Imagine that you're a supercomputer. Now imagine that you're bored. So you dream up a little contest for you and a couple of your supercomputing buddies. Your task is to move one of the stupid little robots out on the factory floor through a series of checkpoints scattered throughout the factory. The wrinkle, however, is that the factory floor is filled with all kinds of inconvenient (if not down-right deadly) obstacles located in various locations: conveyor belts, crushers, flame-throwers, pushers, teleporters, oil slicks, pits, et cetera. But the real fun comes when the robots cross each other's path, and suddenly your perfect route is something less than that...
In RoboRally players each control a different robot in a race through a dangerous factory floor. Several goals will be placed on the board and you must navigate your robot to them in a specific order. The boards can be combined in several different ways to accommodate different player counts and races can be as long or as short as player's desire.
In general, players will first fill all of their robot's "registers" with facedown movement cards. This happens simultaneously and there is a time element involved. If you don't act fast enough you are forced to place cards randomly to fill the rest. Then, starting with the first register, everyone reveals their card. The card with the highest number moves first. After everyone resolves their movement they reveal the next card and so on. Examples of movement cards may be to turn 90 degrees left or right, move forward 2 spaces, or move backward 1 space though there are a bigger variety than that. You can plan a perfect route, but if another robot runs into you it can push you off course. This can be disastrous since you can't reprogram any cards to fix it!
Robots fire lasers and factory elements resolve after each movement and robots may become damaged. If they take enough damage certain movement cards become fixed and can no longer be changed. If they take more they may be destroyed entirely. The first robot to claim all the goals in the correct order wins, though some may award points and play tournament style.
The game was reprinted by Avalon Hill (Hasbro/WotC) in 2005.
The Ultimate Collection Rulebook allows you to combine components from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Editions of the game plus all four of the original expansion for the game (Armed & Dangerous, Radioactive, Crash & Burn, and Grand Prix).
For full details on how the different editions/expansions can be effectively combined, check this link: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/35968/board-games/roborally-the-ultimate-collection
The Ultimate Collection rulebook also incorporates crucial errata and unifies the RoboRally experience into an authoritative and easy-to-use revised rulebook: Whether you want to pursue an Ultimate Collection of your own or not, you'll find the rulebook a valuable resource for all your robotic rally racing!
This is a fully standalone, automated and animated, software version of the boardgame, including a board builder (which you can export). It might be a bit daunting at first look due to the vast amount of fan material that I added. If you have any questions pls ask them here (there you can also find a manual, although the game has one build in): http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25221&p=253538#p253538 on the forum. That will also be the spot where you can always find the latest version.
The attached file does not work standalone. You will need maptool b91 (and thus java 7/8): http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads
When you have maptool installed, you can load attached file and start playing your games online (or local).
Edit: it appears that the file is...
This is my first created board for RoboRally. I created it mainly to test my new board buildercreated in Maptool, and specifically the ledges created in Photoshop. In the end I decided to add some Escheresque elements. I'm curious to your feedback.
Attached is a big update of the document. I've finished the maptool implementation which means that I had to think through all elements here. Hence there are quite some changes in it.
Here the original text:
I've scoured the interweb for all variants out their an crammed them all into one excel sheet. I'm using this to create a maptool (http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25221) variant of RoboRally. To do this it required me to think long and hard about the rules provided (if any) and their consistency and order. I'm nearly done with the full maptool implementation of nearly all original and variant elements, but in the mean time I thought to release a pdf version of this document here.
Note that (nearly all) pictures in the excel sheet are either newly photoshopped images...
Two boards intended to be played with the soccer variant, but still good for a normal game, size 13x13 cells. Designed by me combining tiles from the game.
In this second version I removed the cracked floor as I thought it was only decorative instead it has a meaning and it makes one of the two team slightly in advantage.
Intended printing resolution: 150dpi, it means the maps printed are a square with the side of 33.8 cm (or 13.29 inches).
Rules of this variant:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1173666/soccer-variant
I took some wall-e vending machine toys http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CTSZPU/ref=wms_ohs_prod... and I use them when I play roborally now. So I built boards to support them. I also got a custom set of tiles from http://lyrisstudios.com/laser/ and that is why the bottom is in hexagon shapes
I took some wall-e vending machine toys http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CTSZPU/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and I use them when I play roborally now. So I built boards to support them. I also got a custom set of tiles from http://lyrisstudios.com/laser/ and that is why the bottom is in hexagon shapes
