for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition.

It’s also important to remember that this new game is still adapting the physical, 5th Edition release of the game - the rules changes, new visuals and other features unique to 5th Edition are in Talisman: Digital 5th Edition because that’s what is in the physical Talisman: 5th Edition board game. While the new edition does revisit the core experience with updated visuals and some mechanical refinements, Games Workshop and Avalon Hill have put in a ton of work and effort to speed up the classic Talisman experience we all know, and many veteran players have praised the rules changes for the new style of play it brings to their favourite board game.

So, to close, we’re working hard to deliver new and exciting content that we hope will reignite the spark you and your Talisman buddies are looking for!

From C de Malmanche via email

“Did you fix the issue with the RNG? It made the previous version not worth playing (yes, I uninstalled). No point playing something that gives me 80% bad rolls almost every game (sample 20) with no agency, while computer player almost always gets better options”

We actually got a question very similar to this in our latest AMA, so we’ve grabbed the answer we gave there and updated it slightly, as it applies to this question too.

First of all, we've proven, time and time (and time) again that the dice in Talisman: Digital Classic Edition are random, and in all our years of working on the game, nobody has ever, ever proven otherwise.

Back in the early days of Talisman: Digital Classic Edition, we used a different method of generating dice rolls than we used now. On the Steam forums, we'd often get people complaining that the dice weren't random, that they favoured the AI, and that we needed to change the system we used. So, we changed the way our dice rolls were generated (even though they were already random), exactly as people had requested.

We then continued to get people complaining that the dice weren't random, that they favoured the AI, and that we needed to change the system we used.

Even with an entirely new system in place to handle how the game generated dice being generated, the complaints were exactly the same - because the issue was never with the dice themselves, but the way human brains are wired.

We know it sucks when you get a bad roll, and that those experiences stick in players' heads far more than regular dice rolls would. The entire reason we added the "Change of Fate" house rule was because of this, because when you spend a resource (fate) and get bad luck, it sticks in your brain way more than any other roll. If you get two 4s in a roll to move, it won’t even register. If you roll two 1s in a row, it’ll absolutely register, even if from an RNG perspective, both of those results are equally likely to happen to you.

We fully, fully understand why it can sometimes feel like the dice are out to get you, and that the RNG needs ‘fixing’. We're going to look into other ways we can add digital-only house rules that make the dice more 'fair' for players (the ‘Change of Fate’ house rule is a good example of what we’ve got planned), but ironically these rules would actually be making the dice less random!

From patkow7 via Discord (and translated from Polish)

“Hello everyone. I have a question, can you play Talisman on xbox one with friends from other platforms, e.g. PC?”

Yes, you can - but only with the Windows Store version of Talisman: Digital Edition, due to cross-play restrictions between certain platforms.

And that’s the end of this months update! Don’t forget, if you’ve got questions you want to ask the Nomad team, you can always email your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk. We answer each and every question that comes in, so don’t worry if you want to ask us something weird. In fact, we’d encourage it!

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

The Reaper Classic Expansion Previews and Winter Sales!

19 Dec, 2024

Hi Talisman fans! ːTalProToadː ːBlueTalismanː

Today we’ve got two exciting things to share with you - first, we’re going to be showing you a heap of previews and looks at the upcoming ‘Talisman: The Reaper Classic’ expansion that we’re bringing to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition.

Second, the Steam Winter sales have now officially kicked off, meaning that you can grab some great deals on Talisman (and a bunch of other digital board games we’ve worked on) on Steam, mobile and console!

To celebrate both of these things happening at the same time, we’ve just launched The Reaper Classic Bundle here on Steam, meaning you can grab the base game for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition and The Reaper Expansion together for a discounted price, so you’re all ready for when we launch it!

We’ve also made this a ‘Complete Your Collection’ bundle, meaning that if you already own The Reaper Expansion for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition (we know a lot of you do!), you still get the bundle discount on Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, as a thanks for owning The Reaper Expansion!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/47841/Talisman_Digital_5th_Edition__The_Reaper/

Now, without further ado, let’s start showing off some of the exciting things you can expect when The Reaper Classic drops!

