Deals and Fates

Next, players should give their character a Deal. As in "what's the Deal with Morpheus?". This represents their chief mental hang-up, which both drives them to action yet sometimes paralyzes them. It is the voice in their ear that causes them to do rash and crazy things, to go beyond their orders, beyond reason and beyond their limitations. Morpheus' Deal, for example, is his obsession with The One, and his fanatical belief that Neo is he.

Deals should be simple, and able to be expressed simply. Most importantly, they should be defining concepts, something which informs, controls and consumes almost everything your character does in the game, and everything they want.

Your Deal has no rules advantage. The idea is simply to sum up your character's personality in one clear concept. The characters of the Matrix are simple, boldly drawn personalities, and all the more entertaining because of it. Choosing a Deal will help crystallize this and having it on your character sheet will help you remember to use it to inform all your roleplay.

Optionally, the GM might allow you an Advantage Die or Body Chip if you are performing an action which greatly involves your Deal. If you should resolve your Deal in a very large fashion (for example, Trinity admitting her love for and belief in Neo), you might even get a Matrix Chip.

• Examples of good Deals:

  • Always follows orders, no matter what.
  • The One I love loves another and my jealousy rages out of control.
  • Insatiable curiosity, beyond even self-preservation.
  • Belief in a higher power who guides my every action.
  • Unable to back down from anything, even a fight against an Agent.
  • Searching for my long-lost lover (or child, or brother, etc.).
  • Consumed by a need for vengeance against the machines (or the world).
  • Gripped by cowardice and lack of faith in myself.
  • Believes The One is a fake and must expose the truth before all is lost.
  • Lost the will to live and just looking for a way to die with meaning.
  • My younger brother must be protected from all harm.
  • I am deeply in love with a coppertop/program/my commanding officer.

• Examples of bad Deals:

  • I really like watching Dr Who.
  • Wishes Morpheus would use deodorant.
  • Wants to ask that girl who works at Starbucks out.
  • Likes to fight.
  • Pyromaniac.
  • Kinda wacky.
  • Speed freak.
  • Likes the Opera.
  • Believes in luck.
  • Hates the Irish.
  • Easily bored.
  • Is Jewish.
  • Devoted to my captain.
  • Always has to dress well.
  • Flamingly homosexual.

Finally, all characters should also have a Fate. Every member of the resistance is taken to meet the Oracle as soon as possible. Unless you are using this event in your game, you should assume it has already happened for each PC, and that they were given a vision of the future. This Fate should be determined by the GM and for the most fun, be kept secret from the other players. The GM should hand them out in note form, or provide them in a private conference before the game begins.

GMs should note that the Oracle may or may not see the future, but what we know for a fact is that she has been known to lie and tell people what they need to hear. She has an agenda, and what she tells her charges is what furthers that agenda; indeed, she shapes the future into being by what she tells people. It is arguable that being The One isn't inborn in just one person at all, but that the Oracle brought it out of Neo by manipulating Morpheus and Trinity into believing in him enough.

In other words, the purpose of Fates is not to tell the future, but to create it; not to limit players' actions but to spur them on. There is more on this in the GM's section.