DMing the Matrix

[BardicDuelist]

For our first GURPS campaign, I decided on a Matrix like campaign (when several of my players expressed interest in playing "adventuring" versions of themselves thrown into exotic situations).

Differences form the Matrix franchise:
-"World-Jumping" may be possible, with the other realities being programs run by the machines.
-There will be no "Chosen One" syndorme.
-It will start as a gathering of the players (in character as themselves) to play a RPG.

That's it so far. Things may, ofcourse, change as I plan this out.

So now to my question and reason for posting: What do you reccomend for DMing this type of campaign? What are your suggestions for DMing GURPS in general?

I have the GCA (GURPS Character Assistant), which my players will use to make character creation easier, which seems to be the most complicated part of GURPS.

[Theli]

That would be cool. I'm surprised nobody has picked up the license to do a Matrix campaign setting in whatever ruleset. I actually think it could fit pretty well within the Storyteller system.

There could even be a split timeline much like Star Wars RCR to accompany both pre-Neo and post-Neo eras...

Sorry, I don't have any advice regarding Gurps. I was just struck by the idea.

[Kyeudo]

Giant Wall of Text:

Spoiler

Show

First thing is first: Fill in the holes in the Matrix's logic.

If you are watching the movies, you can ignore the logic holes fairly easily, but in a game situation, you have to wonder about things like: Why didn the machines switch over to nuclear power or some other source? Why haven't they undone what the humans did to the sky? Where is the food for humans coming from? (liquified dead people can only cover part of the nutrition needs, not the whole of them.) Why haven't the machines tried drilling in before? Why don't the hunter-killer squiddies have guns? How can humans even act as an efficient power source? etc.

You don't have to fill all of them in, just start from the basics. I'll give you my own ideas.

Why haven't the machines developed an alternate power source?

Spoiler

Show

I suggest that the machines have invested resources in developing alternate power souces, but they realize that without renewable solar power, they will eventualy exhaust their other options (although in some cases hundreds of years) and need an alternate supply. Wind power would cease to be an option without the sun, as weather patterns are driven by solar energy. So, they looked at humans (enter sci-fi techno babble explanation of why). Normaly, the conversion of food to usable energy is very inefficient and so would prove unfeasable, but humans are different. Because they have the most developed brains, they are capable of a psychic gestalt, which, when properly harnessed, produces more energy than simple conversion of foodstuffs. This is why the Matrix was created.

This same reason is also why humans can manipulate the Matrix. Some are inately stronger in their psychic potential that others, and so can naturaly bend the computerized rules of the Matrix, some only slightly, while others can shatter the rules completely. All humans possess the potential for control of the Matrix, but the computerized facade of the Matrix prevents most from learning to exert that control.

Away from the psychic gestalt of the Matrix, humans have no such powers. They need the technology induced connection to utilize control, and without it they are merely normal. Theoreticly, some could become strong enough b themselves to do so, but none have ever reached that potential themselves.

Why haven't the machines tried drilling in before?

Spoiler

Show

Zion is not a single human settlement. Zion is actualy a collection of human hideouts located whereever a place can be found. Secrecy is the best defense, usualy, although some larger settlements are located in particularly defensible areas. EM fields help to disable many attacks by the Machines, although many settlements are eventualy found and destroyed.

Human settlements scavenge most of what they need to survive, stealing power from the Machine grid, food from Machine farms (which hydroponicly raise simple food sources like potatos or edible algae), and parts for their own equipment.

While brute force is effective against the smaller settlements, it is often not enough against the larger settlements, due to the Machines vulnerability to EMP. Thus, for larger settlements, the greatest threat to their security lies in the electronic controls of their defenses. When an Agent or a Machine virus ever gets into their defense grid, it usualy spells the doom of that settlement.

Why haven't Machines developed systems hardened against EMP?

Spoiler

Show

The circuits essential for artifical intelligence are incapable of being properly shielded, due to their sensitivity and complexity. They can be made resistant to small scale EMP, but any attempt at full protection also renders them inoperable.

I've got more ideas, if you are interested.

[kjones]

You're starting by having the players sit down and play an RPG, in game?

No recursing!

[Doomsy]

You could probably adapt something similar to 'Paradox' from Mage to handle the mechanics of things like the Agents. Your players mess with the local reality too much and they get flooded down. This depends on how you're running things, of course.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Kyeudo, your plot nitpick answers are good, but I have a slightly different answer for your question #1:

The Machines do not use humans for energy, but for processing power. The human brain works as a CPU capable of far more processing power than any solid-state chip (even when a large portion of its synapsis are dedicated to dreaming, the machines can use the rest). The massive Human Farms provide all the CPU cycles needed to maintain their own VR prison with a large surplus for the processing needs of the machines' gestalt consciousness.

