A Splinter in Your Mind - Matrix Quest

Reader mode


◉ 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.​
 
Last edited by a moderator:
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence

As the Quest Queen of The Matrix asks us to vote? Then she gets it.
 
Tetra said:
There were a couple options I was considering.
1. if we can avoid fight.exe Harm to ourselves, can we instead force fight.exe harm to our opponent?
2. Could we grab a couple knives off that coat of Apogee's?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
hitting somebody with unnatural precision for extra damage or snatching a weapon from somebody's hand like that both strike me as things that would be Implausible, but Doable.
 
Whilst being able to punch people harder is obviously useful, I think that the second idea could also have a ton of fun use cases. A sort of sleight-of-hand trick which allows us to either steal things or plant things on someone when they're otherwise distracted or occupied, and just skirts the line of what someone might plausibly be able to do with prestidigitation.

And as any good scholar of action movies and anime knows, sometimes being able to sneak a live grenade into someone's pocket is a pretty good move in a fight!

But yeah, if we roll a six or two on our Refresh, I'd be down for trying either of these?

Getting a few one-hit Disconnects we can whip out semi-regularly would be super handy.
 
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence

I'm going to go with this for the moment rather than try to come up with something better - I don't think anything else would win, anyway. In terms of thinking about what Disconnects might matter, I'm trying to imaging what kinds of beliefs and implicit assumptions about the world come easiest to Coda. I think like - I think the things that would come easiest are feats that let her pick things up and just sort of sling around other people and things like their gravity and mass is optional?

My logic here is that Coda's not-entirely-repressed-and-highly-justified-rage manifests here as a way of implicitly saying: these things that should have weight, that should have gravity - no, they shouldn't. These things that should stop me from exerting my frustration just, you know, shouldn't. Don't. Can't.

Think like...this, maybe? Or something like cracking concrete and breaking physical objects with strikes - less "strike extra hard for more damage on people and agents", more "strike and break whatever physical properties that this wall or floor or thing should have".

Apogee has, perhaps, misunderstood Coda.
 
Last edited:
Acatalepsy said:
My logic here is that Coda's not-entirely-repressed-and-highly-justified-rage manifests here as a way of implicitly saying: these things that should have weight, that should have gravity - no, they shouldn't. These things that should stop me from exerting my frustration just, you know, shouldn't. Don't. Can't.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Local trans too angry to realize that humans shouldn't flip cars?
 
Acatalepsy said:
Think like...this, maybe? Or something like cracking concrete and breaking physical objects with strikes - less "strike extra hard for more damage on people and agents", more "strike and break whatever physical properties that this wall or floor or thing should have".

Apogee has, perhaps, misunderstood Coda.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Mithrill said:
Local trans too angry to realize that humans shouldn't flip cars?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Acatalepsy said:
...something like that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Machine never stopped to consider a fatal flaw when it conceived the Agent, that however perfect a combatant it had conceived in all the niceties of its malice, the Agents still had one weakness. Beating them with their own kind.
 
Acatalepsy said:
[X] Plan The Best Offence Is a Good... Offence

I'm going to go with this for the moment rather than try to come up with something better - I don't think anything else would win, anyway. In terms of thinking about what Disconnects might matter, I'm trying to imaging what kinds of beliefs and implicit assumptions about the world come easiest to Coda. I think like - I think the things that would come easiest are feats that let her pick things up and just sort of sling around other people and things like their gravity and mass is optional?

My logic here is that Coda's not-entirely-repressed-and-highly-justified-rage manifests here as a way of implicitly saying: these things that should have weight, that should have gravity - no, they shouldn't. These things that should stop me from exerting my frustration just, you know, shouldn't. Don't. Can't.

Think like...this, maybe? Or something like cracking concrete and breaking physical objects with strikes - less "strike extra hard for more damage on people and agents", more "strike and break whatever physical properties that this wall or floor or thing should have".

Apogee has, perhaps, misunderstood Coda.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The obvious one to me is "this isn't my body."

She has practice with that one.

This also tracks with her established stunts. Jumping impossible distances and dodging impossibly well are feats of athleticism that her real body could never do, but they're not exactly your classic expressions of rage.
open_sketch said:
hitting somebody with unnatural precision for extra damage or snatching a weapon from somebody's hand like that both strike me as things that would be Implausible, but Doable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Shouldn't snatching a weapon from somebody's hand be Mine Now?
 
Torgamous said:
Shouldn't snatching a weapon from somebody's hand be Mine Now?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I feel like Mine Now is taking something from someone forcefully in the context of a fight, like a disarm, whereas a Better Check Your Pockets style Disconnect would be more about light-fingering something from someone while they're distracted, or planting something on their person. Stretching the realms of plausibility in what's actually possible with pickpocketing or sleight of hand, but subtle enough that we don't break consensus reality too much.

