I used to run D+D like games in the 1980's and 90's. I can't really call them D+D because I never actually used any TRS rules beyond the first three books in the little white box. So my games were D+D like the Incredible Hulk is human. Start with one set of rules – expose to high doses of gamma radiation and mutate. The most interesting mutation was the addition of the Matrix Game. This article will describe three separate games and how the Matrix Game fit into them. Though the MG rules are now better developed now than they were then – the basics are the same. Players make arguments to cause things to happen. MATHERSVILLE: THE D'AMBERLY SAGA This was a fantasy game set in psuedo-medieval France. It centered around the Southern town of Mathersville and followed the adventures of the members of the D'Amberly clan who came to the city to seek their fortunes. All the player characters were cousins so they had a reason to work together and play nice. The adventures were fairly standard – except for the role clothing played. Dress well be treated well. Dress like a peasant and be treated like a peasant! Oh and dirty cloths are poor cloths even if made by the Duke's tailor. CRITICAL EVENTS A couple of times during the year long run of Mathersville, I would hit a situation that I could not decide on as referee. As you all know, RPG referees have pretty well complete control over what happens in their world. Which is a lot of responsibility and even more work! Well on the times in question I was tired or literally didn't care what happened so I asked the players to make arguments about what they wanted to happen. They did – dice were rolled and the players helped me out in my job as referee. This did not change the way the game was run. It only happened a few times but it worked perfectly. EXPERIENCE AND SOCIAL CLIMBING Over the years I have used many different systems to handing out "experience" and doing character growth. Generally I've moved away from Monty Hall gaming to low reward approaches where people really appreciate the jeweled daggers or amber pin. But I never found a way using standard RPG rules to show social growth. Spending "points" of "contacts" is like going down to the slave market and buying some friends. This is not my experience in life so it does not ring true in games. Mathersville game me the opportunity to try out the Matrix Game as an experience system. At the end of each game the players were give two sometimes three arguments to make things happen. The arguments had to be about specific subjects. Sometimes I, as referee would make a competing argument, sometimes not. The players would then roll and events happened. The subjects were as follows… CHARACTER GROWTH: The player could attempt to do anything with their person. Increase his stats, learn a skill, learn a spell, buy new cloths etc. SOCIAL CONTACTS: The players could make up people who they met and became friends with. They could deepen friendships, get married, have kids, try to get jobs, promotions etc. So naturally all the players started social climbing! THE BIG PICTURE: Sometimes I would ask the players to make arguments about events far away that would not effect the game. So we would hear about events in Rome or Jerusalem. Some of these events then subtly effected politics in France. The net result was that the players did not miss the old experience system (I still gave out experience points but that is not where the development really happened). The players all pursued their own social agendas (just as they do in all RPGs) but it did not detract from the role play sessions. They reserved their individual pursuits to the post game arguments – during session they worked together. I think the players actually looked forward to the post game arguments as much as the game itself! All of the players had a much greater devotion to the game than normal. The role playing seemed to be energized by the possibility that they could do what they wanted. And to this day players still like to talk about this game. STAR WARS: THE EVER GROWING WORLD At some point in the early 90's I ran a Star Wars RPG. I had noticed that I could never get all the players to come to each game session. My solution was to do one shot games. I modeled the games on a 30 minute TV show. I found that the players could do that much action in three hours of play. The stories were in fact walk throughs. The players would encounter the next encounter no mater which direction they went and when they needed to be captured, they would find themselves surrounded by a thousand storm troopers! It was fun but lacked depth. I decided to use a Matrix Game to find out what was going on in the wider war. I started with a simple map of the star sector. At the end of each game the players made an argument to add something to the universe. Players added to the map. Added new Rebel and Imperial leaders and made some fights happen in neighboring sectors. I had no rules on what they were to do and no limits on what was allowed. It was after all a SCI FI game. The results were not as good as Mathersville. By allowing total freedom there was no unifying theme about what needed to