a point of discussion which often comes up in TTRPG sphere, especially in the D&D/OSR sphere and on this site. is of the legitimacy of nonhumans PCs in setting.

I'm not really here to throw in on any one side of that specific debate, and is not the scope of this post.

But something I've noticed is robot player characters tend to be much less divisive in this respect, at least typical objections brought forth against nonhuman PCs are not brought up as much against robots, is there a reason for this?

Is it a matter of setting or expectation? or is there something inherently different about robots as a nonhuman archetype that makes them more tolerable?

Robots generally are constructed things built for a purpose. It's kinda hard to get upset that Assassin Droid XT-97 is accused of being violent and dangerous just because he's an Assassin Droid with guns built into his arms and a "Seek and Kill" mode.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:09:12 PMRobots generally are constructed things built for a purpose. It's kinda hard to get upset that Assassin Droid XT-97 is accused of being violent and dangerous just because he's an Assassin Droid with guns built into his arms and a "Seek and Kill" mode.

True it is hard to get angry at such a construct, but does it make that behavior on the players part tolerable? is it simply a matter of the fiction supporting the acts?

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:14:23 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:09:12 PMRobots generally are constructed things built for a purpose. It's kinda hard to get upset that Assassin Droid XT-97 is accused of being violent and dangerous just because he's an Assassin Droid with guns built into his arms and a "Seek and Kill" mode.

True it is hard to get angry at such a construct, but does it make that behavior on the players part tolerable? is it simply a matter of the fiction supporting the acts?

I don't know about tolerable. If we're talking about robots as constructed things, then it's just a fact that a hammer can drive a nail. An assassin droid is dangerous because it kills people.

The issue I think you're driving at is when it's a player character, and we bring in all the baggage of whether the robot is a person or a thing. Which varies wildly between settings and even within settings.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:23:51 PMI don't know about tolerable. If we're talking about robots as constructed things, then it's just a fact that a hammer can drive a nail. An assassin droid is dangerous because it kills people.

The issue I think you're driving at is when it's a player character, and we bring in all the baggage of whether the robot is a person or a thing. Which varies wildly between settings and even within settings.

So it is somewhat context driven as to the setting and expectation?

we might extrapolate that robots are in settings that tend to be more excusable to their nature vs elves or dwarves where their tropes tend to grade against us harder?

would that be a fair assessment?

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:26:56 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:23:51 PMI don't know about tolerable. If we're talking about robots as constructed things, then it's just a fact that a hammer can drive a nail. An assassin droid is dangerous because it kills people.

The issue I think you're driving at is when it's a player character, and we bring in all the baggage of whether the robot is a person or a thing. Which varies wildly between settings and even within settings.

So it is somewhat context driven as to the setting and expectation?

we might extrapolate that robots are in settings that tend to be more excusable to their nature vs elves or dwarves where their tropes tend to grade against us harder?

would that be a fair assessment?

Hm. I don't think I'm getting my point across, so I'm going to try clarifying terms.

When you say Robot, what do you mean? What is a Robot?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:32:07 PMHm. I don't think I'm getting my point across, so I'm going to try clarifying terms.

When you say Robot, what do you mean? What is a Robot?

For the sake of simplicity, let's stick to droids from Star Wars, that seem fair?

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:02:15 PMa point of discussion which often comes up in TTRPG sphere, especially in the D&D/OSR sphere and on this site. is of the legitimacy of nonhumans PCs in setting.

I'm not really here to throw in on any one side of that specific debate, and is not the scope of this post.

But something I've noticed is robot player characters tend to be much less divisive in this respect, at least typical objections brought forth against nonhuman PCs are not brought up as much against robots, is there a reason for this?

Is it a matter of setting or expectation? or is there something inherently different about robots as a nonhuman archetype that makes them more tolerable?

Star Wars' cultural inertia runs deep. Artoo and Threepio are better developed characters than many humans in other stories.

Also noteworthy is that, because they are generally built by humans, the existence of robots doesn't intrude upon a human-centric ethos, but rather reinforces it in the way that a plant-man or insectoid doesn't.