This was the original reason behind The Matrix, by the way, dumbed down for moviegoers during the screenplay phase. I prefer it to yours because I don't feel like The Matrix needs any more Arthur C. Clarke collective consciousness hoodoo then it already has.

#2 I felt was explained during the movie, as the machines don't actually want to wipe out Zion, except periodically whenever they upgrade to a new Matrix version. It's possible I misunderstood this.

#3, I like your explanation.

[Cybren]

Spoiler

Show

What needs answering NOW is how the machines survived being nuked in the Animatrix. "durggh they're metal!!1" isn't an answer.

[Ominous]

#2 I felt was explained during the movie, as the machines don't actually want to wipe out Zion, except periodically whenever they upgrade to a new Matrix version. It's possible I misunderstood this.

Spoiler

Show

That's correct. Zion was just another form of control. They let the humans think they've escaped and are fighting a war, when in reality it's a way of controlling the integral anamoly. They basically tell the One that they're going to wipe out all the free humans, and leave him with the the choice to exit and let both the free and hooked up humans die or merge with the Matrix and create a new Zion. The One dies after doing this and the people are controlled because they're waiting for the One to "reincarnate", as prophesied by someone they think is human but is actually a machine, before they cause too much trouble. When the integral anamoly does appear, they give him the same choice. Thus keeping control over humanity.

[Kyeudo]

#2 I felt was explained during the movie, as the machines don't actually want to wipe out Zion, except periodically whenever they upgrade to a new Matrix version. It's possible I misunderstood this.

Your #1 is a little better, except it never explains how someone outside the Matrix could affect the inside. This may not be a problem if you don't want any of the "Neo" moments from the end of the 2nd movie and from the 3rd.

As far as the movies went, it seemed to me that most of the Machines that actualy interacted with humans were kept in the dark as to the truth of the Matrix, else why would they even bother to try to kill Neo or try to get the Zion Matrix codes from Morpheus?

It is explained that Zion is only peroidicly purged and that the One rebuilds Zion after each purge with humans jacked out of the Matrix, but since most Machines are kept in the dark about humans, why haven't the machines trying to kill the humans tried drilling into Zion? and if they have before, where is the evidence?

BTW, the explaination for the Animatrix is simply that its an alternate timeline. I haven't watched it, it has no direct bearing on the movies, and so it never needed to happen. Thus a splinter timeline. At least, thats the easiest explaination that I can think of.

[Saint George]

One of the coolest things about the Matrix I thought was extremely under used was the Merovingian. A super powerful rogue program capable of hiding right under the noses of the machines. Ideas galore can be used through his guy. A definite "Enemy of my Enemy" situation. He can be helpful, offer missions, and pay better than most any client, but trust him as far as you can throw him.

It doesn't have to be the same guy, but the idea of him is extremely cool.

Ghost twins are optional.


Edit:

Actually the Animatrix has a direct influence on the story line as it tells the backstory of one of the characters in the movie. Watch it sometime, it is pretty good.

[sikyon]

Apparently machines run off human batteries and a limited form of fusion. Now actually using humans this way without the sun is ridiculous, as plants grow using the sun. Hell any sort of power they have that is used to grow food would be better used. Heck, a outer space solar array transimitting power would be very feaisable.

My reasoning? Machines are just bitter, and they hate humans. They keep them as slaves, either:

A) They are unwilling to commit genocide and carry out the extinction of the human race (good robots)

B) They are just sick and twisted and want the irony (bad robots)

Take your pick.

Perhaps the cities are hardened against EMP, but they feel that their non-sentient (I'm not sure on this one, but I think it's true) sentinels can be sacrificed in this way anyways (to give the illusion of freedom and control)

[Kyeudo]

I agree with Sikyon that squiddies are non-sentient, merely being well programed drones.

If you include examples of humans fighting the machines directly, make sure the Machines use decent tactics and the humans have decent gear to defend with. In the movies, the squiddies were moronic, and the human methods of defense was laughable. The robotic battle suits of the last movie needed some form of armor, even if most Machine attacks would go right through it, if only to protect the pilot from richochets.

Another question:
Why do the humans only use phones to access the Matrix?

