Version 1.2: 23 February 04

• They Are The Gatekeepers
• Programs Hacking Programs
• Hit Me – If You Can
• I’ve Never Seen Anyone Move That Fast
• Mikey, I Think He Likes It

I tend to agree with Ross Winn: Dan Bayn's A Wushu Guide to The Matrix is probably the best RPG conversion of the Matrix films out there, and Dan definitely deserves congratulation for his work.

Although the game's overall direction agrees with several opinions I've formed on roleplaying games over the past year or two, I disagree with some of Dan's system choices - like making the Zen ability double the cost of regular Traits when it's not even part of the system mechanics. It's just an arbitrary limit on the coolness of the stunts you can perform. I firmly believe that a point-based character creation system has to confer a measurable rules benefit, or a step toward a greater benefit, in return for each point spent.

Also – and this is more of a niggling disagreement rather than a fully-fledged gripe - there was no mechanic for Bullet Time in the game. Sure, Bullet Time doesn't exist from a character perspective in the films, but it's the big, jaw-dropping special effect of The Matrix. It allows the camera to do more than capture scenes in slow motion – it allows the audience’s point of view to move at normal (and even high) speed even when the action is frozen. In other words, it's a keen Embellishment for action sequences.

And finally, there's a mechanic in the Operator's section for limiting the number of skill programs downloaded per session, but no guidelines for when a Free Mind might need one.

What follows is my attempt to bring a little more Matrix flavour to Dan's already well Matrix-flavoured system, to add a touch more crunch without slowing things down. Ultimately, and in all honesty, I'm altering Dan's system so that it better suits my tastes, but I hope that the material below brings a little extra something to your A Wushu Guide to The Matrix sessions.

It’s been noted that Agents, being self-aware programs, don’t have a Zen Trait. Instead, they have Sysop Rights. If Coppertops are Users in the Matrix, and Free Minds can Zen themselves Power User access, then Agents are the System Operators and Super Users (but not the all-powerful Administrators - that's saved for management AIs like the Architect). Sysop Rights covers all the funky things Agents do in the films, from dodging bullets to delivering machine-gun flurries of punches to leaping from car to car on a moving freeway, crushing engine blocks as they go.

Sysop Rights is also an unofficial measure of authority among the Agents – in theory all Agents are equal, but requests for Sentinel strikes, database searches and changes to the Matrix made by more experienced or intuitive Agents usually get a higher priority in the request queue.

Sysop Rights comes in two grades. The lower grade is for those faceless, personality-less Agents like Jones and Brown (Smith’s partners from The Matrix) and the Agents that Neo whips in the first ten minutes of The Matrix Reloaded. It confers a Sysop Rights Trait of 2.

The higher grade is conferred on Agents such as Agent Smith and the three sample Agents listed in A Wushu Guide to The Matrix. While it grants a Sysop Rights Trait of 3, it also imposes a Weakness. Continued exposure to crafty Free Minds has made the Agent better able to anticipate their strategies, but a little of them has rubbed off. The Agent has a personality, and with it, a character flaw of some kind, like Agent Lee’s addiction to the hunt, Agent Doe’s sociopathic tendencies and Agent X’s compulsion to aid Free Minds whenever he believes he can get away with it. As with Free Minds, the Weakness is rated 1, and is tested by the Operator whenever an Agent is in a situation where his Weakness may affect his actions.

Finally, all Agents have the Trait Trace Call, rated 3. It comes into play whenever the Agents are actively tracking a player group of Free Minds down. If a Free Mind uses his or her mobile phone to call the Operator for assistance while Agents are after them, the Agents make a Trace Call test on one die. If successful, the Agents know the caller's approximate location, and if the call continues for at least another twenty seconds, or if any of the Free Minds makes another call in the same scene, the Agents can test again. If the second test succeeds, they’re listening to every word…

Exiles – those Programs that no longer perform their original functions and have chosen refuge within the Matrix over deletion – interact with the Matrix differently than Free Minds or Agents do. Through choice, accident or random mutation, the very code of an Exile is different from when it was first written. Tales of the supernatural – ghosts, vampires and werewolves – are often directly attributable to Exiles, and while many of them are forcibly deleted from the Matrix by the system, there are those who have escaped by banding together or by serving a more powerful patron like the Merovingian. Strength in numbers, or an arrangement their Patron has with the AIs who run the Matrix, gives these Exiles protection from the Agents.

A “named” Exile is created in the same manner as a Free Mind. NPC Exiles who will directly oppose (i.e. fight) the players have a Trait called Altered Code; for the purposes of these optional rules, it functions in the same manner as Zen and Sysop Rights (see below). The Operator is free to rate an individual Exile’s Altered Code as he or she sees fit, but any Exile with a Potential-esque special Trait (like the Twins’ ability to Ghost) shouldn’t have an Altered Code higher than 2 (unless they’re an adventure-ending villain). An appropriate Weakness is also suggested for supernatural Exiles (for example, the presumably lycanthropic Cain and Abel’s Weakness for silver bullets, exploited to deadly effect by Persephone).

