Yet another person inspired by The Matrix

[Uncle Pine]

Have you ever watched the Matrix and realised you could build an entire campaign based on its premises, except you wouldn't do that like the other dozens of thousands people who tried to, because your setting wouldn't have anything to do with the actual Matrix setting?

Tonight I've seen this almost 20 years old film for the first time in my life and halfway through I've asked myself:

what would happen if you took any of your standard, semi-optimized campaigns starting from 1st-level, have every player in it choose what kind of psionic character he or she wants to play and then give each of them access to every level appropriate power or spell in existence (as if a friendly Spell to Power Erudite (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) manifested Psychic Chirurgery (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicChirurgery.htm) on them over and over as many time as necessary) with the caveat that they only get 1 minute to declare their actions in each round of combat, measured with a handful of those Taboo hourglasses?

How do you think such an experiment would develop? What would your approach be? Would you enjoy playing in this environment? (Wherever necessary to your argument, please assume the two most common gentlemen's agreements to be in place, so no infinite loops and stick to PO rather than TO)

Think fast! :smallcool:

[TheIronGolem]

what would happen if you took any of your standard, semi-optimized campaigns starting from 1st-level, have every player in it choose what kind of psionic character he or she wants to play and then give each of them access to every level appropriate power or spell in existence (as if a friendly Spell to Power Erudite (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) manifested Psychic Chirurgery (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicChirurgery.htm) on them over and over as many time as necessary) with the caveat that they only get 1 minute to declare their actions in each round of combat, measured with a handful of those Taboo hourglasses?
I don't understand what this has to do with the Matrix, or how it's supposed to make D&D more Matrix-like.

[Uncle Pine]

I don't understand what this has to do with the Matrix, or how it's supposed to make D&D more Matrix-like.
Whatever (spell or power) you can think of you have it at your disposal, but you have to do it fast.
EDIT: The time constraint is also intended as a minor balancing factor: if you had all the time of the world to dig in handbooks and splatbook the game would grind to a halt and you'd also have almost always an answer to everything as long as you have power points to fuel it.

[noob]

So this means that now the players get to do stuff which is not related with informatics at all except that they have to pretend it is linked?
Basically it is like movies after matrix 1: They did not understand it was about gaining root privileges(and making people understand they are in a simulation) and through it was about having a set of powers to use.

[Uncle Pine]

So this means that now the players get to do stuff which is not related with informatics at all except that they have to pretend it is linked?
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean: the players simply have access to whatever power or spell they can name, provided their level is high enough to manifest it and they have enough pp. They don't have to pretend anything.


Basically it is like movies after matrix 1: They did not understand it was about gaining root privileges(and making people understand they are in a simulation) and through it was about having a set of powers to use.
As I mentioned in the OP, I've just seen the first film a couple hours ago, so I don't entirely get references to the others. Regardless, there are no root privileges for the PCs to gain or simulations to breach: they are playing your average d&d campaign. If you prefer, you can picture the party going through the Sunless Citadel, except with slightly more optimized encounters.

[ben-zayb]

Did you just say The Matrix was already ~20 years ago?
*checks*
:smalleek:


On, topic, I have to agree with the post above. The simplest and closest I can think of that would capture the matrix feel would just be a normal metagame-y campaign that allows any crunch to be refluffed the way they want to, with all splatbooks and optimization handbooks available but still bound by some optimization ceiling (eg. no pun-pun, no infinite loops, etc.). Basically, it spells the difference between ye olde core-only Barbarian and the Lion-Totem Whirling Frenzy Barbarian Shock Trooper with ridiculous charge multipliers.

If you insist on instead granting PCs with ability suites, I'd open it to more subsystems, especially Blade Magic and Incarnum, to expand on a character's options for competence.

[Uncle Pine]

Ok, but how do you think a game with the mechanics proposed in the OP would play out compared to a normal campaign?

EDIT:

If you insist on instead granting PCs with ability suites, I'd open it to more subsystems, especially Blade Magic and Incarnum, to expand on a character's options for competence.
I'm not really granting ability suites, at least in the way I imagine ability suites: the only requirement for the PCs is to have their first level in any psionic class. The reason I chose psionics instead of other subsystems as a starting point is because other systems don't have a "cheap" way to stack the knowledge of the entire subsystem in question on a single character (here accomplished thanks to the fact that Spell to Power Erudites exist).

[TheIronGolem]

Whatever (spell or power) you can think of you have it at your disposal, but you have to do it fast.

