1st December 2021
NOMAD MONTHLY MAILBAG - DECEMBER 2021 EDITION
Hello everyone!
November was a super exciting month for us here at Nomad, as we officially announced we’re working on a digital adaptation of Catan! You can read the full announcement here. We’ve had a few Catan related questions roll in this month as a result, so without further ado let’s get to answering you all!
From Lucas
“What's the best flavour of crisps?”
Here’s what different members of the Nomad team said about this important question:
Mat - Hedgehog
Rob - Plain
Ethan - Cheese + Onion
Jethro and Michael - Salt + Vinegar
Duane - Nice N Spicy Nik Naks
Tom - Sweet Chili
Stephen - Prawn Cocktail, Nice n Spicy and Flamin Hot Wotsits!
Carl - Pickled Onion Monster Munch
Talk about divisive!
From Piotr
“Have you ever heard about a game called Magiczny Miecz? It was one of my childhood's favourites. After Polish company called Sfera lost Talisman license (2nd Edition was known in Poland as Magia i Miecz), they decided to make their own version.
The game was released in 1993 or 1994, at the same time as the 3rd Edition. It was more difficult to enforce copyrights in Central Europe during that time, so Games Workshop never struck that down. When I bought it, I wasn't even aware that was actually Talisman! But today I could clearly see the similarites and differences.
The main board was different. There was a Stone Bridge atop all three regions (which served as the final area) and the Inner Region was the starting one.
The cards were similar, although some had different names. Characters were different, more or less similar to the original.
Two Talisman-like Objects existed - Nemed's Magical Sword and Toliman's Magical Shield. The first one was required to enter the Stone Bridge. The second one was required to face the final boss at the center of the Bridge. It was called The Beast (a Strength/Craft 9 creature attacking with two dice).
Instead of turning into a Toad, there was turning into stone. Petrified character cannot do anything, but he/she cannot be attacked in this stats and is immune to Spells.
The game also had five expansions. Two of them (Labirynt Magów and Gród) were like Dungeon and City. Next one was called Jaskinia. The Cave was originally released earlier as an exclusive Polish expansion for the earlier licensed version. It contained strong enemies and the main objective was finding the Magic Crystal, which could be used to ignore the final obstacles before The Beast. Fun fact, the board looked similar to the modular one used today in Talisman: Legendary Tales! Last two where called Krypta Upiorów and Magia. Unfortunately, I don't own them, so I cannot share much information. I know that the Crypt featured atypical movement (you could even wrap around the board), as well as Wraiths that can possess you. The last expansion features only additional cards for the Labirynth, City and Crypt, but small amount of copies were produced.
There was a 2nd edition with different graphics released around 1998, but only the base game has been released.
You can believe me, but actually Magical Sword made me current Talisman player. Today, I'm using my experience gained from that game. One thing that I love is End of Days ending from the Harbinger, because it features The Beast as the final boss (although it isn't 100% identical).”
We have heard of this version of Talisman a fair few times! We’d love to get our hands on a proper copy so that we can fully see all the differences. We also know we have a whole host of Polish fans who were brought in thanks to this version of Talisman, so we’re glad that more people were able to experience that joy.
From Mark
“How many of the Nomad team are working on Catan? I imagine it's a big project for you all.”
4 programmers, 2 artists, 1 designer mostly at the moment - nearly half the entire company!
From Seth
“What's your favourite Catan resource?”
Another one with multiple responses, although not as divisive as the crisps one!
Duane - Sheep
Ethan - Lumber, very closely followed by grain
Jethro - Brick, precious precious brick
Carl - Lumber
From Nic (Analand Sorceress)
“Having seen your request demand for questions....
I really enjoy your games on Steam and thought that your FF Legends/Portal games were wonderful. Do you have any plans to produce further FF gamebooks in this style?”
Right now we don’t have anything in the works, but we know that Ian Livingstone is working on something new from keeping an eye on his Twitter. We’d be happy to do another FF game if the opportunity came up!
From Marc
“As you had a call for questions - here are a few for Talisman.
Can a game be “recorded” with an option to play it back afterwards ?
Is there an internal representation of how strong a character is? It might be cool to have that represented somehow. Could even be displayed on a timeline at the end so can see how players compared throughout the game.
Could you get right down to board level and see the characters and major buildings in full 3d glory? There are digital 3D models that exist for major buildings - would be great to see them in the game.
Scenario editor : Where you can preset a situation with the characters/cards that a player has and a task to complete, potentially in a set number of turns”
A whole trove of questions for us to feast on! Let’s go through them then:
This isn’t a feature we offer at the moment - it seems like something you’d need to design the game to do from the ground up. Also, with patches and updates being a thing, we can’t just expect the game to run exactly the same as when it was recorded. So it’s tricky and we can’t do it right now, is the answer!
You mean something that adds together all their stats? We don’t have anything like that, but a post-game stats screen where you see how people did would be cool - would need to make sure all the stats are being pulled correctly of course!
This isn’t something you can do in the current version of Talisman, but maybe one day! We can dream.
This is similar to what we have used to create Talisman: Origins, but it sounds like you’re asking for something players can use? We’ll have some internal talks about it, we know games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey have had success giving people tools like that!
From Samuel
“Any chance you'd ever make Catan Histories? Way better than just normal Catan imho”
That mainly depends on how well Catan does first on Xbox and PlayStation! Of course we’d love to do more Catan if we can, especially as we will already have all our experience from bringing the game to console. Watch this space!
And that’s the end of this edition of the Nomad monthly mailbag! Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and don’t forget to send your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk if you want us to answer your burning questions next month!