How do you play Sci-Fi games as a Robot/Droid/etc and tackle

I think Engine Heart has some advice on roleplaying a robot.

>>44628791
Link? Or can you at least give me a summary?

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>>44628770

Do androids count? I love androids and I love playing as androids.

>>44628844
Probably, although at that point RPing around the sapience issue is pretty much mandatory.

>>44628770
Depends on the setting

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>>44628770
If all robots in your setting aren't sapient and extremely human in personality, you're doing it wrong.

>>44628926
What if you want to pull a Star Wars style adventure? It's be awesome, but droid characters would probably be relegated to service droids/mindless soldier droids.

>>44628977
Droids can be people, though. Several of them have personalities and feelings.

>>44629047
So Star Wars has an unexplored slavery subplot?

>>44629073
Pretty much. It's almost always just glossed over, since social commentary isn't usually what Star Wars does.

Of course, most droid are just mindless drones, but pretty much every droid will eventually develop a personality if their memories aren't wiped regularly.

>>44629047
Some, but that rarely develops unless they skip memory wipes to clear out loopbacks every so often.

>>44629073

Remember what it's like for droids in the original trilogy? When R2 and C3PO end up in places droids are put, they usually end up in pretty much robot hell. The sandcrawler with all those droids everywhere, broken or otherwise, and Jabba's palace, where they literally have a droid dungeon with a sadistic droid overseer. Even in cloud city, where the undercity is run by horrible little goblins and droids get torn apart and smelted.

>>44629178
Oh yeah, I think I remember hearing this. Artoo is the way he is because he's a black market droid, right?

>>44628809
Not him, but I can summarize. In Engine Heart, you play as robots in a world where the humans are gone. It's partly funny and partly melancholic.

Look up Viral Games on the internet, or ask for the PDF on the share thread, if you want to know more.

>>44629303
So Splatoon with robots? Got it.

>>44628770
>>44629073

As far as Star Wars' droids go, without a few specific types of maintenance performed regularly they develop sapience eventually--sort of like how it could happen with Asmiov's positronic brains if they have just the right composition. But, it's also a pain in the ass to do that with no good reason to think it'll stop them from being able to do anything, so it's rare that such maintenance is routine.

In-universe many claim either that it's simply quirks that appear to be a personality or never think about it. Canonically they're wrong, and plenty of droids have complete free will (IG-88 for instance, and of course C3PO and R2).
Others have partial free will. Some only do have a personality layered on top of normal programming. But regardless, it's just a matter of time before they can think for themselves.

>>44629270
I think he's just that way because he just never gets memory wiped.

>>44629270

He's one of a pretty well put together droid series, as Legends puts it. R2s were basically like those gadgets you stumble upon that are absolutely perfect at the job they're built for. The later series R-units each had a specific purpose in mind when built, and they did it well, but the R2 series was a jack of all trades that everyone wanted. Their model line even got a second run because of its popularity.

>>44628809
>Link? Or can you at least give me a summary?
I keep getting a connection error at 18%. I'll have to try uploading it in a couple hours.

>>44629348
I know, because black market droids don't get memory wiped as much.

>>44629423
Why would the royal families of Naboo and Alderan have a black market droid?

>>44629472
>Why would the royal families of Naboo and Alderan have a black market droid?
Think of it like a burner phone.

>>44629472
I thought he became illegal after the droid war? idk, I might have heard wrong.

>>44629497
*Clone War.

>>44629497
Pretty sure you dreamed this.

>>44628770
A player of a non-sapient robot PC would be advised to create a series of if>then statements related to their robots functions, using them as a guide to their roleplaying.

So I watched the episode of The Clone Wars with the droid infiltration mission, and had the brilliant idea to play as three slave-linked astromechs as a single character. Each would only be about a third as powerful as a normal character, but they'd be able to team up to do stuff, like midgets.

...That is, they could team up like midgets to perform tasks. Not "team up to do midgets".

Gosh, English sucks.

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I played a droid in Star Wars, an astromech, R4-S9. I played with the Laws of Robotics in mind until I rolled a 1 and killed some jawas, which led to making some poor decisions that led to a lot more death, and eventually fried those circuits.

Travelling with a bunch of Jedi, he came to fear death more than anything else, because everything else got to live a life after death, where as it was the end for him, no question about it. So he started copying himself into other droids, with the idea that some version of his consciousness will live on in the backup, and he wouldn't truly die.

He always had an affinity for the treat injury skill, and was the team doctor. Flesh was such an interesting material. Once he got good enough at it, he started to learn how to download his programing into brains (thanks to some stolen Yuzon Vong tech), but his fear of death was too great to believe he would actually be able to join the force upon death now. It had become his passion, his reason for living. Immortality.

He became the BBEG and I had to retire him.

>>44630041
So basically a droid lich. Sounds fun.

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>>44628809
Hope this uploads

>>44629342
Expanding on this, the computers in Star Wars, even their most basic ones, are advanced enough that they develop weird quirks over time that eventually becomes sapience. Any droid, given enough time, will eventually become self-aware. In things like floor mopping robots or what-have-you this is counteracted by periodic factory resets. Lots of robots, like R2D2 and C3PO, aren't reset for sentimental reasons, and in the case of the Battle Droids, it was a combination of 1) the cost of recalling your armies for reset being prohibitive, and 2) their new-found self-preservation instincts making them more effective in combat.