More On Chips

Just as you have Skill dice and Matrix dice, players also have Body chips and Matrix chips. Again, we recommend using two different colors for these chips. Where Body chips represent how much damage you can take in the Matrix, Matrix chips represent moments of sudden clarity, spiritual enlightenment and an almost subconscious control over the Matrix. Players usually begin the game with three Body chips and one Matrix chip.

As well as measuring damage, players may spend a Body chip to give themselves or another player an automatic Skill success. Yes, you pull off that move, but you dislocate something doing it, or you make sure your opponent shoots you and not your buddy. The PC who received the bonus still rolls both their dice; use the multiple dice rules above to adjudicate success. Note that because you can give dice to any player, this mechanic allows a player to get a successful die roll despite having no chips left.

Far more impressively, players may spend a Matrix chip to give themselves or another an automatic Matrix success. The PC with the bonus rolls both their dice, and extra Matrix dice cancel out other Matrix dice just as with extra Skill dice. What's more, a success on both Matrix dice means something absolutely miraculous and astoundingly cool happens, well above what your normal Matrix stat would allow. Examples might be someone coming back from the dead after just a kiss, or someone breaking out of unbreakable handcuffs despite being beaten to the verge of death. This is the big rules-breaker: for one action, you get to be The One. Go nuts. Enjoy it.

Matrix chips are much harder to earn than Body chips. The only way to get one is to do something insanely dangerous, insanely cool or insanely key to your character or the plot, or ideally, all three at once. Getting closure on your Deal might do it (see below); taking on an Agent single-handedly might also. If the latter is strongly related to the former (as in the case of Morpheus' fight in the bathroom), then it's pretty much a cert.

Matrix chips can be given to a player with no Body chips or no Matrix chips, thus allowing successes that might not have been possible without the expenditure. Note, however, that only one chip may ever be spent per die roll. You can't receive a Body chip from someone and then spend your Matrix chip to increase the roll further. One chip per die roll. Got it?

Note also that there are no dramatic editing mechanics beyond Matrix chips. PCs in the Matrix can already ignore physics; they don't need to be able to make up the plot as well. That power is in the hands of the Agents; giving it to the PCs will make the Agents far less scary. Of course, Agents (and all other NPCs) have no Matrix chips — that's a PC-only bennie.