So in keeping with my teeth-gnashing frustration at the abuse of the name Seraph by the Matrix trilogy, I’ve decided to focus a little bit of attention today on naming and terminology for this game. To that end the game itself has been given a name. It is at least tentatively to be titled HouseLight.

The following is a developing Glossary of Terms for both the game and it’s world:

• Avatar: one of those Iconoclasts whose mind has been freed to the truth, allowing them access to true independence and greater-than-human powers when operating inside the Shell. (E.g. Morpheus and Trinity.)
• Daemon: an artificially intelligent program which possesses an Icon within the Shell. (E.g. the Oracle, the Merovingian.)
• Host: a Daemon who serves the Source, with an eye towards order and control. As with angels, the plural is the same as the singular (a host, the host.) (E.g. Agent Smith.)
• Icon: a consciousness manifesting in the Shell. Most Icons are human minds, bound to a world of false material and blind to the lie. (E.g. random people in the Matrix.)
• Iconoclast: a human Icon which has begun to question the lies of the Shell. Only Iconoclasts may become Avatars. (E.g. Neo at the beginning of the Matrix.)
• The Shell: simulated reality, the false world constructed to imprison human souls and limit their potential. (E.g. the Matrix itself.)
• The Source: refers to both the demiurge which constructed the Shell, but also the truth that underlies the Shell which Avatars can perceive. (E.g. the Architect, although that’s debatable.)
• The Trunk: any of a number of simulated realities accessible from the Shell but which obey different natural laws. (E.g. the train station.)

Clever people will notice that these are all some sort of double entendre, although some are better than others.

A typical game arc would therefore concern player-characters who began as Iconoclasts, came into conflict with the Host, became Avatars, confronted the Source and changed (or destroyed) the Shell forever.

I have also begun to broaden the scope of my influences on the game; while it remains a primarily Matrix-themed RPG, I have begun mentally borrowing elements from Carnivale and the Amory Wars. It remains to be seen whether this is a positive development or will lead to the idea losing focus and becoming a sprawling morass of unfinished ideas.

A few weeks ago on the SGBoston mailing list I casually mentioned a desire to run a Matrix-themed game at some point. Not long after that my friend Dev wrote on his blog a post titled “The Matrix: Unknowable”. I cannot say for sure that he was responding to me, but I suspect he may have been, at least in part. And this post is my own thoughts; it is not a response to his post, except insofar as I read it, and thus his arguments got thrown into the stew pot of stuff about this as-of-yet undefined game that has been on my mind.

I’ve been batting around the idea of using a hack of the Don’t Rest Your Head rules, at least to get the ball rolling. That may or may not happen. At this point I am more concerned with precepts than I am with system. Design will come first, system will be added after. Melody first, and then the lyrics.

I kind of want to pick up a copy of the Matrix and Philosophy before I get too far into planning this game. I’ve heard surprisingly good things about it, for a pop-culture philosophy book. I have a pretty good handle on the Gnosticism in the mythic overtones of the first Matrix movie, enough to understand how on the one hand it was even cooler than it seemed on the surface and on the other hand how totally disappointing it was that the rest of the trilogy failed to deliver on the premise and promise of the original. Such is life. But I’m curious to gather perspectives from smarter and more educated people before I delve too deeply.

What I have in mind is to run a game that is inspired by (and thematically similar to) the Matrix. A game wherein the narrative and play concern a Gnostic Allegory as interpreted through the lens of Cyberpunk and the Jungian dissociation so endemic to modern life. What I do not want is The Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix^TM Roleplaying Game. So though I expect the archetypes to appear (or be reinvented by the players over the course of the game) I don’t want to start with a game universe that already contains Morpheus, or Trinity, or the One. I don’t want to prescribe the blue pill or the red pill, the Oracle, the Architect, or Agent Smith.

Also within the game, once the sky cracks open and the first glimmers of what may be the truth begin to seep through, I want to give the players at least the opportunity to paint their mythic overtones with larger brush strokes than were used in the film. I like mythic overtones. One of the most disappointing things to me about the Matrix: Reloaded was their decision to introduce a character named Seraph and then do absolutely nothing of substance with him.

(As a side-note: Seraph? Seriously? C’mon, people! Put not your faith in angels.)

(I’m given to understand that more was actually done with that character elsewhere, either in the video games or the Animatrix or both, and I don’t care. If you include him in the movie at all you become obligated to do something not-sucky with him. See also General Grievous. But I digress.)

Finally, and perhaps most crucially at this stage, I’m starting to think this is the sort of thing I don’t want to do at SGBoston. I do not mean to impune that hallowed conclave and all that it has given me, but I have noted in the past a difficulty in presenting certain genre pieces in that setting. These notions have reached a critical mass in my head; if I’m going to do this at all (and it’s looking increasingly like I am going to) I am going to do it right. And that means getting together the right small group of players, and hashing out something big. Something that will likely take a few sessions to play — more than four and fewer than a dozen, is my current estimate. Something that synthesizes the lessons I have learned from the Story Games crowd and the things I still find useful from my days in more traditional gaming and puts them forth into the world in the first instance of something that is really mine.

It’s funny to say that about a game derived from a movie, but, well, there you have it. More to come.