A Splinter in Your Mind - Matrix Quest

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◉ CODA ◉​

Alice Lovelace
​
Resolve
3/3​
Detachment
2​
Skill
6​
Gear
6/10​

Paths​
Path of Resistance
Level 1
When you Fight.exe.
When you gratuitously blow something up as an act of resistance.
The first time in a session you tell an authority to go fuck itself.
XP: ◉◉◉◉◎
You may spend Resistance XP to add or subtract Harm you give or take, 1-1.​
Path of Truth
Level 1
When you Prompt.exe.
When you follow your curiosity in a way that doesn't advance the mission.
The first time in a session you discover something new about the Matrix.
XP: ◉◉◉◎◎
You may spend Truth XP to reroll dice when you Charge or Refresh, 1-1d6.​
Path of Enlightenment
Level 1
When you Disconnect.exe.
When you refuse to back down or run away from impossible odds.
The first time you run out of Resolve in a session.
XP: ◉◉◎◎◎
You may spend Enlightenment XP as if they were Detachment, 1-1.​
Moves
Beginning to Believe: You gain +1 Detachment the first time you Charge.
Stop Trying to Hit Me: You take -1 Harm when on the Defensive in Fights.
Mine Now: Spend a Full Hit in Fight to disarm an enemy of their weapon. If you then shoot them with it, take +1.
Try Again: When you attempt a Disconnect you failed before and have not yet succeeded at, you may input one 6 as a True Hit.
Bit of Help: When you spend Detachment on any move other than Disconnect, you get two +1s. They can be applied to the same die or different ones.

Stunts
Jump Impossible Distances Lvl 2*
Hit with Implausible Force Lvl 1
Dodge Implausible Ways Lvl 1
Act with Implausible Slight of Hand Lvl 1

​


CW: Very 90s.

Also, this is going to be a seriously fucked up quest. I'm going to be doing my damndest to channel an appropriately edgy, teen-rage vibe. Expect violence, drugs, sex, etc.

There's also going to be some Pretty Uncomfortable Dysphoria-ing, trans readers be warned.​
 
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So, how about we start off by getting our ass handed to us so we can reroll those ones?
 
you know what would be sick as hell? Dramatically flinging off our peak Matrix coat, to then use as a distraction and cover for our body movements and to incorporate in a cool grappling exchange binding one of Apogee's arms or something, just a classic martial arts movie fight sequence.

(EDIT: the coat would also be good as an improvised shield for all those knives, potentially)
 
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open_sketch said:
you can go straight to fight.exe!
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Great. Couple more questions, if that's alright!

What's our current Resolve and Detachment?

Do we need a 7 to Dodge Implausible Ways? Or can we do it on a 6 now?

If we used DIW, could we justify it negating the effects of her knives for a round as we blur past/through them? Or letting us steal a knife on a partial?

Torgamous said:
Did she miss the parts of the fight before the Agent showed up?
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Or the bit where we tried punching out an Agent lmao
 
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Skippy said:
Great. Couple more questions, if that's alright!

What's our current Resolve and Detachment?

Do we need a 7 to Dodge Implausible Ways? Or can we do it on a 6 now?

If we used DIW, could we justify it negating the effects of her knives for a round as we blur past/through them? Or letting us steal a knife on a partial?



Or the bit where we tried punching out an Agent lmao
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I've updated your stats. Yes, you can implausibly dodge on 6s.
 
Okay, so I'm throwing in the Disconnect here mostly because it's cool, but also because Apogee might be able to use her knives to get a bonus the same way we can? IDK how gear enters into this on her side; whether it's just flavour text or this is being mediated as if two PCs were fighting.

[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good Trolling Defence
-[X] [1] Prompt.exe: 'You think the thing stopping most people from beating Agents is that they aren't angry enough?'
-[X] Blur past her knives, get inside her reach and then dodge around to annoy her and make her overextend herself.
--[X] [5 +1D = 6] Disconnect.exe : Dodge Implausible Ways (Trying to negate effect of Apogee's knives in the Fight.exe)
--[X] [4, 1] Fight.exe (Defensive) (Stop Trying to Hit Me) : Take and Deal 0 Harm
-[X] Refresh: +1 Resolve
-[X] Net: +1 Resolve, -1 Detachment
-[X] XP Gain: +1 RXP (Fight.exe), +1 TXP (Prompt.exe), +1 EXP (Disonnect.exe)

Basically the whole idea here is that by going on the defensive, we'll increase her Threat to 3, which means that we can spend all of our dice in one turn and Charge, getting us + 2 Detachment. It also leaves us with a 4 and gets rid of all our bad dice. It is absolutely leaning into her accusation that we tend to go on the defensive, but I feel like this is a transparent goad for us to attack, so I don't mind?

