Talislanta, The RPG WotC Published Before D&D – PRIME
Before D&D and Magic: the Gathering, Wizards of the Coast was a small RPG publishing company in Seattle, Washington that got their start with Talislanta.
Alright, the 90s are back right now, everywhere from the TV shows that are being rebooted, to the trendy clothes that you’ll find on sale at your retailer of choice. When you can walk down the aisles and find a Seinfeld, Rugrats, and Rocko’s Modern Life sweatshirt, button down shirt, and tee all in the same store, it’s a sign that time itself is a flat circle. Either that or Capitalism, in fact is just a big ol’ confirmation bias paradox where the only thing we can make is stuff that was already successful once, which is why nobody makes new IP anymore, they just look for something that Gen Xers liked, ironically or not, and retreads old ground.
But in the interest of helping the invisible hand of the free market find new targets, we’ve decided to take a look back at WotC before they started printing money with Magic: the Gathering, back when they were a small, indie RPG publishing company that got their start with a game that, itself, was descended from D&D. Because the story of WotC’s first game is the story of Talislanta.
And the story of Talislanta, like most fantasy RPGs, begins with D&D. It all starts back in 1982 with a company called Bard Games that was formed to produce Dungeons & Dragons supplements, which they did, starting with one of their more design-intense publications, The Atlantis Trilogy, a custom D&D mod that eventually evolved into a new system: Talislanta.
Written by Stephen Michael Sechi, Talislanta is a fantasy RPG that built some fantastic innovations into the tried and true formula, including graded successes and a die roll that gets better the higher the number you roll. All actions boil down to one of four categories: Combat, Magic, Skills, or Attributes, depending on what you’re trying to do. It’s a fairly flexible system with variable outcomes. Take a look.
The combat table here is just an example. Depending on what you roll, you might have some kind of mishap, which is basically what everyone does with a natural 1 on the die no matter what system they’re playing, unless they’re playing a system where rolling a 1 is good; you could miss, hit for half damage, normal damage, or damage plus an advantage depending on INTENT. What does “INTENT” mean? Well it’s a narrative mechanic that facilitates cooperation between player and GM:
The same basic results are there for skills, attributes, and magic as well. Talislanta had its own system for creating characters, which is honestly one of the best parts about it. Instead of making a fighter or a wizard, you might play a Blue Ardua River Warrior or a Danuvian Swordswoman.
Anyway, that’s just the basic overview of the game. It’s successful enough to launch a 2nd Edition that was easily twice the size and came with a whole collection of supplements and extra books. But in spite of the game’s success, Bard Games, the company that published the game, went out of business shortly thereafter–largely thanks to Waldenbooks, of all things. Waldenbooks.
Because Bard Games’ earlier Atlantis series was in demand, and Waldenbooks ordered a massive volume which Sechi was leery of filling, and in the end when the unsold books were returned, Bard Games was on the hook for $20,000 and they closed their doors. Enter Wizards of the Coast, a company barely two years old, and mostly unknown, fresh out of Seattle. They took their name from a mage’s guild in company founder Peter Adkison’s home D&D game.
The first big score they have is the license to Talislanta. Stephen Michael Sechi and Jonathan Tweet work together on the 3rd edition and produce the biggest batch of the rules yet, starting with The Talislanta Guidebook, a 344-page book that updated the timeline of the setting and overhauled the rules for magic. With 23 different schools for magic (and spell lists) ranging from Aeromancy to Wizardry and with a stop at Invocation and Technomancy along the way, the spells provided some wild variety in the types of magic you can do. Here’s a look at two spells:
A lot of flexibility–and–a few ideas that would rear their heads again in 3rd Edition. But for now, Wizards of the Coast is successful enough with its license that over the span of two years, they publish seven books which helps them gear up financially for the creation of Magic. That one, however, is a story for another time.