happen. So lots of things happened. But no story emerged. The players did not cooperate in their arguing. There was no increase in player commitment to the game and though the role playing was fun it was due to my "30 minute TV show" focus rather from the Matrix Game. CALL OF CTHULHU: TERROR OF THE CHUCK-AMUCK I love Call of Cthulhu. It is easily my favorite RPG. You got to love a game where your character eventually does NOT want to see anything! I've run several Call of Cthulhu games. The last one I ran I did for my wife (The toughest audience there is!!!) Usually it was just Terri and Gary Peak, so the typical role play approach would not work. Enter the Matrix Game. WEIRD AND UNEXPECTED EVENTS One of the most onerous and time consuming parts of any RPG is coming up with the adventure. Referees spend days working on an adventure only to have the players balk and not want to do that. They still want a game mind you! Just not that game!!! Which leaves the referee having to make it all up on the spot. Is it any wonder that so many role play sessions sink? I wanted a way to make the players do part of the work of creating the adventures. That way they would share in the work and be less likely to not want to pursue it. I also did not want to be in the position that RPG referees are always in – that of being the only source on information to the players. I did not want to have to make everything up. So I decided to share the power. At the beginning of each game the players got to make two arguments apiece about "weird and unexplained events" that their characters friends and family told them about. The logic was that everyone knows that the characters are interested in the paranormal. So when something come up they tell them. The result of this was a constant stream of interesting events for the players to investigate. At first they looked unrelated – but this is a conspiracy game so that did not last long! CROP CIRLCES, GIANT CUCUMBERS AND SHOWERS OF POLYDACTYL SHRIMP At the start of the first game the players succeeded in arguments that created a series of crop circles and that Farmer Jones had a cucumber the size of a watermelon. Naturally the players went out to investigate. All I had to do was put these pieces together. So during the role play session I had them find out that the circles formed a line on the map that ran right over Farmer Jone's cucumber patch. Terri's character (the young socialite) convinced Mr. Jones to donate the cucumber to the Lady's Auxiliary League at church to pickle it. The game ended with the monster cucumber arriving at the church. The next game the players succeeded in arguing that the cucumber was found broken open (like an egg) and that strange noises were heard coming from the old abandoned mines underneath the town. The game proceeded from there. Connect the dots! Something hatched from the cucumber and was now under the town – in mines that the players made up (I didn't know there were mines there). As the game progressed more and more details were added. All I had to do as referee was help tie them together. It was not nearly as much work as it could have been. All I had to do was add in cryptic clues like "Everything is digestion" and the players came up with the rest. Eventually I was able to convince them to do a job for the Cucumber aliens (whom we learned were Chuck-Amucks – a cartoon reference to Chuck Jones' Warner Brothers characters – especially Daffy Duck). They were transported to a distant star ship – slipped into engineering and shot up the crew of Star Trek The Next Generation – Especially Wesley! GIVING PLAYERS POWER WORKS!!! This Call of Cthulhu game was one of the best I've ever run and also the easiest. The players were again motivated and committed to the game. They had a stake in what happened. They wanted to find out what happened next. They were not in total control so their could never tell exactly how the information they came up with would feed into the story but they knew it would. I would not hesitate a minute to do this approach again. OVER ALL LESSONS ABOUT MATRIX GAMES IN ROLE PLAY GAMES Matrix Games are a very good addition to RPGs. One can be added in to handle specific problems or be used to resolve most rolled on issues. They do not alter the RPG rules AT ALL. So adding an MG does not mean the referee or players need to learn a new game. MGs are just a tool/utility that can be plugged in and unplugged at will. A Matrix Game allows the referee to share power in the game with the players. This eases the burden on the referee and can potentially same a marginal game from disaster. The use of arguments needs to be focused. They are not the magic bullet that will solve all disease. They do best when given a specific task of limited scope. Character growth, unexpected events, etc. They do create a different feel in a game. More collegial rather than one up one down. This should help make the game more like the "collective story telling" ideal than many games are. SO SHOULD YOU USE A MATRIX GAME IN YOUR NEXT RPG? Oh yes! By all means! Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #14 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com