Characters Updated for 5th Edition

A big feature of all the expansions in Talisman is the new characters they add to the roster! For those who’ve not played with The Reaper before, we’d like you to meet The Merchant, The Dark Cultist, The Knight and The Sage!

For those of you who’ve already met them in Talisman: Digital Classic Edition, what do you think of their fresh new looks? We’ve tried to keep the iconic look that you’ve come to recognise from the many years they’ve been playable in 4th Edition, while also making them fit with the new art style of 5th Edition.

Not only have they got new looks, but we’ve also updated how these characters play to make them fit better in the 5th Edition roster. As an example, in 4th Edition the Sage has a special ability that allows you to re-roll your movement roll, but now 5th Edition has new rules about spending fate to move up to 6 spaces if you don’t like the result of your die roll.

As another example, previously the Merchant was able to ‘evade enemy dragons’ by paying 1 gold - so we needed to make it clear that you can’t bribe the Elder Dragon at the end of the game!

Updated Artwork

Alongside all the characters in the expansion getting a new look, we’ve taken all of the cards from the original Reaper Expansion and given them the 5th Edition treatment! Check some of them out below:

Our awesome art team have worked extremely hard to keep the original design and outline of the 4th Edition artwork, while updating the style of each card to match the look and feel of 5th Edition.

Oh, and of course you can look forward to seeing all these new pieces of artwork with awesome parallax effect 3D artwork too!

5th Edition Rules

We mentioned this in our original developer blog for The Reaper Classic, but remastering this expansion to fit with the 5th Edition ruleset isn’t just a case of updating the artwork and calling it a day!

With the transition from 4th to 5th Edition, a ton of rules were either updated or changed, so we knew we’d need to look at each classic expansion with that in mind. However, after doing a thorough look-through of each and every card in the original Reaper expansion, we actually only found a handful of cards that needed changing!

One element that definitely did need updating was The Reaper himself - given that the new rules in 5th Edition make death less of a setback than it was in 4th Edition, we wanted to make sure that The Reaper didn’t lose any of the fear players are used to feeling as he wanders the board.

So, we’ve implemented two different options for players to choose from: Modern Reaper and Classic Reaper - and with the Classic version, you’ll suffer all the penalties from death that you would in 4th Edition. Brutal!

New Visual Effects

For anyone who’s played Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, you’ll have noticed that our team have put special effort into visual effects that play when certain cards and effects are triggered. Not only does this make the board more dynamic to look at, it also helps players visually identify when certain key events happen to the board (or to their opponents!).

With the new cards and the Reaper NPC, we wanted to carry on that good work, and we’ve added some more subtle effects to the board when certain things happen. These are quite ready yet, but we’ll be showing them off in the new year!

Bonus Cards

For any Talisman: Digital Classic Edition fans out there, we’re sure you’ll recognise these two cards:

But for those of you who purchased the physical version of The Reaper when it was originally launched, you might remember that these two cards were given away for anyone who pre-ordered the Reaper expansion!

You’ll be pleased to know that you don’t need to preorder anything this time around - we’ve added both of these cards into the pool of adventure cards in Talisman: The Reaper Classic Expansion. Enjoy!

Alternative Ending

With The Reaper Classic, we needed to add a feature to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition that is another staple for experienced players - alternative endings! Specifically, the Dance Macabre ending gets added to the game as part of the Expansion.

We’re planning on adding a ‘Choose Your Alternative Ending’ page to the game in the near future, but given that there are currently only 3 endings available when The Reaper Classic launches, we’re waiting until there are a few more before we design a whole selection screen for it!

Deck Editor Reaper Cards

One of the biggest new features in Talisman: Digital 5th Edition is The Deck Editor, and because of it, adding a new expansion to the game means much more than it ever did before!