Yeah, I get that, but that wasn't how it worked in the Matrix. The characters never have moments where they choose which superpowers they're going to have today. They all just have physics-bending kung fu stunts. Neo can do more than that, because he's Cyber Jesus and has access to Plot Magic, but he still never comes across as having had to choose a power loadout for the scene.


EDIT: The time constraint is also intended as a minor balancing factor: if you had all the time of the world to dig in handbooks and splatbook the game would grind to a halt and you'd also have almost always an answer to everything as long as you have power points to fuel it.

Well, you're right in that the time limit could potentially help with pacing. But it wouldn't really be that good as a balancing factor, because players would soon realize that they could do their book-diving in between games when time isn't a factor, assemble a few loadouts optimized for a variety of situations, and then just choose the most applicable one when the time comes in-game. The less sophisticated players who don't do that will often end up picking powers semi-randomly because they don't have a good grasp of their options and/or suffer from analysis-paralysis.

[ben-zayb]

Ok, but how do you think a game with the mechanics proposed in the OP would play out compared to a normal campaign?
It would significantly raise the competence of most psionic classes. Access to the right power at the right time is pretty much what kept the Erudite at the top of the psionic food chain and one of the things that made Psychic Reformation really good, and you are now giving that out for free. It would also give access to stuff like Psychic Warrior powers being lower-leveled than normal, and great low-level situational powers not normally easily accessible to most psionic class (Minor Creation, Synchronicity, Astral Construct, Charm, etc.). The aggregated power list is actually pretty good.

[Uncle Pine]

Yeah, I get that, but that wasn't how it worked in the Matrix. The characters never have moments where they choose which superpowers they're going to have today. They all just have physics-bending kung fu stunts. Neo can do more than that, because he's Cyber Jesus and has access to Plot Magic, but he still never comes across as having had to choose a power loadout for the scene.
Truth be told, I think there are some similarities: for example, the same way Trinity can ask to know how to pilot a helicopter, a player could decide he wants to manifest a fireball or dominate person - and then do exactly that.
But I won't say that I'm trying to perfectly replicate how things worked in The Matrix, because that is not my goal and I'd most likely fail or have to homebrew like crazy. For this thought experiment, The Matrix is simply an inspiration.


Well, you're right in that the time limit could potentially help with pacing. But it wouldn't really be that good as a balancing factor, because players would soon realize that they could do their book-diving in between games when time isn't a factor, assemble a few loadouts optimized for a variety of situations, and then just choose the most applicable one when the time comes in-game. The less sophisticated players who don't do that will often end up picking powers semi-randomly because they don't have a good grasp of their options and/or suffer from analysis-paralysis.
Yes, I expect that would happen eventually, either in a few sessions or during a longer period of time depending of whether the players compile their lists of favourite powers between games or by trials and errors during the game. For the average forum user, the former approach would naturally be more common.
But would this ruin the gaming experience? Once the players realise they can reliably pick powers from good lists as they see fit, they find themselves at a similar power level than your average Ancestral Relic Sorcerer.
It's naturally worth mentioning that these PCs will have top notch out-of-combat abilities since time isn't too much of a factor there and they can easily choose what they deem being the perfect power for each occasion. However, considering that 1st-level has been chosen as a starting point to initially minimise the mind-boggling amount of options at their disposal and provide them with a steady learning curve (1st-, then 2nd-, then 3rd-level powers and so on) instead of starting at 15th-level or something similarly crazy, it would take months, probably​ years, before the PCs gain access to all the truly game-breaking tools and maybe by then the campaign world around them will have been progressively adapted to such characters. Would this time be enjoyable? I think I'd find the opportunity to play such a character compelling, but this is my idea so I'm definitely biased, which is why I wanted to share it with the playground and hear their considerations.


It would significantly raise the competence of most psionic classes. Access to the right power at the right time is pretty much what kept the Erudite at the top of the psionic food chain and one of the things that made Psychic Reformation really good, and you are now giving that out for free. It would also give access to stuff like Psychic Warrior powers being lower-leveled than normal, and great low-level situational powers not normally easily accessible to most psionic class (Minor Creation, Synchronicity, Astral Construct, Charm, etc.). The aggregated power list is actually pretty good.
The list is definitely good, but is it so good that the PCs would almost never feel threathened, leading to a boring gaming experience? In other words, would this be an interesting optimization/campaign experiment or a boring one?

[Florian]

So you want to simulate the feeling of the Matrix action scenes at the table, forcing players to act fast, so to simulate the "flow" of the choreography?

Then I think 3E/PF is probably the worst system to use, especially the psionic rules. Even with very focused and crack players, mechanical resolution of the individual actions, especially using a subsystem that has many "moving parts" to keep track of (Focus, PP, etc.) is a chore that´ll defeat the whole concept.