Like, we do a fight.exe against an Agent, go on the defensive, get mostly Misses or partials, take some damage they think they've beaten us... then we flash them a bloody-toothed grin and show them the pin from a grenade before jumping out of a window as they explode. Or a similar type of scene, except we're stealing a keycard or other Plot Relevant Item.
 
So it's Mine Now in the current context, where we're being actively attacked by a person with knives?
 
Torgamous said:
So it's Mine Now in the current context, where we're being actively attacked by a person with knives?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, what I'm thinking about would be more along the lines of stealing a knife from Apogee's belt, and/or sticking a live flashbang on her person so that it blows up and we can punch her while she's disoriented. Stealing a knife is probably strictly less useful than using Mine Now to disarm her, honestly. But since I think this fight is best conceived as a great opportunity for us to get new Disconnects unlocked and rack up XP, I'm alright with that? The flashbang trick could be fun though.

Also obviously the version of the Disconnect I'm talking about is only one of many possible ones, not trying to rain on anyone's parade, the world is your oyster, etc. etc. etc..
 
the entire point of disconnects is to bypass the usual mechanics. it's why you can dodge implausible ways instead of dodge.exe; one can imagine a high level character who never uses any other move
 
open_sketch said:
the entire point of disconnects is to bypass the usual mechanics. it's why you can dodge implausible ways instead of dodge.exe; one can imagine a high level character who never uses any other move
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm interested in some of the potential actions here. Like if I have a two-hit Disconnect that lets me flying spin kick people into walls, and I'm a certain kind of player, obviously I'm going to want to do this instead of Fight.exe, and probably also Shoot.exe if I can get away with it. That's good, and should broadly be encouraged, but also you don't want it to completely trivialise the combat portions of a combat-centric game, so I think it's a matter of asking where you find the balance point?

It seems to me that the obvious answer is sometimes the Operator should push moves like Fight.exe or Shoot.exe, sort of as the equivalent of a Hard Move in other games with a PbtA design lineage. But this probably requires an expectation that the Operator will tell people that they can't use the same Disconnect to handle everything. I.E., if you push a Shoot.exe on Mr I Spin Kick Everything I See, and they respond with a dodge Disconnect, that's fine, but just saying "Okay well I'm going to spin kick my way past the bullets" wouldn't be, or comes with the cost of getting shot.
 
Skippy said:
I'm interested in some of the potential actions here. Like if I have a two-hit Disconnect that lets me flying spin kick people into walls, and I'm a certain kind of player, obviously I'm going to want to do this instead of Fight.exe, and probably also Shoot.exe if I can get away with it. That's good, and should broadly be encouraged, but also you don't want it to completely trivialise the combat portions of a combat-centric game, so I think it's a matter of asking where you find the balance point?

It seems to me that the obvious answer is sometimes the Operator should push moves like Fight.exe or Shoot.exe, sort of as the equivalent of a Hard Move in other games with a PbtA design lineage. But this probably requires an expectation that the Operator will tell people that they can't use the same Disconnect to handle everything. I.E., if you push a Shoot.exe on Mr I Spin Kick Everything I See, and they respond with a dodge Disconnect, that's fine, but just saying "Okay well I'm going to spin kick my way past the bullets" wouldn't be, or comes with the cost of getting shot.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
yeah, very much something like this. the game for sure needs better guidelines on it too but i'm sooooooooooooooooooooo lazy
 
Skippy said:
I.E., if you push a Shoot.exe on Mr I Spin Kick Everything I See, and they respond with a dodge Disconnect, that's fine, but just saying "Okay well I'm going to spin kick my way past the bullets" wouldn't be, or comes with the cost of getting shot.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Look me in the eyes and tell me that, if the Matrix had a character who did that, they wouldn't have been your favorite character in the entire movie.
 
Torgamous said:
Look me in the eyes and tell me that, if the Matrix had a character who did that, they wouldn't have been your favorite character in the entire movie.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is a good point. 😅

I think that the game definitely incentivises this, given there's even an Advance which can make your "signature" Disconnect easier to pull off. It's mostly a matter of ensuring that the player still encounters a fun amount of challenge. What I think I would do as the GM if a player decides to spin-kick the gun out of an Agent's hand whilst being shot at might be to ask them how they're going to get close and push a Dodge.exe whilst they narrate it. Or if they've got other Disconnects related to dodging or movement, then that would be an obvious solution if their dice are good enough.

SemiSaneAuthor said:
Would their Freed Name be Spinner or Kicker or How-did-you-just-do-that?! As a thing?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I feel like Kicker is a pretty great name all things considered. Or maybe just Kick?
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Back
Top