KMC Forums - USH'S MATRIX GAME: SECOND ASSIGNMENT: 'Ghost Hunt'

Post Mortem

This was, as I am sure you have guessed, the mission that blew the plot open, and contained the transference from 'Missions from Zion' to 'What the bloody hell is all this then?" You guys now have to wonder just what you have walked into, how does it connect to Jericho, and how the heck are you going to ever get out again?

Like all these Assignments the planning is relatively simple, though the execution can be very complex. We had:

1. A prologue, as Celsius checks the way to the Oracle is clear
2. Dialogue with the Oracle
3. The Fight at the Lon Wa
4. Dialogue with Melitus

Long dialogues and long action- pretty much the Matrix way!

To take each in turn:

1. The Prologue. This was to increase fear and anticipation only. Celsius is on holiday right now so cannot comment- but does anyone else remember what Celsius saw whilst checking out the building the Oracle lives in? If not, maybe you should go back and check...

2. The meeting with the Oracle. As only Philosophy players were allowed in, you may have guessed this was hooking them into their part of the plot. Of course, much of what the Oracle said appeared to be useless or, at the most, unhelpful. This is simply the way it is, of course. I cannot have the Oracle solve all your problems else there would be no game; she is as obfusc and even manipulative as she is in the films. As she would say, you have to make up your own damn mind whether to trust her or not, or to listen or not.

However, aside from simply pointing you to Ni Zhan, there ARE useful things ther Oracle said. Now, please don't go over every word she said with a fine tooth comb to find the hidden meaning and message of her words. It's not like that. However, there are useful pointers and clues for thinking in there, and not all of them were picked up and discussed at the time. Again, this is not the secret of victory- the Philosophy things does not work like that (after all, every single Philosophical thing that Neo went through came down to 'Because I chose to'. Fair enough but hardly degree level). As I say, pointers and clues for thinking, is all.

3. The fight at the Lon Wah. Proof, of course, that no set-up is foolproof.

This was supposed to be the first uber-fight. TONS of mundanes for a gunfight downstairs, with more skilled mundanes and even named characters for some Bruce Lee martial arts fighting up top. Lovely! All packed into a hugely extended combat that would show off every facet of the system, ranged mundanes, close combat mundanes, named characters, and a race against time at the end. Neat!

Of course, it all went wrong,m pretty much for me, quite fast. Being unwilling to forcibly split the party at thjis stage (seeing as such a split is actually part of the plotline later on) the criteria as to who got to which fight was very simply down to who was carrying a gun or not, with the reasoning that anyone not carrying a gun must be an MA specialist and could go up!

Sadly not so. Two of your finest and most experienced close combat players, Fire and Coeus, brought back-up guns and had to stay down, whilst the Veteran who was in fact an all-rounder, Mors, didn't bring a gun and went up!

I could, of course, have suddenly re-written things to make a more favourable split but it is not my place to totally mould the entire plotline just to suit the way I envisaged things. No blame on you guys who had no real clue on that happening, but it became rather harder than planned for you from that point on. One single concession I made- the nunchaku fighter who was also supposed to be a named opponent upstairs was removed- being so outnumbered really would have put an early end to things.

Technically speaking none of these problems were unsurmountable. The upstairs Mundanes could easily be hacked down and the named opponents were all skill 13 and so, for all their bluster, relatively easy to deal with.

Downstairs you would be apparently overwhelmed but it was a situationn your gunners were cutsom made for., The combat specialists trapped down there needed only patience and to be willing to concede the lions' share of work to the gunners in order to be just fine.

But this was all technical. I knew the truth of the matter before I started- that this was your first PROPER big fight, in the Matrix, under pressured conditions. I knew the Martial Artists downstairs would want to try their luck anyway. It was deliberately built in with slack to make life easier for you, but this slack had kinda vanished into the starting mis-match, so yuo guys were rather thrown in at the deep end!

And so that considered I thought things went well. I do not mean that you all instantly became experts but it is very visible how you guys learned and improved more and more as time went by. At first I was owrried that your team dynamic, which semeed to be buiding, fell apart whilst blasting through the second floor, but it came bacj together again for the roof which was fine. One thing that made your life more difficult was ignoring the blocked door. A blocked door? You guys can go through walls if you try hard enough (probably not concrete ones though...). That door was a very destructible barrier. Instead you guys got slowed down a lot wandering two by two through places, which increased the pressure at the end and probably led to Cloud going down , else he would have been rescued a few actions earlier. No biggiie; he is fine.