A related aspect of this would be to ask if something like the Rifts Dogboy (a human-created mutant dog) bothers you in the same way something like a Wolfen (a non-human species that happens to resemble a humanoid wolf).

If the former feel okay for a player character, but the latter doesn't, then I'd contend it's the same as with the robots above... the genetically engineered Dogboy doesn't detract from the humanocentric ethos because it is another fruit of human ingenuity.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMAlso noteworthy is that, because they are generally built by humans, the existence of robots doesn't intrude upon a human-centric ethos, but rather reinforces it in the way that a plant-man or insectoid doesn't.

This right here, you basically put into words what I felt but could not describe for whatever reason. I tend to play human centered settings. Robots like you said don't intrude on this, they are the products of human minds, they simply point back to us, a sort of reflection.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMIf the former feel okay for a player character, but the latter doesn't, then I'd contend it's the same as with the robots above... the genetically engineered Dogboy doesn't detract from the humanocentric ethos because it is another fruit of human ingenuity.

I also agree my gut instinct is to like the former more than the latter. and framed the way you put it, it makes sense. hence I don't dislike werewolves or vampires as much either in settings, because they are humans with afflictions or curses, they don't violate the central ethos.

Robots are much more realistic than fantasy races.  It makes sense that some kind of mechanical worker will be created in a lot of potential futures, there's no laws of physics being broken, and pretty much any kind of robot, from a mindless laborer to a looks-like-a-human-but-is-an-immortal-metal-god is something on the axis of both possible and plausible given enough realistic assumptions.

Fantasy races, by contrast, ask a lot of questions about how humans arrived.  If humans evolved, did elves?  If humans were created by God, were elves?  If you're building your own world, you probably need to think about this at some point, if you're using a prebuilt world, do you really find it satisfying that goblins came from the feywild, or were created in the image of a weird goblin god?

Many fantasy races exist to create some stereotype (usually an entirely novel stereotype) and then people can roleplay that. Tolkien elves and dwarves aren't really based on any real world stereotypes (yes yes we all know that there was some inspiration here and there for certain aspects of their cultures, but nothing about the dwarves represents a type of human, similar for the elves).  Similar with Vulcans and Klingons, fantasy races that are basically stereotypes.  While there's absolutely nothing wrong with all these races being stereotypes, it does greatly thin the experience when one is in your party- he'll either play the race square and correct, or do some oh-so-random subversion.  If that character was a human, what would be missed?

By contrast, robots really do offer new things, and they are open enough that they aren't subject to any of this.

Basically, robots just don't ask the audience to have to make as many assumptions as even standard and well-loved fantasy races do.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:41:57 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMAlso noteworthy is that, because they are generally built by humans, the existence of robots doesn't intrude upon a human-centric ethos, but rather reinforces it in the way that a plant-man or insectoid doesn't.

This right here, you basically put into words what I felt but could not describe for whatever reason. I tend to play human centered settings. Robots like you said don't intrude on this, they are the products of human minds, they simply point back to us, a sort of reflection.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMIf the former feel okay for a player character, but the latter doesn't, then I'd contend it's the same as with the robots above... the genetically engineered Dogboy doesn't detract from the humanocentric ethos because it is another fruit of human ingenuity.

I also agree my gut instinct is to like the former more than the latter. and framed the way you put it, it makes sense. hence I don't dislike werewolves or vampires as much either in settings, because they are humans with afflictions or curses, they don't violate the central ethos.

OK, but it can become a slippery slope very easily. What if the robot is biological like the replicants in Blade Runner or the tanks in Space: Above and Beyond or the bioroids of Appleseed? Are they considered more human than a robot because they are collections of cells that have memories and skills programmed into their brains?

This has been the question of a lot of science fiction dating back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Or earlier because I don't know enough about the Golem legend).

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:09:12 PMRobots generally are constructed things built for a purpose.

Depending on the setting, the same can be said for biologicals. Examples include the xenomorph from the Alien franchise and the Orks from WH40K.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:33:09 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:32:07 PMHm. I don't think I'm getting my point across, so I'm going to try clarifying terms.

