Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush

[Mr.Johnson]

Alright so while I was working on my superhero mush I realized that I was doing far more work on the little side project than I was on the main supers project.

That side project was a little revamp of my old Matrix mush that I ran for some friends back in the day.

This thread is to catalogue development progress on this game concept that's going to hopefully actually amount to something this time around. Will it? I can't promise anything on that front. I'm the first to admit that until I actually launch a game I go through a lot of trial and error testing out what game concepts FEEL right to me.

Onto the meat and potatos of What IS gridlock?

Gridlock is a Matrix, World of Darkness Inspired Mush.

Effectively what this means is that the Matrix world or The Grid is a world of darkness style world with players taking the role of vampires changelings mages excetra as normal but there's a second grid of the real world players can wake up into and jack in and out of the grid.

I've got several arcs planned out for how this can go for general progression similar to how The Matrix Online handled situations as I was a major fan of the game and again will be taking big inspiration from The Matrix properties in the creation of Project Gridlock.

As for the system I'm using I honestly the system I'm going to use is the only reason I'm not launched into a beta state at this point. I just need to decide yet again what to use that's best for me.

If you guys have any questions at all related to themeing development or ideas feel free to hit me up in this thread or in DMs I'm currently going through documentation phase of getting everything done outside of system that I can to make it nice and quick to launch once I decide on a system proper.

[Mr.Johnson]

Grid has been built in mushroom, just needs transferred over to an actual server. Tried not to go too overboard with the general design, and need to remember how to lock grids to IC and OOC and all that jazz, been a long time.

Still trying to decide if I want to use Ares Rhost or penn.

Finances have been secured for one full year of ares hosting which should see me hosted long enough to gain my disability.

Wiki work is progressing slowly.

[23quarius]

Mister Johnson Anderson, Ruby is horrible, don't torture yourself with Ruby

[Runescryer]

@mr-johnson Okay. I'm not trying to be negative or a nay-sayer or 'This is never going to work'. I just want to bring up a point that I feel you need to be really solid on and have solid reasoning behind it. But, in all seriousness...why have the second 'RL' grid?

What's the hook for that? What is the allure? Why should I spend my mundane RL time on a virtual mundane RL grid?

Is there a minimum amount of time players will need to spend 'RL' to be able to afford to access the WoD grid (like having to go to work to pay the net and game subscription bills)? Are there mechanical penalties for staying jacked in 24/7 to the game? Will there be periodic server outages and patches that make the WoD game unavailable at times?

Honestly. Think about this.

What is the reason or the attraction to get the players invested in participating in a virtaul 'RL' grid? Because if the choice is between spending my time in the game as Greg the CPA (not my real name or occupation) or Eaon Grimtooth the dai-klaive wielding Fianna Ahroun that slices through leeches and Black Spiral Dancers in the name of Gaia....I know who I'm choosing to spend time in this game as.

Again, not trying to knock down the concept. From how you've described things, I don't see any reason for me to be invested, as a player, in this secondary grid you're working on. To paraphrase Morty...'That sounds like slavery an OOC Room with extra steps...'

[Mr.Johnson]

@runescryer No the 'real world' is a post apocalypsic hellscape where you have to fight the machines and can jack back into the matrix using stolen technology to try and free more people from The Grid.

The allure is the same one as in The Matrix itself. I'm basically just as I said combining a Matrix game and a WoD game.

For some people they'll never want to leave 'The Grid' and that's fine but for the people who want that opportunity of fighting a battle with people pulled from different spheres working side by side to achieve goals. The 'real world' provides that.

[Runescryer]

@mr-johnson Okay, that makes more sense. I read that as The Matrix as in 'the WoD grid is a direct neural interface VR simulation', rather than 'the RL grid is literally the outside world of The Matrix.

Carry on

[Mr.Johnson]

Hosting service has been purchased with digital ocean. Going to go with ares in spite of how hard it is to code with Ruby. Just because it's the system I've used for my last 4 games that actually saw a release.

Should make it easier on me to actually make this place a reality.

[Mr.Johnson]

Server is technically live. Just installing and configuring plugins as well as installing the grid.

[Jennkryst]

OUT OF CURIOSITY, is this... oWoD, nWoD, the WEG D6 Matrix rules some mad lad wrote up ages ago, or some other rule system?

[Mr.Johnson]

@jennkryst The lore will be most similar to oWoD for how things function in universe, as for the system I'm still trying to figure out what works best with Ares. Ideally I'd use nWoD's systems with oWoD lore just because I find nWoD fixed a lot of mechanics, but there's not really anything like that which exists for Ares.

I'm looking through options for chargen systems at the moment and am open to suggestions however I will say that I am not a coder. I'm a writer. So I have to use what's already available to me.

[faraday]

@mr-johnson There's nothing WoD-specific available for Ares. A few games use the generic RPG plugin which allows hand-entered character sheets (some games use google drive and generate PDFs, or just enter things as plain text) and a generic die roller (e.g., dice 5d10)

[Wizz]

So an Ares game about the Matrix only it's also about oWoD but with nWoD mechanics.

