Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 07:14:55 PM

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.

 

That's just it. A clone is biological and by definition must be manufactured.

Would you feel more empathy for a machine made of flesh that looks like a human or a machine made of metal that may have a human shape?

It is a fun thought exercise, but would probably really bog down a game if used in an adventure.

There's another element to it, I think.  Any decent player picking a robot PC is making a commitment to play very ridged within the limits imposed by the type and class.  You can get away with playing off type a bit as an elf but not as a robot.  A robot is probably the most restrictive PC option in terms of character and decision making.  Robots are running a program, a script.  If a player makes a call that's not expected but makes a good, logical, robot-like explanation as to why then it's good role play.  If a PC robot goes off program and you call him out for it, everyone at the table feels it's legitimate.  OTOH, if a PC elf gets drunk and acts like a buffoon you can still call him out for un-elf-like behavior but you're going to have a split opinion.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 07:14:55 PM

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.

You definitely have my point accurately.

My point was not about whether a robot or Dogboy or 'bioroid' is considered human or not... it's that artificial beings created by humans don't run afoul of taking the focus of the world off of humanity when you decide to make them a playable option.

Likewise, you point out that in settings with them, playable vampires and werewolves feel less discordant than say, a playable dragon or pixie, would because there's still that underlying humanity... the hook of a vampire or werewolf is "how does this human react to their transformation?"

There's just something less bothersome about an altered human or human creation as a PC because we all understand what it is to be human so you're not really asking a player to try and portray something completely alien to human experience and even the nonhumans are products of human thoughts.

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2025, 07:33:20 PMA robot is probably the most restrictive PC option in terms of character and decision making.  Robots are running a program, a script.

Many science fiction sources have AI that is at least as capable of open decision making as humans if not superior to them.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 07:09:28 PMIt'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.

I agree about the Star Wars inconsistency. Contrary to your original premise, though, I find that in Star Wars games, most GMs and players have no problems with nonhuman PCs like Wookies or Twi'lek, but there is more often controversy about droid PCs.

When there are droids as PCs, it inevitably brings the slavery issue to the forefront. The droid PC is clearly sentient, so it is highlighted when the PC is treated as property.

---

I suspect that's different than the legitimacy of non-human PCs from the original post (OP), though. Since you didn't say what the legitimacy arguments are, I'm not sure.

It might be an "us-vs-them" issue. Sometimes certain people identify with nonhuman characters as "us". Like Klaatu in "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Klaatu is a literal alien, but some people find him more relatable than the trigger-happy government and paranoid crowds. Aliens like Klaatu or Mork or Starman are used as devices to portray how actually weird and/or wrong some mainstream human behaviors are. Other people either don't like the metaphor, or perhaps identify more with the mainstream humanity rather than the fringe.

Literary and film interpretation is a quagmire, though, especially with an issue as broad as all nonhuman characters in fiction. It's easier to talk about particular cases.

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 17, 2025, 07:55:30 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2025, 07:33:20 PMA robot is probably the most restrictive PC option in terms of character and decision making.  Robots are running a program, a script.

Many science fiction sources have AI that is at least as capable of open decision making as humans if not superior to them.

Sure, but there's still a much higher expectation to play to type in an RPG.  Also, even the most avant-garde scifi still holds to a more linear form of thinking for AI and robots.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 17, 2025, 07:09:28 PM

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.

They don't. Star Wars is about the action and adventure, and doesn't stop to consider the implications of some of it's feature. I have my head canon to justify both droids and clone soldiers. But it's just head canon.

QuoteBut 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.

Sticking with RPGs, I think Star Trek leans more into actually considering the implications of androids and artifical people. (Data, Exocomps, The Doctor) But then, I don't think many players have issues with playing such artifical people as characters.

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2025, 08:54:37 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 17, 2025, 07:55:30 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2025, 07:33:20 PMA robot is probably the most restrictive PC option in terms of character and decision making.  Robots are running a program, a script.

Many science fiction sources have AI that is at least as capable of open decision making as humans if not superior to them.

Sure, but there's still a much higher expectation to play to type in an RPG.  Also, even the most avant-garde scifi still holds to a more linear form of thinking for AI and robots.

We'll have to disagree. Sci-fi frequently shows high-end AI that equal or even vastly exceeds humans in all manner of thinking, including creativity.

I am playing a Warforged cleric in a campaign that just passed the 4 year mark. I'd say it's more foreign than the dwarf, halfling, or elf. A lot of that is he is "young" in that he only came online 2 years ago when the campaign began, so a lot of learning about emotions. Which isn't something other non-human races tend to deal with.

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

Star Wars in general is inconsistent about a lot of things, and droids are absolutely one of the worst offenders.  If we look at just Star Wars, the movie, we have a pretty clear vision: droids have no mind but are programmed to act like they do and to obey their master's orders.  We know they have no mind because a lot of goody-two-shoes characters treat them like property and have no qualms about wiping memory, sending them into mortal peril, and generally do not take them seriously at all.