The Reaper Classic adds a whole heap of new cards to the 5th Edition base game, so even if you’re not using the Reaper NPC or any of the new characters added, the extra options for customising the adventure deck are massive!

If you’ve checked out our roadmap then you’ll also know that we’re planning on rolling out improvements for the Deck Editor too, so keep an eye out for a future developer blog where we’ll go into more detail on what you can expect!

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

A Tiny Talisman: Digital 5th Edition Patch

17 Dec, 2024

Hi everyone!

We've just released a small patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition that fixes some issues that certain users were having, when graphics-related error dialog boxed were popping up.

As a thanks for your dedication to reading the tiniest of patch notes, here is some bonus character artwork for the upcoming The Reaper Classic expansion, coming to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition early next year!

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

11/12/2024 - Talisman: Digital 5th Edition Patch Notes

11 Dec, 2024

Hi Talisman fans! ːTalProToadː ːBlueTalismanː

We've just rolled out another patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, and this time it's quite a beefy one! Check out the full patch notes below:

Fixes:

We've fixed a bunch of odd AI behaviours - they should be a bit smarter now!
Some specific fixes include the AI overvaluing the forest and the graveyard, and how much the AI values it's fate
Fixed the lighting on characters when playing in high detail mode
Previously, it was possible to cast a spell while casting the same spell, in a weird menu quirk. There is now a new mini card popup menu, and we don't allow clicks on menu text during spellcasting, which fixes this issue!
Fixed the screen glow not changing colour to match the active player
More fixes for low-end rendering hardware (aka the black-screen issue): we've rolled out new, simplified shaders, more optimisations, lighting tweaks for simplified rendering, alongside improving how the game automatically detects low fps at start-up (followed by a message box and then the game will auto-switch to low detail mode).
Fixed the banner not always appearing when you completed a Warlock Quest
Previously, the sorceress was given the option to use mesmerism on followers she couldn't actually use her ability on - you now won't be presented that option when you can't use it
Fixed an issue with the player summary tooltip
Fixed a crash in frontend card browser, when you were going through My Collection
Fixed an issue where the losing character didn’t gain a fate issue if the combat they took part in resulted in a Warlock Quest being completed
The text for the description of The Graveyard was previously misaligned - now it's not!
There were some minor character card text issues - these have been tidied up now
Previously, combining the character selection rule + default death rule meant that the death/re-spawn rules were not being properly followed as they should in the rules. Now they are!
Dying while a spell was queued caused a number of issues - these have all been fixed now.

Improvements:

We've made it so that there is now larger text for card and space descriptions, and disabled some bold text in the space descriptions that made them harder to read
We've added some new text & translations in various places - there is now a low FPS warning & new character text
We've made some UI tweaks for when players are create/recreated, to make it clearer what's happening
Previously, the cards that were on the board were quite dark - we've brightened them up to make them easier to see!

Once you've given the patch a try, you can keep up with everything Talisman: Digital 5th Edition by following us on all the places we are online[linktr.ee]! ːheartː

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

The 'Black Screen Fix' Patch

3 Dec, 2024

Hi again Talisman fans! ːBlueTalismanː ːTalProToadː

We've just rolled out another patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, this time entirely focused on resolving the issue that a small number of players have been having where they would only see a black screen upon launching the game. If you're one of the people who has been effected by this, please download the latest version of the game and see if it resolves your issue!

Once you've tried the patch, you can keep up with everything Talisman: Digital 5th Edition follow us on all the places we are online[linktr.ee]! ːheartː

It's especially worth following us now, as an old friend has just turned up... The Reaper Classic Expansion - 5th Edition Version previews are beginning! 💀

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

27/11/2024 Patch

27 Nov, 2024

Hi again Talisman fans! ːBlueTalismanː ːTalProToadː

We've just rolled out a fresh patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, which includes a mixture of performance improvements for lower-end hardware, and then some community-requested game features!