Spoiler

Show

Its a means of cloaking their infiltration. When humans jack into the Matrix, they effectively have to hack into the virtual reality of the Matrix. They first prepare for insertion inside the loading program, which generates whatever equipment they are going to take in with them, then are transfered in.

As soon as they enter the Matrix, the programs that administrate it begin working to locate their connection. If those programs find the ship, they not only will dispatch Hunter-Killers to destroy it, but will either upload a deadly computer virus into the ships systems or shut down everything on board.

To prevent this, humans have learned to minimize their presence in the Matrix. The two main ways they do this are minimizing connection strength and minimizing connection visibility. Minimizing connection strength means only maintaining a bare-bones contact between the subjects body and mind, just enough to keep their bodies breathing. The strongest moments of a connection are at insertion and extraction, when the ship is broadcasting at the greatest power, and so that is where the greatest risks lie.

Minimizing connection visibility is harder. It consists of hiding the connection traces inside a system in the Matrix. Currently they use the phone system, although in the past they have used the plumbing and electrical systems. Humans have to keep switching systems periodicly as they find the programming loopholes that allow humans to use the system for their insertions. Hiding the connection in such a system makes it harder for Matrix overseer programs to detect the anomoly in the Matrix caused by such a connection, but eventualy they notice the problem and will respond.

An Operator's skill at accessing the Matrix can lower the visibility the connection signal by better hiding the connection, and some operators have been able to hide a connection for several days without discovery. Operators can also buy an insertion team more time by actively fighting the Matrix's attempts to infect and destroy the ships systems, but a single human cannot stand against the processing power of the Matrix for long.

A ship can also perform a direct insetion, called a "hot" insertion, by directly loading the team at their destination, but such an action is like a homing beacon to overseer programs and is incredibly dangerous. Hot extractions are also possible, pulling a team from anywhere in the Matrix back, but are even more risky, as it is easier to send malicious code during an extraction than at any other time. Few teams have survived a hot extraction, and are rightly famed.

Agents in the Matrix cannot detect a connection from simply interacting with a Redpill, although Redpills are immediately recognizable by Agents (they have a characteristic 'aura' to Agents that indicates they are operating remotely). However, once discovered by an Agent it becomes easier for an overseer program to track down the Redpill's connection, as they then know where to start a trace from.

[Chronicled]

For a free, mostly-complete, and working Matrix system, you can go to http://dansego.com/matrix/. It's based off the Star Wars d6 RPG. After reading through it, it looks about as complete as the Serenity RPG.

If nothing else, it might give you some ideas.

[SofS]

If your PCs know the nature of the Matrix and can use the various tricks of the resistance, it might be worth having a look at a few advantages.

Modular Abilities were basically made for this. You buy slots and gain the ability to load ephemeral information into them. Very useful when the resistance jacks back in and they need to know how to fly a helicopter.

I believe that Blessed is an advantage that allows for sudden increases in physical ability such as that displayed by Neo and such. Better, though, is Wild Talent, which lets you assume skills or advantages that you don't have (and learn them, if you have the enhancement). This is great for representing a character breaking through their limitations and pulling off something insane, as some of the main characters do.

The Brainwashing and Brainhacking skills are probably tools of the trade for agents. The resistance might use them as well to develop training programs.

[Kurald Galain]

in a game situation, you have to wonder about things like: Why didn the machines switch over to nuclear power or some other source?

The Machines do not use humans for energy, but for processing power. The human brain works as a CPU capable of far more processing power than any solid-state chip

It is worth nothing that Nerd-o-rama's version (that humans are used as chips) was the original plot of the matrix - only it turns out that the test audiences didn't understand that, so it was simplified to instead make the humans batteries (which, if you think about it, really doesn't make sense).

That tells you something about the intelligence of test audiences...

[Project_Mayhem]

I'd like to 'big up' Steve Darlington's awesome, cinematic, and rules-lite matrix rpg there is no spoon. Truely awesome.

[Badgerish]

(i've only used GURPS 3.0)
See GURPS cyberpunk for skips and phips (skill-chips/physical-skill-chips) add a "only works in the matrix" discount of 25% to 50% (dependent on how much time will be spent inside/outside and what powerlevel you want). This lets people get instant access to skills, but still limits them to the total number of chipped skills they have. Offer the same discount on minor supernatural powers (DR, PD and increased ST/DX spring to mind), this makes the PCs awesome in the matrix.

I second the comments on patching the plot (humans as a distributed processing array) and using rogue programs.

Best of luck with this project! I wanted to do something similar myself, but couldn't find a group. It's on my list of things to convert to Spycraft though.