Climbing the stairs to the second floor was also hairy; in fact, what it needed was a simple 'check what is up there' instruction (a call to Ariadne is the nuclear soloution to checking around 'corners') but in any case one must be very careful about entering a defensible position via a VERY unsafe means- a spiral staircase being as unsafe as you xan get.

I thought for a little while Zuban was going to mincemeat Heph as Heph needed to hit him so damn much whereas 4 hits from Zuban would have been the end of it. But some well adjusted tactics, two Lightning Fists and twoi VERY good rles gave Heph that fight, in time to also clean up the Knifeman who had gone through Mors. Unlike the focusless Zuban, Knifeguy had a probably illegal amount of Focus (9) to represent his natureal knife skill; evejn so, Mors should heve been able to take him. I think Mors' already sustained wounds, some bad luck, and simply being in the wrong fight, told against him.

Poor Cloud had difficulty adjusting to block tactics with the Go Twins- unsurprising, as no-one around here (up to this point anyway) has tried it yet. As it is, it may surprise you to know that they only had 3 focus each. Enough for one block and one follow up each Round. So even though there were two of them it should not have been that bad but it all seemed to go wrong for Cloud early in the day. Nonetheless, he hang on in there well, downed one opponent and with the improved Natrual for the next Assignment he will be much happier!

The final chase to the Helicopter, when everyone was unified, was designed thusly- that your Eagle Eye gunners would hang back and try and pick off the ludicrously well covered bad guys (Rade could evern have taken the Heli Gunner, to be honest) whils the Martial Artists carefully picked their way forwards using the cover which was of just as good a benefit to them. The big distraction was the heli gun. This was, in fact, no great threat- only one burst from it is very much less likely to hit you In fact, for all the seventy or so shots it took, only one hit. So long as you guys kept in cover you were fine.

And in the end, what I planned is pretty much what happened and by the end you were all working together rather well. The final bone of contention was Heph's 'suicide' run to the Heli. I know some of you think this was foolish, and indeed a small difference in die rolls from me would have led to an Outed Heph.

But there you go! He took a risk, he got away with it, it paid off well. That is the way of things; you take risks, either they cock you up royally or you get the gold. And it fits his personality... in many ways, Heph was your man of the match for that fight.

4. The meeting with Melitus.

Ah, hardcore plot time. This is where the apparent trappings of the Underworld Crime Bosses gave way to something decidedly more... well... umm... you aren't sure, but whatveer it is it is decidedly more so.

Whilst some of you did question it and some of you were probably just being polite, I will state, just in case, that the iron lung is considerably ore than just 'quaint'. When I said it was 50 years out of date, that was not meant to mean that its use was old fashioned. It was meant to mean that its use was, basically, insane. No being in the time period the Matrix simulates should have any business using one of those, any more than having nails hammered into your head to let the evil spirits leak out, or the 'throwing in pond' diagnosis for Witches. it is a toal anachronism that was meant to scream "WEIRD!"- rather like everything around Melitus, the masked empolyees and the oddness of an apparent crime Lord who cannot even turn his head.

Nontheless, as you found, Melitus is an extremely polite person which may be why he did not provoke the angry reactions I often expect from players, until Fire went hardcore at the end there. In the end, some form of threat against Melitus was te only option you had- Jericho is his agent, what else could you possibly offer him to make him give that up (as he seemed so sure that would mean). That said I was surprised that Fire got quite so... direct... about it.

So, just what the heck is the deal with Melitus and his surroundings? Well, whilst all of you are concerned with what is going on and what to do about it, I reckon only about half of you need to think TOO hard about that specific thing...

The two final twists bring the plot into the open. First, that your enture conversation with Melitus took place somewhere where your shipmates could not observe you. In case you have not guessed this happened as soon as yuou wnet through the door on the upper floor and were greeted by the Butler. You were phoned some five seconds after you came out of that door the other side. When you tried to use the phones inside those chambers there was no reception.

Before you guys come up with some 'obvious' answers to that one (obvious only because you have seen Reloaded, not at all obvious for your characters), I will remind you that no key was used to open that door.

Secondly, of course, you guys now appear to be trapped in the Matrix, Not quite literally trapped, as I think some of you theorised about Jericho. But unable to jack out, which is trapped enough and VERY dangerous indeed for you.

Troubled times, but much to look forwards to!

I hope Azrael will not mind if I do not award him a participation for joining in at the end there- he was not really in the main body of the Assignment. Hammurabi appeared to not post; I hope he will in the next Assignment but we shall see.

Barbarossa and Coeus score a half participation rate for their part in it.

Everyone else socres fully! Nice work! See you for the next one...

__________________

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"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"

BtVS