Monday Musings #142
Musings on the joy of a regular table
Good Monday, Gamer!
“The creative adult is the child who survived.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
As I come up on two months of running a weekly IRL table, Judd’s recent post about his Thursday game night landed at exactly the right moment. I dig having a regular thing on the calendar. A standing table changes how gaming feels.
Before the Age of the Pandemic, Wednesday nights were my regular night. Dice, snacks, friends, same table every week. When everything shut down, that rhythm broke. We never quite put it back together the same way. I ran plenty of online games afterwards—most notably my 50+ session Twilight: 2000 campaign—but aside from that, most online games ended up being short flings, four to eight sessions before everyone drifted back into real life. Fun, but not quite the same as a table that becomes part of your weekly routine. Right now, that’s Sunday brunch, a car ride and chat over to the FLGS Cafe, a cappuccino, catch up with the friends, and then session recap!
Tron: The RPG?
A funny conversation came up this week about Tron: The RPG. We were flipping through character sheets from various TTRPGs—Transformers, G.I. Joe, Power Rangers—and another gamer asked:
“Where’s Tron? Wouldn’t that be a great RPG?”
Light cycles. Identity discs. Arena battles. Yep. I nodded.
“Yep, for sure. Sounds great.”
Because I’m curious, I asked:
“What do you actually do in Tron?”
He thought about it. There was a pause.
“Well… there’s arena fights.”
Another pause.
“Maybe… It’s kind of a cozy game?”
He was serious. I HARD rolled my eyes.
“What if you played Users instead of Programs?”
He immediately shook his head.
“Nah. That’s not interesting.”
And he’s right. But the question still hangs there:
Tron: The RPG — what do you do?
The setting is incredibly evocative. Among the coolest visual worlds in science fiction. But when you start asking what the characters actually do session to session, the answer gets fuzzy. Arena fights? Sure.
Running missions inside the grid? Maybe.
Rebel programs fighting the MCP or some corporate OS overlord?
Feels like Cyberpunk
There’s probably a game there. But it’s a funny reminder that great fiction doesn’t always translate directly into great role-playing games without figuring out what play actually looks like.
Still… I’ve been down that grid.
Occulted Kansas City
My Monster of the Week Sunday group, Occulted Kansas City, closed their third case this weekend.
The situation started simple enough: a local gang dispute. The Disciples were infighting and—both sides brought barely understood occult artifacts to the parley.
Things escalated. magicks got used.
And suddenly there was a Djinn loose in the city.
This session was also the first one after the hunters selected the Hauntbusters Team Playbook, so we got to see some of those new team abilities come online. They used one of their location cleansing moves, which fit perfectly with the Djinn situation.
At one point, the hunters needed the True Name of the Djinn in order to deal with it properly. That led them to their team’s enemy: Celeste, the occult librarian and they made a deal with her. Love to see it!
Now there are a bunch of loose threads floating around the campaign, so next session might just be Free Play—no immediate mystery, no ticking clock. Just the hunters poking at the world and seeing what shakes loose.
Bennie, Eleanor’s burned tech contact, has gone missing.
The Disciples still have a frog monster they’re trying to weaponize.
The Siren is probably still body-snatching with Michael Jones helping her.
The MiBs?!
And there’s that weird liminal space from the first case…
HAHAHAHA.
I love this shit.
A Word from Our Sponsors
Mad Dice continues to reliably roll along.
mad-dice.com now has over 2500 dice rolls logged. I still get a kick out of seeing people use it at their virtual tables.
Lifted: Indomitable is very close to PDF release now. We’re down to a cover, an afterword, and a final check before sending it out. You can check out the latest Kickstarter update!
Muses of Play — Episode #2 should (hopefully!) drop later this week. Sarah and I spent two hours talking with the Baker family—Meguey, Vincent, Elliot, and Tovay—about Apocalypse World, indie games, and their approach to creativity and design. I had to edit this into two parts!! This will be 1/2.
But, you can still catch the first episode here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/muses-of-play-149521286
I’ll also be moving the PDFs for some of my early zines over to DriveThruRPG or Itch soon.
I still have a few physical copies floating around here, too, so if you missed those the first time they came out, there will be another chance to grab them.
I watched Tron Ares (and was disappointed) recently and was also thinking of a Tron RPG. It should exist! I was thinking either Cypher for the most true-to-fiction play or Daggerheart for a looser interpretation that might include Reboot, Matrix, and other inspirations.
What I struggled with was trying to think of how to play with the Gridded and Analog character sheets. Then you could also build on Neo's Always Connected abilities, too. Curious if you're able to go anywhere with the inspiration.