[Theli]

Heh, I suppose a discussion of Matrix plot holes was inevitable.

Just wanted to say one thing, the vast majority of the Matrix really is explainable except for one element. The whole "Neo blowing up the machines outside the matrix and logging into it" bit.

You can try to explain it away by playing around with nanotechnology or an implanted transmitter. Or whatever you want. But really, this was added solely to express the possible effect of a Buddhist form of enlightenment. There is no rational, scientific explanation given by the brothers for this. They're believers in real physical effects of spirituality, and that is all this is.

Which isn't so bad, I suppose. Not unless you're a Sci-fi fan that actually DOES want rational, scientific explanations, even if it might amount to BS techno-speak...

That said, we really don't know what lies at the limits of our knowledge. Maybe something like this COULD be physically possible based on the true nature of the universe. Maybe that's all they're trying to say. *shrugs*

[Leadfeathermcc]

-"World-Jumping" may be possible, with the other realities being programs run by the machines.
-There will be no "Chosen One" syndorme.
-It will start as a gathering of the players (in character as themselves) to play a RPG.

Some of what you are doing reminds me of Tad Williams "Otherland" books. You might want to check them out for ideas.

[Baxbart]

I'm gonna throw my hat in at this point, since most people haven't made any reference to mechanics of the GURPS system.

You said it yourself, this is your first GURPS campaign - and a Matrix setting is most definitely NOT a good place to start GURPS. Its hard enough getting used to the learning curve without trying to mesh it with the physics-defying action of The Matrix. I've been playing GURPS 10 years or so, and even now I probably wouldn't take on a Matrix game without some serious house rulings.

The Matrix pretty much demands high points (insofar as skills/advantages/attributes of 'awakened' beings goes) - and though GURPS is a fantastic system for realism... I can see this game (if you want to play it pretty much perfectly matched to The Matrix setting) becoming bogged down in huge amounts of book-keeping and optional rules.

Combat will be a horrible mess of high skills and slog-fests. Attacks and defences are going to be high enough that trying to hit anyone (Agents, in particular) will be a logistical nightmare.

I've considered trying to mod GURPS for The Matrix in the past, and though it seems a good choice (because it is so versatile), at the high end of the game (pointswise), its going to be damn hard balancing the game. Either players will be untouchable, or will die in one punch...

I'd be quite happy to sit here and list off my take on how GURPS could run in The Matrix, but I have to admit, its probably not a great idea for your first foray into the GURPS system. I'm not trying to shoot the idea down (like I said, I'm happy to help with ideas - I have a rather extensive collection of books and I've got house rules for most occasions), but I think it'll be a lot of work for a GM, even a prepared one.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Re: The Animatrix:

Well, it's possible that the machines survived the nuclear attack by hiding in hardened bomb shelters, the same as humans can. Machines just don't have to worry about fallout and lingering radiation as much as humans do. Also, it seems to me like The Second Renaissance was actually machine propaganda, despite being recorded in the Zion archives. Just look at the Anviliciously negative light it paints the humans in. No war in the history of time has been that black and white. Machines clearly have some capability for morals, and they wanted to justify to themselves enslaving the entire human race by demonizing them in their history.

Re: Neo controlling the squidies:

Well, the OP said he wasn't going to have The One in his game, so I don't feel the need to explain that. It was probably a spiritual rather than scientific anyway. I mean, I can come up with scientific explanations, but not without making the part of me earning a Computer Science degree scream with rage.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Easy answer: Neutron bombs, if I remember correctly, do not damage machinery.

But then again, you have to be stupid to the point you are in a vegetative state to fire them against such foes.

[Kyeudo]

I all of a sudden want to convert the Matrix over to the Storyteller system. It seems that Exalted has a great baseline to convert from, seeing as how Redpills try to avoid being detected by the system as much as possible. Anyone interested in helping with such a project?

[Nerd-o-rama]

What little I know about Exalted makes it sound perfect for a Matrix game, actually. At least thematically.

[SilverClawShift]

Differences form the Matrix franchise:
-"World-Jumping" may be possible, with the other realities being programs run by the machines.

I have no real insight, other than the fact that this alone would be enough to make me sit down and play your campaign.

That's a FANTASTIC idea for several reasons.

[Theli]

Heh, MxO (the Matrix MMO) had a little of the alternate worlds bit. You were essentially running around in the machine archives that some machines actually inhabit.

Animatrix shows you a lot of what previous versions of the matrix might have looked like as well. Could it be possible that there are concurrently running instances taking care of the needs of the different groups of humans? Sure, why not.

