For the Users!

So after taking a hiatus from game night (after finishing our Warhammer Gathering Storm campaign) for the month of October, I decided at the last minute to make the return to game night extra memorable.  A couple weeks ago I stumbled across some blacklights real cheap at the Halloween store (75% off), which immediately inspired me to run a TRON game.

Problem was, no TRON rpg/board game really exists!  So that meant I had to make one up and build it.  First thing I think of when I think of TRON?  Easy, Lightbikes!

After finding some good rules for Lightbike-inspired board gaming online (based on the Speed Rally boardgame), I tried out a couple games with Mary using pieces of paper and a dry erase board to make the walls.  While kind of fun, I decided it would be a lot more fun if it were in 3-D.  So, after ordering four diecast lightbike models from Amazon, and heading over to the Hobby Lobby for boatloads of foamcore and fluorescent spraypaint, I cut myself a boatload of light walls and drew up a game grid for game night.

After giving my players a quick synopsis of the rules, I then immediately got my butt handed to me by Wes in the third turn of the first game.  We then proceeded to play subsequent games with random powerups, which all seemed to turn out to be 'jump boost' (over other walls) power, which leads to crazy cross-wall intesections like this:

Note that I'm the yellow car about to smash into my own wall in that one above.  How can I be so terrible at my own boardgame?!

After we played a couple sessions of the lightbike boardgame, they made characters for the actual TRON rpg I cooked up.  Its based on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg and, without going into boring detail, I used LotFP because its the perfect mashup of Old-School D&D (which I'm familiar with) and 3rd edition D&D (which everyone is familiar with), that I can wing such a system with my eyes closed.  I gave them each little frisbees that are their Identity Discs, complete with memory upgrade slots for installing "subroutines" (equipment).

Then I threw them on a Game Grid for Disc battles against four other programs, where they had to jump from spot to spot and try to get to the Data Access Ports (the superballs glued to bases) where they could download different kinds of subroutines, at the same time fighting other programs jumping around the board, all under the watchful eye of the Recognizer! (blacklight on some yoga blocks)

It was a lot of fun, and made for a good game night.  For the Users!