Dungeontron

I caught Tron Legacy last week. It was entertaining, though not of the caliber of my other holiday visit to the theater to see True Grit. The internet has led me to believe that a lot of people have a great deal of affection for the original film, which I had interest in as a kid, but never any great passion.

What I most liked about the first film was the design aesthetic, something that the new film “updated”--I think, to its detriment. French comic artist, Jean “Moebius” Giraurd was responsible for many of those designs, and his seventies Metal Hurlant sensibilities come shining through. Sensibilities which had their impact on the imagination of old school gamers through the work of Moebius, Druillet, and others.

Of course, Tron’s “world inside a computer” concept was always silly, and even more hard to buy today when the public’s knowledge of how computer’s work is greater than it was in the early eighties where they were essentially “magic boxes” to most of the populace. Still, if gaming and comics have taught me anything, its that cool things don’t necessarily have to make sense.

It strikes me that old school style adventuring could take place in a world of a Moebius/Tron aesthetic. Programs could have different functions lending to fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief sort of divisions. Maybe clerics, for example, are genuinely the priests/mediators for the “User” cult, interfacing with the System’s mysterious and puissant architects and programmers?

They could travel through glowing, block dungeons on a monochrome grid searching out abherrant code or virus-monsters which endanger the system (one could borrow freely from ReBoot here too, which did some of the conceits of Tron better, but without the cool design elements).  In classic old school style, digital adventurers could be champions of the system's Order against viral-haunted, error-filled Chaos.