There are other valid approaches here though - we could not fight defensively, and take/deal some damage, or we could whip out some Gear. A Shoot.exe would be a perfect way to get rid of dice and let us Charge this round, but whipping out a gun here feels like a bit of a dangerous escalation? I think it might be best to keep our Gear as an ace-in-the-hole for now.
 
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Unfortunately, Defensive's +1 input forward applies to your *next* fight, not the current one you're resolving.
 
open_sketch said:
Unfortunately, Defensive's +1 input forward applies to your *next* fight, not the current one you're resolving.
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Uhm, as far as I'm aware, the plan I posted isn't predicated on an extra input this turn. The idea is we'd need to input three on the next fight, as you say, and this would allow us to Charge.

Torgamous said:
How is the 1 a partial?
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It isn't, that was a typo. When we're on the Defensive in a Fight.exe and use Stop Trying to Hit Me, which I should also have noted down, we don't take any damage. The four means we don't deal or take damage, and the one is a Miss which gives us one Harm, but our Harm reduction from Stop Trying to Hit Me comes into play and negates it.
 
Skippy said:
Okay, so I'm throwing in the Disconnect here mostly because it's cool, but also because Apogee might be able to use her knives to get a bonus the same way we can? IDK how gear enters into this on her side; whether it's just flavour text or this is being mediated as if two PCs were fighting.

[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good Trolling Defence
-[X] [1] Prompt.exe: 'You think the thing stopping most people from beating Agents is that they aren't angry enough?'
-[X] Blur past her knives, get inside her reach and then dodge around to annoy her and make her overextend herself.
--[X] [5 +1D = 6] Disconnect.exe : Dodge Implausible Ways (Trying to negate effect of Apogee's knives in the Fight.exe)
--[X] [4, 1] Fight.exe (Defensive) (Stop Trying to Hit Me) : Take and Deal 0 Harm
-[X] Refresh: +1 Resolve
-[X] Net: +1 Resolve, -1 Detachment
-[X] XP Gain: +1 RXP (Fight.exe), +1 TXP (Prompt.exe), +1 EXP (Disonnect.exe)

Basically the whole idea here is that by going on the defensive, we'll increase her Threat to 3, which means that we can spend all of our dice in one turn and Charge, getting us + 2 Detachment. It also leaves us with a 4 and gets rid of all our bad dice. It is absolutely leaning into her accusation that we tend to go on the defensive, but I feel like this is a transparent goad for us to attack, so I don't mind?

There are other valid approaches here though - we could not fight defensively, and take/deal some damage, or we could whip out some Gear. A Shoot.exe would be a perfect way to get rid of dice and let us Charge this round, but whipping out a gun here feels like a bit of a dangerous escalation? I think it might be best to keep our Gear as an ace-in-the-hole for now.
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I don't think we should Disconnect here. Even if she can use the knives to boost her fight (mechanically presumably this equates to reducing ours) we'd at most take 1 Harm, which we immediately heal off on the Refresh.
Also not sure how you're planning to spend 5 Dice on 3 Threat next turn?
Not that this really changes the tactical situation but I think we'd only get 1 Detachment from Charging, since we've already Charged to enter the fight, using up Beginning to Believe.
 
Tetra said:
I don't think we should Disconnect here. Even if she can use the knives to boost her fight (mechanically presumably this equates to reducing ours) we'd at most take 1 Harm, which we immediately heal off on the Refresh.

Also not sure how you're planning to spend 5 Dice on 3 Threat next turn?
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A large part of why I wanted to Disconnect is because it's cool, honestly. Given this whole thing is about showing off what we can do, using a Disconnect makes sense to me. It also gains us Enlightenment XP, and there's no good reason not to take this opportunity as often as we can in a spar.

The idea was that we'd do other things than a 3 Dice Fight.exe to use the other dice. A Prompt.exe and a State.exe, for example. Or another Disconnect if we have a spare 6 handy. However...

Tetra said:
Not that this really changes the tactical situation but I think we'd only get 1 Detachment from Charging, since we've already Charged to enter the fight, using up Beginning to Believe.
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Oh snap, you're right. In that case it's not really worth trying to set up a Charge.

Re-jigging my plan, hang on.



