THE MOD ACCOUNT (noexitsmod) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-11-30 14:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !new plot, → week 026 (animal crossing matrix) |
NEW PLOT: THE ANIMAL CROSSING MATRIX (DEC 1 - 15)
Hello there, everyone! Right now on the island it is 1:32 AM on Wednesday, September 1st 2020. I don't have any big news to share with you all today, but I would like to touch on one seasonal topic. When I was taking my morning walk today, I noticed some goodies had fallen from the trees. What could be more "fall" than that? Sometimes when you shake trees they'll surprise you by dropping acorns or even pine cones. So get on out there, folks, and shake things up!
-- Agent Smith, The Matrix
This week, your characters will wake up in that perfect world; A simulation designed to give each person a perfect, happy life. This week, your characters wake up in a programmed matrix simulation codenamed Animal Crossing.
"The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth, [...] a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this [a battery for the machines].”-- Morpheus, The Matrix
WHAT IS ANIMAL CROSSING?
Animal Crossing is the first iteration of the matrix, a gentle social simulation program where humans live among anthropomorphic animals and can do various activities like fishing, bug catching, and fossil hunting. The program is notable for its open-ended gameplay and use of an internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time. (See “Time in the Real World” for more.)
WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD? WHERE IS DERLETH?
Right. So in a nutshell, in the late 21st century humans developed an AI. That AI created more AIs and then the humans and robots went to war. The AI were dependent upon solar power so the humans thought it would be a great idea to blot out the sun and turn Earth into a wasteland. The AI discovered they could put humans in a dream-like simulation and use their unconscious bodies as living batteries as a new power source.As Morpheus says to Neo, Welcome to the desert of the real. In case you haven’t watched The Matrix, or it’s been a while, here is a video of one of the characters describing the real world. Needless to say, this world is pretty bleak.
So where is Derleth? This is a world where its native Derleth didn’t explode on itself. Instead, Derleth is where a few great minds made the first AI. The first AI, in fact, calls itself Derleth. Derleth is your new robot overlord. Derleth created The Matrix.
-- Lazy Villagers, Animal Crossing
WHEN YOU START IN THE MATRIX
You awake as a very simplified version of a human* as understood by an AI hive mind, modified to what they believe will make you happier and at peace. Everyone is the same size, height and body type regardless of gender*. There are only a few hairstyles in existence in the world, changed by simply looking in a mirror and selecting it. It was developed this way to limit envy and jealousy. But clearly the machines don’t understand the importance of a complicated spectrum of intimacy and desire. Within the Matrix, those impulses simply don’t exist.You will have a house, pay a very basic mortgage to a anthropomorphic
raccoontanuki named Tom Nook. You are able to make payments at whatever pace you like for there is no interest. You can do that by catching bugs, picking up weeds and seashells, fishing, and selling those items at the general store called Nook's Cranny. Really, your life here is to be content and do whatever you wish.*Unless you want your character to wake up as an anthropomorphic animal.
WHEN YOU WAKE IN THE REAL WORLD
You will awake in a coffin sized pod filled with viscous fluid, your body connected to over a dozen thick, black cables including head, spine and limbs. You are hairless, your muscles and abilities are seriously atrophied. (Essentially a “soft” depowering to that of a baseline human.)Once the machine realizes you are no longer dreaming within The Matrix, it will treat you as deceased. The cables will unplug from your body, leaving plugs where they once were, and you will be flushed from your pod into the machine’s sewer system.
Thankfully, an NPC group of human rebels will find you. There are small scouting ships looking for survivors. It takes about a week of recovery and healing, which they help you to do, and by then you’ll also hopefully have eyebrows and a small amount of hair again.
What you do after this point is up to your character. Stay and help the human survivors that found you? Try to go back into the Matrix and help your friends? Find another way to communicate with your friends and get them to reject The Matrix on their own? Or perhaps you’re more interested in bringing down the AI that uses human crops to power themselves.
(Mod Note: If you haven’t seen the movie or remember the scene of Neo waking up from The Matrix, you can watch that here for reference.)