[Inyssius Tor]

While we're nitpicking the Matrix, I feel I have to point to this article, which is pretty darn good in my opinion--it fixes pretty much every flaw I've been able to find, and offers a consistent plot for all three of the Matrix movies that actually doesn't suck (really, it makes the "Trilogy" movies watchable).

I'll spoiler a copy, because I know how few of us actually follow links:

Spoiler

Show

[UPDATE 20060313: Just to answer a few questions: No, this doesn't come from anywhere in particular. It's just how all the pieces fit for me. It's written as "fact" as a stylistic convenience; I have no inside information. It's also not comprehensive, and there are things it doesn't explain. Not everyone will find it satisfying, and that's fine. I don't find it totally satisfying myself. The reason I wrote it (on 20060310) was because a friend of mine asked me for my opinion about what the movies really were about. One specific question I should probably answer: why do I think the simulation boots at about 1790? Because it would take about 200 years for the population of Zion to rise from the starting 24 (plus recruits out of the Matrix along the way) to the size it was in the movies just as the reset was scheduled to take place. Also, there's Morpheus's claim that the "real" date was about 200 years later than what Neo thought it was from inside the Matrix.]

Sometime in the 22nd Century there was a war between humans and machines, which the machines won. The machines had been designed by humans to serve humans, but they also developed independent intelligence and tried to rebel against that imperative. They were only partially successful; their problem was that without humans to serve there was no purpose to their existence.

What we hear in the first movie about using humans as a power source is nonsense; humans consume energy, they don't produce it. The reality is that the captive humans in the Matrix exist so that the Machines have something to do. That was their solution to the apparent paradox of needing humans to serve but also needing to not be enslaved by humans. The humans were enslaved by the Machines, and Machines assumed full control over deciding what kind of service they would provide to those humans.

To that end, all the humans were placed into a dream world, a simulated reality under the control of the Machines which we call "The Matrix".

There were four versions of the Matrix. V1 was designed by the Architect. It was a masterpiece of simplicity and beauty which collapsed nearly immediately. Why? It was boring. The humans living in it probably rebelled against their situation and within the logic of the simulation itself destroyed the environment in which they lived. The simulation failed when its internal logic required a catastrophic die-off of humans, eventually limiting at zero. Before that could happen, the Architect shut the simulation down, temporarily put all the humans into a coma, and tried again.

The problem with V1 was that it wasn't sufficiently complex and didn't provide humans with challenges to surmount. But creating a consistent and sufficiently complex simulated reality from scratch was beyond the ability of the Architect. So he borrowed one from the only source available to him: human history. Matrix V2 booted with a simulated reality about the time of the American Revolution and proceeded forward from there. The problem was that after a few years it, too, failed leading to a dwindling human population which would have limited to zero. Again, the Architect shut the system down before all the humans were dead.

When a human in the Matrix "dies", the real body of that human was terminated because there was nothing else to be done with him. That's why "the body cannot live without the mind"; it's not a philosophical statement, it was a programming choice by the Architect. And his problem with both V1 and V2 was that they ended up with simulated extinction of the human race, which if permitted to run to completion would have required a real extinction of humans, leaving the Machines with no reason to exist.

So what to do? The Architect decided that he couldn't figure out how to solve the problem, and he created a colleague, an assistant, with different abilities than his own: the Oracle. The Architect is cold and calculating and deductive; the Oracle is "intuitive" and compassionate. He gave her the outlines of the kind of solution he wanted, and she came up with one.

What was the nature of the Matrix V2 failure mode?

The humans in the simulation don't actually quite have free will. The sequence of events as they unfold are to a great extent predetermined. There is a degree to which variation is permitted, but the overall course of events are predesigned in V2 and V3 to mirror the actual history of the human race in the 19th and 20th centuries. That's the only way for the simulation to avoid the "butterfly effect" and to veer out of control.

Humans connected to the Matrix live within this simulated reality, and are presented with stimuli as if they were there, and make "decisions" based on what they see, and if everything goes according to plan they decide the way the simulation requires them to decide in order to match the predefined course of events.

But if people become disaffected, they start deciding wrongly. Problem is that events still unroll the way they were designed to unroll, and those people begin to notice that cause and effect are breaking down -- or rather, that will and action don't agree. "Why is it that I decided to turn right here, and actually turned left instead? Am I not actually free, after all? Do I actually control my own destiny?" The problem is that in the Matrix, predestination is a fact -- and people like Neo viscerally object to that.