First up, we've made some behind-the-scenes updates that should improve performance in the game across the three different selectable graphics settings. We've also made various GPU performance improvements to the game as well.

Technical Updates

We've also added some command-line parameters that you can add in your Steam config:

'--nomusic' disables the music system.
'--noaudio' disables all audio.
'--detail n' (where n is 0, 1, or 2) forces the graphics detail option to be low, medium or high respectively.

We're hoping that these extra launch settings might help some of you who can't start the game right now! Please ensure that you type in the double -- instead of a single - otherwise it won't work!

Gameplay Updates

In this patch, we've added a community-requested houserule - the ability to make the starting player random! This is something that was requested shortly after launch, and we hope this means an end to fighting over player order in online/local games. We can't promise this will stop you fighting for other reasons, please note.

In 5th Edition, the default ending was changed to the new battle against the Elder Dragon - however, some community members asked us to implement another ending to help them speed up their games. As of this patch, you can now choose the 'Race to Win' Ending when setting up your game, so go give it a try!

Fixes and Improvements

The main fix in this patch is for the combination of fatality and character selection rules - player shouldn't have to choose a new character, and Talisman: Digital 5th Edition now properly follows this rule!

We've also fixed the title of The Mystic in Spanish - thanks to Zangetsu here on the Steam forums for pointing this out to our English speaking team!

Thanks for playing!

You can download the latest patch now, and to keep up with everything Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, make sure you follow us on all the places we are online[linktr.ee]! ːheartː

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition Player Survey

26 Nov, 2024

Hi Talisman fans! ːBlueTalismanː ːTalProToadː

Since launching Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, our small team have been listening closely to all the feedback you've been giving us - and we massively appreciate everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts! Whether that's been here on Steam, on our social media channels[linktr.ee] or our Discord[discord.com], we're keeping track of everything you've been sharing about the game since launch.

But, we know that a lot of you would rather have a more long-form, direct way of giving us feedback on the game - which is why we've put together a Google form just for that!

You can find it here, if you'd like to fill it in.[forms.gle]

If you're wondering what we've done with the feedback you've already given us, we're currently working on another patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition based on community-feedback, so look out for that soon! ːheartː

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition - 21/11/2024 Patch Release

21 Nov, 2024

Hi Talisman fans! ːBlueTalismanː ːTalProToadː

We've just released a new patch for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, which fixes a number of community-reported issues.

You can check the full list below:

We've fixed an issue where the game would end without needing to kill the elder dragon if another player dies (despite Fatality being set to off)
Fixed a crash that was being caused by Steam names containing non-Latin characters
Fixed an issue where sometimes the detail option was not getting applied until the options UI was opened
We've made some improvements to performance when selecting medium and low detail modes
The Dwarf is now correctly unaffected by the maze card, and doesn't need to roll
The 'End Quest' achievement will now trigger properly if the player steals a Talisman from another player
The 'Share the Glory' will now unlock properly when using the Mercenary to help defeat the Elder Dragon

A massive thank you to everyone who reported these issues, either on our Discord[discord.com] or here on the Steam forums.

We're also aware that on certain hardware setups, people are experiencing a black-screen crash at start-up. We're still investigating exactly what is causing this, and hope to roll out a patch soon. Thank you for your patience while our team keep working hard behind-the-scenes! ːheartː

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

Your Feedback, Our Answers and What Happens Next

15 Nov, 2024

Hi again, Talisman fans. :TalProToad:

First of all, our team want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported and shared feedback on Talisman: Digital 5th Edition since launch.

We also want to fully acknowledge that it’s not been the smooth start we hoped for, and that’s why we want to publicly acknowledge that we’ve heard you all loud and clear, whether your feedback has been positive or negative. We’ve always strived to be as transparent with you all as possible as a studio, and we’re making this blog post ensure we continue doing that.