TIME IN THE REAL WORLD VS THE MATRIX
If you were to spend all your time in The Matrix, it would feel as if seven days had passed. If you were to immediately reject The Matrix and wake up from the simulated reality, you will experience seven weeks. One week in the real world equals one day inside the animal crossing simulation. Due to the simplicity of the simulated world, time passes much more slowly to keep humans content for what feels like a shorter time frame.(Mod Note: So I’m hoping this isn’t going to get too complicated or be too confusing. Posts should be labeled Day One/Week One, depending on what reality your character is in. We’re still using just 15 days of OOC time for this plot, so character RP in the “real world” will be condensed. Depending upon how this goes down, it also opens the door for future worlds to have messed up systems of time, just to mix things up every once in a while.)
WHAT IS THE ANIMAL CROSSING MATRIX LIKE?
Look. I don’t want to get too long with this plot write up (too late). So, here is a video going over the basics of Animal Crossing.Here is a video of an island tour that we will use as reference for the simulation that characters are on. You don’t need to watch the whole thing, just get an idea of the aesthetic and how things look in general. For those of you who play the game, you can actually visit the island via dreaming at DA-7867-3773-5204.
COMMUNICATION/HACKING
How are network posts going to work in this plot? Characters will have access to the network within their own realities. There’s a Matrix network and a real world network. Make sure you label your post so characters know which network we’re working with! The networks on each reality will otherwise work as normal for simplicity's sake.There is, however, a way characters inside and outside The Matrix can communicate. It’s very basic. It’s writing letters. Yes! You can write each other mail (limited private messages) in Animal Crossing! It’s a hack that humans outside the matrix figured out, exploiting a vulnerability in the programming.
You can only send two letters a day (or real world week) to the same character. The letters are limited to six lines, at 27 characters each line. So be very careful about what you write! It could mean the difference between someone waking up in the matrix or not.
GETTING OUT OF THE MATRIX
Getting out of The Matrix is much easier in this plot than in the films*. As stated by Agent Smith and Morpheus, this first iteration is basically a dream world. When the mind becomes lucid and rejects the dream world, it will wake up into the real world. (It won’t be pleasant, but….)So for some characters, they will reject this simulation first thing and wake up right away. For other characters, something in the back of their mind may recognize their reality as weird but are not quite lucid enough to reject it without a push from the real world (a well written letter, for example). But there can totally be characters that are deeply comforted and totally accept the reality of The Animal Crossing Matrix, and those characters are unlikely to wake up.
*That is, if you want it to be. Your character is allowed to be frustratingly stuck.
GETTING BACK INTO THE MATRIX
Okay, so what about characters who are outside the Matrix? Can they get back in? After all, their friends are in there! They’ve got to help them get out and writing a letter might not cut it.
- Plugging into the Matrix. The rebels are trying to figure it out. This is the very first iteration of the Matrix, maybe your character helps them build the chairs and hacking/programming design to get them back in!
- Being plugged in means you can’t simply wake up. You have to find a phone! Your little phone you have on you won’t work! It must be a phone booth, or hard wired phone you might find in someone’s house (public phone, rotary phone, etc).
- If someone simply unplugged your character without them getting to a phone, your character will end up in a coma and be unplayable for the rest of the game. Oops.
- The Animal Crossing Matrix might not have agents, but it does have defenses to try and keep you from messing with it.
- Happy background music to try and lull you back into a dream state. You won’t really be connected to the Matrix and powering it, but you won’t be able to wake up and will remain “dreaming”.
- NPC villagers to talk to you and engage you in chit-chat, also to lull you back into a dream state and make you forget the real world. (It probably won’t work but you never know.)
- Wasps, spiders and scorpions. These little “bugs” are the first agent-like programs in the game. Wasps can come out at any time if you’re near trees. Spiders and scorpions only come out at night.
- People who are still apart of the Matrix and are stung by those three bugs will simply pass out and seemingly vanish, waking up safely outside their home.