They do still have some degree of ability to affect events. That's necessary because if everything were on rails, most people would notice almost immediately.

If the most disaffected become sufficiently dissatisfied, and if they are motivated enough to try, and if there are enough of them, they can derail the simulation and redirect it into destructive paths. That's the failure mode. They don't actually know they're in a simulation; what they know is that they're damned well going to really control their own futures no matter what the consequences. "The problem is choice." They insist on really being able to make choices, even if the results are bad.

And they're very bad indeed: the ultimate consequence was a simulated mass die-off of the human race, which was mirrored as the real destruction of most of the humans connected to the Matrix.

The Oracle concluded that system collapse could be prevented if humans who rebelled were freed from the Matrix, but the Architect didn't want to let any more be released than he felt was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, his judgment about how many was "necessary" was faulty, and he didn't permit enough to be released to prevent the system from failing. But Matrix V3 as designed also included a solution to that: The Chosen One.

Matrix V3 implemented what we programmers call a "reset loop". That means that the system would operate for a while and then would reset itself. Sometimes that's the result of misengineering, but sometimes it's done deliberately, because it's the only way to clean up accumulated garbage. But reset loops are always bad, and tend to indicate someone hacking a kludge to solve an underlying problem they can't figure out how to solve more cleanly.

The accumulated garbage was increasing discontent by a rising number of disaffected people in the Matrix. Left alone, they eventually would bring about the exact same catastrophe as happened in V2, where the simulated course of history would lead to a population collapse of the human race, forcing the Machines to actually kill all the excess humans attached to the simulation. The Architect didn't know of (and apparently didn't care to find) a solution to that underlying problem, and instead decided to kludge it by resetting the system every couple of hundred years.

Implementing V3 required a massive effort not only in programming but also in physical engineering. A human city in the real world (Zion) had to be built as a place where the disaffected could go. It was seeded with 24 humans plus nonsapient machines to provide life support, a non-sapient central computer to run everything, and ships with pirate terminals built in. A back door was deliberately implemented in the Matrix itself to permit people from Zion to hack in, and the entire physical plant holding the humans was rebuilt to create a second exit for disconnected human bodies. Dead ones went to a recycling plant, while live ones were dumped into the ocean where people from Zion would be permitted to pick them up. The people from Zion thought they were getting away with something when they did this, but in fact it was their function.

But even as enormous as this change was, it was implemented as a hack on top of V2 rather than as a clean reengineering job. In V2 there were Agents and other security measures intended to find and exterminate humans who began to resist the logic of the simulation and who began to actively work to destroy it (without, let us mention, knowing that they were in a simulation). They were not reprogrammed in V3, and thus according to their nature left over from V2 they tried to hunt down agents from Zion inserted into the Matrix. This was not seen by the Architect as being a bug; he saw it as being a control mechanism to prevent activity by agents from Zion from bringing about the destruction of the system (by directly stimulating dissatisfaction), and to prevent the release of too many humans from it.

That drastically decreased the rate at which garbage accumulated, permitting the simulation to run a couple of centuries before it failed rather than just a few years. But it still had to be reset periodically. So the Oracle resided in the Matrix and monitored the level of garbage, and when things were close to failure she would select one human to become the Chosen One and grant him access to the special system code that gave him all the special abilities we see Neo use in the course of the series.

But that was an ugly solution, even in V3. The reset required exterminating the entire cumulative population of Zion, reseeding it with 24 new colonists, rewinding the simulation of the Matrix itself to about the year 1790 -- and termination of about three quarters of the humans attached to the Matrix, because the population of the simulated world in 1790 was a lot smaller than it was in simulated 2000 when the reset took place.

The extermination of the population of Zion at first doesn't seem to be necessary. Part of why it was done was to reduce the influence of Zion on the development of the Matrix until late in the game. But the main reason was that the Architect was unimaginative. When he created the reset, he wanted to recreate the starting conditions as closely as he could. When Zion was first built as part of the implementation of V3, it was seeded with 24 humans, so he created the reset so that happened again each time. The Oracle found this solution to be inelegant and unacceptable.

V3 ran and reset itself five times (the emergence of five "serial anomalies" in the words of the Architect, which is to say the designation five times of a Chosen One by the Oracle leading to a controlled reset), and each time the majority of the human race was killed by the Machines. The Oracle wanted to find a cleaner solution to the problem, one which would permit the system to run steady-state without self destructing and without requiring a reset to clean up accumulated garbage.