Something like Feng Shui would actually be a better fit for this concept.

[icefractal]

So funnily enough, I did have an idea for a Pathfinder campaign that's similar to the Matrix in some ways. Didn't end up running it because the premise would have required:
1) A ****-load of prep.
2) All the players to be CO types.
3) Seriously, so much prep.

The idea is that you’ve got this typical fantasy world - super-generic, matches all the D&D fantasy tropes, and doesn’t take extrapolation into account at all. In fact, the world is completely in stasis; the current empires have lasted as long as anyone can remember with little change.

This isn’t a coincidence. Forces are keeping the world this way, to the extent that the inhabitants are literally not capable of inventing or doing anything that would change the structure too much. A Wizard learns Teleportation Circle and starts thinking about Tippyverse-esque tactics? No, he doesn’t, the idea vanishes immediately from his thoughts and he uses it to make traps in his obligatory mage tower instead.

The PCs are playing as people who would have the willingness to shatter the whole world and gamble on what happens. Probably because they have some significant problem with the current world, but maybe they’re just crazy like that. For that reason, they’ve been contacted by Nobody (https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/4/49448/1669216-mister_nobody.jpg) and granted awareness. Which means they’re immune to the stasis effect, and can start doing things that would have been impossible.

Which is good because their task is very hard. There’s a hole in the world. By destroying unique things, such as artifacts (which all have specific destruction methods in PF), and unique creatures like the Tarrasque, the hole gets bigger and the world gets less stable.

Mechanically speaking, the PCs all start as Paizo pre-gens, exactly as published. Every time the hole gets bigger they get an expanded set of things to pick from (all PF core -> all Paizo -> some 3rd party PF -> 3.5 material, maybe) and can rebuild their characters. Actual level-up would be minimal, at most going from 10th -> 15th over the whole campaign; rebuilding with greater cheese is the main source of power growth.

At first, they’re only facing the normal resistance from people in the world who notice what they’re doing. Since the PCs can use any tactic possible where-as everyone else is limited to ones that wouldn’t change the setting, and since most people don’t even understand what they’re doing, they’ve got a sizable advantage. But eventually, once the hole gets big enough, Agent Smith shows up.

Agent Smith is a presence that can possess any creature. At first it doesn’t change anything mechanically, just gives information, but since it has the same immunity to stasis as the PCs, as many copies of itself as it needs, and a hive mind that shares all information, it should ramp up the challenge considerably. Eventually when the hole gets big enough that the world starts getting noticeably unstable, Agent Smith breaks the rules itself and starts cheesing out the creatures it possesses in the same way the PCs are doing.

What the world actually is - a simulation, a pocket dimension, a normal world and the PCs are really working for the far realms - and what happens if the PCs succeed and shatter it, I hadn’t decided.

[ExLibrisMortis]

It's been a while since I saw the film, but I believe most of what Neo does (before he gets power:Yes) amounts to a dodge bonus to AC and haste. Maybe throw in prestidigitation and true seeing or something.

Now, if you want to run a campaign inspired by the Matrix, using 3.5 material, I'd try the (not-totally-RAW) combination of a planet-wide metaconcert manifesting a self-targeted forced dream, plus some Lucid Dreaming. For ultimate "is it real!?" madness, allow forced dream to be nested.

[Arutema]

My thought for a Matrix based campaign would be be to have the GM's narrative/world itself as The Matrix, and give PCs a pool of "Override Points" they could use to alter it. A single override point would let you fix the roll of any die on the table (yours, GM's, another player's. Larger expenditures of override points would let you change things like room descriptions or other box text.

GM: The gap is 120 feet across, all but impossible to---
Thomas: 20 feet
GM: 3 points. 20 feet across. Rolling your acrobatics check?
Thomas: 1 more point to get a 20 on my acrobatics roll.
GM: And the pursuing knights roll a 5, a 7, and a 20.
Carrie: a 1.
GM: All three knights fail the jump.

Agents could be represented by either blatant GM cheating, or having their own pools of override points to burn through.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Tonight I've seen this almost 20 years old film for the first time in my life-

Let me stop you right there.

Go back and watch the movie two more times, then come back and check this thread again.

It also wouldn't hurt to hit up youtube, and binge-watch all the fight scenes from the second movie.

One fake internet cookie says you'll have a slightly different frame of mind on this idea by the time you're done doing that.

And no, I'm not talking about all the head-trippy stuff in those movies. BURLY BRAWL! BURLY BRAWL! BUUUURRRLLLLYYYY-