Matrix Action Hour?

[Lostfactor]

First of all, if you haven't read http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/nifties07may03.html>this article, you might want to go do that and then come back.  It's not a long read - took me less than ten minutes - so you won't be gone for long.

Now, if I was ever going to run a serious campaign in the Matrix world, I'd probably use Mage.  But one of the big points that the article above brings out is that when most of us think of gaming The Matrix, we're thinking about the nifty fight scenes and the sheer rush of the whole thing.  And when I was watching the movie again last night (it was on FOX... I'd meant to just have it on as background, but it took over), I was thinking about running a game in it, and began to think about CAH for doing it.

Just thinking about it off the top of my head, it'd be easy to give everyone a couple different Clusters - Movement, Offensive, and Miscellaneous is what I'm thinking - at reduced costs that scale up as time goes by.  The system's well-suited to the way that characters can suddenly acquire skills when the game calls for it (where the Miscellaneous cluster comes in, boosting certain Traits up from zero), and the system's quick and free-wheeling enough so that you could maximize the intensity of events without bogging things down too much in specifics.  You might want to tweak the goon rules slightly, but not too much - after all, what was the hallway scene but a very stylized rush against a group of goons?

It's only a thought, but it's one I'm quite pleased with.  Let me know what you guys think about it - I might even unleash it on whatever players I can drag together.  (Flashing The Matrix around might help attract more fringe elements.)
-Eliot

[Norbert]

Hi there.

I am not much of a Matrix fan, in fact I hardly know the movies.
The whole cyberpunk dark future thing so far happened mostly without me.  ;-)

But your ideas sound very thorough and applicable. The more series CAH can and will be used for, the better.
I have myself considered using it for a concept like "Special Unit 2", "Angel" or somesuch. Adult monster-hunting action. CAH has turned out to be a cool system even when you're moving a bit beyond the Saturday morning (children's) cartoon world.

[Lostfactor]

I'm not generally a fan of the cyberpunk genre - the main reason that I really liked The Matrix was actually because it took the genre and headed it in an utterly different direction from the core.  To throw around cliches, it took a genre known for angst and anitheroism and turned it into something of wuxia kung fu and elaborate gunfights.

The big change that I'd have to make (and the more I think about doing this, the more I like it) is to the mook rules, to better reflect the ways that most rebels do have to work to take down each goon without really being in danger.  Unless you want each player to spend half an hour of game time describing how they undo the goon squad.

As for using CAH for Angel... I'm not a fan of that series, so I'd be a poor judge.
-Eliot

[Eddy Fate]

I'm not generally a fan of the cyberpunk genre - the main reason that I really liked The Matrix was actually because it took the genre and headed it in an utterly different direction from the core.  To throw around cliches, it took a genre known for angst and anitheroism and turned it into something of wuxia kung fu and elaborate gunfights.

The big change that I'd have to make (and the more I think about doing this, the more I like it) is to the mook rules, to better reflect the ways that most rebels do have to work to take down each goon without really being in danger.  Unless you want each player to spend half an hour of game time describing how they undo the goon squad.

Wow.  That's actually a very good idea (and things like Oomph can also be explained in the Matrix - those characters are special, instead of just chumps).  And SAs would be just various "hardwired" programming...

[Lostfactor]

Wow.  That's actually a very good idea (and things like Oomph can also be explained in the Matrix - those characters are special, instead of just chumps).

A MiscSA that allowed you to add your Oomph to certain rolls would probably be easier than having lots of Clusters for characters.  I'd think that a little balance of the two would be called for - sure, all those within the Matrix can do certain things that simply surpass human abilities, but everyone has tricks that go beyond that and simply aren't physically possible.

And SAs would be just various "hardwired" programming...

The big things I was thinking about were making sure every character had an SA that could enable them to get increases in abilities in the middle of the game (skill downloads), SAs to simulate some of the stunts that aren't physically possible (some of the aerial martial arts, the running along walls, the increased strength), and a few more thrown in there for characters that begin to truly "grok" the Matrix.  (Think of Neo's bullet-stopping trick, for examle - simply negating ranged weapons is probably a bit gratuitious, but that general idea.)

Of course, the big point is that everything done in the Matrix by the characters is physical, so no energy bolts or anything else.  It's part of why Mage looks so appealing, because the emphasis on coincidental abilities dovetails nicely with the way that abilities work.
-Eliot