[Interest Check] Matrix, 2400

This is purely to gauge if there is interest, and if people think this is viable before I put effort into defining rules or thinking about this much more.

This is an idea I have had in mind for a long time, ever since the original Matrix movie in 1999. It has gone through many iterations and 'rules', but never seen the light of day (the sky is scorched, after all (and I don't believe it was us that did it)).

Most recently I was reading 2400 Codebreakers, and was reminded of a variant thought I had in the early part of the latest Matrix 4 movie:

• What if people accepted that they were living in a simulation and tried to make the most of it. Some buck the system and try to get away with altering the world to suit them, they are not 'unplugged', but instead took the Purple Pill. (Possible game name?)

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More in line with the original ideas, though:

• We play a game using a few different systems (or variations on flexible systems). I have conceived of this using Apocalypse World for the 'Zion' stuff, with some PbtA with more robust 'Ship' rules, and something cyberpunk-adjacent for 'in the Matrix' parts (Impulse Drive? For both?); as well as other game systems I don't care to remember.

• 2400 offers a variety of games that are not-quite-right-but-close-enough that we could cobble together something like a working system. Maybe Codebreakers for the in-Matrix stuff, EOS for the ship stuff and possibly the on-planet stuff, too, with mixins from Resistors, Project Ikaros, Legends, Nuclear Family, Orbital Decay, and even Xenolith if the tone works.

I would probably steal bits from those games and put together something that makes sense. As a group, we would decide how much our stats in the real world influence our characters in the Matrix. It could be that we use them as the basis and add on extras that we can do in the Matrix (Toughness, Speed, Wall Run and such). Or it could be that we use completely different stat blocks in the Matrix and our character out there has little effect. We would probably aim to make the same ruling for all players, but could vary it up if we really wanted to. We could have a base character with addons that only apply while on a Ship (Command, Gunner, Engineering, ...?), or only while in a Settlement (Spycraft, Influence, Radiation Resistance, ...?), or only in the Matrix (I Know Kung-Fu!, Jump, Lots of Guns, ...?), and such, though some of those could spill over into other fields when the fiction allows.

The group can also decide just how weird the real world has become, and if elements from games like Xenolith or Nuclear Family are relevant. I would probably tend to tone that sort of thing down, but we could have a little, and players are welcome to ask if they can use anything from any 2400 game they think fits.

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Mainly, though: Whenever I do find myself considering running this I also find myself worrying that there might not be enough stories to maintain a game. The 'post-apocalyptic survival on the surface of a planet occupied by AI' has legs (could even tend towards Terminator), but why do the characters go back into the Matrix? That is a core question.

I can think of a few reasons for repeat return, ranging from 'for entertainment', through 'to 'free more minds', to —and possible the strongest contender— 'to watch the programs and/or fight them from the inside' or even 'this is the only way to communicate with people in distant settlements' (yes, there is more than one city, not just 'Zion' (if it exists at all), there are other continents and everything!:).

If this devolved into mainly living on the surface and in ships, and we almost never went into the Matrix simulation, that would not be a bad game. Yeah? But we could easily set that up from the start and it feels to like false-marketing to call that game 'Matrix'.

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What do people think? I look forward to your ideas and input.

Any interesting idea, although I admit that I do not know any of the systems you have mentioned :)

One other potential hook you could use for matrix runs would be if systems in there reflected or impacted machine bases in the real world. Something like Shadowrun where in you need the plans for a real world machine base/weapon/etc but the only way to get it is to break into a matrix location. Or destroying a location in the matrix, disrupts something in the real world for the robots.

Team has to run a matrix mission first, then run the real world mission based on intel recovered.

Yeah, I deliberately took out the links, they are available in many places (where 'many' is at least two:) and can be looked up. :)
Yeah. The need for 'hard-lines' could mean that you need to enter somewhere safe, then make you way to the telephone network that is attached to the machines base, and then use the hard-line there to exit into their base.

One wonders why they machines allow the hard-lines to exist, but we have to assume it makes sense for the game-conceit to work.
Sure, even if not 'reflected' you could need to go into the Matrix just to get the plans, since they don't exist 'in printed form'.
And before the machines realise and change things out from under you.

Intriguing idea. I do like universe hopping games. One of my favorites is the high octane thriller Feng Shui where they unashamedly came up with this idea of a time war just to have a reason for Shaolin monks to be fighting cyborg assassins. The pretense of the time war are these time junctures all connected and moving in parallel. 69AD, 1850, modern (1994), and 2070 I think. Many people play Feng Shui without the time war element, finding it limiting, but you could reenvision that as to being two "junctures", inside and outside the Matrix. Only, there is no built-in change to your character built into the game when you enter a new juncture.

