Hey everyone, I’m a GM looking for 3-4 players for a weekly or biweekly online game set in the world of the Matrix. Tl;dr pitch, *biff *pow *bang *bang *philosophy *dakkadakkadakka, also flying robot squids, it will be great. Here’s a link for a Google Form I set up to get applicant info, will contact people through the email you provide there, so keep your eyes out. <a href="https://forms.gle/mVdZPgkifg7pWat38" rel="nofollow">https://forms.gle/mVdZPgkifg7pWat38</a> Who am I? What do I do? My first experience with TTRPGs was stumbling upon the D&amp;D Basic Game box at the ripe age of eleven in 2004-ish. I played an eleven year old’s idea of a 3.5e game with a friend for a few years, collecting much too many minis for our own good, and then my ADHD brain eventually lost interest and went on to other things. I found my way into computer security, Taekwondo and eventually a love for MMA, graphic design, photography and cinematography, comics, etc etc etc. I rediscovered D&amp;D in the 2010’s, then Critical Role and Stranger Things hit, and all my friends started talking about D&amp;D. As the only nerd with experience, I volunteered as tribute and introduced everyone to the game. I began a weekly offline 5e campaign set in a homebrew setting in 2017, and though players have dropped in and out intermittently, that campaign is still running presently with a majority of the original group (though we’ve switched to online play after COVID and players moving out of the same city). I’ve DM’ed and played in a handful of one shots and short stints in modules ran by various members of this group, though we always end up coming back to our main campaign shortly. I began another weekly offline 5e campaign in 2018 running parallel to my first group in the same homebrew setting, with a mix of brand new players and old players from the first game. That game is still running presently, but with more frequent breaks due to scheduling, COVID, and babies popping into existence lol. In 2019 I began a short lived third offline 5e campaign that introduced a group of brand new players to the game, also running parallel to the other groups and in the same homebrew setting. This group fell apart due to COVID, and players moving to other cities during that time meant they couldn’t meet offline anymore, so play ended there. For the games mentioned above, I’ve created a variety of maps and homebrewed a variety of items, class features, and mechanics with input from players, all moderate to great successes. Examples can be provided if anyone is interested for a look at my design sensibilities! Why this game? As a youngster my dad introduced me to the Matrix and I became instantly transfixed. My background in computers probably had something to do with it. Dove head first into behind the scenes, played Enter the Matrix, poured way too many hours into The Matrix Online while it was still running, read the Matrix comic collections, and tore the story apart to understand why this resonated the way it did. Now, as a uni student headed towards a Computer Science degree, The Matrix Resurrections relit my fire to create stories in this setting. When? Where? How? What? Currently I have Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays available for running a weekly or biweekly online session, in the evenings (Pacific Standard Time). For the right group, I might be able to move some things around and be available other days. I am most familiar with Roll20 (though not sure Roll20 will be strictly necessary as I imagine this game will mostly be theater-of-the-mind) and Discord, but am open to other options. Audio and video will be required, and I’m toying with the possibility of recording the sessions and posting them online. I’d like a record of the stories we create together, and if other people enjoy it, then all the better. Additionally, I plan to make extensive use of Google Maps for street layouts in the Matrix portions of the game, and for the portions of the game in the Real we can extrapolate out what we imagine cities will have grown into in the three-hundred odd years that have passed in the real world. I am flexible about which TTRPG system we use, though none that I’ve browsed have felt quite right. I enjoy portions of the various Chronicles of Darkness games (particularly Mage: The Ascension and flexible casting), and quite enjoyed Dimension 20’s use of Kids on Bikes/Kids on Brooms. At the moment, I’m tinkering with a Frankenstein-ed homebrew mash up of the two, hoping to tweak it to meet all our needs, with mechanics for hovercrafts and martial arts (to add a bit of strategy to hand-to-hand combat). I am very open to iteration and changes, and I imagine it will be something that is fluid at the table. We tweak as we go, to conform to what we need and want. My goal is simplicity and intuitiveness, allowing us to focus on roleplay. Combat should be flexible, smooth, descriptive, seamless, and not particularly number-crunchy. Hovercraft gameplay will be focused on staying alive, exploration, scavenging and salvaging, adding and upgrading components to expand functionality, managing resources, and repairing tech that’s barely holding it together. The group will have to decide whether they bring their will to bear in the Matrix or in the Real to solve problems. A particular focus I’d like to have is on a variety of subcultures, though not necessarily the ones presented by the movies and other media. For Morpheus, it was martial arts, choice, pince-nez mirrored sunglasses, and sleeve garters. For Trinity, it was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, latex, Italian hardware (pistols &amp; motorcycles), and conjuring mini uzis seemingly from thin air. For Neo, it was being a cubicle-confined software engineer by day, a hacker writing penetration tools for cash by night, flying, and stopping bullets. For Spoon Kid and the others hopefuls, it was bending spoons and telekinetically levitating blocks. For Smith, it was making Mr. Anderson's mouth go all gooey and closey. For Switch, it was being born he/him, but transitioning to she/her when she jacked in (until WB execs caught wind of it). It's running on walls, traces, making impossible leaps, fashion, dodging bullets, prophetic dreams, residual self image manipulation, tech malfunctions and gremlins, phasing, mirror worlds, and shocking creepy crawly tech bugs out