Across our Discord, the Steam forums and more, you’ve all had a ton of different questions about Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, and we’re going to answer the most common questions now. We’re not going to shy away from the hard questions, because we think that would not be fair on you as our audience.

Also, even though a large amount of these questions have been answered directly to the people who have asked these questions, we wanted to gather them all in one place so that if people have questions, they can check here first to see if it’s already been answered.

You can find the full FAQ below:

When are fixes coming?

Right now, the priority for our team is to work on bug fixes, especially the ones that result in crashes. We’ve narrowed down the cause of the most common crash issue thanks to the help of our community and the hard work of our development team, and we’ve rolled out a fix for the issue already.

You can expect a series of rapid updates to be deployed to the game soon, as we fix these key issues.

We’ve already released 2 patches which fix common community reported issues - and we plan on continuing this until those issues are resolved.

How did you release a game with bugs?

We know that in an ideal world, every game that is released would be entirely bug free. Some of our team members here at Nomad have spent enough time in the games industry to remember the time when patching your game after launch wasn’t even an option!

Even knowing that patching is an option these days, we always do our best to make sure every single game we release is as bug-free as we can make it. With the size of our team, thrashing the game as much as it can be thrashed goes a long way, but there are still going to be issues that we miss that come to light in the public release.

Between our QA team and rest of the Nomad Games staff, we’ve managed to play thousands and thousands of games of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition from start to finish - which has meant that we’ve been able to iron out tons and tons of bugs over the past few months. However, in 2 days more people have played games of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition (on a much wider range of hardware setups) than we ever could in the time we’ve been developing the game.

If an issue only crops up in every 10,000 games, there’s a good chance that our testing team will miss it, because it’s so rare. If 10,000 games get played in a week by Talisman players, chances are that someone is going to find it.

I'm getting a 'save crash dump' error whenever I try to get into a game - what should I do?

If you can, grab the crash dump that has been generated and send it in an email to support@nomadgames.co.uk. This will help us work out why your hardware is either struggling or not working with Talisman: Digital 5th Edition. The more information we have, the better we can be positioned to fix these kinds of issues - so we massively appreciate all the information that you can share.

If you need to find your crash dump, it should be located in your default Steam directory, under: \Steam\steamapps\common\Talisman5

Why isn't the game cheaper?

We understand that pricing is always a consideration for players. This isn’t just a re-release of the original game - it’s a reimagined experience adapting a brand-new edition of Talisman, with improved graphics, additional content like the Deck Editor and a revamped game engine to handle the 5th Edition rules. These updates reflect the time and effort our team has invested to bring this version to life, and our goal with Talisman: Digital 5th Edition is to create a game that will offer hours of adventure, replayability, and enjoyment.

We’re also going to be adding free feature updates to the game as time goes on, adding even more value to the Talisman: Digital 5th Edition experience.

Why have you made this game easier than 4th Edition?

When we talked to Avalon Hill and Games Workshop as they were designing Talisman: 5th Edition originally, one of the common elements of Talisman that was mentioned was the average amount of time spent playing a single game. We also confirmed this, sharing information about the average time it takes for players to complete a game of Talisman: Digital Edition from start to finish.

Knowing that the length of time an average game took was a common complaint among players, Talisman: 5th Edition was designed to speed up the time it took for an average game, while keeping the same experience players have grown to love. Changes to how the game plays were made with speeding the game up in mind (for example, there are now far fewer ways to miss a turn), not making the game easier. Talisman: 5th Edition still offers the same challenge it always has, it’s just a more streamlined experience, which means that veteran players might mistake that for ease.

Why isn't this free for Talisman: Digital Edition owners?

A good question, which is related to the “why isn’t the game cheaper” answer above.

We fully understand that people have invested a lot of time and money into Talisman: Digital Edition in the 10+ years it has been available. While this is a brand new title, we always knew that a large amount of our audience would be existing Talisman: Digital Edition fans. With that in mind, we had many internal discussions here at Nomad about how we provide those existing players with something to say thank you for their support.