When you say Robot, what do you mean? What is a Robot?

For the sake of simplicity, let's stick to droids from Star Wars, that seem fair?

No. Droids from Star Wars are wildly inconsistent in how they're portrayed. They feel pain, have emotions and generally act like people instead of robots. Except when they don't. They're built in factories and programmed like computers. Except when IG-11 was wiped by Kuill and allowed to learn by doing instead of being programmed.
The implications are that Droids in Star Wars are designed to feel pain and distress and then enslaved by the "good" people in the setting, at best making them well treated slaves.
I don't think any of this is intentional. I think Lucas just didn't think through the idea of Droids being person-like and thing-like at the same time.

I mean, we can have the discussion, but the Droids from Star Wars are going to kick up contradictions. From a perspective of playing them as characters, it's going to rely heavily on how the players perceive Droids. There is a contention about whether players should even be allowed to play a Droid character. I doesn't come up as often as humanoids in D&D because more people play D&D than Star Wars RPGs, and the amount of those players who play droids is even smaller.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 06:41:32 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:33:09 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 17, 2025, 05:32:07 PMHm. I don't think I'm getting my point across, so I'm going to try clarifying terms.

When you say Robot, what do you mean? What is a Robot?

For the sake of simplicity, let's stick to droids from Star Wars, that seem fair?

No. Droids from Star Wars are wildly inconsistent in how they're portrayed. They feel pain, have emotions and generally act like people instead of robots. Except when they don't. They're built in factories and programmed like computers. Except when IG-11 was wiped by Kuill and allowed to learn by doing instead of being programmed.
The implications are that Droids in Star Wars are designed to feel pain and distress and then enslaved by the "good" people in the setting, at best making them well treated slaves.
I don't think any of this is intentional. I think Lucas just didn't think through the idea of Droids being person-like and thing-like at the same time.

It's funny you mention that, I had someone argue that the separatist movement had the automatic moral high ground vs the Republic because unlike the Republic they didn't use sentient batch created warrior slave clones.

I promptly pointed out many instances of B1 battle droids emoting pain, fear, desire, and even contemplating disobeying. it is odd how slavery in the setting is viewed as bad, except with droids or clones, those never really get questioned as much.

But what would be a more consistent robot depiction? Issac Asimov's stories? he is probably the primary influence of our pop culture perception of robots.

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 17, 2025, 06:23:00 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 05:41:57 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMAlso noteworthy is that, because they are generally built by humans, the existence of robots doesn't intrude upon a human-centric ethos, but rather reinforces it in the way that a plant-man or insectoid doesn't.

This right here, you basically put into words what I felt but could not describe for whatever reason. I tend to play human centered settings. Robots like you said don't intrude on this, they are the products of human minds, they simply point back to us, a sort of reflection.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 17, 2025, 05:35:02 PMIf the former feel okay for a player character, but the latter doesn't, then I'd contend it's the same as with the robots above... the genetically engineered Dogboy doesn't detract from the humanocentric ethos because it is another fruit of human ingenuity.

I also agree my gut instinct is to like the former more than the latter. and framed the way you put it, it makes sense. hence I don't dislike werewolves or vampires as much either in settings, because they are humans with afflictions or curses, they don't violate the central ethos.

OK, but it can become a slippery slope very easily. What if the robot is biological like the replicants in Blade Runner or the tanks in Space: Above and Beyond or the bioroids of Appleseed? Are they considered more human than a robot because they are collections of cells that have memories and skills programmed into their brains?

This has been the question of a lot of science fiction dating back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Or earlier because I don't know enough about the Golem legend).

I think the distinction Chris was making was that of human sourced vs naturally evolved. it had nothing to do with it being biological or robotic, it matters if the source of being is human or not. elves hypothetically evolved independent of humans, something like a robot requires humans to exist, thus the human centric ethos is not undermined.

Also the distinction between machines and biological organisms is naturally kind of arbitrary, since you could build a machine that qualifies by all definition of life.