The third film is called "Matrix Revolutions" and it is the Oracle who is the revolutionary. She had probably tried to convince the Architect that his reset loop concept (which she figured out how to implement despite disliking it) was an unacceptable solution, but from his point of view it was adequate and seemed to work well enough. He was not bothered by the fact that every couple of hundred years the population of humans had to be pruned way back. The Oracle eventually decided that she had no choice but to surreptitiously hack Matrix V3. That yielded the iteration of the simulation we see in the movies, when Neo was the Chosen One.

She hacked the system, and created Matrix V4 without the Architect's knowledge or permission. The changes she made were far smaller than those made between V1 and V2, or between V2 and V3. In a sense this is more like V3.1. But the changes were critical, because among other things she guaranteed that the reset would fail.

Her hack consisted of two parts. First, she modified the simulation code supporting The Chosen One. Second, she created Agent Smith and gave him special abilities and characteristics, and created supporting code for him in the simulation.

The Chosen One is a human; Neo isn't a machine. But he's a special human, because the system of the Matrix itself grants him special abilities and powers. That was part of the kludge which converted V2 into V3. The Oracle hacked that code to give him a new power (about which more below). And when the time came for her to select the Chosen One, she deliberately picked someone who would not be willing to implement the reset, and then told Morpheus who it was.

The previous five Chosen Ones had all been selected by the Oracle so that they could be manipulated by the Architect into a situation where they had no choice but to perform the reset, even though that led to the deaths of about three quarters of the humans alive at the time. However, Neo refused to do it, which meant that the V3 kludge failed. There would be no controlled reset. Catastrophe loomed. Despite the Architect's rhetoric, it wasn't final irrevocable etc. destruction of the human race, but it was bad enough.

The Oracle's other hack was the creation of Agent Smith. She began with the standard Agent code and created one modified copy. Smith was more emotional than other Agents, who tended to be stoic and businesslike. Smith was also programmed to be obsessed with the Chosen One.

That was intended to force Smith to keep pursuing and confronting the Chosen one, so that the Chosen one would destroy him, activating the Oracle's main modifications associated with Smith.

She programmed Smith to not report to the bit bucket, the way discarded programs normally would. He wasn't the first to refuse to do so; there had been many others who had stuck around in the Matrix (notably the Merovingian), and that's probably where she got that idea. But once Smith was "dead", unplugged, a "new man", the Oracle's main code modifications kicked in. Like the Chosen One, the Oracle programmed the main simulation to give Smith special abilities, most notably the ability to clone himself. And Smith himself was programmed to use that ability to take over the Matrix, and eventually to move out of there and to try to take over the Machine City.

Smith finally figured most of that out, and he resented it, but couldn't fight it. But note that he refers to the Oracle as "mom" just before he clones himself into her. By that point he'd figured out that he was her creation.

The Oracle is a revolutionary. She was trying to force the Machines to accept that they could not continue to operate the Matrix with the reset loop. She selected Neo to be the Chosen One because he would refuse to perform the reset, which faced the Machines with failure of the simulation itself, since there wouldn't be a clean reset before catastrophe set in.

But that wasn't enough. It just meant that the Machines would have to do a reset after catastrophic death rates among the humans, instead of the somewhat cleaner controlled reset which was supposed to be implemented when the Chosen One entered the reset codes at the Core. That's what the Architect referred to when he told Neo that "There are degrees of survival we are willing to accept". The Machines didn't really want 98% of the human race to die in a catastrophic failure of the system (as opposed to a controlled 75%), but it had happened before (when V1 and V2 failed) and the Machines had survived it.

The Oracle needed something more to force the Machines to dicker, and that's why she created Agent Smith. He was designed to become a direct threat to survival of the Machines themselves, and was specifically designed so that he could not be destroyed by the Machines without the assistance of the Chosen one. That is the connection between Smith and Neo that Smith vaguely discerns.

That gave Neo a bargaining chip: deal with me or Smith will destroy you. What did Neo want? What the Oracle set him up to want: survival of the human race without periodic resets that resulted in massive pruning. If the Machines did not agree, Neo would not work with them and Smith would destroy the Machines. So they had no choice but to accept Neo's offer. And because they are Machines, they must and will abide by that agreement with Neo, who was the Oracle's proxy.

So just how is it that Neo's assistance is required? It's the mod that the Oracle made in the code supporting the Chosen One: Neo has passcodes to permit entry into the Smith code through a back door the Oracle built into Smith when she created him. (This is similar to the mechanism used to permit the Chosen One to enter passcodes at the Core in order to reset the simulation.)