Monte Cook's The Strange also has universe hopping but with a conversion occurring when you "translate" to a new "recursion". Using The Strange, you'd have one character in one world and when you translate into a new recursion your race and class and equipment would adjust to match the new world. This translation kind of matches the skill uploads in the Matrix.

Which leads me to another game I ran in the 1990s, Space Master. In that space opera rpg, there was a device called D.R.E.A.M., a virtual reality device that was outlawed because it could cause people to develop uncontrolled psychic powers. The party got one, of course, and during a long space voyage the PCs plugged into it. I gave them Werewolf: The Apocalypse pregen character sheets and we played a rpg within the rpg where their Space Master characters were playing virtual werewolves fighting off a vampire invasion in the wild west.

So there are three ideas: use an existing game that has those mechanics built in, or add a new mechanic to supplement Matrix-time, or just have two completely different characters possibly with different game systems, a simple one for real world (2400 works great for that) and a more wire fu based game system for inside the Matrix (Wushu, Feng Shui, Outgunned maybe, Savage Worlds, or any superhero game with appropriate limitations to powers). These two different characters could gain experience at very different rates: Neo advances a lot faster than Mr. Anderson.

As to modifying 2400, you could add a fourth-stat in chatter creation: Rule-bending, that is rolled for doing unusual things in the Matrix.

So this gets me to a wacky idea to build on what VagueGM has posted: what if the real world is post-apocalypse awful (as in the movie, a barren wasteland) and if they need any news or information or research then the Matrix is the only internet: you go in to find out stuff, then get out when you're done. This is much as to what DrifterDwarf suggested.

But to your last point, the question is: why? Data mining the Matrix for solutions to real world problems is one thing. "We need a large quantity for Yttrium to build that new power plant. Only the Chinese government in the Matrix knows where all of the mines are. Infiltrate that military facility and find one close to our settlement." Cue James Bond theme song.

The Strange was one that I considered using at the time when it came out.
I have done that before. Not all players enjoy needing to learn a new system for part of a game. With an established group we can tailor this to games they are familiar with, but that is harder with random groups on the internet.

Hence the advantage of something flexible like 2400 (or PbtA, or generic like Fate or SW for both).
2400 Codebreakers does exactly that. There is a Simulation stat that you use for this purpose:
'Daemons' are agents with the serial numbers filed off.

Or there's this take. Definitely reasons to not stay in the Matrix 😂

After seeing the 2nd Matrix movie in the theater, I was very interested in the idea that the A.I. programs were not a monolith. That some of them might work against each other. I hoped that would get explored more deeply in the 3rd movie, but aside from rogue Agent Smith, it got mostly dropped.

BUT - what if that really did happen? What if there are various machine factions that want different things? What if one of those factions is willing to team up with humans to achieve their goals? If their goals include conflict with other AIs, then doing things inside the Matrix might be the most direct way to accomplish those goals. PCs could be doing things in the Matrix to help their AI allies. They could be working to change the Matrix so that it isn't a place where humans (and AIs) are controlled, but a place where they can be free. Matrix anarchists! Or something.

Anyway, I think there's potential.

I would be up to play in this game. Especially using 2400 rules. One design note for that system is that it's intended for hopping between settings.

Edit to add: 2nd to timplausible's take on inter AI conflict.

Yes. Factions and conflict in the program world, but also factions and conflict in the human world, not every settlement is 'on the same side', and one may experience conflict with other 'humans' outside the Matrix (and in?).
Er... Obviously this has issues, since one has to exit back into their own body, which is where one left it... but who says that has to be the way? Maybe one can exit into a capable host on the other side, some sort of Peripheral (Gibson, 2014)? One still needs to keep one's body safe and connected... now through two hard-lines, because neither the mind nor the body can live without the other (those who try end up warped in horrific ways).

Agent Smith managed to invade a human brain. Maybe humans can figure out how to invade a machine brain.

Once you have that, what does it even mean to be human or machine?

Not sure I'd actually want to go this far, but it's a fun thought.

It could be interesting to download into a machine or construct, or for a program to corrupt a human mind when transferring back and such, but, as you say, blurring the line too much would probably make the game unfun (or at least make the game about that (similar to how including 'time travel' turns any game into a game about time travel)).

Our characters might have philosophical debates about what it means to be human, or if the programs are sentient (an overrated property, anyway:) and such, but keeping a clear delineation can help a game on a meta level.