After much discussion, we decided on our previously announced plan to remaster classic Talisman: 4th Edition expansions, and bring them over to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition entirely free of charge for people who already own those expansions.

We went with this plan, as it allows us to provide value to players who have already purchased Talisman: Digital Edition content, giving them access to the remastered and rebalanced content we’re working on at no additional cost to anything they’ve already paid.

Why aren't there expansions or extra content included at launch?

A simple question with a simple answer - we don’t want to overwork, push and demand more from our team than we expect of them.

We’re a small studio founded by experienced game developers, all with experience in the AAA games industry, with first-hand experience of being overworked, pushed and crunched to do more than they should in too short a time. One of the main reasons that Nomad Games was founded was so that they could get away from that kind of environment, and that environment is something that hasn’t left the industry over the past 10 years.

Our team have been working hard for over a year on Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, and they will continue to work hard on the game - we’ve already published a roadmap for our planned upcoming content and further development on the game.

Also, because of the size of our studio, we’re keenly aware of our financials at all time. While we of course get ongoing sales and income from our other existing titles, it’s through making sure that new, paid content is being released by our team that enables us to pay our hard-working staff. If we wait until Talisman: Digital 5th Edition has expansions before launching, that’s more time without us being able to support ourselves through the income of that new, paid content.

Why are there less house rules than in 4th Edition?

When we originally started designing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, we did so with two things:

An entirely stripped back Talisman game engine.
Knowledge that we wanted to focus on fully adapting Talisman: 5th Edition first, and then we would build upon the game for a long time.

Because of these two things, we didn’t want to just bring across all of the house rules from Talisman: Digital Classic Edition. With all of the legacy code in the Talisman engine stripped out, many of the things that specific house rules relied on to work were now missing - meaning we’d have to rebuild those house rules from scratch.

We also knew that there were a lot of issues with how we’d previously designed house rules to work, due to years of legacy code bloating up the feature, so we redesigned how house rules work behind-the-scenes.

As part of the roadmap we published pre-launch, we also announced that we’d be bringing more house rules to the game in a free, future update. This is because setting ourselves up to have house rules work better in the future took more time than we thought, but we’re confident that in the long-run, it’ll be worth it for both us as developers, and for you all as players.

Why isn't there text on the cards anymore?

With the release of the physical 5th Edition of Talisman, the cards in the game were redesigned to have more of a focus on the stunning artwork on them. Using the new design of the 5th Edition cards as a basis, we designed the Talisman: Digital 5th Edition cards to showcase the artwork in a way that did the hard work of all the artists at Avalon Hill justice as we brought them to life.

While this was our focus, we understand that for some players, usability comes before showcasing artwork, which is entirely fair. We’re going to be looking at ways to offer players the ability to choose between the modern look that we currently have, and one where text is featured more prominently.

My stats seem wrong, why?

We’ve had a much bigger influx of new players than we expected, which has meant that the servers we use to track player statistics was overwhelmed with requests. We’re going to be looking at the statistics tracking system we use soon to ensure everything is running as it should - it’s on our list of things to sort!

I'm getting a 'Lost connection to server: HandleDisconnect' error - what should I do?

Good news! We recently rolled out a patch that hopefully will have fixed this issue - if you’re still getting this error though, please email support@nomadgames.co.uk with as much information as you can, and we’ll do everything we can to help.

Are you going to change the yellow lines on the board?

Yes! This is feedback we heard strongly during our debut developer stream, and in the update that we just rolled out, we've reduced both the intensity of the dividing lines, and also reduced the bloom generally across the game.

The dice are pre-seeded, make them like they were in Talisman: Digital Edition!

If you’ve followed the development process for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, you’ll know that we stripped back the Talisman engine to the absolute bare-bones to build the game back up again.

Part of stripping back the engine meant taking the dice system back to how it was when we originally launched Talisman: Digital Edition, where the dice would be generated before the game started. We recently rolled out an update that adjusts how the dice behave, to bring them more in-line with the experience players expect from the current version of Talisman: Digital Classic Edition.