I really am not intending to say this to be hurtful or overly critical, but I feel like that is a concept that is so niche, it's going to have most people scratching their heads and lead to a lot of confusion. There just isn't a lot of overlap in those two properties.

If it's a game where you are expected to focus on supernatural life and society as in WoD...why include the Matrix element, which is largely about escaping that reality? If it's about the Matrix, why muddy the waters with all these extra unnecessary elements that just distract from the overarching conflict with the Machines?

[Mr.Johnson]

@wizz To be fair a lot of my ideas start out as overly niche and then work their way to something more open by the time they launch. I'm still in the building phase where a lot can change. My main focus is on the Matrix theme with people having supernatural powers as a sign of breakdowns in the simulation.

Part of sharing this idea and sharing my building process is to narrow down on what works trim what doesn't and build something original without going too crazy in the process.

Already I'm not using the nWoD system just because it's not available which simplifies maters to a degree. I know my main focus is on the Matrix with supernatural elements thrown in so I've got that as a focus for general building.

WoD is what I think when I think supernatural but maybe that's just not the proper approach to get to the end goal I'm looking for.

Edit: That is to say you're absolutely right and I'll look into options.

[Wizz]

@mr-johnson said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

My main focus is on the Matrix theme with people having supernatural powers as a sign of breakdowns in the simulation.

I guess I am just personally struggling to parse this part of your desired theme. Glitches in the Matrix are already a thing without any sort of like, Old World supernatural monster factor.

I mean, there is that one part in the second film I guess, where it's like...vampires and werewolves were deliberately designed as programs in older alpha versions of the Matrix for some reason? But that is honestly the weirdest and most inexplicable part of that particular movie especially because there's zero impact or follow up whatsoever. The Merovingian's wife is just like, "oh these guys exist btw, but whatever fuck it, you just have to shoot them in the head with silver bullets." And that's it. Blink and you miss it, they might as well be regular goons for as much as it matters.

So my question is, what's the appeal in having that as part of the game when supernatural beings are ultimately meaningless, and other forms of extra normal ability (rogue humans and programs bending or breaking the coded physical laws of the simulation through willpower or design) are already part of the setting?

[Ghost]

@mr-johnson said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

Effectively what this means is that the Matrix world or The Grid is a world of darkness style world with players taking the role of vampires changelings mages excetra as normal but there's a second grid of the real world players can wake up into and jack in and out of the grid.

Fun fact.

My RL existence is that of a brain wearing bone armor and a meat suit who jacks into the internet to play vampires and werewolves.

Non-sarcastic comment:

I would recommend a theme other than "normal people who connect to an online gaming session that hosts an exhaustively huge WoD base set in New England 4.0" and maybe go with something Sci fi or other than a meta version of what the players are actually doing in real life (people who jack into MU server to play WoD).

Because I would hate for it know that this exists:

PLAYERS who connect to ONLINE GAME to play CHARACTERS WHO ARE PLAYERS connecting to an ANOTHER ONLINE GAME to play CHARACTER-PLAYER OWNED VAMPIRE CHARACTERS who TS and then disconnect to fight with each other and act out being players who have technically IC/OOC drama about online "relationships" and then disconnect to fight with each other about their online characters on the real MSB who fight with each other about their 2nd level IC vampires who do sex stuff.

OR I totally want to join and reopen WORA in the first layer human-space so that people can disconnect from the vampire space and have technically IC flame wars as assumed OOC personas.

Brain hurts now. Getting out of here.

[Wizz]

@ghost said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

I would recommend a theme other than "normal people who connect to an online gaming session that hosts an exhaustively huge WoD base set in New England 4.0"

Not that what you presented wasn't painful and amusing, but he has already clarified that he wasn't intending this to be some sort of wacky isekai setup but literally a mashup of urban fantasy/horror and the setting of the Matrix films.

[Mr.Johnson]

@wizz Honestly it's me taking those throwaway lines and running with it into an entire whatr if scenario that I thought would be a fun departure from standard matrix. Not that there's actually a standard matrix server out there already, but hey who knows

I'm still working through the process of building up the grid fixing a few errors in said grid to make it to my liking and trying to figure out what chargen system to even use to get it the most where I want it.

[Jennkryst]

I actually think the Matrix-esque nameless city (or simply, the city) is a great WoD setting.

Very few places have actual names. There's THE Freeway, THE Mountains, THE Train Station, THE Power Plant, THE Core Network (not actually a place, more... where the code aligns geographically with the internal cosmology)

It's also HELLA Virtual Adept-y, which is actually great. All the mages use computer lingo instead of Atlantis lingo? Demons as rogue programs working against the God Machine, Angels as Agents...

[Mr.Johnson]

So a type of grid is in place. I've been battling back and fourth with myself as to if I want to actually use the matrix grid that I have built already as it only consists of Richland from The Matrix Online and still has references to the matrix online and Mega City.

Still mostly doing gridwork that said to try and expand and flesh things out since it's something that'll work either way.

[Mr.Johnson]

There's not much to look at yet but if folks want to hop in and build characters they can do so over at gridlock.aresmush.com port 1999