The Engle Matrix Game: Playtest

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami on October 2, 2004 at 01:59 PM

Three weeks ago, I ran an Engle Matrix game, and I just finished my review, which you can read by clicking on the continuation link below. The bottom line is that this is a cool little game and you should definitely buy it.

An Engle Matrix game bears a family resemblance to "conventional" roleplaying games, but is different enough that you could call it something else, if you really wanted to. But that's a theological dispute, and one I really have no interest in.

Anyway, I'll describe the basic structure of a scenario, and contrast it with a traditional rpg. In a Matrix game, things kick off with a scenario. A scenario consists of a set of characters, a map with some named locations on it, and some goal for each of the characters. Each player chooses a character to champion, and if that character ends the game having achieved their goal, that player wins. (Championing is not quite the same thing as playing a PC in a traditional game -- the differences will become apparent later.)

The game is then played in turns. At the start of each turn, the players move the characters around the map, arranging them is some mutually satisfactory fashion. A player can move any character, and not just his or her own character. In fact, they can even move someone else's character -- though of course some mutually satisfactory situation must be achieved. This phase can include as much or as little roleplaying as the players like, or as much of an authorial attitude as they like. Often, when the players want a conflict between some characters, they will ensure that they end up at the same location.

Then, the players each make an argument about what they want to happen that turn. The referee rates each argument's plausibility on a scale of 2-6, and the player rolls a six-sided die to and tries to roll that rating or higher. So a very convincing argument is 2-6, and a weak argument succeeds on a 6. It's worth noting that this is the referee's only role! Unlike a GM in a traditional rpg, the referee never introduces any elements into the setting (beyond the choice of scenario). The ref's only authorial duty is to rate the plausibility of arguments.

This is one of the best ideas in the game, and one of the best ideas I've ever seen. In many freeform games, the setting becomes as silly as the inventions of the player in the goofiest mood. This is something that having a game moderator as the source of truth can prevent, but it does this only because the players can no longer invent parts of the setting. The Matrix game neatly avoids both of these problems. The referee has the power to rate how convincing and appropriate an argument is, but has absolutely ability to create setting -- this remains in the hands of the game's players. (It's worth noting that an argument either happens in toto or it doesn't; there are no partial successes. This means that a referee can't become a game master via line-item-veto, so to speak.)

I think this was one place where my GMing habits led me astray, actually. I didn't rate many arguments as weak, because my experience in regular rpgs is that it's vital to accept everything the players suggest ("say yes") in order to keep the setting from being totally dominated by the GM's inventions. But with a Matrix game, I bet I can afford to be much stricter -- this has the consequence that the players will invent supporting arguments first, that will make their desired goal more credible.

Also, inventing arguments is a place where the distinction between playing a PC and championing one show themselves -- anyone can make an argument about any character, even characters who aren't "their own". However, if a player doesn't like the outcome, they get to make a "trouble argument", in which they explain why what happened didn't have as bad an effect as it seems.

There are two other elements in the game: conflicts, and barriers. These serve to give more structure to the game environment. A character can use an argument to set up a "barrier", which is something that makes it hard to affect a character. Barriers can be things like disguises, legal protections, or even actual fortifications. When a barrier is in place, an argument that would affect a character protected by a barrier triggers a conflict. A "conflict" is a series of arguments, in which each player in the conflict makes an argument about what should happen, in order from the character in the best position down to the worst. The first player to make a successful roll wins (this can trigger a trouble roll).

And that's pretty much it.

We played the Three Musketeers scenario from the Lone Wolf scenario book. As championed characters, we had the Duke of Buckingham, Lady de Winter, the French Peasantry, and the Cardinal's Guards. Our game lasted for about two hours, and took on a tone that owed more to Victor Hugo than to Dumas, in part because the French Peasantry had a player but D'artagnan didn't. The game was a lot of fun, and I plan on running another Matrix game again.

Something that I liked very much about the game was the fact that arguments either happened or they didn't. This meant that we could construct a complete record of everything that was happening in the game, which we wrote on a blackboard as it happened. And a LOT of stuff happened! This was a game very rich in incident, and that makes me very happy. I like games which there is a lot of narrative motion, and the Matrix game delivers this in spades.

However, there were a couple of issues. First, I think the next time I run the game, I'm going to require that the players champion individuals, because that will make roleplaying a bit easier to do -- there's still a sense of "ownership" to characters, and even if someone is willing to mobilize the mobs of Paris against Lady de Winter, they are generally unwilling to put words in her mouth unless they "own" the character.

Second, and as I noted before, I don't think I was very rigorous in accepting arguments -- as referee, I accepted pretty much everything fairly loosely. I think that this reduced the fun of the game a bit, because it meant that the players didn't have to incorporate as many of the changes the other players had made to the situation in order to come up with credible arguments. The next time I run a Matrix game, I'm going to start with the assumption every argument is weak, and then increment the likelihood based on how much pre-existing evidence the players marshall in favor of what they want. This way, everything that comes into the game will have ties to what has come before, and hopefully the narrative that arises will feel more organic and coherent.

The bottom line is that the Matrix game is fundamentally really cool. Even if you are running a conventional rpg, it could be extremely useful as a tool to resolve things that are outside the existing scope of the rules -- I can see it being extremely useful as a way of handling large scale geo-political machinations in an Exalted game, for example