A very Happy New Year to one and all, and I hope the last couple of news posts haven’t dampened anyone’s celebrations, but it would seem that things are most certainly afoot!
I’ve been a regular visitor to the Pegasus Spiele online stores since I noticed that some of the Talisman lines were being removed, and over the last week there have been a load of changes, predominantly to the main site, where the whole German language range of Talisman’s Revised 4th Edition has been in some sort of flux.
After the weekend, the base game and Woodland expansion turned up in the listings, and then the Cataclysm, Lost Realms and Frostmarch took their place, and then the Frostmarch disappeared again, and then… POOF! They all disappeared.
All that remains of the Talisman range on the German and US sites, are the licensed Talisman games – Talisman: Legendary Tales, Talisman Adventures: The Fantasy RPG and its various accessories and (on the German site) Talisman: Star Wars Edition.
Again, I have no useful information to give you, but it would seem that the Revised 4th Edition might finally be getting put out to pasture and we could very well see a new edition of our favourite game before too long.
Of course, there are still ships traversing the globe with copies of the game on board – the French localisations from Matagot spring to mind – and there are various places online where copies of the game are still available, so you’ll still be able to pick up the game if you need to (and I might even get around to freeing up my foreign language editions of various versions of the game, though shipping from our little island is getting ridiculous!)
Mind you, 14/15 years is pretty darned impressive for an edition of ANY game to be in print, especially with the huge amount of content that was made for it, so we can’t complain too much. Even if a new edition is on its way, there’s a load of play still left in the Revised 4th Edition, as well as the previous editions!
I’m hoping that we’ll see some news about the previously mentioned Talisman card and dice games soon from Pegasus Spiele, and I’ve no doubt that Games Workshop will be wanting to keep Talisman in print one way or another, so we’ll have to wait and see.
By the way, if anyone at GW is reading this, I do have some ideas especially if it’s being brought back in-house, but we are likely well beyond any planning stages by now…
So, what do we know for definite?
The GM’s Kit for Talisman Adventures should be hitting retail soon, with the Tales of the Dungeon source book in production from Pegasus Spiele.
The Italian localisation of Talisman: Kingdom Hearts Edition will be out later this month from Asmodee Italia.
A number of the aforementioned French expansions should be on sale soon from Matagot.
I’m sure Asmodee Italia and Galakta in Poland were looking to make localised version of Talisman: Star Wars Edition too… there are probably others.
Anyway! If I find anything out, I’ll let you know and if you’ve heard any whispers, please give me a shout!
/Jon