Naturally by the time the main trilogy is over, we see a bunch of other weirdness.  We see what appears to be a nameless bounty hunting robot (it's not certain that he's a robot, but he's very skinny and appears to be one versus an exo-suit- while he was given the name "IG-88B" offscreen, it does appear that he was always intended to be a robot), and we see a scene where a droid in bondage is tortured by some kind of foot-torture device, followed immediately by another droid in bondage.  What is going on here?  We aren't told for sure, but the only hypothesis that squares with what we saw in the original movie is that these droids aren't actually suffering- it's just set up that way because the people in charge are all crazy gangster weirdos. 

But there's no way this is what's going on- if we take this scene at face value, these droids have some manner of suffering, some internal sense, a set of desires- in other words, they are reasonably similar to humans in a lot of ways, and are not just roleplaying as people as was the clear intention in the first movie.  If robots are fake people, you don't torture a Gonk droid and you don't hire an assassin droid; by the time the main trilogy was over, droids are clearly some kind of oppressed sentient beings, most of whom are enslaved from creation to decommission or destruction.

If you start adding in all the other sources of Star Wars stuff, it gets way worse quite fast.  Tons of EU materials involve robots who have desires, don't want to serve, consider themselves slaves and are mad about it.  The way good characters treat droids changes in some of the material.  By the time we get to see a movie made during Extra Spicy Political Bullshit Era, droids possess a desire for leisure time, have an analog for alcohol, fall in love with each other and with humans, and have abolitionist droids trying to abolish slavery- some manner of white guilt messaging along with some eternal revolution nonsense.


Anyway I agree with you- Star Wars droids aren't a good discussion point at all.  Data from Star Trek can be, because we have a bunch of episodes that address what he is directly. 

Overall, robots in general are a good TTRPG race because a given table is going to have a definitive answer about what robots are, exactly.  The robots either have an internal sense (or believe that they do), or they don't.  You can even tell a story where it's not totally certain, but if a settings book does that while giving you playable robots, it's a copout. 

Robots being things is fine as a PC and it's going to work fine if you tell a PC they aren't behaving right.
Robots being people is fine too.  It all works.

There are no robots.  Only golems.

You can't really have this discussion without including the setting's idea of if characters have a soul or not. One of the key reasons Star Wars feels so willing to abuse droids is that they have no force signature; they behave like sentient living beings, which can fool people who are not force sensitive, but they aren't actually sentient per the setting's own canon.

(That said, I would also argue that part of what makes classic Star Wars incredible is all the mixed signals you get from the fact it's a genre kitbash under the hood. The problems wind up projecting depth and history rather than becoming plot holes. Well, not just plot holes, anyways.)

In the same way, you have to ask yourself what a setting's mythos about the soul and life after death is before making your mind up on if robots are a race or not. The player point of view will almost always perceive them as a race with a different coat of paint on, especially if they are a playable race, but the GM may perceive them differently depending on how the setting's metaphysic works, especially as it relates to life and death.

Modern sensibilities tend to default to interpreting human minds as complex computers thanks to the theory of evolution, so unless you are very specific in your worldbuilding to make the opposite the case, players will naturally interpret a moral equivalence between organic and digital characters. Players do not naturally assume the Star Wars mentality; they assume the Star Trek mentality that Data is just a member of the Enterprise crew who happens to be an android.

It's because the primary distinctions between robots and humans are physical, not cultural.

The droids in Star Wars don't have their own nation -- they are already an integral part of the same human culture.

It is trying to define "fantasy races" in terms of culture that causes divisiveness, since players don't typically engage in those cultural differences anyway, and are only there for the physical differences.

Robots fit that tendency rather than fight it.

I think it very much depends upon the setting. Star Wars droids are (as others have said) super inconsistent.

Not all robots need to be human centric, though it's common. They could have been created by an entirely different species (ex: The Geth in Mass Effect) or some variation on the always popular "the ancients made them" which is in a lot of ways the sci-fi version of "a wizard did it".

I don't think I'd want PCs playing robots which are just programmed automatons as it'd get boring. It's really a very setting dependant question. While there are some standard robot tropes, it's definitely not as consistent as fantasy races.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 18, 2025, 07:18:02 AMYou can't really have this discussion without including the setting's idea of if characters have a soul or not. One of the key reasons Star Wars feels so willing to abuse droids is that they have no force signature; they behave like sentient living beings, which can fool people who are not force sensitive, but they aren't actually sentient per the setting's own canon.

The Force doesn't really care about sentience--it is in all living/biological things (with some odd exceptions). A droid is a non-living/biological sentient being. A tree is detected by the Force as a living thing, but does it really have a soul?