[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence
-[X] [1] Prompt.exe: 'You think the thing stopping most people from beating Agents is that they aren't angry enough?'
-[X] Blur past her knives, get inside her reach and then sock her in the jaw.
--[X] [5 +1D = 6] Disconnect.exe : Dodge Implausible Ways (Trying to negate effect of Apogee's knives in the Fight.exe)
--[X] [4, 4] Fight.exe: Take and Deal 2 Harm
-[X] Refresh: +1 Resolve
-[X] Net: -1 Resolve, -1 Detachment
-[X] XP Gain: +1 RXP (Fight.exe), +1 TXP (Prompt.exe), +1 EXP (Disonnect.exe)


So rather than going on the defensive to set up a Charge next turn, this is just straight up trading damage. Still gets rid of most of our dice, and hopefully we can spend the 1 on another Prompt.exe next turn.
 
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Skippy said:
A large part of why I wanted to Disconnect is because it's cool, honestly. Given this whole thing is about showing off what we can do, using a Disconnect makes sense to me. It also gains us Enlightenment XP, and there's no good reason not to take this opportunity as often as we can in a spar.
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It is cool, in all fairness (also everything else you said about mechanics checks out). I think my priority in a spar like this is to try to work out some new Disconnects to make it easier to use them in real missions. Part of the reason we lean on Dodge Implausible Ways so hard is that it's our only one 6 Disconnect.
 
Tetra said:
It is cool, in all fairness (also everything else you said about mechanics checks out). I think my priority in a spar like this is to try to work out some new Disconnects to make it easier to use them in real missions. Part of the reason we lean on Dodge Implausible Ways so hard is that it's our only one 6 Disconnect.
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Yeah, I think that's fair enough, I'd be in favour of coming up with a new one in a subsequent round, when we've rolled a 6 or two so it doesn't cost two Detachment to use it?

But yeah uh, basically...

...I think we need to start voting? Like you don't need to vote for my plan, make your own plans if you like!

But I'm kinda struck by how the discussion has died off as soon as it's gotten to combat. Sketch worked hard on this update and I think would have done another combat update if we were a bit quicker on the draw here. I know it's been a while since we've done combat, but the system is quite lightweight, it's not going to bite.
 
As you command.

[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence
-[X] [1] Prompt.exe: 'You think the thing stopping most people from beating Agents is that they aren't angry enough?'
-[X] Blur past her knives, get inside her reach and then sock her in the jaw.
--[X] [5 +1D = 6] Disconnect.exe : Dodge Implausible Ways (Trying to negate effect of Apogee's knives in the Fight.exe)
--[X] [4, 4] Fight.exe: Take and Deal 2 Harm
-[X] Refresh: +1 Resolve
-[X] Net: -1 Resolve, -1 Detachment
-[X] XP Gain: +1 RXP (Fight.exe), +1 TXP (Prompt.exe), +1 EXP (Disonnect.exe)
 
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence
-[X] [1] Prompt.exe: 'You think the thing stopping most people from beating Agents is that they aren't angry enough?'
-[X] Blur past her knives, get inside her reach and then sock her in the jaw.
--[X] [5 +1D = 6] Disconnect.exe : Dodge Implausible Ways (Trying to negate effect of Apogee's knives in the Fight.exe)
--[X] [4, 4] Fight.exe: Take and Deal 2 Harm
-[X] Refresh: +1 Resolve
-[X] Net: -1 Resolve, -1 Detachment
-[X] XP Gain: +1 RXP (Fight.exe), +1 TXP (Prompt.exe), +1 EXP (Disonnect.exe)
 
I've been trying to work out a plan, but I've been having difficulty with reasoning about what fall into the "theoretically possible" range for a Bend Disconnect. It's very clearly worded, but frankly I have no idea what the bounds of physical human ability are (especially as it pertains to specific combat maneuvers). Working out what the direction for the relevant actions would be, for lack of a better word, has also proven difficult.
Skippy's plan is reasonable, anyhow.
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence
 
Tetra said:
I've been trying to work out a plan, but I've been having difficulty with reasoning about what fall into the "theoretically possible" range for a Bend Disconnect. It's very clearly worded, but frankly I have no idea what the bounds of physical human ability are (especially as it pertains to specific combat maneuvers). Working out what the direction for the relevant actions would be, for lack of a better word, has also proven difficult.
Skippy's plan is reasonable, anyhow.
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence
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You can poke @open_sketch and ask her how many True Hits a given Disconnect would take, I think? What were you thinking of?
 
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