We’re also going to be looking at other ways we can give players more options when it comes to dice generation - but more about that in the next question.

The dice are rigged still, why are they still rigged?

This is something we’ve discussed, debated and argued with players in all our games for the past 10+ years. Not only that, but every single digital board game developer we’ve ever spoken to has had the exact same issue. Negative pattern recognition, gambler’s fallacy and more combine together to make it feel like the dice are against you when you get bad luck.

There are many high-profile examples of titles tilting the odds towards the player, because as humans we’re not very good at recognising the difference between ‘true’ randomness and what we define as ‘fair’ randomness. It’s for precisely this reason that we added a house rule that will make your re-rolls always be a different number, which we hope will mitigate some of the dice rolling frustration!

In the future, we’re going to be investigating other, optional ways we can lean the odds into the players favour, to better align with what people ‘expect’ the dice to do. Ironically, this would mean we were actually rigging the dice at that point, but if people would feel happier with the ability to optionally toggle on such a mode, we’d be happy to offer it.

I rolled a 1 but it counted as a 6, why?

In the physical version of Talisman: 5th Edition, the Talisman symbol now represents a 6, instead of a 1. This caught out many of the Nomad Games team when we first started playing 5th Edition, so we understand the confusion!

When is 5th Edition coming to other platforms?

When it’s ready to! To answer this question properly, we’re going to be focusing on just the Steam version for the foreseeable future until we’ve incorporated community feedback and requests, and then look into other platforms.

Every character can now choose their alignment, why even have alignment at this point?

Alignment being chosen at the start of the game is something that was introduced in the 5th Edition rules changes, in order to give players more options with how they wanted to play the game. This choice is only made at the start of the game, and during the game follows all the same rules as 4th Edition did, so changing your alignment in the middle of a game carries the same weight, choices and tactical decision.

What Happens Next?

Now that we’ve gone over the more common community questions, one question still remains - “What’s Next for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition”?

Firstly, our priority is going to be fixing any of the bugs, crashes and other issues that have been reported by the community. We’ve already rolled out two patches (you can read the patch notes for the latest one here) that fix a number of community reported issues, and we’re not slowing down anytime soon. Our team are going to keep working on updates, and we’re also going to be putting out a player feedback form so that you can more directly give us your feedback on the game.

We massively appreciate your patience, love and support, and can’t wait to show you what we’ve got planned for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition.

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition - 2nd Launch Hotfix

15 Nov, 2024

Hi Talisman players! ːBlueTalismanːːTalProToadː

We've just released our second hotfix for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, with one major change, and some very important fixes.

In this update, we've adjusted how the dice behave, to bring them more in-line with the experience players expect from the current version of Talisman: Digital Classic Edition. So, dice are no longer pre-determined in offline games.

If you’ve followed the development process for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition, you’ll know that we stripped back the Talisman engine to the absolute bare-bones to build the game back up again. Part of stripping back the engine meant taking the dice system back to how it was when we originally launched Talisman: Digital Classic Edition, where the dice would be generated before a game started. A number of you raised this in reviews, so we've now updated the dice based on that feedback.

We’re also going to be looking at other ways we can give players more options when it comes to dice generation - but we'll share more about that soon!

You can find the full list of other fixes and changes below!

Fixed a crash that was occurring on some 64GB PCs.
Fixed an issue where you'd see blurry graphics when Windows DPI scaling was set to greater than 100%.
We've made some improvements to the board visuals, specifically by reducing the amount of bloom and the intensity of the guidelines on the board.
Fixed a crash that would occur when you transformed from the toad into another character
Fixed a crash/disconnect that was occurring in some online games
Fixed a glitch that would sometimes occur when the camera zooms out
We now show greyed-out game choices for AI/remote players

If you notice any other issues, please post them in the Bug Reports channel on the Steam forums!

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition

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