In preparation for my Pulp game, a friend of mine ran a Matrix game with FATE to give the rules a shakedown and get people used to the system. The concept was fairly odd, as he had us playing in a post-trilogy Matrix where the PCs are a group of former runners and an Agent who are working to protect the system from people who wish to stop the Treaty. Our team was Alpha Team.

The GM – Will

The PCs – Mage <Runner> (Judd, me), Frame <Runner> (Matt), Chopper <Operator> (Les), and Agent Baker <Agent> (Vince)

The game started with us being placed in the white room and briefed by a Program. The mission is simple – the Treaty allows machines to have the inhabitants of the Matrix until they are 15 years of age, at this point they are allowed a choice of leaving the Matrix. It is a violation of the Treaty for visitors of the Matrix to try and convince people to leave the Matrix. The Machines still need the Matrix and the battery power and they are going very slow in weaning themselves from it. Our mission is to stake out the local elementary school to catch elements that are trying to influence the choice of children on the cusp of the choice.

The Team arrives at the school and discovers that the outsider convincing people to leave is a Program! He turns out to be a Diplomat who was retired and saved from deletion by the Marovingian. He tells us that he only started this activity to force the system to apprehend him – so he could tell some Runners that the Machines are not dealing fairly with them. He claims to have information that the Machines are concealing a technology for restoring the sky (part of the Treaty is that if solar power is ever restored that all humans will be freed from the Farms). This convinces the humans to try and bring this guy (who is requesting Asylum in Zion) back to base. The Agent gets an order to terminate this guy before he can say more.

There is a brief battle where Runners and Agents fight for possession of the suspect ensues. Some of the skills in use were “Rule Bending”, “Hacking”, and of course “Martial Arts” and “Gunplay”. Our Operator was able to make all sorts of cool hacks and direct Runner activities using his “Tactics” skills as well. The PC Agent had his aspect of “The Rules” used on him to force him to protect the system, but he blew some FATE points to choose the route of defending the Team, because his directive is to serve the Treaty, not the System and the current diplomatic incident could threaten the Treaty.

After fighting some Agents (and me getting shot nearly to Death), we finally make it to an exit point and get out with our suspect. Brief Diplomatic incident where Zion is threatened by some Dreadnaughts gets resolved when we talk to the machines current Diplomat. We discover that the Programs information is an attempt to restart the War by the Marovingian, but that the Machines are indeed concealing information about restoring the sky. Our team and the Machines reach a new Diplomatic understanding and the next target for our team is the Marovingian. Game Ends…

Game Talk:

FATE served the setting well, of course. The aspects in use included: The Rules, Machine World, and the Matrix. It was cool how much the Operator was involved in things despite the fact that he was not present as an Avatar in the Matrix. He was able to see the big picture and use his “Hacking” skill to make modifications when needed.

Whenever either side wanted to do something freaky and Matrix-like they rolled their “Rules Bending” skill. Bullet time and super jumps being the main things done. My character used his cell phone pager to hack the Matrix code as well, giving himself a login clock for everyone he saw, helping us identify the bad guys (they had shorter login times).

Combat flowed pretty fast (but the situation didn’t have us fighting as much as I would have liked). We had two scenes of use sparring with some Agents (and getting our butts kicked) as well, as a tutorial of combat (too bad it happened after the only fight scene in the session).

FATE was very accessible to the players, some who had never played it before but were underway rapidly. This experience really bolstered by confidence about running my Pulp game and gathered some much needed support for FATE from those who had previously not played it.

Overall, it was a great one-shot. I would not be surprised if the GM wants to keep it going.