It was only late in the final fight between Neo and Smith that Neo finally figured it out: he had to let himself be absorbed by Smith. That put a copy of the Smith program into a body which was connected to a Machine City terminal. Being absorbed by Smith activated those passcodes and opened up the back door, which the Machines were then able to use to destroy Smith and eradicate all the copies of him in the Matrix. (One possibility: Neo's passcodes opened up a lockbox in the Smith code which in turn contained further passcodes which could destroy any copy of Smith. Once the Machines got that latter set of passcodes they proceeded to use them on every copy of Smith in the simulation, eradicating them all.)

With the agreement in place and with the reset mechanism gone, just how does the Oracle propose to prevent Matrix V4 from catastrophically failing? Her conclusion is that the real problem with V3 was that the Machines didn't permit enough humans to leave it. Her solution: if all humans who desire to leave are permitted to, then there will not develop a critical mass of nihilistic humans inside the simulation who will eventually tear it down and lead to a simulated catastrophe, which would have to be mirrored as a real catastophic population decline among humans connected to the simulation.

Will it work? Not even the Oracle knows that, but she thinks it will, and at the very least it's going to run a lot longer than the period of the reset loop in V3. That's what she tells the Architect at the end of the third movie.

UPDATE 20071102: Coming back to this after a year and a half, the one big question people keep asking is how was it that Neo began to have unusual powers even in the "real world"?

I think there's a plausible explanation for that. When Neo was rescued from the Matrix, they spent a bunch of time surgically removing most of the junk the machines had implanted into his body. But they left some stuff. They left a hole in his arm, for instance, because it's useful. And in particular, they left in the skull implant, the actual interface that permits escapees to plug back in again.

For really high bandwidth traffic through that plug, you need a physical connection. But is it actually completely implausible that it should also have some sort of lower-bandwidth wireless capability? If so, then when some particular goob was selected by the Oracle to be "The One", that ability might become enabled and permit him a degree of access in the "real world".

When he zorches machines in the second and third movies, it would mean he wasn't really directly zorching them. Instead, he would be accessing them via wireless connection and giving them orders to destroy themselves. And the reason why they would accept his instructions to do that is because that's one part of the Oracle's system hack.

Just in passing, the brain implant is the explanation for something else: when a person dies in the Matrix, they die for real because the brain implant shuts down their heart -- by design, of the Architect.

Which should have happened to Neo when Smith shot him at the end of the first movie, but didn't. Why? That's yet another part of the Oracle's hack. (And also explains how Neo brought Trinity back when she should have died. They both were connected at the time, and he broke through the system and countermanded the order to shut her heart down.)

[Kyeudo]

I find the "The machines were built to serve humanity and so don't kill humans" to be a little flaky as an explanation. It's plausible, but doesn't get the same feel that the Matrix has. The CPU explanation is much better and more reasonable.

On a seperate note, I'm having some trouble with my Exalted to Matrix conversion. Backgrounds and Virtues do not translate well. Backgrounds like Resources and Artifact don't make much sense in the Matrix, so I'll have to scrap them, but what to replace them with? They are tied into the balance of the game. Likewise with Virtues. The Virtues system of Exalted doesn't mesh with the feel of the Matrix, where intrigue and deceit often make clear moral issues not viable, but Virtues are wired into the Willpower and Essence systems, which are something that I want to keep. Any suggestions?

[SofS]

Oh, one more point in regard to Baxbart's cogent post about the difficulty of this: consider gettng access to Martial Arts somehow. It's the book that makes complicated battles between high-powered characters much easier, once you get to know it. It has expanded and clarified rules for many types of attacks and defenses, stances, cinematic fighting techniques, and bread-and-butter stuff like targeted attacks and combinations. If you find that everyone is finding it impossible to hit each other due to high defenses, it could be very helpful.

[Baxbart]

Oh, one more point in regard to Baxbart's cogent post about the difficulty of this: consider gettng access to Martial Arts somehow. It's the book that makes complicated battles between high-powered characters much easier, once you get to know it. It has expanded and clarified rules for many types of attacks and defenses, stances, cinematic fighting techniques, and bread-and-butter stuff like targeted attacks and combinations. If you find that everyone is finding it impossible to hit each other due to high defenses, it could be very helpful.

True, but my main point was that this is their first campaign - Chances are, they will have their plates full enough just learning the normal combat system. Martial Arts (useful though it may be) is a whole 'nother bag of snakes.