Hit Me – If You Can

The combat skills of all Free Minds are virtually identical, thanks to the operation training delivered directly into their brains before they embark on their career of Resistance. Thus, it’s mastery of Zen – a Free Mind’s ability to bend the Matrix to his or her will – that (as some hacker Free Minds like to say) separates the n00b from the l33t. It’s also what allows Free Minds to stand half a chance when holding Agents off – and although combat between Free Minds is mostly relegated to sparring within the Construct, disagreements have been known to get out of hand in the Matrix…

As already noted, Free Minds are way more powerful than Coppertops, so Zen just serves as an indicator of the crazy, bullet-time stunts you can pull off when fighting them. However, if you’re challenging an Exile, another Free Mind or – God forbid – an Agent, the highest Zen, Sysop Rights or Altered Code Trait is subtracted from the lowest. Whoever has the lower Zen, Sysop Rights or Altered Code Trait gets the result applied to his or her Combat, Hacker and Tech Traits (or their closest equivalents, if the character is an Exile) when attacking or defending against the character with the higher.

Example: Race, a recently-freed mind, is practicing his newly-learned combat skills in the Dojo against Sine, the Enlightened Captain of their hovercraft. Sine’s Zen of 3 is subtracted from Race’s Zen of 1, giving a result of –2, which is then applied to Race’s Combat Trait. Race fights with an effective Combat Trait of (5 – 2 =) 3 while up against Sine, who fights with his full Combat Trait of 5. Race is going to get his residual gluteus maximus handed to him on a silver platter.

Agent Bell has a Sysop Rights of 3, equal to Sine’s Zen, so neither of them takes any penalty to their Traits when in conflict with each other. However, the Exile Attila’s Altered Code is 2, and although he doesn’t have the Tech Trait, he does have Drive Like A Bastard at 5, now reduced to (5 + [2-3] =) 4 while he’s trying to evade (or sideswipe) Agent Bell’s Lincoln. Attila had better keep his foot to the floor – or try to exploit Agent Bell’s Weakness of Patronising Arrogance somehow…

The above rules mean most Free Minds will face a penalty when going up against an experienced Agent or tough Exile, and let’s face it, this game is about the players, not the Agents or Exiles. That’s why Free Minds have the unique ability of Bullet Time.

Free Minds get their Zen Trait rank in Bullet Time dice each session (un-used dice aren't saved between sessions). One Bullet Time die can be added to a single stunt (a "doing something" plus Embellishments) in a single scene. While it can be used for cool stuff – Trinity’s leap-kick at the Cop (which also takes out the Cop behind him) in the opening sequence of The Matrix, for example – it’s most often saved for tense or difficult situations, like Trinity’s leap across a main street from a roof to a small window in another building (effectively, an all-Yin-dice roll to evade Agent Brown), or Neo’s dodge of Agent Jones’ bullets on the roof of the government building (which lost him a Chi point – but only one). When you use up one of your Bullet Time dice (which should be tracked separately from your Zen Trait, as your Zen isn’t affected by using Bullet Time dice up), you must describe how the Bullet Time effect makes your stunt look even funkier, i.e. how the camera moves around your actions in freeze-time or slow-motion. (You could say that Bullet Time embellishes Embellishments.) Like other Embellishments, the Operator can veto inappropriate Bullet Time.

The standard Combat, Hacker and Tech training courses given to all Free Minds before they join the War against the Machines allow them to handle most eventualities, but those courses aren’t intended to cover every single possibility; no one mind can handle the volume of information required. Ergo, the standard training programs tend to be general in their coverage of weapons, equipment and computer systems. Specialised or unusual skills, such as use of restricted or military weapons, operation of complex vehicles and the intricacies of individual electrical systems, are left for the Operators to load into the brains of Free Minds “on the fly”.

Trinity gives two good examples of this: in The Matrix, Tank provides her a piloting program for a military transport helicopter, and in Reloaded, she requests knowledge of how to hotwire motorcycles. While both skills meet the definition of the Tech Trait, they're specialised enough that Trinity still needs them downloaded by her Operator. By contrast, riding a sport motorcycle (a common vehicle) is covered by the core Tech Trait, as Trinity demonstrates after the Keymaker gives her an ignition key.

In game terms, the Operator can tell a player that the knowledge he or she needs to perform a specialised task under the Combat, Hacker or Tech Traits (i.e. operate a gun, computer, vehicle, or other device) has to be downloaded. As a rule of thumb, this will probably apply to complex tasks involving devices native to the Matrix (i.e. that the Free Minds didn’t bring with them from the Construct). The rules for downloading training programs in the I Need An Exit section of A Wushu Guide to the Matrix apply as normal.

There are also, of course, certain skills that can't be recorded on chip, that are either innate or must be learned. These are skills that rely more on personality, wit and cunning rather than knowledge or reflexes, skills like leadership, oration or seduction. But any specific field of knowledge (such as a sector of business, age of history or genre of literature) can be downloaded as a Trait.

If the additional knowledge counts as a Trait outside the Free Mind's starting Traits, it's only available during the current session, after which the specifics and nuances of “expertise” fade from the Free Mind's memory, leaving behind only “general knowledge” (i.e. the default Trait rating of 2).