of your guts with some sort of monstrous electrical contraption held together by rivets, zip ties, duct tape, and sheer force of will, wired together with salvaged copper. All set to techno, alternative metal, and hard industrial rock. All very compelling and will very likely make an appearance in our game, but we can explore any backgrounds, passions, manifestations, and identities we like. Music seems like an essential element to explore, and I’m currently pouring over music to put together playlists. I’d love to get player input and put together playlists for a variety of themes: Matrix-themed, Real-themed, and character-themed playlists. Who Will You Be? Ultimately, that will be up to the group to decide. Have you been freed? How long as it been? Are you human or machine? I guess the answer is, I don’t know yet. What I can tell you is thirty years have passed since Neo &amp; Trinity secured the Truce for Zion. Peace has held, at least on the surface. The Machines permit Zion operatives to free any humans that become aware of the simulation, but awareness is hard to quantify. The Machines have devised numerous indexes to ascertain if a human is aware, settling on a test involving a series of more than one hundred questions, cross referenced. Often jarring and rather unpleasant. Zion employs a less defined approach, and the Machines haven’t taken issues with their methods directly, yet. No direct military action has been taken by either side. Instead, a Cold War has begun. The sides undermine each other at every available opportunity; any direct violence committed by the Machines is done through proxies. These proxies are often misguided and misinformed at best. Zion operatives and Machine assets go to great lengths to acquire intel and leverage. But if no one is around to witness a killing and no body is ever discovered, did it really happen at all? In contrast, only about fifteen years of technological and societal progress has been allowed to come to pass in the simulation. The Machines have employed the internet, cell phones, and social media culture to great effect. Many humans are too focused on their self image and the way others perceive them to realize anything is wrong at all. Inauthenticity has festered and spread like a disease. Many simply don’t care to notice. Hardlines can thank smart phones for their death: technological advancement encouraged by the Machines. The number of landlines and payphones have dwindled. Finding hardwired connections to transport Zion operatives in and out of the simulation has become a massive logistical challenge, an attempt by The Machines to freeze Zion out. The number of freed pod-born Zion operatives has fallen over generations, to dangerously low levels. Natural births have skyrocketed under the reduced threat of extinction, and many see the pod-born hovercraft crews as an artifact of the past, bordering on obsolete. There simply aren’t that many humans to free anymore. The number of active Zion hovercrafts has dwindled to three, most often crewed by skeleton crews. Some Zion operatives have even become disillusioned with the Truce, choosing exile (self imposed or otherwise), fleeing to the ends of the Earth with what hovercrafts and supplies they can steal. The Machines, no longer necessarily needing Zion under their thumb, have set about focusing on maximizing energy output. Consuming, in all forms, leads humans to produce more energy. Inhabitants of the simulation are to be stimulated at all times, in all ways. Programs and Machines now deal in energy, and producing is a way of life. The entire endeavor is propped upon batteries, and must be kept running. Machines collect and amass energy to keep functioning. An economy takes shape with energy cells as currency, and now that the Machines are not resupplying Zion as their cycle begins anew, humans are forced to participate in order to acquire necessary supplies and resources. Demand has increased steadily, relentlessly, but supply hasn’t changed much. Tensions rise. Factions form in the Real, with analogous corporations in the Matrix, complete with analogous capital and assets. Plots are hatched, schisms form, and new powers rise in both worlds. Where will you go and what will you see? Where will the world be by the time you’re six feet under? What matters to you? Inspiration and other things you should check out. Here’s a big brain dump of things that seem even remotely connected for me, in no particular order. If nothing else, hit me with some recommendations I can lose myself in. Films The Matrix Quadrilogy The Animatrix (2003) Blade Runner (1982) &amp; Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Johnny Mnemonic (1995) Death to the Tinman (2007) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Kung Fu Hustle (2004) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Unleashed (2005) Simply, anything with Jackie Chan in it District 13 (2004) John Wick franchise Man of Tai Chi (2013) The Raid: Redemption (2011) The Raid 2 (2014) The Man from Nowhere (2010) Train to Busan (2016) James Bond franchise Mission Impossible franchise Predator 2 (1990) Bloodsport (1988) Anything with Hannibal Lecter in it Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil (2017) Polar (2019) The Hateful Eight (2015) Alien (1979) Aliens (1986) Her (2013) Mad Max franchise District 9 (2009) I, Robot (2004) Terminator (1984) &amp; Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) V for Vendetta (2006) TV Shows Firefly (2002) Community (2009) Hannibal (2013) Lovecraft Country (2020) Watchmen (2019) Midnight Mass (2021) Netflix’s The Punisher (2017) Love Death + Robots (2019) Stranger Things (2016) Video Games Enter the Matrix The Matrix Online (servers shut down, RIP) Final Fantasy VII .Hack// series Shadowman (1999) Mirror’s Edge Alien: Isolation Anime Princess Mononoke (1999) Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) because it’s simply the best Aeon Flux (1991) .Hack//Sign (2002) Kengan Ashura (2019) Ghost in the Shell (1995) Cowboy Bebop (1997) Jujutsu Kaisen (2021) Comics The Matrix Comics: 20th Anniversary Edition Hard Boiled by Frank Miller, draw by Geof Darrow Sin City by Frank Miller The Invisibles by Grant Morrison V for Vendetta by Alan Moore Books Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick Dune series by Frank Herbert The Green Brain by Frank Herbert 1984 by George Orwell