- Interlopers from outside the Matrix? When their digital self dies, their real world self dies. (RUN FOR THAT PHONE, TRINITY!) Given how long it takes to open a door? Public phone booth is your only option for a fast escape.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
I’m so lost.On what part? If you aren’t familiar with The Matrix, ask for help. Same with Animal Crossing. From there you can decide if you want your characters to stay in The Animal Crossing Matrix and enjoy some silly slice of life, or leave The Matrix and try to survive in a robot apocalypse.What villagers are in the simulation?I felt like that was too much detail to get into for this plot. So if you know the game and you have a favorite (or least favorite) villager, you can run into them and interact with them.Won’t it be confusing to have two different timelines in the matrix and real world? Not to mention trying to RP seven weeks in 15 days for those outside the matrix?I think I have smart players who can do fun things with this concept. But hey, I could be wrong and have come up with a concept that’s really hard to RP. It’s a temporary plot so we’ll see how it works, and if not, lessons learned. If it does work, it opens the door to try things with time in the future.I’m still confused. May I have a visual of what the timelines look like?Yes with the caveat that the OOC times are flexible. You might be working on logs and need to back date them, etc.
OOC TIME ANIMAL CROSSING/MATRIX TIME REAL WORLD APOCALYPSE TIME 12/1-3 DAY 1 WEEK 1 12/4-5 DAY 2 WEEK 2 12/6-7 DAY 3 WEEK 3 12/8-9 DAY 4 WEEK 4 12/9-10 DAY 5 WEEK 5 12/11-12 DAY 6 WEEK 6 12/13-15 DAY 7 WEEK 7
Can someone be The One? Will Morpheus show up? How about other characters from The Matrix?This is the very first, very basic Matrix, several generations before the events of the first Matrix movie. Neo and Morpheus have not been born yet, and the matrix is so primitive that “The One” is not necessary. Does your character become a messiah that inspires a need for “The One” later on? ...That depends entirely on what you RP.Is my character still them in the real world? Will they have their powers? Their species, etc?Yes. Your character is still them. However being in a pod, living as a battery for who knows how long has atrophied your characters’ powers and supernatural abilities. Your character will basically be the equivalent of a baseline human after recovery. You may, once or twice, have them able to do some small, weakened version of a power or ability for dramatic effect if there’s a cool plot thing you want to do. Have fun, don’t run over anyone else’s fun.Speaking of cool plot things… who is running the villager NPCs? The evil robots? The human survivors?I’m going to allow players to run NPCs interacting with their characters. But if you need help or have questions, please ask! Offer to run NPCs for one another. Really, I want to give you guys the freedom to tell the stories and develop your characters how you want for this plot.So does my character have to be a human in The Animal Crossing Matrix? Can they be a cat or a deer or something else?For the lolz, I 100% am down with this.Do I need to have Animal Crossing icons for my character?No! We will assume your character looks like an adorable little potato using the power of imagination. You are, of course, welcome to go that extra mile. There are also various Animal Crossing character generators online that you can google.Can my character recognize the Animal Crossing Matrix as a dream but not wake up still?Yes. Feel free to make things more difficult for your character.Can my character still accept the dream even if they’re told otherwise?Yes. Feel free to make things more difficult for other people’s characters. Lol. Think of it like a dream. Most people can’t lucid dream, so even if someone tries to explain it to them, their mind might kind of ignore it or shrug it off.So basically I can have my character be in the world I want?Precisely.Do our characters speak Animalese in The Matrix?You know what? Yes. They do. They just might not be aware of it. But if you're reading everything I've written so far and are paying attention, your character can know Animalese after this plot and use it as a secret language with folks who also remember the language from their time in The Matrix since it will not be present on other worlds.Fuck. I should rewatch The Matrix.It’s streaming on HBO Max. For being over 20 years old it holds up surprisingly well! Some of the CGI is a tiny bit dated and that’s about it.I don’t have a switch to play Animal Crossing.There are all kinds of twitch streams and walkthroughs on youtube if you’d like to check out more of it.The Matrix sequels suck though.Au contraire! (Yes, I realize that’s a two hour youtube essay on the Matrix sequels, but that’s still shorter than actually watching the sequels while going into all the depth, meaning and themes you might have missed. This video is for the hardcore nerds only.)
Just remember, that Tom Nook is a shady motherfucker. Have fun!